El idioma

Of course, there is a huge language barrier for me in Spain. Yes, I've taken 6 years of Spanish, and yes, I've spoken and listened and read and all of it before. But that doesn't stop the constant inundation of Spanish from being occasionally overwhelming.

I'm pretty sure from people's facial expressions that they can immediately tell when I speak that I'm an American. More than once, the person has just switched to English for me, instead of waiting for me to pick up what they're saying in Spanish.

I'm not sure how this makes me feel exactly. Part of me is grateful that I'm understood in some way, and part of me is upset at the last six years and why exactly I'm still not anywhere near fluent. It'll be interesting to see if, after a month of living in a Spanish household and taking literature and civilization classes, if I've greatly improved or not. Fingers crossed.

On the flip side, one of the weirdest and coolest things is sitting at a cafe or in the lobby with the two girls from Mizzou, chatting in English, as is completely normal for us, and getting odd looks because suddenly we're the ones speaking a minority language.

I've been on the other side of the table for that one, and I've always thought it was really cool that those people could just sit there and speak another language, but let me tell you that it's harder to break out of the shell of what's normal. You don't think "Oh, I'm speaking another language right now." You're just speaking, the effort is only when the waiter asks you what you'd like or when the shop owner gives you your total in euros, in Spanish.

Speaking of totals, I bought my first Spanish item. 3 guesses which stereotypically me item it is??