Summer daze in Spain

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world.  This makes it hard to plan the day.  ~Elwyn Brooks White

There's a heavy heat hanging in the air. You can almost see it, a hazy layer which blocks my view of the mountains and levates off the tarmac. An early morning shower refreshes for about ten minutes, and then the permanent layer of sweat  forms again and is only cured by another shower or a swim later in the day.

From August to the beginning of September, it is the main holiday season here in Spain. Tourists flood into the country and populate the beaches with their white torsos and swiftly turn into crispy prawns and rosy tomatoes. Many businesses close, civil servants take leave and the judicial system grinds to a holt. The radio DJs leave listeners with a rivetting playlist of 10 songs, which are played over and over and over again, while they disappear on holiday. Past series and movies are played throughout the day on television, so if you missed the first season of "Friends", don't worry because it'll be back on in no time, when they've played through all of the 10 seasons and start again at Season 1 Episode 1. For the third time. This month.

My "foreigner" status must be as obvious as a teabag amongt coffee beans at this time of year. While all the locals are on cruise-control, holiday mode, I'm itching to get productive. Having already been on holiday since the end of June, I've almost forgotten what my profession is and I'm raring to go and get back into "normal" life. Although I would usually class myself as a balanced Type AB personality, this is when my Type A personality shines through. So I try to resist the snail pace at which everything is done in this heat and get busy.

For the third year running, after a few days of making a huge effort to get moving again, I succumb to the reality that this is never going to happen. Nothing productive will be achieved and will only get frustrated. I look down my street and while all my neighbours' cars are parked outside their houses, indicating that they are home, there is no one in sight. No children screaming, no pools splashing, no sunbathers in the garden, no cyclists or joggers. The blinds are all drawn down in their houses and only a small, open crack at the bottom of the window indicates any life behind those shutters. Every year I ask myself the same question: What do they do all day indoors??

At about 6pm, the heat relents and a fractionally cooler spell begins. All of a sudden, there's the noise of blinds being opened, car engines starting as people drive off into town or to the beach, children playing games with their friends and the chatter of village gossip as people stand out in the street. They tomar un fresco or get some fresh air, which they must need having been cooped up all day! Now that they have relaxed and avoided the heat, they are ready to go out and enjoy themselves, socialise, exercise, eat and drink.

This foreigner clearly has a lot to learn from these wise locals. Here is a nation of people who saber vivir - they know how to live . They generally live long and healthy lives and I´m sure high blood pressure is not as common as those from higher-paced worlds. So perhaps it's time for me to take a leaf from their book. To listen to nature and act according to the season. If it' too hot, keep the house cool, pick up a book, grab a drink and sit in the shade of a tree in the garden and just enjoy life. Soon, autumn will be here and summer will be a distant dream. ¡Viva la vida!

Linguistic faux pas: false friends

 Diversion vs diversión (fun)

                                                    

Learning a new language is fantastic. It enables you to communicate with an entire new section of the population and, somehow, when you hear people speak in their mother-tongue, you understand a lot more about their personality from their choice of words, expressions and intonation. It also opens up an unknown world of foreign films, literature and music.

However, on the road to mastering a language, one has to dodge all sorts of mines in the battlefield of linguistics. Full of literal misunderstandings, faux pas and double-entendres, the use of the wrong word can be either:
 a) embarassing  b) mortifying or c) hilarious.

As an English Teacher, some advice I give to my beginner level students is just to try, to not be afraid of making mistakes and when in doubt, invent. This usualy works quite well when two languages are relatively similar, and 70 % of the time it's worked for me from English to Spanish too. The problem is the remaining 30%. This advice of "invent!" should come with a caveat: Beware the false friends!!

False friends are pairs of words in two languages or dialects that are similar in appearance and pronunciation but have different meanings. Here are a few examples of such amigos falsos.


Don't be shocked when you hear people saying constipado. They are not, in fact, constipated and having problems with digestion but rather simply have a cold. You may then remark that this is an embarrassing situation, to which they might respond "Felicidades" (or Congratulations) because embarazada means that you are pregnant, not embarrassed!  

Your complexión is not your skin tone but your physcial build and decepción has nothing to do with a deception but is a disappointment. When you contestar you answer, when you asistir you attend a class and when you molestar you annoy. And when you hear Rafa Nadal talking about " having illusions" he is not talking about a false idea or image, but that he is, indeed, hopeful (~me hace ilusión).

So next time you try and guess the foreign word, remember that it's not a disgrace, it's just a desgracia (= a misfortune!)

Culture Shock

Most definitions of the word "shock" include expressions like 'sudden', 'unexpected', 'a violent blow', 'strike', 'a collision', or 'a disturbance'. Put together with the word "culture", it conjures up the image of arriving in a foreign country, stepping off the plane and all of a sudden, you receive an unexpected, violent blow to the head, which strikes you down, resulting in a collision with all the other passengers, thereby creating a disturbance. Perhaps this is a little dramatic! In my experience, the shock doesn't come suddenly. It grows gradually as you learn more about the new culture in which you are immersed and try to come to terms with how to reconciliate it with your own.

The first part of crossing cultures can compare to being a tourist in a new place. It's a time of excitement and discoveries, a real stimulating experience and all senses are heightened. I could take 101 photos of baskets of bread, signs on the street, people sitting on benches, the architecture of buildings, and myself with the typical "insert fabulous holiday background here", all in one afternoon. I noticed the small, curious things. Everything looked exciting and intriguing, a real feast for the eyes. The smells, the culniary delights, the landscapes, the people, their habits, their way of life. It was all so delicious and vividly imprinted in my mind.

