A Normal Day in Spain

---

Hi!
I’m really sorry. I hate giving you guys two blogs in one day, but it’s just want happens sometimes. I bought this mobile Wi-Fi thing and it worked great for the first two days, and then it just stopped working! What?! Called the help line, woman spoke so fast! “Más despacio por favor.” (Slower please). As I said in an earlier blog, if a Spaniard realizes you are slower at Spanish they don’t slow down or pick different words, they just talk louder. “No, más despacio por favor.” Two beeps. Someone on the other end speaks, “Hello.” She transferred me to their English speaking folks (uhg) where I was told I need to “top up” my device, meaning I need to go online and put money on the account since it is pay as you go. Ahhhhh. I see. That would have been good information to get from the salesgirl, or the instruction manual. So, I will take care of that on Monday (I guess that’ll be today for you guys when you read this) since I forgot to bring my card to the internet café. Hopefully, problem solved.

I opted out of writing a blog Friday simply because not much happened. It was a normal day, which is actually kind of exciting when I think about it! A normal day in Spain. Today I’m just writing it on a word document since I didn’t have time to get it done in the internet café.
Class was pretty uneventful as well, but we are learning how hard it can be to communicate and explain things between cultures, not languages, cultures. An example might help here. We played a game in class where our teacher split us into teams and each team had a simple word that they had to describe with riddles and the other students had to guess what your word was. My team’s word was “camisa” meaning “shirt.” Our team was two kids from the US, and two girls from Germany. Brian and I came up with saying “Sin esto, sin zapatos, no vamos a servirte.” (Without this, without shoes, we will not serve you, or No this, no shoes, no service). The girls from Germany gave a pretty blank stare, so I asked, “Do you have that saying?” More confused looks. Brian explained the concept by asking if they have rules in Germany that you need to be wearing something on your feet and have a shirt on in order to sit at a restaurant. “Oh, yes that’s a rule we have, but we don’t really have saying.” While it was a good clue, we decided not to use it because it was virtually useless since over half of our class is from Germany/Poland and the saying would have no meaning.

I actually found it really interesting. We could all communicate, but coming up with riddles and things was difficult because we had to make sure that the clues would make sense to anyone who read them no matter where they were from. You can’t use a lot of culture references because it’s really a crapshoot whether or not they will know what you were referring to. One of the girls from the US, Whitney, started talking about Sarah Palin during a “debate.” I say “debate” because it wasn’t very ferocious since no one could really get too emotional while trying to get their point across haha. Anyways, she starting talking about Sarah Palin and actually is speaking very, very good Spanish and at the end our professor is just staring at her. “Who is Sar-Sarah Pay-Payleen? What are you talking about?” Ah…Spain. Apparently they are Sarah Palin free here. Does that mean I will get peace from all of the annoying political stuff for the next year? Things are looking up already, eh?

This morning (Saturday) I woke up around 9 and had breakfast with the family. One of Selu’s favorite things is just “tostada con aceite de olivo.” Toast with olive oil. (I have finally got his name right. Not Selco, not Serlu, its SELU, like Say-loo. Got it.) Pepa asked me if I wanted to try it. “Sure!” I get my toast and I start putting some olive oil on it. “¡No, mas, mas!” says Selu. So I put more on until he says to stop. It was really pretty good. He likes it better with tomatoes…I agree Selu, I agree. After breakfast Selu (and Pepa, but mostly Selu) took time and got out a map of Càdiz and Selu explained a lot of the city’s history.

Ready Dad? This is especially for you. All who aren’t interested in history should skip the next few paragraphs.

Càdiz was built up as a very powerful and strong fortress. The entire part of Old Càdiz is surrounded by large, strong, stone walls that now protect the city from the ocean, but in the old days it kept out all types of invading ships. The walls were more effective still because the inhabitants of Càdiz were able to shoot cannons from behind their protective fortress. Old Càdiz is also famous for its many towers that were originally used to keep watch for invaders. Even as the French took over nearly all of Spain, Càdiz was one of the only places that remained unconquered.

