Admiration for our friend

We admire Gen’s friend from China. Her perseverance, her attitude.

We’ve been discussing how difficult it is for her here, culturally. For those who have traveled to another country, culture shock is easy to imagine. It’s a lack of familiarity, a necessity to “figure out” even the simplest things that causes fatigue and disorientation and a deep longing for a cheeseburger. But for Gen’s friend from China it’s magnified. Imagine each part of your life, each thing you do on a daily basis, and then imagine that it’s not only foreign, different, and strange but difficult to figure out.

Language: she knows English. Enough to get around, ask directions, listen to lectures, though she misses some things that Gen explains to here, typically idiomatic expressions. And the entire language system is different – letters and words rather than characters, so it’s more difficult for her to look at something and try to figure it out. But Spanish? Different. And Catalan? More different. But even with English: she has a hard time deciphering cursive writing when professors and students write in that form, rather than printing. And capital letters are new to her, so when words are in ALL CAPS they seem to her different words. That really made me think back to all the education we had in primary school for these subjects. Of course, no one thinks that capitalization might be a problem.

Food: Even if the menus were in Spanish, they would be difficult to decipher, but most are in Catalan. Moreso, the actual food items are different, as are the descriptions. Of course jamon is pork, but cocido? Like the Eskimos and their 100 words for snow, the Spanish have almost as many ways to describe their pork. And culturally the food they eat is very different. Lots of bread and cheese - not common in China. Imagine going to China and trying to figure out a menu that was only in Chinese. (Our friend Darren told us when he traveled in China he was so tired of this issue that at some point he went in to Kentucky Fried Chicken to eat for the only reason that he wanted to know exactly what he was ordering) Add the times of day they eat to the confusion. Then add the utensils. Of course she has used a knife, fork, and spoon before, but not everyday at every meal. And a lot of food here is to be eaten with the hands, which is definitely not typical for her. We had her over for hamburgers during her first few months here and she ate it with a spoon. I felt bad because I didn’t realize that eating with one’s hands would be so… unpalatable. She’s better now and accepts the difference in culture.

Calendar: the calendar is different as well. Not just the day and month, but the year. We asked her when her birthday was but she didn’t know the exact day because the calendars are so different. She knew approximately when but not exactly because of the time difference. (Sure, she could have just counted the days forward or backward from one calendar to another but she didn’t have a Chinese calendar or a Western calendar at the time so it took her a few days to tell us).

General Culture: the spanish are more laid back, they drink beer during lunch, they go to sleep at 2am and eat dinner at 11pm, they are animated (the Spanish more than the Catalans, but still).

And with all this, she just goes about her business with a smile on her face and doesn't get angry or yell. We salute her.

Back in Barcelona

We decided we needed a day out of the city. A little quiet. I found a hotel near Tarragona, about an hour south. It looked great on screen, modernly renovated 18th century building. They had a room with a bathtub (!). Heaven. And for the first few hours it was wonderful. Then 12:30pm rolled around and the dinner party with three kids decided to take up residence in the lobby. Hopped up on sugar, the kids were screaming. And of course the cloud of smoke filtered into our room. The hotel staff told me they couldn’t possibly ask them to be more quiet. Okay. We switched to another room.

We’ve come to realize the little cultural differences that come to mean a great deal. Smoking. Loud voices. Treating public spaces as one’s living room. The seeming inability to walk on a sidewalk in any semblance of a straight line (VDD, variable direction disorder, as Gen named it). Smoking and the loud voices have the most impact. We are sensitive to smoke, being from LA, so the problem is worse. But we haven’t gone a day here without it. Sometimes it’s a cloud of smoke in a café. Sometimes it’s just walking behind someone who holds a cigarette, seemingly for effect because we don’t see people actually smoking, just holding the cigarette. The strange thing about this restaurant is that normally high-end haute cuisine restaurants are very concerned about the dining environment, and discourage smoking because it interferes with the taste and overall experience of the food. Not in this place. To their credit the staff was patient with our mediocre spanish and attempted to explain some of the dishes, which needed explanation even though we were reading menus in English.

Yet with all the smoke, Spain, like so many other countries, has a greater life expectancy than the US.

The Magi are coming, the Magi are coming

We were stuck in a parade. Not stuck, really, but we couldn't get back to our apartment. More like...cornered. It was a traditional 12th day of christmas parade where the three kings/magi/wise men come to visit in floats, accompanied by camels, african masks, dancers, and flatbed trucks and shower the children with candy. In particular, we liked Balthazar. I'm not going to go into detail about the pronunciation of his name here in spain. We like the fact that the city here dedicates so much time, energy, and money for it's citizens. They take care of the city, yes, but moreso, they provide a lot of events for the inhabitants to take part. They seem to give back quite a bit.

Florence (the city, in Italy)

We spent a good few days in Florence, or Firenze, or Florencia. Great food. We say Italy has the best food anywhere. Even the average food was good. Hell, even the airport food was above average. And they had extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar in glass bottles for your dressing. That would never happen in the US.

We had two fantastic dinners and one “Worst dinner ever.” The two fantastic dinners were very different experiences: a rowdy boisterous neighborhood restaurant famous for its beef, and rightly so, because it was one of the best we’ve eaten outside of Argentina. The other was a fancy, small, restaurant with Austrian-Italian fusion cuisine.

The best dinner we had was cooked by our friend Marta (“La Marta”) in her apartment. That was the highlight of our trip. Marta introduced us to the local extra virgin olive oil, which she argues is the best. She’s right. All others pale in comparison. And she cooks a fantastic fish.

Oh, and the sites were fun, too. We introduced George to David, and Venus, and the Ponte Vecchio. We exposed him to all the culture he could handle. (Better than the opposite)