You're Not From Here, Are You?

I've been asked this question a lot in the past couple of weeks, more times in fact than I think I was asked the entire last year I was here.  To be precise, I have been asked this question four times in the past two weeks, including three times in the span of two days.  What is it that makes my foreignness so noticeable as of late?

My foreigner status becomes more apparent when I open my mouth to say something.  I know I have a strange accent when I speak.  I tend to use peninsular verb forms and intonation with Central American pronunciation influenced by English.  There are some sounds, both in Spanish and in Basque, that will always mark me as a foreigner, specifically the "r" and the "l".  If you don't believe me, ask anyone who has suffered through my attempts at pronouncing the Basque word for clock, erlojua. Not only do I have difficulties with pronunciation and grammar, as would most non-native speakers, but I feel that my levels of oral and written production have worsened since living here.  Because I am not actively studying Spanish and spend the majority of my time thinking in English I don't speak or write as well as I used to.  However, some of the people who asked me this didn't have the opportunity to judge me based on my speaking ability because I had yet to say a word.

So, if it isn't my accent or speaking ability that gives it away, what is it? Is it how I dress? On three out of the four occasions I was wearing a fleece jacket and white socks, however, I was wearing long pants and they couldn't be seen over the tops of my shoes. If you have read my previous post about the subject, you know that is common for Americans to wear white socks.   In fact, we love our white socks.  Recently, my parents sent me a couple of care packages with things I was missing.  My instructions to them were that if there was extra space and the packages were underweight that they fill they fill the extra space with white socks.

Every time I have come to Spain I have come with more than enough pairs of socks to last me through the year, yet, by the end of the year, I seem to have only a couple of pairs left.  I am convinced that there is a sock monster living under my bed that eats only white socks, because none of my colored socks ever go missing. I believe that no one ever wears white socks because they know they wouldn't last long in the face of the sock monster so they don't even bother.  Either that or people are just more fashion conscious.  I personally support the sock monster theory.

What is the first thing that marks others as foreigners for you? What marks you as a foreigner?

"He's Tramping, He's Tramping"

One of the great things about being human beings is our ability to use language.  We can express ourselves to others using our language, sometimes more eloquently than others.  We have the ability to create phrases and sentences that have never been uttered before, and will probably never be uttered again. This post contains some of my favorite quotes of the past couple of weeks, quite a few of which I'm sure the world has never heard before.

"Hello, my graffiti."  We were working on introductions in class and the students asked me which languages I could speak.  When I mentioned that I had studied a little bit of Swahili, they asked if I could say a sentence for them.  I told them in Swahili that I could speak a little Swahili.  They were so interested in the language that I decided to tell them that some of the names of the characters in the Lion King were taken from Swahili.  After explaining that simba meant lion, I moved on to rafiki, which means friend. One of the students thought I kept saying "graffiti" and turned to the person sitting next to her and, while giving her a big hug, said, "Hello, my graffiti".  It was entertaining for the entire class.

Student 1: "I have 12 years old." (We're still working on using the verb "to be" to say ages instead of  "to have".)
Student 2: "You are only 12!"
Student 1: "No, pero no sé cómo se dice 13 en inglés." Translation : No, but I don't know how to say 13 in English.

Student, upon first seeing me after the summer vacation: "You go home for vacation?"
Me: "Yes."
Student: "How was England?"
Me: "I don't know. I went to the United States. I'm American."
Student: "What?"  The student couldn't believe that I was from the U.S. even after being in class with me for a year.

Woman from choir: "¿No eres de Inglaterra? Pensaba que eres de Inglaterra." Translation: You're not from England? I thought you were from England.

After trying to establish that I was from Seattle, Washington, a student asked me, "You're from Washington. Do you know Obama?".

Pointing at a photo of the Space Needle, "Do you live there?".

Student: "And your father's name?"
Me: "Ken."
Student: "Your father is Ken, like the boyfriend of Barbie. Then your mom is Barbie?! Your mom is Barbie. Barbie and Ken."   In case you were wondering, my mom's name isn't Barbie. It's Tina, which I had told them about 10 seconds prior to this exchange.

Student: "He's tramping, he's tramping!" In Spanish, hacer trampas means "to cheat".