The new part of Càdiz is really very new. When Selu was young the peninsula was pretty much empty on the other side of the land bridge that separates Old Càdiz from New Càdiz It is interesting how the part of the city we are living in has been inhabited for nearly 3000 years, however less than a mile away is an entire part of the city that has only been “settled” for roughly 30, 40 years, maybe? It is really a very multidimensional city. (I can tell my English is getting rusty because it literally took both Natalie and I like 5 minutes to come up with that word, and we ended up cheating and using a thesaurus.) Also, the first democratic constitution was drafted here in Càdiz by Los Cortes de Càdiz in 1812. Next year on March 19th is the bicentennial of the constitution. Càdiz is covered in signs and banners talking about “La Pepa” (no, not my host mom, although that will be a popular joke, I think). The constitution was called “La Pepa” for San Jose, which comes from Joseph and can be shortened to “Pepa.” Much of the city is under construction right now and the city is taking great steps to clean Càdiz for the celebration. Selu said it is going to be really beautiful by the time I get back from Christmas vacation.

Selu and Pepa also took a lot of time today to tell us about all of the celebrations they have here in Spain. Many of the celebrations are for different Saints; people here have a birthday and then they have their Saint’s day, which is based off of your name. For instance Selu has another name, Jose and Pepa’s real name is Josefa. El día de San Jose (the day of Saint Joseph) is in March so everyone with the name Jose or Josefa celebrates their Saint’s day almost like another birthday, but much smaller. Most celebrations are religiously (Catholic) affiliated and most of Spain is technically Catholic, but not practicing. The majority of the celebrations seem to be in the spring, including the 10-day carnival which Càdiz is very well known for. There were so many holidays though there is NO way I can remember them all, and you’ll hear about them as I see them anyways…just know there are a lot and they give out free food.

After we got done eating I decided to go ahead and go for my run. I hadn’t really run too far down the maritime so I decided to go for a longer run. However, when I got to La Playa Victoria (the long beach in Càdiz the tide was low, so I opted to run ON the beach. It was so, so nice. I have never gone for a run on a beach before. There were actually a lot of people running on the beach and there was even one guy that smiled and gave me a thumbs up! In the end my run ended up being nearly an hour and twenty minutes because I just didn’t fell like turning around on the beach. I ran most of the length of Playa Victoria, but not the whole thing. Somehow the song “Defying Gravity” (Glee Version 😊 ) was stuck in my head all morning, all though my run and through most of the day. I blame Conor since it was in his car that I heard it, but I didn’t really mind, good song.

Towards the end of my run I even saw three girls from Sevilla who came to Càdiz for the day. One of whom I was pretty good friends with at orientation and we have talked about doing some traveling together. She is already starting! She’s meeting her boyfriend who is studying in Budapest in Venice next weekend. We have finally started planning some trips. Tomorrow is a big day and we are venturing into New Càdiz to see an air show the Spanish air force is putting on and we are going to a Càdiz soccer game! We hear they aren’t very good, but aw well. We are going to Gibraltar next weekend, we are trying to plan a trip to Portugal for the first weekend in October, I am going to visit Chiara in Italy the first week in December and I booked my flight to Germany for Christmas today!! I am very excited to start seeing more of Europe!

Not long after I returned it was already lunchtime! Pepa made us fish with a sauce that had potatoes, tomatoes, peppers and wine. DELICIOUS. She said all of the girls really like it. Natalie asked the family if they like to read. Pepa not so much, Alba is like me, if she finds a good book then she does, Selu loves to read and reads everything. He said he just finished reading the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series and really liked it. He will read anything, but he prefers historical fiction or just history books. Let’s see, likes history and loves talking about history to us, loves reading historical books. Does this sound like anyone I might know? (*Cough*, DAD aka REX*Cough*) I need to ask if he likes to golf and we may have found Dad’s Spanish counterpart. Minus the fact that Selu is a personal security escort…which I take as a personal bouncer. Another difference though is that Selu really loves theater. For a long time he was a part of a company here in Càdiz that did classic and Avant guard theater. I think it’s really his passion, but the company had to stop because they took their theater very seriously and it required a lot of time, devotion and money and they were not funded by anyone so it came out of their own pockets. However, he said that many of their productions won significant awards and were very prominent in the area around Càdiz.

Overall Natalie and I agree that today was a good day with our family. We got to talk to them a lot and learn a bit more about them. Pepa is even said she would plan spa day for us, her, Alba, her friend Isabel, and her exchange girls that are in our API group Whitney and Megan because there is a hotel here that does a special on Wednesdays where you get two for one. I’ve never been to a spa before so I think that would be really fun!

Love and miss everyone,
Love always,
Devin 😊

---