So, as yesterday was my one month anniversary in Spain, I thought I’d share some of the things I’ve learned. How to survive, how to live, what the people are like and just generally how I experience things.

In the mornings I get up around ten to seven and go down to breakfast at 07:10. It’s usually just me and my host-dad, because my sisters and mom only get up around 08:00. Breakfast is usually just some toasted bread with butter and milk and coffee. I leave the house at 08:00 and catch my bus a few minutes later. School starts at 08:15, but it’s okay to be a few minutes late. I’ve never gotten into trouble, even when a few minutes turn into ten or fifteen. School consists out of 55 minute periods. We have three and then a 25 minute break and then three again. If you need to write a test, you either do it in your period and/or during break or after school. School ends at 14:10. I either then catch the bus or take the metro, depending on whether I’m going to make it to the bus stop in time or not. The difference between the bus and the train is that I usually need to wait up to 8 minutes for the bus (and then still walk to to the stop), where the train station is opposite the school and the maximum waiting time is six minutes. The train is faster, but, the bus stops next to my apartment block, where the train station is 350 meter away, and I need to walk home uphill. So it all really depends on how I’m feeling and which shoes I’m wearing.

At home I usually just arrive as my sisters are leaving for school again. Their school starts at 9 and then has a two hour lunch break after which they need to go back for an hour and a half more, where mine starts earlier and ends at lunch. I eat some lunch , maybe chill for an hour and then start with my homework. It’s not actual homework, it’s just me translating the schoolwork we did that day. Everyone is usually back home around 7 and we usually eat around 9 or 10. That is considered the normal dinner time in Spain.

So, that’s a normal day in the life of me. Now unto some things I’ve learned and observed.

THE FOOD
They use olive oil and/or white vinegar with and in everything! And I mean everything! Where we would use butter or Spray ‘n Cook, they’ll use olive oil. They even have a special little canister they put it in and that thing is as constant as salt and pepper on a dinner table. They put it in their salads(with white vinegar), they cook their eggs in it, their paella, their meat... It’s not bad, it’s just so different. I’ve also had some amazing new dishes. Sweet potato mash (with olive oil), salmon with lemon (and olive oil), rice with soy sauce (no olive oil, but there was probably some in the pot), a whole range of different kind of breads, from white bread without crust, to the darkest type of rye bread. I think by my second week I had eaten everything in the food pyramid. Except ice cream. They don’t do that at home. They eat plain Greek yogurt and add some brown sugar for dessert. I like that a lot!
It was also a shock to find out that my family didn’t have a kettle to boil water in.
“But how do you make tea?” I asked, exasperated.
My sister frowned. “We don’t drink tea.”
I was rendered speechless.

You’ve probably also hear of café con leche. It has always confused me why they would need to add the con leche part (milk). Isn’t all coffee with milk? That was soon cleared up on my first day here when my dad showed me how to use the coffee machine. You take a cup and fill it ?– ¾’s with milk and then put that in the microwave until it’s as hot as you like it. Then you put it in the coffee machine and tell it how much coffee you’d like. Then you put your sugar or whatever (heaven forbid, not olive oil) you want in. It was only then that I understood that you drink milk with a little bit of coffee.

They also don’t have fizzy cooldrink or juice in their fridges. It’s water, coffee or milk. Which I am fine with.

I could go on about the food for days, but I think I’ve covered enough to give you a good idea of what it’s like.

THE PEOPLE
I was really surprised to find that people are very much the same as in South Africa. I don’t know what I expected actually, to be honest. Let’s start with looks. Most Caucasian people here are considerably darker than Caucasians in South Africa. 80% of my class has dark brown/black hair and dark eyes, ranging from very a very light brown, to the deepest black. I have not spotted any natural blondes (only on the tiny humans)and few people have blue eyes. When it comes to length, I am one of the tallest people in my class, including the boys, although they tend to be taller than the girls.

