La Equivocaciones de Alyssa

Hola!
I’ve decided to rename this blog (hopefully just for this entry) to “La Equivocaciones de Alyssa”! (“The Mistakes of Alyssa”!)

My past few days in Sevilla have been marked by a recurring theme of misunderstanding, mistakes and outright stupidity. Some events I may chuckle at in the future…for others I may just cringe.

As much as I love living with my Senora, Julia, it hasn’t been a breeze getting acclimated to living in Spain. The house is always 60 degrees or colder, we eat lunch at 2 or 3 p.m. and dinner at 9 or 10, and sometimes I just don’t understand what Julia is saying! In my experience so far, Spaniards like to talk—and once they start on a subject, they just keep going and going and I occasionally get lost along the way… Julia can do that sometimes.

Other times I just don’t get the vocab or the question. The first morning Christa and I were at Julia’s house, Julia came to call me for breakfast and said something like, “Christina? Christiana?” I thought she was asking if I was Christian so I replied, “Si, soy Catolica!” (Yes, I’m a Catholic!) She was very confused—and quite rightly so—because after she pointed and explained, “otra chica” (the other girl) I realized she was asking me what Christa’s name was. Yikes. I can’t imagine how ridiculous she must have thought I was as I repeatedly explained to her that I’m Catholic!

We’ve had a lot of time to get to know each other the past couple of days, though, so already communication has improved incredibly. And my Spanish has improved too—I even spoke Spanish in two of my dreams! And Julia said she would correct me when I make errors.

Once during dinner, Christa and I were asking Julia questions about bullfighting here. She, like roughly half of the Sevillanos, is a big fan of bullfighting. The other half criticizes it as barbaric and cruel. Anyway, the bullfighting season starts at the end of April, during a festival called Feria (which happens to fall on my birthday this year!) and runs through September or October. I made a comment like, “?Es como un estacion de un deporte, verdad? ?Como el beisbol?” (It’s like the length of a sports season, right? Like baseball?) Well, she didn’t like that. “No.” While I had only meant to compare the lengths of the seasons, she thought I was calling bullfighting a sport, when, to Spaniards, it’s an art. I don’t have a judgment on bullfighting yet, but to challenge a Sevillana’s interpretation of bullfighting created a slightly tense moment.

Julia really is very helpful and friendly, and fortunately forgiving. These traits came in handy when I had a tough time getting in the door after coming home the first night there. Before we went out, Christa and I received a set of keys each. There were three keys, all for different gates or doors to get into the building. When I got back that night—a group of people walked me to my building—I got in the first gate…then was stumped by the second. I tried all three keys repeatedly, right side up, upside down—nothing worked. I knew I couldn’t stay outside, and I had Julia’s phone number, so, at nearly 3 a.m. and after living with her for only a few hours, I called my senora to let me into the building. I was sooo embarrassed!! She came down and was very understanding, but it was slightly mortifying, especially when she came out a different door than I had spent 10 minutes trying to open. So…the keys do work.

Like I said, there would be tales of stupidity in here. And I thought I’d save the stupidest for last. A few days ago my throat was a little sore, so I grabbed a small bottle of hotel mouthwash I had brought with me and went to gargle with it. As soon as I took a swig my mouth was on fire!! I immediately spit it out and came to the horrible realization of what I had almost ingested!! I remembered putting a small amount of NAIL POLISH REMOVER into an empty mouthwash container to bring with me to Spain. I ran to Christa’s room, drenched in the water I had splashed in my mouth and she didn’t have real mouthwash either. Anyway, I cleaned out my mouth obsessively and finally got the awful taste out! Don’t think I’ve ever felt like such an idiot! But I don’t really mind sharing the story- if I can prevent one other person from doing the same, I’ll have made a difference! Ha.

For the maintenance of my pride, I’m going to attribute these acts of silliness to the fact that soy una inadaptada (I’m a misfit) attempting to get acclimated in a foreign country. It takes some time to get used to new surroundings, and sometimes I figure things out in embarrassing or potentially dangerous ways. Ah well, they’re learning experiences, right?