Day 18
Do they know I’m trying really hard and they want to make it easy for me? Or do they enjoy hearing their language pulled and twisted like new taffy? Or is the face I make when I’m thinking hard just real entertaining? Either way, guys, I have news! I have used NO ENGLISH with any Spanish people for over a week! For whatever reason, all of Spain has been humoring me... but I am still quite proud :-)
A general record of pretty successful interactions:
1. There was an older local lady on the trail the other day and she had lost her dog. I could talk to her about what it looked like and where it might be and that I should tell the cafe in the next village that I saw him. (I did not find him, poor little guy.)
2. My hostel in a recent town “lost” my reservation and discovering this meant a long and complicated phone conversation of which I understood everything (amazing!). I also understand that humans make mistakes and there are other hostels in town and I don’t think I could have conveyed those feelings if I hadn’t been speaking the same language as she was, so I was pretty grateful my Spanish didn’t let me down this particular day.
3. I told some guy he had dropped his sock. “Sir, your sock!” (I didn’t say I was Spanish Shakespeare or anything, hehehe)
4. In Sahagun there was this huge bakery, open during siesta because of the holiday. I walked in and said something like, “Good afternoon, sir, my Spanish is very creative. That’s ok, right?” And he was so nice about it. I don’t know the particular names of things but announce (while pointing, which helps) that I want “two of the things with the apple, two stars, two of those ones, and the big blue thing.” He said I did great and I took all my sugar home, proudly, as my prize.
5. The lady with the church key in a-few-little-towns-ago (there is always a lady with the church key, sometimes you have to track her down) told me that the light from the top window that day was special - it hit one place on the alter to highlight a particular statue. “Only today?” I ask. “Today only,” she says.