Saturday, January 23, 2010

Gato Con Botas

Today I attended some of the last orientation sessions and met a really cool girl from Delaware. Hi, I’m in Delaware. (I hope at least one person gets that.) Finally bought a dictionary and Sevilla travel guide so that I can know the history of all the beautiful buildings here. Also, I bet you’ve been dying to know, I bought shampoo, soap, dental floss, and a bottled water. Life is glamorous here. Mostly I walked around the center of the city for about two hours, trying to gain my bearings and find a handmade guitar for under 100 euros. Unsuccessful I finally got some internet at my study center and at an internet café, and I’m finally through all my email and facebook responses.

Lunch was enormous again and required a two hour siesta afterwards. I did a lot of reading today and mostly relaxed after a few days of chaos. For dinner: wine and cheese, sardines, chorizo, and pizza. Although there is so much beauty outside my apartment, my favorite moment in Spain so far was dinner tonight because conversation with Dolores and Antonia is so great. They are very patient with my Spanish but also genuinely interested in my stories and my day. Life is good just talking to good people over wine and cheese, and hearing about all their grandchildren and the grandchildren of their friends. I can’t understand everything, but one of the funniest things about Dolores and Antonio is that they can talk about anything for a really long time. They talked about what time I need to wake up tomorrow for about a half hour but it’s only because they clearly are invested in the people around them, which now includes me. It’s easy to just attribute this to Spain and think things like, “Isn’t Spain great? They really know how to live.”

I think there’s something more because as I think about it, there are probably a lot of people here who are totally different, and in all likelihood don’t have foreign students living with them. And furthermore, I’ve realized that my grandparents know how to live just as well. So though I think it is a cultural difference, generational difference might be more accurate. Life keeps getting faster and faster, and we need to look to the people who have experienced the most life to show us how to live.

After dinner, Dolores mended some clothes while singing. Antonio joined her at intervals but mostly helped narrate a movie we were watching: Gato con botas (Puss in Boots). I’m in Spain, with thousands of beautiful women and bars and what am I doing the first week here? Watching puss in boots with people over triple my age.

However, it was great. So relieving to finally be listening to Spanish I fully understand, it made Antonio’s narration hilarious. Every once in a while he would mutter something like, “The king is very fat, he must eat a lot”, or “The cat plays many tricks, very sneaky cat”, or my personal favorite, “The cat wears boots. It’s funny”. While other students were out partying, Antonio and I fell asleep on the couch, watching Puss in Boots. What can I say? Light switches may be upside down and people eat French fries with mayonnaise, but it’s still just life over here.

1 comment:

  1. Mookalakaheeki. Come on, you wanna lei me...WE'RE IN HAWAII.

    ReplyDelete