And then, like every romance, the honeymoon period comes to an end. The rose-tinted glasses come off and anxieties about work, money, making new friends and fitting in kick in. I remember realising that my few Spanish phrases were not enough to survive anymore and the language barrier seemed greater than ever. I could understand a lot but I couldn't express myself or jump into conversations with ease, so I constantly felt like I was on the sidelines and not a part of something.

With communication being such an integral part of the social beings that we humans are, this is the time you start to feel lonely, isolated and homesick. You retreat into yourself and even walking down the street, sitting in church or doing your grocery shopping, somehow makes you feel self-conscious and that everyone is looking at you oddly because you stick out. The difference between your own culture and this new foreign one triggers fear and anxiety. Small things, like eating supper after 9pm or the shops closing for siesta in the afternoons and on Sundays, which seem so wonderful upon arrival, now seem to be completely irreconcilable with your old habits and you wonder if you'll ever be able to fit in.

Eventually, the weeks and months pass by. The resistance to the new ways of this strange land dies down and you realise that you have adopted many of those habits yourself. Life seems normal and you go about your daily routine as if you'd always done exactly that for years.

By now, I was integrated into the local community and saw how much they appreciated me making an effort with their language and their customs and this appeared to open them up even more. I also realised that I didn't have to change myself completely to fit in. I had blended many of the positive traits of my host culture while keeping a lot of my own, creating a unique blend of identity.

This chameleon-like experience made me realise how versatile the human spirit is and how we can adapt so easily to new environments and situations. There's always going to be a difficult stage to get through but once you do, living in a foreign country can be one of the most rewarding experiences of your life. It is enriching, fulfilling, bewildering and ultimately addictive.

The quarterlife crisis

From the moment I turned 24 years old, 363 days ago, I dreaded turning 25. It's amazing how a number can create all sorts of internal crises. During my childhood and adolescence, I remember imagining what life would be like when I was 25. Perhaps I thought I would be climbing the corporate ladder, travelling the world for a highly-paid job, married (with children?), be a famous musican, a world-reknown sports player, Secretary General of the United Nations. The list goes on and on as far as the innocent child's imagination stretches.

I recently read an article in The Guardian, where the headline read, "The quarterlife crisis: young, insecure and depressed". It went on saying:

It is supposed to be the time of opportunity and adventure, before mortgages and marriage have taken their toll. But struggling to cope with anxieties about jobs, unemployment, debt and relationships, many young adults are experiencing a "quarterlife crisis", according to new research by British psychologists    

A little depressing, isn't it? There is a lot to be said about the different factors contributing to this feeling and crisis that young people face, but I won't go into them.

The truth is so far my life has turned out completely differently to how I planned it. I would never have believed that I would be living in Spain, in a small village with a view of the Pyrenees, immersed in a non-English speaking community, have friends from all over the world, be working with languages, travelling constantly, teaching English and be my own boss. I sometimes wonder how I got here and then I remember.

I too faced the same crisis many young people face, graduating from university into an unstable and uncertain job market. I had to leave the part of the world I grew up in and where my family lives because I didn't have the right passport or the right contacts to tick all the boxes for the bureacratic, red tape. I had to move away from my field of study, law, and explore other options. As I took this massive leap of faith, a very wise person said to me, "All you need to have to achieve anything in life is passion and courage. A lot of people have passion, but not many people have the courage to do anything about their passion." And so I leapt.

It's only when we face real crisis that our character is truly tested. Sometimes doors are closed for us when we don't have the strength to do it ourselves. This is when people feel helpless and depressed about the outlook. But it really makes you stop, question and reassess your life. What I realised, far away from everything I had ever known and that had defined me, was that what I had always wanted was to live an extraordinary life, one that was interesting and adventurous. That is what had always been in my heart. I can still remember being 12 years old, sitting on the stoep on a warm African evening, telling my mother that. I didn't know what I wanted to be-a lawyer, a doctor, a teacher, a musician- but I knew how I wanted my character to be and how I wanted to feel as I lived my life. As I approach 25, I have accepted that outwardly, materialistically and on paper, I am not what I hoped to be all those years ago. But I am, in fact, exactly who and where I'm meant to be.

Paulo Coehlo says, "Don’t predict or forecast. Have a goal in life and be open to the sign." This means that in a crisis, we need to be versatile, willing to adapt and stray from the road described on the map. It means when you see an opporunity, take it and make the most of it, even if it wasn't the opportunity you were waiting for. And who knows where it will lead you? Maybe to a small village in Spain?

"In omnia paratus: Prepared for all things"       

Back to the blogs

Summer is coming to an end here in Spain. Those days of waking up covered in a layer of sweat, clothes stuck to you like cling film and everyone hiding behind their drawn shutters at home until 6pm, are slowly being replaced by a cool breeze, afternoon rainshowers and leaves dropping to the ground.

This signals the return to routine and adios to summer holidays. It's back to school soon and the rhythmic feeling of regular days. It also signals my long-planned return to the blogging community, which I have been putting off for months.

I believe that thoughts, ideas and energy (positivity or negativity!) are contagious. Consciously or not, we all spread our energy and ideas, so here's my conscious attempt to put mine to virtual paper!

Happy reading!