So I Skip Verbs Sometimes...

When you move to another country, personal interactions become much more important because so often you are clinging to the 70 percent of a situation which you actually understand through reading visual clues, gesturing, or other things in the context of a situation.  I don’t think I ever realized how much of communication truly is beyond the words before living abroad (especially with a baby).

Now, I fear I rely on these other signals too much.  Sometimes without realizing it I just stop using important things when talking – like verbs or sentences.  The brain is truly an amazing thing and the more I live with myself the more I realize I’ll never fully understand my wiring.  But two things related to language have appeared while living abroad. 

First, is the verb skipping habit. There are days where I just feel like I can’t communicate at all with people; then I’ll realize its because I am skipping all verb usage.  Just trying to act out my verbs or imply them doesn’t seem to work well.  This usually gets Eric rolling as I am sure it really is quite entertaining, although at the time I am thoroughly embarrassed and will deny I am doing anything out of the ordinary.  

The second thing I have learned is that my mind can handle learning another language but nimble it is not. It’s like the handle on that part of my brain is really heavy and takes a long time and effort to toggle back and forth.  Case in point, on a recent trip for work to Italy for 2 days, rather than just speaking English (or staying silent) I would instinctually respond in Spanish (or French – I don’t know where that came from!) but there was nothing in my brain which was inclined to use the few words of Italian I knew.  This brain is rusty!

But even for the all the weirdness of interacting with others with this brain in a foreign language I remain remarkably not good in, it’s possible to get about anything done, with enough time, frustration, and insanity.  Sometimes the little things like working through an internet connectivity issue over the phone or that the dishwasher is electrocuting you (yes, this was actually happening) become the small miracles of the day.  The victories over yourself and your inabilities.  The victories of feeling a bit more at home.  Who needs verbs...not me...well, except in writing this.  

A Spanish Wedding

Iglesia de San Manuel y San Benito

Five minutes until the wedding was to begin, we stood on a busy sidewalk across from Retiro Park, groom a few feet away checking his iPhone for a just-arrived text.  Up the few steps that separated us from the cathedral entrance a parade of exiting people flooded out.  They went left; we were on the right.  Slowly it became apparent that one wedding needed to end before ours could begin.  Our first Spanish wedding but apparently the third or fourth wedding in that cathedral that evening (ours was set to begin at 7).  It's hard to imagine a U.S. bride putting up with this scenario but for the Spaniards this all seemed normal.  The ceremony is only the beginning of the process, and they were all out for the long haul.  Unfortunately, we weren't.  We only had childcare coverage for the ceremony, not for the hour and a half bus ride, the dinner, the dancing or the 6 am bus ride home that would follow.

So, we enjoyed the curiousities of the ceremony and look forward to attending a full wedding in the future.  We were late additions to the invite list (one of Eric's colleagues) since we’d only met a few weeks earlier.  It was quick for a Catholic ceremony, about 35 minutes, but very beautiful.  We were on time as we only had to walk over but many of the guests were late, we think for lack of parking.  One particular guest made her way down the isle ten minutes into the ceremony and proceeded to have the first pew of attendees all scoot over so she could squeeze in.  I'd love to know who she was!  No attendants here.  No ring bearer.  Only the bride, groom, mother and father.  The bride and groom sat in the middle with the priest and the parents on either side, to help arrange the long train and provide the rings are the appropriate time.  I understood very little of the wedding as the grand setting and somewhat muffled acoustics made it simpler just to enjoy the ambience rather than to focus on any details.  The only major sections I picked up were the Lord's prayer and obviously the vows.

Street greetings

I should note one other Spanish wedding tradition that I am sure our American friends would wince at.  With the invitation the bride and groom provide their bank account details.  No wedding gifts from Crate and Barrel here.  Just send the money from your home computer in advance.  This is one of the few areas of Spanish life where they are oddly efficient and non-emotional.  We spent more time kissing in greeting and on exit than in looking for the wedding gift.

Baby + Ruth

We have been blessed with a wonderful nanny in Dorothy’s life these past six or so months – Kate.  She’s probably ruined all other nannies for us as she’s very caring, independent, and smart and has great intuition and instincts.  But happily for Kate, she has a life to live in Chicago…

So enter Ruth.  Ruth is Dorothy’s new nanny.  She started on the 20th of September.  She is Honduran and has lived in Spain for about 5 years.  She’s in her late 20s and seems a very curious, gentle, and hard-working woman.  She is trying very hard to improve her English and to help us with our Spanish as we navigate the new terrain of caring for Dorothy and finishing settling in here in Madrid.

