ROAD TRIP!

¡HOLA!

It feels like a LONG time since I have updated on here. Well, maybe because a lot has happened in approximately two weeks.

So, my last post wasn't really about anything...just a rant of despair with regards to LINGUISTIC FAILURE (haha, like SYSTEM FAILURE). But! Now I must talk a bit about the fun stuff I've done in the past two weeks.

So, my routine is sort of like every au pair's routine. You 'work' Monday to Friday and then on the weekends, you are free to do whatever the hell you like! It's inevitable that that includes hanging out with your friends. However (and I'm quite glad that it has turned out this way) I do try to balance my free time by spending some of it with the family as well. I am only here for two months after all, and it would be a shame not to make the most of being part of a Spanish family.

For example, last Saturday we went to a water park with the family – actually was pretty fun. But then again, I'm never one to miss out on a water park experience.

Here are the photos.

Needless to say....I did not try the yellow slide. (I did try the blue one though. Never again.)

For some reason, my sense of fear has increased by double since I was about five.

Sufficient translation? Something like "Don't get into trouble and we'll have no reason to put you in prison"....there was some kind of Wild West theme....

The invisible tap trick (it's been done before)

The beautiful view of Magaluf (ahem)

So then the following day I got out of bed at the crack of dawn (well, 9 o'clock), resisted the snooze button on my alarm and made my way into Palma to go to SPANISH CHURCH.

Which was interesting. I took my map, my bag and my beach stuff (for afterwards of course) and followed the map down lots of little streets, some correct, some incorrect, until I eventually arrived a building which looked like a bank (what is it with me and churches that don't look like churches? My church in Southampton is disguised as a Bingo Hall) but underneath I could hear music so I went in and voila! Church!

There were like 300-or so people, and somebody led me by the hand, babbling away quite happily about something in Spanish, not realising I'm not a native (I guess my tan disguises my nationality now) and eventually plonked me down in one of the only free seats, which happened to be next to a tall blonde girl who did not look Spanish.

We eventually discovered we were both newbies (the pastor suddenly announced that the newbies stand up and make themselves known) and Sara (the blonde) stood up. I was too shy because she was the ONLY one standing up and EVERYONE was looking.

This extremely excitable and petite Columbian woman came bounding up to us. I could tell the minute she opened her mouth that she wasn't Spanish. Everything was ¡Que linda! Or ¡Que rico! Or ¡Que miracle! And I've only ever met one other woman like her at another church in Manchester who is Peruvian. Latin Americans seem more 'jovial' as it were (can't think of a better synonym at the moment, I know that one was shocking).

ANYWAY when she found out that me and 'the other rubia' were both newbies and complete strangers she went overload on the excitement. It really was ¡QUE MIRACLE! Wow, and you didn't even KNOW each other? That's fantastic! What a miracle from God! Haha I'm just translating (probably badly) but you get the gist.

Anyway they made us introduce ourselves to the congregation which was a little bit daunting to say the least. I've only ever had to do this once in a foreign language and that was in France at the beginning of my stay as an au pair in French church. It was ok in French for some reason. Maybe I felt more at home with the language. But Sara went first and she can speak great Spanish because I found out later that she spent a year in Argentina and six months in the south of Spain. She told them the story of her morning and how she found the church on the internet at a café eating breakfast (or something to that extent) but anyway it was elaborate and fluent.

My turn was next. I gulped, looked at Smiley Shirley the Excitable Columbian Lady with the mike extended to me and I said (approximately no more no less):

• Hola. Me llamo Rachel. Soy de Manchester – I smiled generously at them all – Donde hay el fútbol.

It was the best I could do, and yet nobody got the football reference. I slunk as low as I could in my chair and tried to ignore the hundreds of faces peering down at me (seems like all I've done this holiday is try to ignore the stares in embarrassing situations).

As the service progressed, I soon found myself listening as hard as I could and AMAZINGLY somehow I understood nearly everything that was being said in the sermon. I mean, there were pockets where I had to tune out because the problem is, if there's one phrase or one WORD you don't understand sometimes, you lose the entire plot for a couple of minutes and then (rather like drowning in a lake an you break through the surface and get some air) you catch up with the language and you're back on track with the gist.