Student: "Rita, what is this word?"
Me, after trying unsuccessfully to define it in English: "I don't know how to explain it."
Student: "In Spanish?"
Me: "I don't know, but I have a friend named Oxford," gesturing towards the dictionaries at the back of the room. "Ask him, he'll know."
Student, thinking about it then laughing: "He's your friend, not ours."

Highway Walking

a.k.a. el castillo de Butrón (Part 2)

If you are reading this, you have probably been waiting in anticipation to find out if I made a successful visit to the castle. If you are unfamiliar with what happened on my first attempt at visiting this castle, please click here to find out about the necessity of a second visit.  The good news is that I made it to the castle. The better news is that I managed to do it without getting arrested or killed.  Normally, I try to avoid anything excessively dangerous or things that could land me in potential legal trouble, but I was determined to make it to the castle before the weather turned bad.

Still doubting the legality of walking along the shoulder of the highway, I posed the question to my friends before embarking on this adventure. The response I received was that as long as there were no signs explicitly prohibiting walking the on the shoulder, it was not illegal. This isn't to say that it is legal, but at least I probably wouldn't be arrested if I were to attempt it.  On the chance that I did get stopped by a law enforcement officer, I planned this excursion for the day my foreigner card expired, so that if I did get arrested, I was still in the country.  In fact, I was so preoccupied about getting arrested that not only did I plan this trip around the expiration date of my card, I also took with me my passport and official, stamped application that showed I had applied to renew my identification card a month prior. On a side note, I am still waiting for the government to process my renewal paperwork, a process I began now two months ago, which will be a subject for another post.

After the now familiar, train, metro, bus trip, I found myself facing a sign that pointed me in the right direction.  I started down the highway in the direction indicated by the sign.  As always, click on the picture to see a larger version.

I was so excited when I finally arrived at the castle that I started taking pictures of everything.  The castle was smaller than I had expected, but that made it more beautiful.

I spent a couple of hours at the castle and felt the visitwas completely worth my while, and did not regret making the trek along the highway to get there, until I saw some of the local wildlife.  As you know from my previous post, I do not have a soft spot in my heart for spiders. What I didn't tell you was that also near top of my list of my least favorite animals are caterpillars. During my time at the exploring the castle grounds, I saw some of the biggest spiders and caterpillars that I had ever seen in the wild. On several occasions I had to move to a new place to eat my lunch because I was sitting too close to a spider web. I knew my time at the castle was complete when, while sitting under a tree, I heard a loud plop and thought it was just an acorn. Until it moved. I realized the "plop" was a huge caterpillar that had fallen from one of the trees. Terrified that one would land on my head, I packed up the rest of my belongings and left as quickly as I could.  The least frightening of the animals were the lizards, as they usually scurried away from me before I could get a decent picture of them.  However, sometimes they would dart away before I could even see them, having me convinced with the rustling of the leaves that some particularly menacing creature (a spider) was going jump out of the foliage and attack me.

On the way to the castle, I noticed the following sign, and considered following the hiking trail back to the bus stop during the return journey if there was time.  I stopped at the signs again on the return trip, and remembering what happened the last time I tried to follow this trail (in the opposite direction), I decided that if I actually wanted to catch the return bus and not encounter any more wildlife that I should stick to the highway.

Basque words of the day:
Armiarma - spider
Beldar - caterpillar
Gaztelu - castle

That's Probably a Bad Idea

a.k.a. El Castillo de Butrón (Part 1)

While I was back in Seattle, I watched the t.v. show America's Got Talent, a live talent competition to find the next headline act. There were many acts that I enjoyed, but one that seemed permanently engrained in my mind, not because it was particularly good, (because it wasn't) but because it was catchy. You probably don't care at all about this information, but it is essential in fully appreciating the story that follows. The following video is the act that will forever live in my mind. I suggest starting at 0:45, as the beginning is not relevant to the story.

Do you now have the song's chorus stuck in your head yet? Good. If not, repeat the video until you can't escape the sound of the bearded children singing "That's probably a bad idea".  Throughout the following story, there will be several instances where this phrase will come into play. I encourage you to repeat it with me in the style of the bearded children each time that it appears.

