La cultura española: una perspectiva americana / Spanish Culture: An American Perspective

First and foremost, HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!

Spain is an interesting place. When you make eye contact with someone, you don’t smile. You can keep looking, or look away, or whatever, but you don’t smile. It feels very unnatural to me – I’m so used to smiling at people! But I’m trying to get used to it. I’ll probably finally get it down right before I have to go back, and then when I get home, people will think I’m mean because I’m not smiling. Some more cultural thoughts…

Lawsuits: People seem supremely unconcerned with these (compared to the U.S. anyway). In El Centro, there’s a tram that takes you around. It moves very slowly, but anyone can cross the tracks at any time. The tracks are basically in the middle of the street, so there are always people walking on them. I can’t imagine this in the U.S. – what if a kid ran away from their parents and fell down and the tram driver didn’t see?? The tram would be sued so fast…

Swimsuits: At the beach in Cádiz, there were some sights that were a little scary to my poor American eyes. I’m not talking about topless women (though there were a couple). I’m talking about the heavy, wrinkly old men and women in bikinis and speedos. It’s interesting to see – people seem to just not care about what their bodies look like. I’m trying to decide what I think of this. On the one hand, modesty is a good thing. On the other, isn’t it a healthier approach to self-image to not care about what you look like and just worry about having a good time at the beach? I mean, I still don’t care to see speedos, but it’s an interesting thought. God knows the U.S. has terrible problems with body image. Maybe we could learn a few things from the Spaniards.

PDA: This I cannot get used to. I’ve seen people making out way too many times already since being here. Maybe Americans are conservative, I don’t know, but I just don’t think it’s appropriate to do that in front of a bunch of people. End cultural thoughts for now…

On Sunday I went to Itálica with Sarah and Ryan. Itálica is a bunch of Roman ruins right outside Sevilla. They’re very cool to look at and it was fun to explore. Didn’t take too long and didn’t cost too much. In fact, the most difficult part of the day was figuring out where to catch the bus. And we saw some random things – in the café in the bus station, there was a kid with a little duckling. And on the bus back, I definitely saw two guys riding one horse (one of them shirtless) down the street. I love Spain.

I also love that Spain has a monarchy. My Spanish politics professor mentions them a lot. The king , Juan Carlos de Borbón y Borbón (two Borbones because his parents were cousins – the royal families of Europe are all so interrelated), is extremely popular. He has been king since Franco’s death. His son, Felipe de Borbón y Grecia, Príncipe de Asturias, is heir to the throne.

I finally bought stamps a couple days ago, and realized that I won’t be sending many postcards. 20 stamps cost me 15.60€. I will try to send one to the people I promised one to…but definitely don’t expect more than one. Just a heads up…

Another note on Spanish: I think in general I might be improving. I still need people to speak very slowly to me though. Too fast and I lost track of the words. Have I mentioned yet how weird it is to hear the vosotros form used? We never learn that in the U.S. since they mainly teach South American Spanish. I want to get used to it, but not too much because I don’t want to use it when I go home. We’ll see if it makes its way into my vocabulary. ¿Vale? Vale.

I now have a weekend in Istanbul planned, and I may do a weekend in Barcelona (I found REALLY cheap flights, I just need to talk to people to make definite plans before we book anything). The ISA weekend in Lisbon, Portugal, is coming up soon, so the European traveling will commence shortly. I’m so excited!!!! ¡Qué les vayan bien! ¡Besos!