Anyway, I think its a sign that my Spanish is improving!

Anyway Sara and I made friends, went to the beach and basically had a great afternoon. She's Swedish, I found out later in the service.

So there's another rule about being an au pair that I swear by (a bit like the no liquids-or-towels luggage rule with planes) and it's this:

Usually, you only need ONE friend to then know a hundred.

Ok, so maybe not quite a hundred, but you get my idea. Sometimes there are people that you meet, and once you've met them you meet everyone you possibly need to meet. So Sara's sister and sister's friend were arriving next week and one thing led to another aaaand...

The next weekend we had the road trip of the summer.

We rented a car 'Jesus Rodriguez' we called him (nice, fancy Spanish name)

(We did get him into a few tricky situations but he survived well enough, minimal bruising)

We went to a place called Puerto de Sóller (it's on the other side of the mountain to Palma and you have to TREK over some seriously windy roads at a high altitude) but basically there were some beautiful views getting there.

This photo is from Sóller and it makes me crack up so much. I don't know why. It's probably the way they are marching.

We got a bit delirious on the way back (maybe it was a combination of the heat, carsickness and the Whitney Houston songs) but suddenly we all found the word YOLO very funny indeed. So we tried to incorporate it into the scenery.

We also came up with a Christian version You Only Live Twice (YOLT). A little bit sad, I have to say. But what did I say about summer heat delirium? It's a real thing and it affects millions of us out there.

Anyway the following day we all met up again and had a day in Palma at the beach and had a lazy day reading Hola (Spanish version of Hello magazine) tanning and swimming in the sea. It was recuperation central for me as I had been out the night before with different au pairs in the German version of Magaluf which is called Arenal. Seriously.

Still, sometimes it's worth it for a few drinks on the beach!!

Here is the beach at Palma:

Anyway, after that my week has gone pretty uneventfully. Well. Actually. I've been doing a bit of window shopping (and real shopping – what did I say about those Spanish sales – rebajas??) and so far I've only bought a top and a pair of trousers from Zara – HALF OFF!

I guess otherwise me and Marina (the girl I look after during the day) have been at home playing Mario Kart, learning English, practising spelling, swimming in the pool, chasing the dogs around, playing Sims and PLAYING MONOPOLY!!!!!!!!

They have the MALLORCA version!

Basically I hate Monopoly. It's such a long game, especially when you play it with more than 3 people, and usually I'm one of the first to fold and declare myself bankrupt (which is probably why my family and friends love to play against me). However, we have played it at least 4 or 5 times this week (only 2 against each other) and 3 times out of those I have WON big time. And weirdly...when you win at Monopoly...it's suddenly very appealing!

Marina's side of the game: (ie no money)

MY side of the game:

So I don't mind playing Monopoly. I may get really good at it and challenge my family to a Monopoly showdown when I get home. Also – Mario Kart. I am getting really good at that. So in total, I am improving in Spanish, Mario Kart and Monopoly. In some ways, fairly useless things, but I guess it proves that I am enjoying myself and relaxing to the max.

Erm....what else can I say? I think I'm done for now. There might be another entry soon because I want to write in a bit more detail some interesting Spanish things I have learnt (language related) but I am sleepy now and it's time for bed.

Oh! And before I forget: 

Sangria. 

The perfect end to an action-packed weekend.

Communication. Important.

Let me just start this blog entry with something that has been haranguing me greatly since I have arrived in Spain – BETTER YET – began LEARNING SPANISH.

