welcome to majadahonda

We were told an interesting analogy for the culture switch at our big Rotary meeting this past weekend. When you are born in the United States, you are born wearing a certain shade of glasses- let's say blue glasses. You grow up looking through a blue lense, for your whole life, everything is blue. When we joined Rotary, we signed up to move into a culture with an entirely different lense, let's say yellow. For the rest of our lives, we were told, even after we leave, we will have the perspectives of both cultures, we will see our lives through a green lense. I loved this analogy and I loved this thought, that we can carry both ways of life with us.

I'm in my second week here in Majadahonda and I'm starting to feel pretty darn comfortable with my new surroundings and my new lense. I understand more and more Spanish as each day passes and I'm getting accustomed to some of the quirks that distinguish this experience clearly as SPANISH.

Here are several characteristics of my everyday life that let me know I'm in Spain:

• There is much more care and awareness as to how you look in Spain. It is not in a superficial way, people just seem to take more pride in their appearance.


• I fall asleep at around 1 or 2 in the morning and I don't wake up until 12 or 1 the next day, as do most teenagers. When school starts, we fall asleep at around 11 pm and wake up at about 8 am for 8:30 am school.


• Your father is the head of your household. He is not domineering, it's just known that what he says, goes.


• The shower heads are not mounted on the wall.


• Breakfast is a very small meal at around 10 or 11 am. Lunch is the main meal of the day at about 2 pm. Dinner is a medium sized meal at about 10 pm. I have eaten almost no junk food while I've been here and fruit rounds out every meal.


• There is, of course, the ever present kissing on each cheek.


• The Spanish version of Facebook is called "Tuenti".


• Soccer is god. Basketball comes close. Baseball is known but not popular. Good luck finding a hockey team (though Majadahonda actually has one of the 7 teams in the country).


• People answer the phone here with "si".


• Commercials come in giant blocks right in the middle of people talking; they aren't at a logical time in the program, though the advertisements themselves are almost exactly the same as in the U.S.


• The siesta lives on. At about 3 pm everything slows down; people might not necessarily sleep, but they definitely don't strain themselves this time of day.


• If there's one thing the Spanish are not, however, it's lazy. The schooling here is incredibly intense, kids here genuinely study and take their classes very seriously.


• Public Universities are the more selective in Spain. If you do well on "La Selectividad" you are welcomed into a public university and you don't have to pay nearly as much, it is the payoff for doing well on your tests. If you didn't do as well on your tests, you have to pay more and attend a Private University.

My family has a maid that comes everyday (la hortencia, pronounced or-tense-eee-ah) and she is a wonderful, chatty woman that always greets me with a big smile when I manage to roll myself out of bed. I'm trying to do my best to just smile every single place I go and at whatever situation I'm unsure of or in which I feel intimidated. Spanish people are not outwardly welcoming, they are rather shy and need to feel you out before they'll give you their trust, but once they've welcomed you, you're in their hearts. I officially begin school tomorrow at 12:20 am (it's just a meeting where you're introduced to your class and hear a little about your courses). Thank you for the kind comments and encouragements, I'm thinking of you all back in the States!

Un Beso, Sam