So, I started a blog...

Okay. This is a long post. I have separated stuff into different categories, so you can just skip what doesn't interest you. Sound good? I hope so.

Hey Guys!

BACKGROUND

So, some people were saying that they wanted to hear about my time in Barcelona, Spain. I was thinking about it, and if history serves, there is just no way I'd be able to tell everyone about my time here, but I want to keep in touch and also give some insights into what life is like in Barcelona. Someone mentioned that I should start a blog. Perhaps they were joking. But I have no sense of humor. So I decided to actually use my blogger account (*gasp!*) that I've had for awhile now.

If you didn't know I was in Spain, well, now you do. I'm here from June 8th to July 20th, which is about seven weeks. I'm working for a consulting firm called the LTC Project (or, in Spanish, the elle-te-se proyect), and I'm living with the CEO of the company and his family in Terrassa, a large town outside of Barcelona, about thirty minutes away by train.

For those of you that want to Skype me, it's a nine hour time difference, so I'm on at night in Barcelona which is the morning in the US.

Okay, enough of basic background.

LANGUAGE ISSUES: CATALAN

I've been here for five days now, and it's been hectic.

Did you know that the language of Barcelona is NOT Spanish? Me neither. Not kidding. I kind of realized when I got here that Catalan is the language of Catalunya (yeah, duh), the province which houses Barcelona, and thus everyone in Barcelona speaks Catalan (not actually surprising when you put it that way....whatever). The point is, it is actually kind of difficult to communicate here. Usually, when you fail at speaking the local language, the people try English. Here, it's you fail at Catalan, they go to Spanish. You fail at Spanish, they go to English. Naturally, it's better to not fail at Spanish, because once you do that everyone thinks you're an idiot.

CULTURE CLASH: KISSING. THE SPANISH DO IT A LOT

Another way to make yourself look like an idiot in Barcelona is to NOT kiss people on both cheeks when you are greeting them and saying goodbye. Now, I'm not a super-huggy kissy touchy person. By which I mean I guard my personal space bubble with my life. So, you can imagine I was kind of like OH MY GOD WHAT IS GOING ON!?!? when I arrived in Barcelona and had women, children, and men, all of whom I have never met, kissing me on both cheeks. Keep in mind I have very good friends, like people who i would trust with my life, my first born child, the passwords to my bank account, so on and so forth, who I have never kissed on ONE cheek, let alone both, and probably never will. So, having complete strangers do this to me? Yeah, the first day was kinda awkward. When I got to the LTC office, one of the female consultants went in for the kiss, but I defaulted and gave her my hand for a handshake. She looked at Xavier (the CEO) like I was an alien with three heads, and then we proceeded to shake hands AND kiss. Yeah, that's how I do.

Basically this blog is going to be about how I single-handedly make myself look like a fool in Barcelona. That's gonna be a running theme.

LANGUAGE ISSUES: SPANISH. TURNS OUT I CAN'T SPEAK IT

Speaking of which, it turns out I can understand Spanish really well. I just have lost the capacity to speak it. I have some really bad news for those of you still in high scholol and taking Spanish: high school Spanish doesn't teach you everything you need to know about speaking Spanish. Maybe that isn't surprising, but it is kind of unfortunate in my circumstance. So, you know, things like "Exacto Knife" and "zucchini" aren't on the vocabulary lists, and they never bother to teach you how to write a work email in Spanish. However, I am able to read and understand research documents about social innovation in governments in Spanish. And I am also exceedingly good now at plugging documents into Google Translator when they aren't in Spanish, but rather Catalan.


You probably think I'm kidding about the not speaking Spanish thing. I'm not. Literally 90% of what I say on a given day is "vale", which means "okay." Occasionally, I say "esta bien" (it's fine) just to mix things up. Sometimes I utter random words, like "bueno" (good) or "bien" (well). The complete sentences I use most often are "Que es esto?" (What is this?) and "Estoy muy cansada (I am very tired); the second one is my way of trying to excuse my inability to communicate, open the refridgerator, find the correct trashcan, basically my inability to do anything. For the most part, these phrases can get me through the day.