A few months ago while I was searching the internet, most likely for something completely unrelated, I found a photo of a castle. I happen to have a special fondness for castles, especially those with round towers, and when I first saw the picture of the Castillo de Butrón, I knew I had to visit it. As I began to look into how to get there, I realized that it was going to be more difficult than I had originally anticipated, because there was no transportation directly to the castle.

After several many hours of searching travel sites, bus schedules, and Google Maps, I found a route that would get me fairly close to the castle.  The nearest bus stop was approximately three kilometers from the castle (about 1.8 miles), but I was more than willing to walk the distance.  According to Google Maps, there were two possible routes from the bus stop to my destination. Option one: I could take the slightly more direct route and walk on the narrow shoulder of the highway (that's probably a bad idea) or option two: I could take a smaller road that wound its way through fields and a small forest. Doubtful of the legality of walking on the shoulder of the highway and fearful of being hit by a car, I chose the smaller, more indirect route.  It was fairly simple, once I got off the bus I was to turn right and follow the road. According to the map, the road branched at several places, but as long as I stayed to the right, I should be able to get there without too much trouble.  For those of you who have had experience with my sense of direction, you should be saying "That's probably a bad idea".  I should mention that because this was an aerial map, parts of the road were obscured by trees, but I figured I would be able to handle it.  After checking the weather report and feeling about as prepared as I could be, I decided to embark on this adventure.  I decided to go alone because I tend to take far fewer pictures if I am with other people. (That's probably a bad idea.)

The adventure began mid-morning, which was significantly later than I had hoped because I had overslept my alarm by about two hours. After an interesting train ride that left me slightly uncomfortable, I took a 40 minute ride on the metro to where I needed to catch the bus.  Upon exiting the metro, I promptly turned and walked in the opposite direction of the bus stop (I never said I had a good sense of direction), and arrived at what I thought was the correct stop. Without any signs stating which buses used that stop, I was unsure that I was in the right place. As the bus only came once an hour and there were about 10 minutes until the next departure, I began to get nervous and did what any reasonable person would do at this point, I went to the tourist office where I was told that the correct stop was just on the other side of the metro station. Perfect. I crossed the bridge over the tracks and made it with plenty of time to spare.

Two and a half hours after leaving my house, I stepped off the bus onto the side of the highway and began walking up the road to my right.  The fields and spacing of the houses looked like what I had seen on Google Maps, so I was fairly certain that I was headed in the right direction. I had been walking for about five minutes when I noticed some cows in a field. I have always liked taking pictures of the local wildlife, so these cows were no exception. As soon as I got close enough to get a decent picture, the cows sensed that I was there and stopped eating to stare at me. I'm used to being stared at, as tall blonde Americans aren't exactly commonplace here, but being stared at by these cows was more unnerving than being stared at by almost any person.  Maybe it was their size, or the fact that the only thing keeping them from me was a small rope that they could probably step over if they wanted to, but I felt very out of place and thought of my excursion, "That's probably a bad idea".  As am standing in the middle of the road like a typical tourist taking pictures of cows and contemplating running in the opposite direction, two joggers passed me and the cows didn't even flinch. Not one bit.  Apparently these were intelligent cows that could tell difference between someone who belonged in the area and a tourist.

Since I had already disturbed the cows' late morning snack, I decided there was no harm in continuing my journey. I continued up the road, remembering to keep to the right every time it split.  A bit farther down the road, I spied some grapevines. As I am from the city, I had never seen real grapevines before, so of course I stopped to take a picture. In the middle of my picture taking, I managed to alarm a small dog tied to a house next to the road. Upon seeing me, the dog decided that it was necessary to sound the alarm to every other dog within hearing distance. Now there were at least six (yes, I counted) dogs barking, their noise echoing throughout the entire valley.  I quickened my pace up the road for fear that one of the dogs would escape and chase me down, all the while thinking to myself, "That's probably a bad idea".  The paved road ended an a well-worn path began.  Thinking that the map wouldn't show such great detail, I continued up the path where I entered into the cover of the trees.  At this point, the path split into three, all going in more or less the same direction. I know what you're thinking; me walking into the woods by myself with my sense of direction, "That's probably a bad idea". I had the same thought, but out of sheer determination and curiosity, I continued down the leftmost path. That is, until, just a few feet down the path, I ran into my arch nemesis. Literally.