Speaking of boys, I find a very disconcerting lack of manners in every man under 30. They don’t wait for you to go into a room/bus/train first, they simply walk in front of you. They are extremely childish (although this might just be the age group I am a part of), and have a habit of disrupting class by simply speaking over the teacher. This of course drives me crazy, because it’s hard enough as it is for me to try and understand the Spanish, now they go and make it more of a challenge by talking so loudly that I can’t hear what the teacher is trying to say.

Moving swiftly along, when it comes to people in general, I am really enjoying just watching. I have never seen so many tiny humans on a daily basis. They are everywhere. Before school when I wait for the bus, they are there, all tightly wrapped up in their little coats, looking like astronauts. After school again, but this time their faces are just a little redder. When I go for walks in the late afternoon I see them again, in their strollers, tucked into little sleeping bags, their mothers or nannies slowly walking by, chatting with each other.

I also see a lot of older people. And again I am amazed at the similarity between here and South Africa. Every time I walk past one, I am sure that I’ve seen the same face in South Africa. They age in the same way, I think to myself every time. Why wouldn’t they? I think then. But it’s still fun to watch them; the old ladies in their big fur coats(it’s fun trying to decide if it’s real or not), hair all permed up, make-up immaculately done, legs stockinged and little rectangular handbags hanging from their wrists, with a slightly disapproving look around their mouths as if nothing can completely ever satisfy them again.

THE DRIVING
Everyone warned me, but I still wasn’t ready. It’s crazy. Absolutely crazy. But let me start at a more rational point. They have all the same cars we do in SA. Although, I haven’t seen a model that can be older that 20 years. They drive on the opposite side of the road, and this had led me to having a few small panic attacks each time I see an approaching car with what I believe the driver to be looking down at their phones and not on the road. This is of course due to the fact that the steering wheel is also on the other side of the car and the person I am seeing is actually the passenger.

Now, onto the driving. It is nerve wrecking, when you sit in the front seat and look at the traffic. But, when I’m in the back with my sisters I totally forget about it. It almost feels to me as if the lanes are narrower, because every time we pass a car on the freeway, I’m sure we’ll touch them and most likely cause an accident. They also drive very fast. For example, on the second day, my host dad and I were driving into the city and we came to part of the highway where two roads met and he told me that this was a high accident zone. I could see why; people coming in from the right wanted to cross over to the left, to continue on the highway, while people on the left wanted to exit the highway and take a slipway that was to the right. So in a space of 500m you had cars whizzing to and fro across the road. Also, it is totally acceptable to simply stop in the middle of a road (note, not highway), switch on your hazards and do something you need to do, be it check your maps or fix your car. I don’t even want to mention the parking. If my mom were here she’d say something along the lines of, “Hulle parkeer soos hul gate.” Maybe a bit less innocent. For example, if someone sees a parking space, they won’t slow down the car and put an indicator on. No, they’ll simply swerve the car into the space and be done with it. Having said that, I need to add that that do the whole swerving thing very well. Also, small narrow streets are nothing for them here. They navigate it with ease.

But, I think the one big difference between Spanish driving and South African driving is that everyone in Spain knows how to drive. That is not always the case in South Africa. So, because everyone here knows how to drive, it seems very reckless, but it’s all actually just a lot of calculated risks very well delivered. Although seeing people drive in Spain is very nerve wrecking, I can in all honesty say that I’ve never felt unsafe. I remember thinking of this quote: 'Your driving is unpleasant, but it isn't technically unsafe.'

THE LANGUAGE
Spanish is fast. When they read, when they speak. It’s almost unnecessary in a way. By now I obviously understand more than when I first came here. Everyday I learn one more word, one more useful phrase, one more verb.

