Blog Post 7 Madrid

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“The City”



THE INDIVIDUAL LEVEL (A Mixture}

I think that Madrid is one of my favorite places that we visited this whole trip. I really like that the city was modern, but still had the beauty of the past incorporated into it as soon in the picture. When we were going shopping, I thought that it was going to be horrible since there are so many people here, but it turned out to be easy. I noticed that when we went into stores that the cashiers spoke English well or had someone there to help them. On the other hand, when we went into McDonalds to order a frappe I had to order in person since my coffee wasn’t on the quick ordering machines. The person I spoke to wasn’t very good at English, so I tried my best to tell her what I wanted even though I was nervous. I ended up not ordering the right drink, but it still turned out good. I think that if most people didn’t speak English that they just used the quick order machine, so I am happy that I got to practice my Spanish even if I didn’t want to.



THE RELATIONAL LEVEL (Eating Out)

There are numerous amounts of places to eat in Madrid. One of the places that I really liked was a restaurant called Vips. When we walked in, we seated ourselves and the waiter came right over and gave us our menus. One thing that I noticed was that this menu had a lot more pictures on it than normal. In Culture Smart, on page 101, it says that in tourist areas menus will often have more pictures in order to avoid language problems. I found this to be very helpful considering my Spanish isn’t very good and so I pointed to a picture of the croissant I wanted to order as shown in the picture. The picture on the menu looked exactly like the food that was brought to me and I was happy about that. The waiter than said something to me very quickly and I just froze. Thankfully my friend Logan was there to translate for me. This is similar to the American culture because usually when someone doesn’t English then they have someone with them who can in order to communicate better.



THE SOCIAL LEVEL (Helping Those in Need)

One thing that I noticed when walking around shopping was it seemed like there was a lot of homeless people. There were people in boxes and in beds made from blankets set up on the corners. This made me sad to see that people are living on the sides of the streets. It also makes me thankful for the things that I have in my life. In Leading with Cultural Intelligence, on page 102, it says that some cultures have a collectivism attitude toward society. I feel like Spain has that kind of attitude so maybe they can focus on trying to get individuals off the streets or offered programs to get homeless people back on their feet in order to better themselves as a whole society.

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