Different from our situation in the U.S., Ruth is living in our home.  She has a separate apartment with a quasi-separate entrance and everything.  It’s good for us as we get some additional flexibility and good for Ruth that she doesn’t need to maintain another place (although she does, at least temporarily).  But I have to say Ruth’s living with us has been more of a stress than I expected during this adjustment period.  Like any new arrangement there is some stress, and we don’t always get along.  I think we are seeing how much harder it is to get past some of that when you are staying in the same household.  But, I think we might be getting past the worst of that as the last week has been improving.

As for the language barriers, there is no doubt that Ruth is helping me with my Spanish, if for no other reason than the fact that she forces me to use Spanish more frequently than I would otherwise.  I have basically lost all my hesitancy in speaking and will now blabber on, very incorrectly, to store clerks, doctors, etc.  Ruth’s English also seems to be improving some but she still reports understanding me better in English than in Spanish (sad).  She’s making attempts to read Dorothy’s English kid books, if with a bit of a struggle.  I’d say she’s using English about a quarter of the time and exposing Dorothy to Spanish the rest of the time.  This was part of what we hoped for Dorothy so we’ll see how her language continues to develop.  So far Dorothy isn’t using many other words besides dada, but she’s very verbal and trying out many sounds and mimics often.

It’s funny to have someone in our lives named Ruth because that was the name of one of my great aunts.  Dorothy actually gets her middle name, May, from one of my other great aunts.  Eric said that the Ruth is about as foreign sounding a name as you can get in Spanish, as the language doesn’t really contain the right sounds to make it.  That’s somehow appropriate, as Ruth still has no idea what my name is.  She thinks of me as Eric 1 and Eric as Eric 2.  We have gone over and over “E.J.” but to her it just doesn’t work.  For a while she was calling me Ethan, which seemed about as close in pronunciation as she could get.  I’d like for her to eventually be able to say my desired name but for now it’s not much of a stress.  One of Dorothy’s younger “adoption cousins” (group of six families who adopted through our agency at the same time) is Ethan so I like thinking about Jill, Ross, and Ethan when incorrectly referenced.

Looking through the Tunnel

I swear some weeks fly by and others just creep.  This was a strange one for sure.  We’re not yet settled, but we’re not new to Madrid.  We have been here long enough that it’s embarrassing to say “no hablo espanol” but many aspects of the city and living still seem mysteries.

It was a rough 40 hours or so from Sunday night through Tuesday morning at 1:30am when our building’s water was shut off.  This summer we have had more water issues than I can remember ever having.  It started in Chicago where we lost water to our condo for the better part of a week.  It was incredibly frustrating and as close as I have seen to a riot in some time.  With hundreds of people living together and no water things got very tense very quickly. 

Dorothy has been battling a nasty cold since Thursday night.  She’s been a trooper with it but we don’t yet have a permanent doctor here so we are very anxious to see her get better.  Even though we have found lists of English-speaking doctors, when calling their offices are not as English-friendly thus far.  Dorothy’s new nanny starts on Monday so hoping we don’t have to go to the doctor before that time and we can go with someone who speaks some Spanish (although little English).

We have our new apartment.  Things got signed on Thursday night.  It is quite exciting if still a bit surreal.  The only things that occupy this apartment until our shipment from the U.S. arrives next week are a few random bottles of water and a nearly finished room for the new nanny.  Since she’ll be living with us we had to get everything set for her even if we aren’t there full-time yet.  Closing on the apartment was significantly more stressful than either of the homes we have owned previously but I think I’ll leave that for another post.

I have a call with my brothers in a few hours.  Will be good to catch up with them.  We started doing three-way calls which is kind of fun.  Seems to be a lot more like we are all together than when just talking one-on-one.

So, lots of adventures this week.  Several marathons I could have cared to do without but all and all still a good week.  I think we see the light at the end of the tunnel that is flashing “settled” and I hope we make it there soon.  Vagabond life can be exhausting.  

I Almost Paid $20 for Betty Crocker

It’s a strange thing the price we will pay for something.  A bottle of water is the physically identical whether it’s sitting in at a store in Minnesota or the Sahara, but I am pretty sure where I’d be willing to pay more for it.

