Living in a foreign country

Everything feels a little upside down and backwards right now. It´s a little like the idea that I was standing up straight in Canada and now in another part of the world I am standing a little sideways. I think a lot of this feeling is coming from trying to adjust to a new place and a new pace of life. Having lived in France, arrived in Spain first on holiday and now living with a Spanish family the transition is much easier than my previous experiences.

Generally it´s whenever you try to do new things, especially if there is a deadline involved that you feel a bit of culture shock. That is a feeling of confusion, frustration, and lack of understanding why the other culture has to make things so complicated when they are so easy back home. At times I have to remind myself to be a little more patient and that I am the foreigner. I have found that like it or not I have the unconscious expectation that things should work the way they do in Canada. In my mind you should be able to find sugar in a grocery store in the baking section and it is irrational that it be in the beverage section like it often is in France. In Spain the general rule of thumb is to go with the flow and to not try to do anything between 2-4pm. When I want to do something new I try to prepare myself gradually and I try to look at it as a little adventure or challenge to see if I can decode the culture.

Adjusting to my new schedule I am having a hard time organizing my time because everything is a little scattered. First I should explain I am now living in an apartment with a family that consists of two parents, two boys (ages six and soon to be nine) and a dog. My day starts around 8:30am when the kids get up for breakfast and at which point the race begins to get them out the door and to school for 9:30am. Then I have a break until about noon and this my free time, sort of like my ´evenings´ when I lived in Canada.

At 12:30pm I go to the school to pick up one or both boys to bring them home for lunch. On the first day when I arrived at the school we walked through a door and went down some stairs into an inner courtyard which seemed to be both the gym and recess area. As we entered children were running and screaming out of every door I could see into the open paved area. It felt a little like finding a needle in a hay stack trying to locate the boys, but eventually they appeared.

As we walk home for lunch together I try to have a conversation with them in English. It is easiest to ask closed questions that only require yes or no answers, but those are not very good for language learning. The older boy usually understands and if he does not he will answer ´yes´ or ignore me, whereas the younger boy does not like hearing English at all. When I ask him a question first I say it in English, then Spanish and then English again. He will usually play deaf or tell me he doesn´t understand in Spanish. I have recently learned that sometimes I am ignored because I pronounce things wrong and/or make small grammar mistakes. To be fair he doesn´t really understand much English and finds it overwhelming.

We usually eat lunch early around 1:30pm, unless it is a Wednesday when I have a Spanish class and I will try to eat with the father, who is also learning English, around 3:00pm. I have not had to prepare any meals because both parents like to cook and they also have a cleaning lady who comes in every day, so in some ways I am feeling a little spoiled.

My ´working´ hours at the English school are between 6-9pm and then I come home to read a bed time story in English to the boys. I end up eating supper some time between 9:30-10:30pm. The idea is to eat a lot at lunch and then treat supper like a bedtime snack, but I am still getting used to it.