¡Que simpático!

I’m telling you, the people here are just so nice. I really can’t get over it. First, this morning after my one class, a couple teachers invited me for a coffee during the mid-morning break. Then the head of the English department Marga invited me to her house on Sunday to have paella with her and her family. Then Clare got an invitation for the two of us for dinner from her coworker Juan. Then she and I met this woman named Nansi at the centro de la juventud (the youth center) who took us around town to help us investigate internet options (more on Nansi in a little bit). Then I got a text from Óscar inviting Clare and me to dinner tomorrow night. Would you believe that that all happened in a matter of ten hours? Before you know it, Clare and I are going to be serious Almanseño socialites.

But really, though, I can’t believe how friendly everyone has been. Being invited by all these people in these first few days is really making me feel like I’m wanted and appreciate here. I think that they’re truly fascinated by us foreigners. That we’re able to speak different languages really impresses them, too. When I mention to people that I spent last year in France, they ask with much surprise and curiosity, “¿Tú hablas también francés?” And then I go on to explain that I actually speak French a lot better than Spanish, and they’re kind of amazed.

I don’t know, I guess at this point I just don’t really think much about it anymore. It’s just what I love. Would you be shocked if a carpenter told you that he’d built enough furniture to fill an entire house? Probably not. What about if a doctor told you that he’d written over a thousand prescriptions and treated hundreds of patients in a lifetime? Tampoco. I guess for me, language are my thing. They’re what fascinate me and inspire me. What a nerd, huh?

Anyway, I mentioned Nansi before and said I would tell you more about her. She works at the youth center across the way from our apartment building, and as soon as we came in there, she was talking away, trying to be as helpful as possible. It turns out that five and a half years ago she moved here from Bulgaria. She didn’t know a word of Spanish; even worse, she didn’t even know how to read the Latin alphabet! (Bulgarian is written in the Cyrillic alphabet). But somehow she came across a woman around her age who decided she was going to help her. Through drawings and hand gestures, they set up a coffee date for the next day. When Nansi (which is actually her adopted “Spanish” name) arrived at the café, her new friend was already there, ready for a Spanish lesson, with a Spanish-Bulgarian dictionary at hand. Nansi didn’t know where her friend had found the dictionary, but that was the beginning of a long-lasting friendship, and now all these years later, she says they’re like sisters.

Nansi is one of those people who loves to talk to people and to help them, so it’s no surprise that she was able to overcome such a difficult feat of moving to a foreign country where the speak a foreign tongue which is written in a foreign alphabet. She’s a real go-getter, and one of her goals in life is, basically, to pay it forward. She said to us, “I’ve been there, I know what it’s like to start from scratch, to know nobody, and I want to help you feel as comfortable as possible as I had people do for me.” It’s really a beautiful thing, I think.

So she asked us to wait for her to finish closing up the youth center, and when it was all done, she took us around town to try to find a way to get us internet in our piso. The problem is that in order to get the super-fast ADSL, you have to have a contract of 18 months. Otherwise, we can opt to get a USB drive that has a 3G card in it. According to the girl at Vodafone, the connection is actually really good, and you can even buy a router-type thing that will let you share the internet among up to five computers. I am skeptical about the speed of the connection, especially since Clare and I will be wanting to use it for things like Skype and Google Voice. But it is sin contrato, so if we don’t like it, I suppose we can just choose not to renew for the following month.

Oh, and one other funny story. Yesterday, I lay down to take a siesta. But when I got into bed, the legs started wobbling, and all of a sudden it just collapsed underneath me! Although it was pretty annoying, it was still really funny, and I yelled for Clare to come look at my crippled bed frame. So I called Rosario who said she would come by later with her husband to take care of it. She felt so bad when they arrived, but we just laughed and brushed it off. They must have a furniture warehouse or something because they came back half an hour with another frame. And her husband is simply hilarious. While she’s relatively calm (despite her screaming at me to make sure I understand), he is a bouncy man of about 65 who’s flat out hilarious. I secretly hope we have more issues around the apartment so that he has to come by because he is just so funny (that’s only half serious... I don’t really want to have more maintenance issues).

That’s all for now. Busy day tomorrow: coffee with Nansi, dinner with Óscar and Miguel. Gosh, this is the life, isn’t it?

Besos,

Lorenzo