Fiesta in the siesta!
(Festival in the nap time)
I keep forgetting the siesta. Things are open in the morning, then you rest, go home, eat, then they are open late. Not just cafes and restaurants but estate agents and hardware shops, everything. Just because it's not warm right now does not change the schedule. Little kids are out in the cafés at 9:00 at night on a school day, they have had a nap and are ready to get dinner and go till 11! Yesterday was a fiesta (festival/ bank holiday) we are so used to doing things in the afternoon, we went in the siesta time, no one was there! A few sleepy stall holders kept an eye on their stuff and that of the next stall (shut and covered) while all sensible people were home snoozing. The whole city sported a few dozen people. No one played music, the fiesta was silent, a festival of whispers!
After consulting google translate I carefully ask "lechi de coco?" The answer "Yes, Madame, coconut milk is right at the end of the isle with the ice cream." So not having to listen for Spanish then!
Or "piña per favour" totally blank expression "pineapple juice please" "Oh! Piña!" "Si piña" clearly my pronunciation sucks! Piña, by the way, is not Spanish, it's Catalan so don't try it in the rest of spain even if you say it right!
I want to be the sort of person who picks up language easily, surly I'm romantic enough for romantic languages, but sadly, when it comes down to it language is remembering verbatim, and I'm really not that sort of student, long after everyone else knows it verbatim, I'm still there playing it back to myself AGAIN! So I watch YouTube videos, carry my phrase book everywhere, constantly look stuff up and get very little learned. In the meantime Tim is absorbing Spanish through his skin, or possibly sublingually, and casualty correcting my pronunciation without having appeared to do any work. Ugh! So frustrating!
Recently Tim has also taken to talking to Jasmine in French, I'm pretty sure it's a sort of, while she's learning all this language, let's throw in another and it's all good education sort of thing, I'm almost certain it's not intended to make me kick them both in the shin for being annoyingly brilliant under my nose!
Some things I don't like about Spain:
You can't home school, well it's difficult, it's sort of a legal grey area. If we were moving here not visiting for 7 months Jasmine would have to go to school, or I would have to go to court and win! I'm told by a friend here (I haven't looked up the law) that you can't renovate your own house or car without a special licence - you have to pay a professional, basically DIY is illegal! You have to take your rubbish to the end of the street and sort it into big bins, they don't pick it up outside your house. No national health service! I would not give up being British for love or money!
Some things I love about Spain.
The indulgent attitude to children and their mess, noise etc. It's almost scary at first, when my two year old ran off toward a road (for the record: I could have caught him up) a man picked him up and hugged him, then carried him into the shop and started showing him the christmas decorations, I hovered around wondering if I should be freaking out! Anyone, anywhere would have stopped my son before the road, but the uninhibited love of kids is forbidden by fears of molesters back home in the UK. People everywhere, talk to my kids, give them food or ruffle their hair without checking with me, not just other mums with kids, just people. After a few days of standing ready to strangle strangers you get to love it. No one is tutting at you for having the two year old spreading scrambled egg all over the bar in the oh-so-cool surf cafe, but they will feed your kids free sugary food before they finish the egg! It's best to relax and go with it!
I also love the light! I feel renewed as a photographer! Writing with light is so much more possible when you actually get some light! Colour is light reflected off objects into the eye, so more light also means more colour! The Spanish style also includes lots of colour. I feel like I'm feasting on the stuff every day. I feel like Gauguin when he went to French Polynesia, he was always a painter I loved, now his colour makes perfect sense!
No comments:
Post a Comment