Although I've been to Spain before, I was visiting with lots of other people, and the focus was history. Now that I'm alone and now immersed, I have more time to notice things. Here are the surprises so far. Most, but not all, are for the good.
- El Ratoncito Pérez. In the US and UK, the tooth fairy comes to visit. Here, the little rat Perez leaves a present in exchange for baby teeth. This is from a children's story with for a prince, and I have visited the tiny monument where the little rat is supposed to have lived, in a bakery in a cookie box.
- Doorknobs on the center of the door. These just annoy me. The principles of physics dictate that you use the minimum of force at the farthest point from the pivot. And in fact, since physics is the same here, these doors are harder to open.
-Safety. Pickpocketing is rampant here, and I actually had a companion scare off one in the act. In spite of this, I feel safer than almost anywhere I've ever been. I looked up the statistics - Spain has one half of the homicides in Germany and the UK and one tenth of the homicides in the US. After being assured by a local woman, I walked through a park at night on my own, something I never would have done at home.
-Spanish. I speak worse than I thought, but I understand more then I expected. I have a lot more studying to do. However, I forgot how much I love learning a language when I'm in a country, and I have been inspired to continue.
4 comments:
I think your exam is out of the way by now - hope it all went well. You will be able to enjoy the rest of your holiday using you newly polished language skills.
Well there are a whole lot of places you can visit that are safer than the US. I think the understanding better than speaking is pretty universal with learning languages. understanding is passive. But speaking requires active construction. You can understand something with only partial data through extrapolation. If you speak with partial data all you present is gibrish.
that is hilarious. I'd totally forgotten about the tooth rat. We are looking forward to having you here in soggy Amsterdam soon!
Where your Spanish will come in handy!
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