At the top of the list of things that will hinder my accomplishing any task are spiders. I detest and fear them. I have been known to take the entire contents of my bed to another room in the house to sleep because I saw a spider in my bedroom and it hid before I could get someone to kill it for me.  As I passed along a fence I felt a sticky thread of the web of doom on my arm. Thinking I had just grazed it with my arm I pulled it off and took another step. When I looked down, I realized that I didn't just graze it with my arm, I had walked through the entire giant spider web and the majority of it was stuck to my pants just above my knee, dead fly and all. At this point, I started panicking, wondering where the actual spider could be. I promptly began a rendition of the I-just-walked-into-a-spider-web-get-it-off-me dance. You know the one. The one that looks like a high speed version of the Hokey-Pokey on drugs. Yes, that one. Noticing that the dead fly was still attached to my knee, I tried to lift it off with a pencil from my bag.  I got rid of the fly, and should probably get rid of the pencil as well, as it is still covered with the web of doom. I took the spider web as a sign that going down that path was "probably a bad idea" and decided to turn around, hoping the spider wasn't following.

I could have continued down one of the other paths (that's probably a bad idea), but afraid of running into more of my eight-legged "friends", I went back the way I came, knowing that I could take the highway if I still wanted to go to the castle. I walked quickly past the barking dogs and back towards the field with the cows. As I approached, the cows began to moo loudly, which worried me.  After I had passed them, the farmer let his dogs out and they began to follow me down the road.  I did not want to add dogs to the list of animals that were potentially following me so I walked faster and didn't look back.  When I arrived at the bus stop, I debated walking alongside the highway, but as the clouds had darkened significantly and I wasn't carrying a jacket, I decided to wait for the next bus back to town.  While waiting, a man driving a car entered the highway from the side street next to the bus stop and offered me a ride. I graciously turned him down, remembering all of the advice I had heard as a child and thinking, "That's probably a bad idea". 

When I got back home, I looked at the map to see if the path would have taken me in the right direction, and as it turns out, it wouldn't have.  I should have continued down a road that looked like a private driveway, instead of taking the road that passed the barking dogs.  The next time I attempt this excursion, and there will be a next time, I will walk along the highway because, although there is greater danger from the passing vehicles, there should be no spider webs to stand in my way.

How to Confuse an American

Q: How do you confuse an American?

A: Speak to them in a language other than English.

Before you get angry and start giving me the evil eye, let me explain. Americans are not generally known for being multilingual. In fact, it is commonly assumed that Americans don't learn other languages because at this point in time the primary language of international and intercultural communication is English. We can get by without having to resort to a second or third language.  That being said, I know many Americans who are, if not fluent, at least proficient in another language.  Despite this fact, the stereotype remains, as illustrated by the following joke.

Two highway workers were busy working at a construction site when a big car with diplomatic license plates pulled up. "Parlez-vous français?" the driver asks them. The two workers just stared. 

"Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" The two continued to stare at him.

"Fala português?" Neither worker said anything.

"¿Habla español?" Still no response. Finally, the man drives off in disgust. 

One worker turned to the other and said, "Gee, maybe we should learn a foreign language..." 

"What for? That guy knew four of them and what good did it do him?"

The reason for this post is that I experienced a situation similar to the previous joke a couple of days ago. Despite being a native English speaker, having a decent level of proficiency in Spanish, being in second year Basque, and having briefly studied a few other languages, I found myself in the same position as the highway workers.

I had planned an interesting day trip for myself on Friday (more about the actual trip in a later post) and having just bought my train ticket to Bilbao, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around to see an older man holding a map and seemingly in need of directions. I said "Hola", as I usually would when someone taps me on the shoulder, and the response I received was "Bilbao?" while pointing to Bilbao on the map. When I didn't receive a response in Spanish, I switched to English and tried to explain how to catch the train. I tried to show him where we were on the map so he could orient himself, but Durango is a small enough city that it wasn't there. After realizing that he didn't speak more than a few words of English, I resorted to pointing to signs and timetables. He seemed to understand, and I went on my way, feeling bad that I wasn't able to speak to him in his own language.

