SPRING BREAK, EURO-STYLE

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Everyone (not a hyperbole) in our Spanish world speaks multiple languages. The underachievers are only fluent in two; most speak between three and five. So when the "Which languages do you speak?" topic arises — as it regularly does — I pretend I'm not that uncultured American who just emerged from my English-speaking cave: "Well no Spanish...yet!...but I took 6 years of French. Guess I picked the wrong language! Oops! [awkward laugh]" As though my deficiency in one is clearly explained by my masterful command of the other. Right.

But it only took 24 hours in France to disabuse me of the notion that I can in any way, ever again, truthfully claim to speak French.

We drove to Provence for Semana Santa — the week before Easter, when Spanish schools and businesses alike get a spring break — and spent 4 nights in Saint-Remy-de-Provence with our expat friends and their kids. Upon sitting through a meal attended by a grumpy French waitress, and then stumbling through a 90-second grocery store checkout, my imposter-francophone self was exposed: my French pronunciation had a decidedly Spanish flare, my limited French vocabulary had merged with my also-limited Spanish vocabulary, and I could not, for the life of me, stop saying "si." It was Spanlishench at its worst. 

Regardless of the language issues (a familiar theme of our last 9 months), Provence was...Provence. Exactly what you'd expect: charming, quaint, delicious, and made even better by a glass of rosé at sunset. We explored several of the surrounding villages and cities — Les Baux-de-Provence, Avignon, Gordes, Fontaine-de-Vaucluse — and spent time enjoying the backyard of a truly delightful AirBnB. 

And thanks to an extended visit by a generous mother-in-law, Aaron and I got to tack an extra two nights onto the vacation; after we dropped off the kids and "Nammy" back in Barcelona, we flew to San Sebastián for brief but oh-so-appreciated kid-less getaway. 

POCO A POCO

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I've officially logged three months of twice-weekly one-on-one Spanish lessons. I can now very confidently order "un café con leche para llevar" at my school's coffee bar, instruct los taxistas that "al semáforo está bien," and fluently apologize because "no hablo español muy bien." In all cases, I aim to keep my words short and my face in an "I'm-a-little-puzzled" expression, for fear that people mistakenly believe I'll understand when they reply back in rapid-fire Spanish; once that happens, I'm toast. 

Learning a new language as an adult is slow-going, but the real obstacle is that Spanish is very definitely the second language of Barcelona. While there is a whole lotta Catalan seeping into my unconscious, it's much harder to passively absorb Castellano. In our area of the city, probably 90% of signs are written in Catalan — high enough to assume it's in Catalan, but low enough to hold out hope that maybe you're learning Spanish. There are many Spanish words I think I've learned, but once I proudly repeat them to my instructor, she laughs and rolls her eyes and tells me I'm speaking the wrong language.

People often assume that Catalan is a dialect of Spanish. It's not, and to suggest such a thing to a Catalan person would be borderline blasphemous. While many Catalan words are unrecognizably different from their Spanish equivalents (e.g., ham is pernil vs. jamón; woman is dona vs. mujer), others are very similar, even identical (e.g., fruit is fruita vs. fruta; train is tren in both) — which makes it hard to always know what you're looking at. The one saving grace is that lots of Catalan words use an accent greu (e.g., è) whereas no Spanish words do, and this has become my go-to trick for figuring out what the hell I'm reading. It came in handy on a recent visit to local bookstore, where we'd gone to pick out Spanish stories for the kids; were it not for the telltale accent marks, I'm 100% certain I would've left up with a pile full of books in the completely wrong language.

I certainly underestimated how much more complicated living in a bilingual city can make language acquisition; if you want to learn Spanish, Barcelona is surely not the best place to do it. That said, I also underestimated how much easier it is to learn, period, when you're immersed — even if that immersion is less complete than you'd otherwise hope. Despite the sea of Catalan, a meaningful amount of my Spanish has been picked up via osmosis, like my favorite new phrase, "poco a poco" — little by little. It's the foolproof way to get a sympathetic smile from a stranger when you're bumbling over your Spanish: "lo siento, aprendo poco a poco."

THE TROUBLE WITH SPANISH

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The trouble with Spanish is that I don't know it.

All those semesters of high school and college French and Italian ne sont pas helping me talk to molte persone in Barcelona. My hand-gestures-per-spoken-sentence ratio is sharply on the rise and the number of thumbs-ups I've given in the last week makes me feel like a dorky early-90s tee-ball coach. As the NYTimes pointed out a few weeks ago, only about a fifth of people in Barcelona speak conversational English, and most of them seem to work near the touristy city center — i.e., not where we live. My lack of language makes every transaction a little more complicated (and frankly, embarrassing) and is a definite motivator to figure this out. I start one-on-one tutoring twice a week in September (a perk of the job), but until then, charades it is. 

Besides the language barrier, the first week here has been excellent. Aaron's parents arrived mere hours after the movers had finished up — a preplanned trip that was meant to happen weeks after we'd arrived and settled in...oops. Luckily for us/unluckily for them, their visit has meant we've had double the number of adult hands to unpack and set up (thanks, Mark and Cyn!). While I worked, the three adults made dozens of trips to shop for groceries and home improvement-y things and new electric appliances (the different voltage meant we needed to make glamorous purchases like a new toaster/hair dryer/vacuum/iron/coffeemaker/etc.), and the apartment is really feeling like home.

The kids, meanwhile, have spent a maximal amount of time wearing a minimal amount of clothing, and still have yet to tire of the hoses on the terraces. We'll take advantage of their watering proclivities by buying some plants and planters at the garden store this week.

I travel by train to Madrid tomorrow for my first "work trip" — not a bad destination, other than the 103 degree high they're expecting. I'm not sure starting a new job 36 hours after moving into your new home in a whole new country is what I would've picked for myself (oh wait; it's not what I picked for myself), but it's made better by the fact that the whole new country takes a four-week vacation three weeks later. August, I love you.