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A day that was so odd that I totally forgot to take pictures! :-O
Anyway, I will not bore you with Spanish life over a simple matter. The good thing about today was that I haven't spoken to this many neighbors for a long while.
David came from weekend in Madrid and first I had an hour long talk with him about everything and anything. And then he offered to come with me to the office to get to the bottom of things. Which he did and we did get to the bottom of things. And then we went around some neighbors to explain it to them. Anyway I really enjoyed my talk with David. He's clearly civilized and learned. And so much fun! We for example shared horror stories from hospital visits in our home countries and then also stories how lovely the care is in Spain. I can talk him him about anything and everything. That's rare!
I also talked to Göran, our Swedish neighbor who's back to take his wife to a Mediterranean cruise on Thursday. They'll be back here after that. I talked to another Swedish couple too. I've talked to Danish, Welsh, Estonians, British, Dutch. Used all the languages (3) I can. I feel glad but tired. It's hard job for me to switch from language to another. My brain needs to get on gear to speak another language. Perhaps it will get easier with time.
I do enjoy our little United Nations here.
Oh and the gossip! My gosh it's been a day of "finding out things". I found out our two Russian speaking families are not speaking to each other any more. Up until very recently they were the best of friends. Jen and David H can't stand our Danish couples anymore. Apparently they feel things are expected out of them, which I think is just a case of "lost in translation". When most of us don't speak English as a native, it's sometimes very hard to get to the nuances. And then the English speaking take it all literally and get upset. They should remember that people are trying hard to speak with them. I tried to explain that, but they were too upset to listen to. I'll try again later.
I think all people here are nice and kind. And we have to be open to them and accept people as they are and understand that there are different languages and cultures. And that's exactly what makes life here so exciting. If you want to, you can always learn something new about people and their way of living and thinking. I think it's fabulous! They are my little anthropology project... ;-)
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