I. CANNOT. SPEAK. SPANISH.

Well. I cannot speak Spanish well. But before I beat myself up too much, it might be beneficial to take several things into account before I continue:

1. This is my first time in Spain; nay, a Spanish-speaking nation, so it's not a complete failure that I'm having difficulty with the language.
2. I have been learning Spanish for only two years; which sounds like a lot but four university semesters of 3 hours of Spanish classes a week doesn't actually amount to much. It certainly doesn't amount to much speaking practise, if you're me and you like to 'make up' for missed oral classes going to Salsa on Fridays.
3. The class I have taken this year is Stage 3 class (which only amounts to high-school level).
4. I'm comparing my Spanish to my French, which is more or less fluent these days (without wanting to boast, I did get 85% percent in my French oral exam recently soooo....)
5. (My Spanish oral exam did NOT amount to 85%)

Now it's time to think of the positive things that I have achieved in my life of a Spanish speaker before I embark on the not-so-positive things:

1. I got 65% in my listening exam THIS year (and everyone I spoke to had gotten somewhere within the 40% region, so for ONCE I was not the worst in the class)
2. I understood, to my very great surprise, most of the sermon that was spoken this morning in Spanish church. Even metaphors about sin.
3. I had an empowering (if slightly tipsy) 20 minute conversation with a Mallorcan cab driver on my way home from Palma and he assured me confidently that my Spanish was good. (He may have also said 'Buenas Noches guapa' afterwards making the whole thing a little biased but even so).
4. In Spanish, I once made a joke at the dinner table and people actually laughed. I can't remember what it was now, sadly.
5. I made an AWFUL joke in church today. About Manchester and football. No one laughed.

That's cheered me up slightly. Maybe I can just sit back and laugh at myself through all of this, and hopefully in years to come when my Spanish is fluent like my French I'll be able to re-read this blog and shake my head pitifully.

Now I'm going to tell you all two very encouraging things that encouraging people have said to me about languages (people that are complete strangers to me, one French, one Spanish).

The French teacher at a school I went to in Winchester to talk to the Year Nines about learning languages said something to the whole class which made me like her 10 times more than anyone else in the room. Her English was perfect and she was married to an English man (she still had an amazingly strong French accent which made everything better). She said that when she was fourteen, like they were, her English had been the worst in the whole year in her school. She said that the teacher had told her parents to put her in remedial English classes over the summer. Her mother had sent her packing to England to au pair the second she turned eighteen and then....well the rest is history. She's been living in England for 15 or so years now. She was, for that day, my inspiration, because I know what it's like to be the worst in the class.

Sergio's (the 13 yr boy I look after here) football teacher made a good point the other day when we were introduced:

• ¿Hablas español? (Do you speak Spanish?)
• (I replied) Un poquito (a teeny bit)
• (He smiled) Pues, vas conocer un poco más este fin de verano. (well, you'll know a little more by the end of the summer)

Little by little. Rome wasn't built in a day; neither was French learnt in a heartbeat (took me a good ten years to built that foundation for my year in Nice, whatever level it had been when I started).

I think I get frustrated by my inability to communicate more than anything else. The other day the dad said to me in the car when we were driving to the water park:

¡Hablas poco, tu! (You don't speak much!)

I smiled in response because it's true. And to prove it, I couldn't even think of a sufficient response in Spanish. But on the inside I was roaring with thunder and lightning bolts of frustration and misunderstanding. I was roaring in no particular language; just with all the despondency I could muster.

Let me just explain. To a linguist, not being able to communicate is like not being able to look outside and comprehend that the sky is blue. Or like a mathematician forgetting his eight times tables. Not being able to communicate goes against the very essence of linguistics, which denotes the entire blueprint, set of rules, codes, Constitution and conventions of communication.

As a linguist, communication is not just an essential part of every day but it is my LIVLIEHOOD. Communication is studied, applied, appreciated, studied some more, reapplied, misused, re-appreciated, applied correctly and studied some more. To me language learning is an ongoing part of life which never ends. In the back of my brain, some incessant fool is always asking 'how do you say that in French?' or 'Would you use the subjunctive?' or 'What is the word for it in Spanish?'.

If I could write a love song to language, I would with all my heart, do so. Before you class that as pathetic, just take a moment to think about where I'm coming from! All you are reading right now is communicated via a code of symbols. Without the symbols, my thoughts are just a stream of sounds. Without the stream of sounds, my thoughts are simply silent.

Without language, there would be no literature!