Being abroad makes one reconsider significantly what tastes and media are essential and will be bought at almost whatever price to satisfy a short or long-term need.  It can feel a little absurd sometimes – how much abundance we have of local fair – and yet we all know how cravings work and the mad abilities they have to drive our minds.  When I was in Chicago, surrounded by pizza, I would crave Rudy’s pizza so badly sometimes.  In Hong Kong, it was Mexican food and we would seek it out in the most obscure locations and cook it at home on our little burner.  In HK, we indulged in a weekly People magazine fix.  Brought over to a few special locations it could be found for about $12-15 if I remember correctly.

Sunday, we were running late with some things and realized that all the stores had closed and we were planning to make a cake for Dorothy’s nanny’s birthday. In addition to cake needs, the water in our building was out (and remains so).  So, with few other options, I went down to VIPS.  VIPS is a strange store. I’ll try to summarize with a few simplified references and likenesses for different people in our lives:

• For all our Kansas friends   VIPS = Hastings + Kwik Shop + Hannover’s House of Pancakes 
• For our Chicago friends   VIPS = 7-11 + Borders + Lou Mitchell’s
• For everyone else   VIPS = convenience store + small book store + lunch counter

VIPS had all that I needed and was a block away.  But with the footprint of British colonialism still underlying most of the distribution channels for English-language media and food, I was faced with many more options for sweets and baking things from the U.K. than from the U.S.  Biscuits and Cadbury’s abounded.  But I wanted cake or brownies.  One row of Betty Crocker met my gaze and I immediately grabbed.  It looked perfect.  The brownie mix that I can pick out of a line-up blindfolded.  I only in passing even bothered looked at the price, as this was something I NEEDED.

         15.99€

I stopped cold.  Apparently $20 was my limit for brownies.  I couldn’t do it.  Knowing that I didn’t have vegetable oil and that substituted olive oil was already questionable, knowing that I had no milk to accompany the brownies, and knowing that I still had to bake them, I passed the Betty Crocker by.  Instead I settled on a British brand, surely inferior, but at 7€ and requiring only butter, it seemed a safer bet.

Box in hand, I return to the rental apartment feeling partially victorious, that is until Eric asks, “what are you going to bake those in?”

A Few Things I Love…

Less than a month in, here are a few things which I’ve found different – and thankfully so!

• Spanish almonds. Um…hello!  I am not sure I can ever go back to California almonds!  So similar and yet so different!
• Leisure. There is no doubt the Spaniards know a thing or two about lounging.  It’s a weak point for me but I already feel as if I can actually just sit around on the weekend and do nothing and be totally content. I am not even sure lounging is the right word because that would imply intent to relax while I think they just stay relaxed. 
• Bank service. We have a personal banker who I go in and see daily.  Hopefully that will slow down soon, but for now it’s my morning ritual.
• A seatbelt sign that turns off. The Spanish airlines do not keep the fasten seatbelt sign on for any longer than absolutely necessary – finally! 
• Restaurants that care about the food. While I don’t love all the Spanish food I’ve had thus far, I do love that the places that I’ve been scant with my consumption seem genuinely concerned. 

From Formula to Film...A Few Things I Miss

I know I am spoiled.  I get it.  I am American and I’ll never totally understand all the ways in which this privilege plays its way out everyday of my life.  But I really miss some of the things I took for granted in everyday life back in Chicago – what I considered little things are apparently luxuries.

• Instant baby formula.  Who knew that only in the U.S. could you get baby formula that doesn’t require you to boil the water?  Our search in Spain has come up empty so far so yesterday Dorothy transitioned to her new Spanish formula and we are now starting the kettle several times a day.  D grew well on the instant mix! 
• Movies and TV. If I were consuming Spanish language films and TV, I’d be in heaven, but sadly I am nowhere near that state. And apparently every popular website for content viewing in the U.S. is protected so only certain IP addresses can access – screening you out if coming from outside the U.S.  IT is advancing, as this wasn’t the case when we lived in HK only 5 years ago.
• Dry cleaners. Definitely wouldn’t have predicted how hard it’s been to find a dry cleaner.  Madridians are crazy fashionable and everything is pressed.  I think they must iron at home all the time.  It’s insane.  And the dry cleaners we’ve found are insanely expense – more than $5/shirt.  

It goes without saying…friends, family, and all our loved ones back home – we miss you the most!  These are all minor material things or conveniences, which makes it funny.