Several Lessons, and a predicament..

Two things I have learned since the last post, both concerning eating. One: Imagine this situation, I'm quite hungry and want dinner so I walk into a Doner Kabab restaurant (not the best food on the planet) and wonder what I'm supposed to do. Well the waiter points to a table, so I sit, and then he comes over and takes my order, brings my food, and acts very waiter-ish. So I eat, drink, finish my meal and begin to wonder how I'm supposed to pay. I try all the usual things, i.e. catch the waiters eye, or try to get his attention in some way to no avail. So I sit, and wait, and lo and behold another patron has saved the day, by going up to the counter and paying the cashier. Moral of the situation: when in an unfamiliar situation that involves lots of other people, just wait. Inevitably someone else will perform the correct action and show you what it is.

Situation number two. I'm sitting in my host family's kitchen eating lunch, and part of the meal is fried chicken breasts. Pretty darn tasty, however one of the ones I took still had a bone in it. How do you eat chicken when it still has bones?? With your fingers of course.... whoa there, not in espana. I had origianally tried to cut it with my knife, but of course failed when I hit the bone, and so put down the knife and attempted to pull it apart with my fingers. My host father made the assumption that the knife I had wasn't sharp enough and so got up and fished a serrated steak knife out of the drawer for me to use. Of course I didn't have the words to tell him that wasn't the problem, and so I learned how to eat chicken on the bone without my fingers. Moral of the situation, when in an unfamiliar situation with few people, all of whom are interested in seeing you succeed, do whatever you think you should, and you will be corrected in a friendly manner if it isn't right.

So after three days, and two classes in Granada, I feel fairly comfortable in the city. I like to walk a lot, and besides the fact that my feet are still reminding me in various ways that I live a very sedentary life in Kalamazoo, I have been all over Granada. My goal for this week is to see how high in the City I can get. If you don't know Granada is surrounded by mountains, and the city itself is really quite small so it is very easy to walk towards the edges and climb really quite high. it is very exhausting but extremely beautiful. Also, I have gotten a little more comfortable speaking with various shop keepers and waiters, although I can still only communicate in the present. Which is ok for my purposes and considering where I'm starting from I am not upset at all. I feel as if I have learned an immense amount in just two days. I can only imagine what I can learn in three months. But I kind of feel as if learning spanish has a slightly logarithmic curve to it, i.e. extremely fast in the begining until I can communicate ok, and then little by little for the rest of my life.

My predicament. So this is my predicament. I am in Granada for the express purpose of learning Spanish, and although the city is overrun by tourists (many of them speaking english) I do not want to talk to them. I find myself trying to think, speak, and read only in spanish, which is quite difficult given I am returned to the level of a child of elementary age. However, it is much easier to do in a Spanish city then in the states. The problem that arrises is that I want to talk with people. Everyone who knows me, knows that the thing which is most important to me is to make real human connections. This is very difficult to do, when everyone I meet sees me as an adult, and yet I can only communicate at the level of a child. Es una problema muy grande.


The following pictures are (in no particular order), my school, the sunset over the mountains from pretty far up in Granada, and the Alhambra from the same location.



P.S. Being able to adjust the exposure time on the camera is very nice. The sunset picture and the Alhambra picture are taken approximately the same time. However it does create problems with blurring... :-/