October 22, 2012, Monday. Deb’s thoughts

We’re in our fourth week now and plugging along. At least part of the time, we’re making complete idiots of ourselves with our appalling Spanish, but we keep up the attempt. The very kind-hearted Spanish usually try to meet us part way with any English that they know.

Together, we usually get through.

For example, today I got my second Madrid library card. We’ve been wanting to use the libraries not only for internet, but also for access to English magazines and reference books. Warren has been zealous in finding the libraries, given the sketchy and often misunderstood directions we’ve gotten. He found the first library (a commune of Madrid kind) and we got our cards in record time. Warren found the second (a municipal of Madrid kind) and got his card there with just his Colorado driver’s license. Amusingly, a few hours later, a different librarian was adamant that he needed my passport number (I look markedly less trustworthy than Warren) but still I had a card within five minutes. Considering the hoops we’ve been jumping through to buy a year’s membership at the Prado (including copies of our passports and two passport photos each!) I am yet again convinced that libraries are the last bastions of civilization and civility worldwide. Librarians of the world – I salute you!

Our Spanish lessons with Norm continued tonight. He is endlessly patient with our bungling sentences and ridiculous pronunciation. (our dear friend Mel Preusser had tried to teach us the correct pronunciation of “plaza” – platha – years ago, but we were too dumb to pick it up.) Our v/b’s and c/th’s are keeping us endlessly amused. Norm has a hard time understanding how we can’t pronounce something simple like the z’s all being th’s, but have no trouble with the tilde n’s - ñ- being the ny sound (think Cañon City.) Or how we know obscure words like orphan, chimney and greenhorn, but don’t know any useful words. Hard to explain what we’re used to in Colorado. Norm actually teaches English to Spaniards, so our classes are sorta “reversed” for him. We really appreciate his being willing to deal with us.

Norm is great with answering all our endless “living here” questions, like how the partial bus/metro strikes work and what some of the newspaper headlines mean. Our attempts at translating newspaper jargon are hilarious. Spain is under huge political pressure at the moment with all the economic issues with the EU, and with separatist agitation in some of the regions of Spain, particularly in the always contentious Basque region. We spend an hour every morning watching TV trying to understand what’s going on in the local news; Spanish immersion training. Surprising how hard it is to figure out even short phrases that use abbreviations that everyone here knows.

I cooked us up some pork and potatoes with the Hatch red chili powder I brought. Our blood levels of capsicum were getting dangerously low, but we’re back in balance now. The food here has been wonderful. The quality of the fruit and veg are just wonderful. I always forget in the US why you would have fruit for dessert – just plain fruit. And then I get here and have watermelon for dessert, and it’s so sweet and fresh that no pastry could compete. And the fresh fish! Spain is second only to Japan in fish consumption, and the variety and freshness are just amazing. After being refused a purchase of merluza (hake), we asked Norm and found out that we needed to ask for slices of the fish, that the whole fish are sold in different units. Anyway, we just keep learning. We now know three different words for “slice” that apply to three different things.

Speaking of markets, we went to the Supermercado at the big Corte Ingles store on Sunday. Almost nothing is open on Sunday, but amazingly this big supermarket is. Corte Ingles is the biggest department store in Madrid with various buildings in several locations. Its supermarket is wonderful and we spent three hours just wandering around looking at food. We bought some stuff, but won’t desert our local market, los Ventos, with the sellers who’ve been so good and patient with us. Not to mention that their produce is of such high quality. We’ll be shopping tomorrow, because Monday seems to be a restocking day after the weekend, so we’re trying to shop on Tuesday when everything is fresh.

Know we’re thinking of all our dear friends/family in the States and missing you and wishing you were here helping us with our Spanish.