Since I was also going to Bilbao, we ended up on the same train. In fact, we ended up sitting across from each other. It was still morning, and I hadn't been awake for that long, so I was hoping to be left alone with my thoughts or my music for the duration of the train ride.  My new-found friend, on the other hand, had other plans.  As it turns out, he was a bit of a talker.  Our "conversation" began with him asking directions from Bilbao to Santander and then to Gijón. I put conversation in quotation marks because what went on between us wasn't really a conversation, since neither one could understand the other.  It was more like a strange game of charades that allowed talking in snippets of five or six different languages. With these special rules, you were not allowed to say more than four words in one language without switching to another. Not having been born bilingual, I'm not the best at code-switching even when I know both languages.  I tend to get stuck in one of them and have a difficult time following the conversation when words of the other language are thrown in at random. Imagine my confusion when having to follow the code-switching between languages I don't understand.

Despite our lack of a common language, I managed to get lectured about my relative inability to speak neither German nor French.  He was of the opinion that because I could speak English that I should be able to speak German because they are related. He thought the same about Spanish and French, and then proceeded to list all of the romance languages that he thought I should speak. While knowing one language that is closely related to another often makes it easier to learn, it doesn't mean that they are mutually intelligible and that understanding one automatically means you will understand the other.  Not only was I lectured about about languages, but about my exercise habits and my choice of profession as well.  Apparently teachers work a lot and don't make a whole lot of money (that's a shocker) and I would be much better off becoming a doctor or a lawyer. I do not want to be a doctor or a lawyer, I want to be a teacher. Now feeling a little uncomfortable, I got off the train at the first stop in Bilbao leaving him to exit at the second stop, where hopefully he could find someone who had a better sense of direction than I did or could at least speak to him in a language he could understand.

Have you ever played the game of code-switching charades or had difficulties finding a common language to communicate in?

Unsuspected Misses

Recently, I made a two-month trip to the United States to visit my family and friends. Within just a few hours of my arrival, there were several things from my time in the Basque Country that I was missing. Some of them, like missing my friends and all of the other people I had met, are things you would expect, while others may seem a bit strange. What follows is a list, in no particular order, of some of the items I wasn’t expecting to miss.

1. Walking and Public Transportation

I do not have a driver’s license. In the U.S., this would mean that to go any kind of reasonable distance from my house, I would either need to use the public buses, or bum a ride off of my family members or friends. I usually preferred the latter because I could arrive at my destination in a reasonable amount of time, traffic permitting of course.  I don’t have any problems with public transportation except for the fact that it takes me significantly longer to get where I need to go.  The suburbs of Seattle aren’t known for great access to public transportation, and since I live “two buses from everywhere”, travel takes me twice to three times as long as it would in a car.

Here, on the other hand, I walk everywhere. In fact, riding in a car is a rarity for me nowadays.  Most of the places within the city are easily accessible on foot, but for longer journeys, I use the excellent public transportation system. To travel the 30km (18.6 miles) from Durango to Bilbao by train, it takes a mere 40 minutes. The same trip by bus takes between 20 to 40 minutes depending on the route and traffic conditions within the city itself.  Once inside the city, it is possible to take many forms of transportation to get where you need to go, including, buses, trams, the metro (subway), and just plain old walking. In Seattle, on the other hand, it would take me that long just to get from my house to the downtown area, a distance of approximately nine miles.  Once there, I would have two choices: take another bus, or walk.  While working on an activity on tourism in Seattle, several of my students were shocked to find out that Seattle did not have more efficient means of transportation. "You have no metro? But Seattle is bigger than Bilbao. How do you go anywhere?" I often wonder the same thing.

2. The Letters K, X, and Z

At this point, you must be thinking, "This girl has gone completely off her rocker. How can she miss something that still exists?" Over the past year, I have grown accustomed to seeing words spelled with these letters not too commonly seen in the English language. The most common letter in Basque is the letter a, which accounts for approximately 17 percent of all letters.  While ranking significantly lower on the list of commonly used letters, k, x, and z are used to a much greater extent than they are in English.  If you are wondering why I know this, it is because I was trying to create a set of Bananagrams so that I could play in Basque. You can ask my family how long I spent figuring out the correct percentages and number of letters I would need to be able to play.  Using a combination of several sets, I now how have enough tiles to be able to play in either English, Spanish, or Basque, as long as I can find someone to play with.

