Spaniards on the street do NOT smile at strangers

Today is Sunday. I suppose I experienced the most “culture shock” since arriving here. This morning I was really, really tired even though I got 8.5 hours of sleep.

Yesterday we went to the beach and it contributed to me getting really lazy with my Spanish. When I speak English, its really hard to go back to Spanish. Anyway, the moral of the story is that I was really struggling with conjugating verbs and everything last night. So this morning we took the bus to church and we had to ask the bus driver what stop to get off on and I just couldn’t handle it anymore. Everyone always glares at everyone else because that’s just how people are here and I just wanted one person to acknowledge that I existed and was at least trying to speak their language and wasn’t ruining their life.
So I had a brilliant idea – when you come to the end of your rope, pass the baton! I said to Sam “¿Quieres hablar con el chofer?” (You wanna ask the driver?) and she was like “Sure!” and so she did it. Which did not stop me from almost breaking into tears twice on the ride there. So we finally found the church and people were smiling and it was TINY. You have not seen a small church until you’ve seen a protestant church in Seville. Anyway everyone was smiling and laughing and kissing (Spanish greeting) and there were babies and I almost started crying again out of happiness.

Anyway, church was great. It was a little weird because I had a really hard time paying attention to the sermon since I was totally drained but we sang some songs like “This is the air I breathe” only translated into Spanish. I don’t really like that song in English very much but it was really great to sing it and know exactly what it meant. Anyway after church there was more laughing and smiling and besitos and babies and hugs and love.

Then Sam and I went to our parada, (bus stop) and while we were waiting, I had this really great conversation in Spanish with a guy who is in medical school here from Colombia. We talked about types of salsa dancing and Colombia and his relatives in the US who live in NY and FL. It was nice because he wasn’t creepy and asked if I wanted his email address and I said no and he was like okay that’s cool, so what do you study besides Spanish? Anyway, now I like Spanish again and feel happy that not everyone hates Americans and people from my hemisphere can understand my linguistic abilities. I now plan on participating in the glorious Spanish tradition that is the siesta.