Without language, no jokes!

Without language, there would be no music as we know it.

Without language, there would by definition, be no television.

Without language, there would be no 'I love you's no 'I'm sorry's no 'I'm so glad I met you, you've changed my life's.!

Without language, there would be no blogs.

I think I am particularly enamoured with language because I enjoy writing for one and language enables me to do that but perhaps the wider scope behind my love of language is that it is communication. Communication involves people and relationships, which goes back to who I am and what I do best: socialising! I enjoy people's company: that must be it.

Now is not the time to despair, even though there have been moments today when I've nearly given up. This is only the first step on a ladder of Spanish-speaking adventures. And who knows?

Maybe one day I'll be married to a Spanish, Brazilian, Nicaraguan or Guadeloupian man and we'll have have bilingual kids who can speak both languages perfectly from day one and there'll be none of this communication frustration I've suffered over the years.

Who knows.  

Beaches, Beaches, beaches...

Hola again

It's now been two weeks and I haven't updated at all but to be honest I haven't really had the energy. During the day I don't really log onto the internet and I 'work' til four Mon-Fri. I say 'work' because it isn't really work what I do! (I'm currently sitting in the lounge typing in front of a Spanish soap – more later – and it's ten past eleven. I only woke up an hour ago!). Anyway, after four I usually try and get out of the house...dinner is usually between 9:30-10:30 so by that time I'm ready to crash out in front of my computer and watch something (no time for blogging!).

So after my traumatic flight incident, I woke up the next morning quite leisurely and freely. (Remember 10:30 my time was 9:30ish English time so I am excused).

The kids showed me around the house and the 'campo' which I guess means field or something in Spanish. (It has only just become apparent to me how little vocabulary I actually have, although I am capable of having a fairly decent conversation en castellano).

They have four dogs (I know) a dozen chickens and some fish-to-be in the 'estanque'-to-be (pond). They also grow stuff like peppers, sunflowers, tomatoes, onions, etc. If I lived in Mallorca I'd definitely own a campo with four dogs and my own produce with that sun in the sky!

So anyway, the day was pretty chilled, I have to say. This experience has it's stressful moments (more later) but compared to Gwendal and Ronan (my two year old French twins from Nice) this au pair experience seems like a dream. Marina is almost eleven and Sergio (I know :) ) is almost thirteen. So they can dress themselves and cook their own lunch for themselves, which is more than I can say for the last kids I babysat.

 

I'm supposed to be speaking in English to them but the reality is that they don't know a huge amount (or maybe they know more than I think they do but they're hiding it very well) so in practice we speak Spanish. Which is good for me. Although they talk. so. Fast. Or maybe it's not even that – maybe it's that they MUMBLE a lot! (haha in my dreams – really I just have no idea what people are saying half the time – the other half of the time they are speaking Catalan – more later).

But anyway I stay at home with them til about 4 (when the mum comes back) and we intermittently play Mario Kart, eat meals, go in the pool and watch (I'm ashamed to say this) Spanish soap operas.

I've counted the TVs in the house and so far I've seen 4 (but there may well be another upstairs in the parents' room).

So Spanish soap ops...! A lot dirtier than 'Enders or Coronation Street! Also cheesier. People are always seducing each other or sleeping with their friend's husband/boyfriend/lover and then occasionally two men will have a rather camp fistfight. And the seducing knows no age limits. There are 60-year-olds in bed with each other! And when it's not about sex it's about stealing something or deceiving people in other ways.

(Actually I found out what it's called: 'Aquí no hay quien viva')

I was a little worried at first that they might not be appropriate for dear little innocent Marina but to be honest there's not much I can do about it even if I tried, they're too old. With Gwendal and Ronan, I was often able to control them (in a non-fascist way of course) when it came to things like TV, toys they wanted to play with or places they wanted to go. But with these guys, I can't really order them about, because A) I'm not good enough at Spanish to maintain a full blown argument and B) they'd probably start a revolution if I tried to tear them away from the beloved TV.