When I first arrived in the Basque Country, I was daunted by the fact that I was constantly surrounded by such unfamiliar letters, but I have grown so used to them that their absence was significant in the United States. How could you not miss spelling chocolate "txokolate"?

3. Dinner After Dark


I never thought I could get used to eating lunch at 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon and dinner after 9:00pm. I have not only gotten used to it, I found that I quite like it.  I hadn't thought about it much before, but now it makes perfect sense to me. I tried to impose this timetable on my family while I was visiting, but unfortunately, they didn't take to it like I had.  Although it made more sense with our schedules, they were still committed to eating early.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some of the things that seemed strange to me at the time, but these are the three that most stood out to me. What are some unusual things that you miss when you travel to other places?

What I've Been Up To: An Update

It's been a  long time since my last post, and I'm sure some of you must have thought that I had fallen off the face of the earth.  The good news for you is that I have not fallen of the face of the earth, unless, of course, you were hoping that is what happened to me. In that case, I am sorry to disappoint you. Now that I know I have a couple of readers besides my parents, I will attempt to post more frequently. The key word here is attempt. Keeping up with my blog hasn't been at the top of my priority list.

After finishing my teaching at the end of May, several of my friends helped to prepare me for the upcoming Basque exam.  I was so nervous, specifically about the oral exam, that I wasn't sure I was going to pass, especially considering my previous performance. During the mid-term exam in January, I got so nervous during the oral exam that I almost completely forgot my name. This time, though, I remembered not only my name, but everything else I was supposed to know as well, and passed both the written and oral parts.  I know enough that I could probably hold my own in a conversation with a three-year-old.

Shortly after finishing the Basque exam and before heading back to the United States for a long vacation, I went with the choir to the town of Sodupe for a concert. However, this was not just an ordinary concert, this was a gathering of many of the choirs from Bizkaia, numbering close to 1,000 people. If you have ever been around choir people, imagine putting 1,000 of us in the same room. It was crazy, but incredibly fun.

Part of the crowd

After that, I packed my bags and headed to Seattle for my little brother's high school graduation, visit family and friends, and play tourist. What follows are some photos of how I have spent my vacation, because pictures are usually more entertaining than words.

This summer I:
watched my little brother graduate from high school,

Posing for a picture with my family after the ceremony

went to several Seattle Mariners baseball games

watched the 4th of July fireworks with my mom and my friends,

took a road trip to Spokane with my sister to visit more family,

Hiking Tubbs Hill with my sister, aunt, and uncle

Standing with my sister at the edge of the Columbia River

fed a giraffe,

fed an elephant.

1,087,000 Words

When it comes to taking pictures, I am definitely my mother's daughter.  Two years ago, my mom came to visit me when I was studying in Granada and we took a three-week trip through Spain, Germany, and Austria.  During this trip, I shot about 500 pictures; she shot approximately 2,000.  I couldn't believe that she could take so many pictures in such a short period of time, and gave her a bad time about it.  As it turns out, I have inherited the gene for taking massive amounts of pictures in a short period of time.  Over Semana Santa (Easter holidays), I spent 12 days traveling through Budapest and Prague, where I took an astonishing 1,087 photos.

It is commonly said that a picture is worth 1,000 words.  If that were entirely true, then this post should be 1,087,000 words long, assuming I can do math correctly.  Luckily for you all, I have never written that many words on a single topic in my entire life, and I don't plan on starting today.

Seeing as how free time is at a premium right now, instead of attempting to write down all of my adventures, which might actually bring me close to a total of 1,000,000 words, I am going to give a brief rundown of the trip followed by a few of my favorite pictures.

