Reflectados d'Espanya

Sorry I haven't written anything in the last week, I've been staying pretty busy. The highlight of my week was going to the FC Barcelona game at Camp Nou. It was a religious experience for sure. I forgot my camera, but my roommate took a bunch of pictures, so I'm gonna get them from him and put up a post all about it later. For now, though, I'm going to write about some Exciting Culturual Learning Experiences and Observations. You know, the kind of stuff my parents think I had damn well better get out of this trip if they're going to be paying for it.

I went to see one of my spanish friends, Mark, play a concert with his band last night. The style is kind of hard to describe, the best way I can put it is as a Rumba/Ska hybrid. You absolutely could not listen to this music and not dance. All the lyrics were in catalan (Hola Nuria!), but I couldn't make out too much of it. I think I might like music even more when the lyrics are in a foreign language and I can't entirely understand them. It allows me to focus less on what's being said and more on the emotions invoked by the tonality and music itself. I really love the feel of spanish guitar. Speaking of which, Mark has graciously agreed to meet up with me sometime soon to teach me some of the basics of spanish rumba guitar, which I'm incredibly excited about.

After the concert was over, my roommate went to the bar with our spanish friend Maria, and some of her friends. We had quite the diverse group: Josh and I, the americans, Dave, an Irish guy, a Canadian girl named Chantal, and Maria and her spanish friends Klaudia and Ivan. I had a great time drinking a couple beers and talking about everything from (a lot) of music to martial arts to science and the existence of God. I'm so overjoyed that I'm getting to hang out with people from different cultures here. Getting schlitzed with other Americans is fun and all, but if that's all I wanted, why even come to Barcelona? So far, every aspect of this trip is an absolute dream come true and I couldn't be happier here.

I've also been working on learning my subjunctive verbs this week. The subjunctive is a verb tense notoriously difficult for gringos such as myself to learn, because there's really not much of an equivalent in english. The only example I can think of is when we say "I wish I were..." instead of "I wish I was...". You use the subjunctive to express opinions, wishes, desires, etc, but there's a little more to it than that. Like I said, its hard to explain, but you use it for things that are hypothetical or only touchable in your mind. My catalan teacher told me that to learn a language is to also learn a culture. I.e. the nuances of a language are a direct product of the culture that speaks it. I finally figured out what she was talking about today while I was eating lunch with my host mom.

My "mom" has a Ph.d. in spanish language/literature, so she has the grammar down perfectly and loves giving me little lessons at the house. We were discussing the subjunctive when I had my "revelation". The subjunctive tense reflects the openness and directness of spanish people. My experiences with spaniards have shown me that they are very straightforward people. They are not afraid to express their opinions and let you know what they are honestly thinking. As such, the subjunctive tense reflects their desire for their intentions to be known and easily understood. It is a simple, albeit difficult for foreigners, way to distinguish between the way things are, and the way things might be. It doesn't sound like much, I'm sure, but it was a moment of understanding that made me very happy.

On a related note, its really amazing to me how much better my spanish has gotten in the 10 or so days since I've been here. I'm having to think a lot less before I speak, and common topics of conversation and phrases are becoming almost second nature for me. For example, I no longer have to consider whether I want to say "dije que" (I said) or "dijo que" (he/she said). I can even understand the spanish news on TV more or less now, which is thrilling, because it sounded like complete gibberish the first week I was here. Anyway, that's enough