Random thoughts from sunny Barcelona:
- Everywhere I go (especially on the metro), people are doing Sudoku. It’s not a craze limited to this city, I know… but Barcelona is hosting a Sudoku Championship on Sunday, down at the Polideportivo Marítimo. So are all these people practising for that?
- I went to my second yoga class here, at DiR (a big and very popular fitness club). The first one was a bit confusing (why do I become incompetent at even basic things — like how to find and operate a locker — when I’m in a new and totally foreign environment?), but the second class yesterday (“hot yoga”, where they crank up the heat and you can imagine someone like me really sweats!) went much better. I feel like a regular already, though I find it hard not to compare (negatively) to my own wonderful yoga institute in Montreal! (see note far below about culture shock)
- As everyone knows by now, it seems the Democrats won the U.S. Congress. This is not a political blog, so I will make no comment. (woo hoo) I have to say it’s nice to be somewhere this is not “the only news” — I assume this story was top dog in North America for the last few days. Today the top news story here is about a new municipal regulation that allows the Guardia Urbana (traffic police) to revoke the licence of any car emitting “smoke or bothersome noises”. The Democrats winning the Senate was only the #2 news item…
- Since my Spanish classes with Universitat de Barcelona fell through (unsuitable schedule for me) I stopped by the offices of a private language school here, and will likely sign up today for classes with them, possibly starting next Monday. A girl at the school (I think she was a teacher) was particularly subtle, asking me (in Spanish, claro!) if she knew me, because I looked really familiar. When I confirmed she did not, she asked if I were someone famous… What does one say to that? “But of course, I’m the King of Spain!” (a Spanish friend once told me I looked like Juan Carlos I, which is not at all flattering since the monarch is 68 years old! Personally, I still don’t see any similarity, so it must be my regal manner rather than my appearance… ;-)
- As I wander the streets, shop and ride the metro, I try to imagine myself living here. One thing I realize is that it would be a huge change and very difficult. Even though I speak Spanish quite well, I am still thrown by all the Catalan I hear everywhere (would I have to learn yet another language? At least somewhat, I’m afraid the answer would be “yes”…) Also, although I can speak to someone one-on-one quite well (depending on the accent), and understand almost everything I read or hear (if I focus on it), I find I am still really in a “foreign world”. My automatic language scanning/processing does not work here. In Montreal, if someone on the street shouts something to a neighbour, or a policeman calls out something, or there is a crazy discussion in a noisy bar, I normally understand everything — in French or (obviously) in English. Not at all true for me in Spanish. I realize now that automatic processing is the “Holy Grail” of languge learning. To simply absorb it without thinking at all, without concentrating. In fact, to be unable to avoid understanding, even if you’re not paying attention. That’s the one pleasant side-effect of being “zoned out” — it’s very relaxing if you understand nothing, you never get distracted while reading because the conversations don’t intrude on your consciousness.
I also find it frustrating when I look for something. For example, this week I went searching for a card. I asked where the print shops, stationery stores, etc, were. I went to a few places, and they only had a small selection of cards, and mostly quite cheesy. In Montreal it’s so easy to walk 2 minutes (from my place, at least) to a shop that has hundreds of artistic blank-inside cards — funny, beautiful, whatever. Sure we also have the Hallmark stuff but you can find some pretty neat stuff. Similar things must be available here but I didn’t find them (though in the end I did manage to find something appropriate from the limited selection). Same goes for a filter adapter for my camera (a non-standard item, but available “easily” in Montreal). I went to all the shops on “photo alley” (my nickname for Carrer de Pelai) and only one store even came close to having what I wanted, and only one (the same one) went out of their way to be helpful. I don’t even live here (yet?) but I find myself in that stage of “culture shock” where one is always comparing things to what you’re used to where you’re from — usually in a negative way. I lived six months in California and I think I drove everyone nuts with my “Canada this, Canada that” comments! (-; - I am working on a Spanish quiz, which I’ll put up on the site soon. Fun practice for my PHP programming, and also hopefully fun and useful for people to try my “quiz a day” (you will be able to use it to learn Spanish vocabulary from English, or English from Spanish). See, those 3000 words haven’t gone to waste!
- I signed up for a Google Maps key, and am ready to start playing with that stuff. So watch out — at some point I will probably scrap gVisit and use my own counter/geocoding thing.