Buenos días blogueros. How are we all? Well this week has been a week with two glorious days off (Monday and Tuesday) in which I slept and drank copious amounts of tea. Mum set me the challenge of using all 240 tea bags she brought with her before I leave (let's face it, not to do so would be a waste!) and I think this 4-day weekend may have made a slight dent in that number.
I have discovered that there is nothing quite like a Spanish supermarket. On the face of it, it looks like an English one, although it does tend to smell slightly more of fish and meat, due to the thousand dead carcasses they have at the back of the shop for adventurous people who don't want their chicken pre-packaged. It's when you get to the checkout that things get exciting. Who says the Spanish don't know how to queue? There is ALWAYS a queue. And none of the 'there are ten people waiting, maybe we should open another till'. Ho no. So you wait. And wait. And wait. You finally get your shopping on the belt, then you have to wait again because the person in front of you didn't realise they had to weigh and print off a label for their half a watermelon. Then the cashier has no sooner given them their change that they start scanning your stuff with a grumpy 'hola', which would be great if the person before you had packed their stuff into bags and gone, but this is an unknown concept in Spain. So you sort of have to shove them (or at the very least, their stuff) out off the way to get to your shopping, put it in a bag the British way, and if you're lucky you occasionally get the previous customer saying 'is that yours or mine?' And I think, well if you'd packed when you were supposed to, you'd know.
Anyhow. You get all your stuff in bags, you pay, you leave. And then you pop into another shop to have a nosey, some seemingly nice woman is there looking at the same thing as you and she says 'aren't these lovely' and you say 'indeed they are', which gives away the fact you're not Spanish. She says 'oh, you're Russian!' You reply 'oh no, I'm English'. Then she turns her nose up in the most literal manner known to man, and she says 'well your skin's the wrong colour to be English'.
The thing is, I would have found this quite funny if I still had a sense of humour and if she didn't mean it in a racist manner. Which she did (I guess you had to be there). It's something we've noticed up here... if you're anything other than 'Spanish-looking' some people give you the widest berth known to man. I say some because some people don't mind talking to us and love our hilarious approximation of a Spanish accent, but Suzy had to tell her life story to the woman in the post office before she'd give her her package, all because she's got an Egyptian last name on her passport. I've been into some shops, not said a word AT ALL, and the shop assistant has imediately not spoken in Spanish. Usually they go into English, but occasionally you get some random language because they assume you're from somewhere because of how you look. The only reason I mention it, is because I now appreciate just how well England has done by comparison. Of course there's still a long way to go, but actually, our little island has done a better job than Bilbao so far.
I'd not be as bothered if this hadn't followed a bit of a stressful week (hard to believe with two days off). We have another 5 page essay to hand in on Monday, but as the tutor doesn't set a specific day and just says 'you have 15 days' it gets awfully confusing. I mean, do bank holidays count? Do weekends? What if you don't have class on day 15?
Anyway, I will try to find something more fun to talk about next time. Has to be said, I'm a bit sick of being here now and am just at that stage where I can't even take the mickey out of my experiences because I don't find them funny anymore. The little things wear you down after a while. Still, normal Lucy-Cakes blogging should resume soon. I should certainly have had a cup of tea before writing this, it would have turned out differently! In the meantime, if you find my sense of humour, please send it back.
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