The trouble comes when I need to not agree with something. For example, when I need to ask my boss what the hell I was supposed to be doing while my brain decided to copy out a whole website. That would be a time when "vale" is really not going to cut it. Although, I have bad news. Google Translator? Epic failure at spoken language. Every time I use it to try to communicate something, my bosses kind of look at me like I'm having a stroke and speak to me slowly, as though my IQ just dropped 20 points. It turns out my pathetic excuse of a spoken vocabulary is better than Google Translator's infinite vocabulary but nonexistant understanding of idiomatic phrasing and grammatical structures.

Maybe you wonder how it is I can read and understand Spanish but not speak it. The answer to that is three-fold:

1. I am scared out of my mind
2. I am jetlagged. Speaking English is actually a feat at times when I am this tired. Try finding the right verb for a sentence, the right subject for the sentence, conjugating the verb correctly, and locating all the other vocabulary to communicate the thought. Think that's easy? Try it at 6:45 am. Or 11:30 pm. Or in the office with 10 seconds to formulate the answer. Yeah, the Spanish AP was nothing compared to this.
3. People think I am insane. Yeah. They do. You're thinking "No, no, they totally get it! You're a foreigner, this is new..." No. Lies. They think I am insane. Not because I screw up constantly, but because I basically can't initiate a conversation. The problem is that you can screw up a sentence or two (or three....or four...ok, like the entire conversation) when it's in the middle of a conversation that has already begun, where someone knows where it's supposed to be going. If I try to start a conversation, and I fail at it, we both have no clue what I'm trying to say. So then it's like 3x awkward. I think at this point the sister in the family I'm staying with and the women I initially screwed up the two-kiss thing with have lost all hope in me. Xavier Marcet (CEO dude) likes to say I'll be speaking fluently in a week. That might have been wishful thinking on his part.

WORK: THE FIRST WEEK.

For the first day, my job was basically to not freak out about the fact that our clients' website is completely in Catalan. The jetlag took off some of the edge. By which I mean I spent the first day trying to not fall asleep, sort of succeeding, and copying the entire website first into Google Translator, then into a Word Document. At first, I translated it into Spanish and English, so I could kind of follow exactly what I was copying. At some point, the English stopped making sense, so I just went straight for the Spanish and the Word Document.

When I got to the office the next day, I realized that having a word document copy of the entire website was sort of a completely useless thing to have. Although I might send it to the Catalunya government so they can have a website in Catalan and Spanish. Spent the day trying to pick out relevant facts and details.


Oh, and if my writing in this blog seems stilted or lacking in fluidity, don't worry. It's just the English-speaking parts of my brain atrophying. I wish I could say the Spanish is taking over the parts that used to speak English, but that really isn't the case. It appears I am going to lose all ability to speak English while simultaneously failing to speak Spanish, so I will eventually become mute. I've sort of accepted this fate.

Whatever. Speaking is overrated. Especially when your job involves sitting at a computer for 8 hours a day doing research. There is one good thing: a lot of the valuable case studies are in ENGLISH. Which I can speak! ...for now... whatever, the point is that I at least know what is going on at work. It's just the rest of my life that makes no sense and has me mimicking a mime 90% of the time.

Okay, this is a lot of me complaining...although if you know me, you were probably expecting that. Hopefully it was entertaining? Maybe?

CONGRATULATIONS. YOU MADE IT TO THE END OF THE POST!

If you actually made it to the bottom of this post, I love you. And to test if you made it, here is a question for you: how do I convince the wife of Sr. Marcet that she doesn't need to clean my room everyday? I even made my bed this morning, and straightened up, but she STILL found things to fold. Ay, dios mio.

Hasta luego!

Emily