That being said, we do other stuff like 'holiday homework' or But I am there to stop chaos being wreaked I suppose. Sometimes I just go outside and read or Skype someone if they're just being sloths but I try my best to initiate fun activities (hmmm....like puzzles).

So aside from Casa Marina and Sergio, I have explored the city Palma a little bit too now. I've met some au pairs online and we all met up for drinks and went out on Friday night. Now THAT was fun :D

But here's Palma:

I had images of Palma town being by a beach somehow, so in my head I was gonna order a ginormous paella and pitcher of Sangria by the beach, with the marina of yachts behind me, Cannes style. However we couldn't find the beach. And it was a pizzeria. So we all ordered pizza. And water. Which cost three euros. Which is the price for water everywhere, including clubs. Can you believe it?! Charging for water in clubs....!

Here's more of Palma that I took:

But having said all that, Mallorca is definitely not too shabby. It's not quite the Cote d'Azur (for me, NOTHING can compare to the fabulousness which is Nice, Antibes and Cannes) but it has some amazingly unspoilt beaches, even at this time of the year.

On the first weekend I went to Alcúdia in the north bit on Saturday, which was nice. It reminded me more of places like St Laurent de Var or Valbonne/Mougins in the Cote d'Azur (inland French Provençal towns). It was very cute and a lot less commercial than Palma, which is like Nice.

Sunday went to some gorgeous beach with the family and all of the 'primos' (cousins). They seem to have a lot of them! Anyway, more beautiful water and sun.

I got spectacularly sunburnt on the chest after this weekend of tanning.

But at least I have got a tan!

This week has been fairly uneventful. I am hoping that photos will do justice to this relatively mundane update, because really life is good but very mundane it has to be said.

I have just finished reading my holiday book 'Eat, Pray, Love' which was surprisingly enjoyable. I bought it in HMV for 49p the week before I left. I was pretty sure that it would be a bit woolly before I read it: the plot is this, the main character who is divorced and not content with her life sets out on a quest to find peace and balance by visiting three countries in year, four months in each.

Hmmm....apparently Javier Bardem plays the Brazilian love interest! :D

First she goes to Italy; eats a lot of food and learns Italian. That was quite a fun section of the book for me as it was about Europe and was almost what I did in Nice when I was au pairing: ate a lot and learnt French.

Secondly, she goes to India and stays in this place called an Ashram and learns about meditation and prayer through Yoga. This part of the book was the most 'spiritual' and yet I found myself really bored and not enjoying it. I think it's because the fundamental aims of meditation and prayer through Yoga are sort of unclear to me (I didn't really understand if it was about seeking union with oneself or union with God, whatever he represents in Buddhism/Hinduism) and a lot of it felt, like believed earlier, woolly. Anyway. It was very interesting to learn a bit more about Yoga – I think I may have to read a bit more deeply into it elsewhere to understand the aims and practices, but in any case I think I'll stick to church.

Thirdly (the best chapter!) she goes to Indonesia to learn about balance pleasure and devotion. There she meets a selection of fun and witty characters; a really old Asian medicine man who can't remember his age – whenever he mentions an event in early life she asks him 'What year was that?' to try and work out his age but then he just says 'Don't know, maybe 1920?' which for some reason made me crack up every time.

Anyway maybe the reason I enjoyed the chapter about Indonesia was that it seemed more like Thailand than India and I think I enjoyed reading about how the Balinese did things in life (she lived in Bali). I've never been to Indonesia but a lot of the characters reminded me of Thai characters I've met over the years!

She also falls in love with a man from Brazil, so basically it's a very happy ending and because it's a true story it seems to make things better because so often real stories don't have happy endings. It's inspired me to write a book about travels and different cultural experiences! 

Well anyway, I've started a new book now by a well-know Spanish author, Carlos Ruiz Zafón. The book is called 'Marina' ironically! It's ok, bit tricky sometimes because my vocab is limited but

basically when I don't understand something I just keep going, it's the best way to learn more.

I guess that's it for now! Oh and there are sales going on at the moment: or as they say 'Rebajas'. Watch this space (for new clothes)...