In the beginning I spoke more French than anything else, to be honest. I would keep on saying mais instead of pero, oui instead of sí and pour instead of para. It was quite exhausting. It took me about a week and half to break that habit. But, French did come in handy regarding verb conjugations and sentence structure. Because I already know how to put a French sentence together, putting a Spanish one together isn’t that much different. Other than that I’ve slowly been getting better. Whenever I learn new words and I recognize it in conversations later I want to jump up and shout it to people. But I refrain from doing so, because that would just be weird. Luckily my family speaks very good English, so whenever they say something in Spanish and I don’t understand, they just translate and there are no communication gaps. I’ve also noticed that whenever I meet people who also speak French and I try to converse with them, I can suddenly only speak Spanish. It is firstly very embarrassing and secondly very frustrating, because I know I’m losing my ability to speak French and after five years of very hard work, letting that happen is very depressing. But, it is a sacrifice I need to make.

I was also surprised to find a few similarities between Spanish and Afrikaans. Muebels and meubles, interessant and interesante. Sampioen and champiñone. There are a few others, but I can’t remember them now.

THE PLACES
Spain is beautiful! Although I think that’s more to do with me finding the beauty in everything. Nevertheless, I never tire of staring out of the window whenever I’m on a bus or just standing on my balcony. The buildings range from Renaissance-period to ultra modern (for example, the first church I went into had three of the four walls completely made of glass) and everything in-between. And I haven’t even been to that many places! Nature also doesn’t disappoint, even though it’s winter and most of the trees are just pale bare branches, half dead looking. While I was on the bus home one day after school and looking at the trees next to the road, the first eight lines of a poem we did for Matric in Afrikaans suddenly came to me

Vroegherfs – N.P van Wyk Louw

Die jaar word ryp in goue akkerblare,
In wingerd wat verbruin, en witter lug
wat daglank van die nuwe wind en klare
son deurspoel word; elke blom word vrug,
tot selfs die traagstes; en die eerste blare val
so stilweg in die rook-vaal bos en laan,
dat die takke van die lang populiere al
teen elke ligte more witter staan

He basically just describes how, when the trees lose their leaves, one can now see the white trunks of the cottonwood trees (I think?), the sun now shines “all the way through” and that the trunks appear whiter. I never saw this image in South Africa, so it was nice to be in a foreign country and be reminded of something from home.

THE WEATHER
I must say, this is the one thing that surprised me the most. Before I came, I read up on the Spanish weather and Wikipedia told me the following: Madrid and its metropolitan area has a Mediterranean climate (Köppen climate classification: Csa)[2][2] with continental influences, with mild cool winters and hot summers. According to Troll-Paffen climate classification, Madrid has warm-temperate subtropicalclimate (Warmgemäßigt-subtropisches Zonenklima)[3] and according to Siegmund/Frankenberg climate classification, Madrid has subtropical climate.[4]
The words to focus on here are “Mediterranean climate”, “mild cool winters”, Warm temperate subtropical climate”, “subtropical”. To me, all that equals very Cape Tonian weather, nothing excessively cold. HA.HA. I’m so glad my mother dragged me to the shops in the weeks before I flew to buy a new pair of boots and an extra pair of warm pants and insisted on giving me one of her warm jackets, because I definitely needed it. I’m telling you, whoever those people are with their weather scales and classifications (they all seem German, and that should have already been a sign to me), my definition of mild cool winters and theirs DO NOT COINCIDE. It is very cold here for someone who just came from a drought stricken nation. I’m so glad I didn’t go to Belgium or Germany or Switzerland, because I really don’t think I would have made it.

But, with all that said, I think that I have become somewhat more acclimatized and used to the weather here. Or it’s just getting slightly hotter each week. No lo sé. For example, the public transport systems are always very balmy, as well as the shopping centers. So, outside I wear all my layers and scarves etc, but once I get inside, all that needs to go around my waist or in my bag, which is kind of a schlep, but that is the way of life.

That is all I have to cover for the moment. If you would like to know more about a certain aspect of my life here, please let me know and if enough people ask the same question I’ll write another post!