Total number of days: 12
Countries visited: 2 (Hungary and Czech Republic)
Cities visited: 3 (Budapest, Prague, Kutná Hora)
Hours spent on a bus :16 (Budapest to Prague and back)
Concerts attended: 3 (two in Prague and one in Budapest)
Dictionaries acquired: 3 (English-Czech, English-Hungarian, and English-Romanian)
Friends made: several
Relatives visited: 1

Chain Bridge and St. Stephen's Basilica, Budapest

St. Matthias Church, Budapest

The Astronomical Clock, Prague

Sunset behind Prague Castle

The Ossuary, Kutná Hora

What Does an American Look Like?

Most of you who read this blog (if there are any of you left) are most likely from the United States, and probably have a fairly good idea as to how to answer the above question.  Think about it for a second until you have a good mental picture of a typical American.  Do you have one? Good.

Does your picture look something like this?

If you answered yes, you think along the same lines as many of my students.  If you answered no, that's okay, you will have another chance in a little while.

A few weeks ago, I was doing a lesson on family relationships and I showed this picture to my class.  In case you have never met my family, the girl on the left is my sister and the boy on the right is my brother.  Having seen a couple of my family photos in previous classes, the students already knew who they were.  The first comment I heard after displaying this photo was, "Rita, your brother is SO American."  I was curious as to what makes makes someone look American, so I asked the student, "Why does he look American?"  The response given by several of the students was that he looked just like the people they see in the movies.  Apparently my brother is brother is the stereotypical American high school boy.  After hearing these responses, I asked if they thought my sister looked American.  Expecting an affirmative response, I was surprised when they told me that she did not look American and had a difficult time explaining why.

If your stereotypical American didn't match the picture of my brother, I am going to give you an opportunity to redeem yourself.  Do you still have your picture in mind? Good.

To further our discussion, I showed the following picture to the class.

 

Upon seeing this photo, the students became very animated and exclaimed, "Your dad is very American!"  Curious as to how their responses would differ from when asked about my brother, I asked the students what made him so American.  One of the students responded with, "The hat, the shirt, and WHITE SOCKS!"  Yes, my dad is wearing shorts and white socks, which, unfortunately for him, is not the latest fashion trend. Although somewhat common in areas such as the Pacific Northwest, this fashion trend has not caught on in Europe, and clearly marks you as an American.

 When I told this story to my brother, who, if you hadn't noticed, is also wearing shorts and white socks in the picture, he told me "I wear shorts and white socks, but at least their not as tall as Dad's.  Besides, everyone wears them."  My brother has successfully reinforced the (possibly accurate) stereotype of Americans and white socks with shorts.   I'm not sure that everyone wears them, but maybe it's just a thing that typical Americans do.  They say that all stereotypes begin with some grain of truth, and apparently this is no exception.

In a Nutshell

I would like to apologize for not writing in such a long time.  I thought I would let you know that I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. Quite the contrary, I've been so busy with teaching, going to Basque class, and the choir that I haven't had time to sit down and write a post about all of the things that have happened in the past few months. Here is the story of the past few months in a nutshell.  I have had several choir concerts, and only had to "watermelon" a couple of songs.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with this term, "watermelon" is what you sing when you don't know the words to the song and have to fake it.  This term is also known in Spanish as "playback".  The reason for my "watermeloning" was that I was given some of the music they day of the concert and needed to sing it as best I could.  Needless to say, my sight reading has improved considerably since being here.

As for my Basque class, it is still difficult, but I am beginning to understand more and more each day.  I say simple phrases and can count to 100.  It's a good thing I know my numbers because some of the store clerks at the supermarket tell me how much I have to pay in Basque. I'm  still far from being the most adept at using the language in class, but I am learning quickly.

In December, I went back to the U.S. for Christmas to visit my family and friends.  I had a great time, especially having the opportunity to visit with some of my cousins who I haven't seen in a long time.  Due to severe snow storms, I almost didn't make it out of Europe, but, after many hours of delays, I made it home and had a wonderful time.

Teaching has proven to be as challenging as I thought it would be, but I am greatly enjoying it.  Sometimes I wonder if my students have learned anything because several of them keep asking them about my life in England or Canada.  Just yesterday, one of my students asked me (again) if I was from Canada.  Newsflash: I'm not English or Canadian.  Despite the difficulties, I love working here in the Basque Country and have submitted my application to return for next, and with any luck, the experience will be just as positive.