All About Spain:)

Since the beginning of time teachers have been telling us, “Never start your papers saying…I’m going to talk about…” but that is exactly what I am going to do because I don’t know how else to start this. For this section of my blog I am going to talk about other countries, mostly Spain. I am going to talk about their culture, as well as fun experiences I had well I was there. Hopefully some of them will make you laugh, but most of them are had to be there moments. I absolutely love Spain and everything about their culture and way of life. This summer I went to Spain with two of my really good friends for the school trip. I had an amazing time and learned more about Spain in those two weeks that I could have learned in a lifetime from sitting home and reading textbooks about Spain. While we were in the country we went to museums and traveled around the country learning everything we possibly could. It was fun, but at the same time very difficult because it tested my Spanish skills, which I have learned, are very weak. It is much different talking to a native speaker who feels the need to talk a mile a minute even when they can tell you are not a native Spanish speaker versus when you are talking to a partner in Spanish class. There was one specific time I can remember when I was in the metro station in Spain. I am standing all alone in the line to buy a ticket for the metro because my friends ditched me, when this little old lady walks up to me. When she walks up to me she starts speaking as fast as I have ever heard any one talk in my life. I have to assume she was speaking Spanish considering I was in Spain. I believe she was asking me directions to a location but I guess I will never know. Unfortunately, I had to say no hablo espanol because there was really no hope of me understanding a word she was saying. I guess I could have just said no se, but that just didn’t cross my mind. Once I told her I didn’t speak Spanish, which truly isn’t that big of a lie, she walked away mumbling something incoherent that I didn’t understand. For the duration of the trip it was not very unusual to have several of these awkward encounters with different Spanish people because apparently I look like a native Spaniard. This was not always the case though, because sometimes I would say something to someone in Spanish and they would answer me in English. I guess I was just that bad at sounding like a native speaker. Hopefully I will be able to talk about actual Spain a little more in my next post.