Pueblo Ingles... Week Two

Travis and I have had the most interesting last two weeks! I would have never guessed that these weeks of volunteer work would be so enriching to our overseas experience. Although 2 months of living in Madrid provided us with a cultural overview and sense of the Spanish lifestyle, the Spaniards we have befriended through Pueblo Ingles have painted for us a much more vivid picture of the Spanish life. During our many, many 1-hour conversation times, we have heard the life stories, passions, interests and personal histories of over 30 Spaniards in two weeks. Not only do I now know about life in one region of Spain, but with the Spaniards representing cities from Granada, Galicia, Majorca, and Barcelona all the way to Andorra, I’ve been given a gift of a widened perspective and an increased cultural knowledge of Spanish life.

As Travis explained to you in his last blog, this past week we were invited to participate in our 2nd Pueblo Ingles Program. Although the format is similar for both programs, the experiences were vastly different. For a brief definition, last week’s atmosphere and group of students were all about fiesta time (constant joking around and Spanish sarcasm, hilarious acting, huge bouts of laughter during group meetings, and late nights of us socializing and the Spaniards drinking and dancing), whereas this week was more about reserved learning (quiet group meetings with the Spaniards too tired by their daily jobs and the week of intense English to let down, be silly, and enjoy themselves and the surroundings). Combine those differences with a huge change in the weather (much nicer the 2nd week), a big step up in the level of food and accommodations (we’re talking 5-star gourmet), and different Pueblo Ingles staff running and organizing each week’s programs.

Travis and I decided not to compare the two weeks but instead to look at each as a very different experience. Although it was easy to miss our “new friends” and certain “characters” from the first week who livened up the setting and added much fun to the days, we also enjoyed the new people and personalities represented in week two. However, week two had a very different feel to it. Before I tell you more though, I’d like to back up and share about my experiences last week in La Alberca. The bungalow hotel was located in a beautiful, cozy, fall European town nestled amongst the mountains with fall foliage views everywhere. Travis and I stayed in our own little bungalow and the facility included a lovely meeting and dining room for all of our group activities. The meals were good Spanish fair- all 3 courses and all served with wine and bread and dessert (and we truly do not spend a DIME!!! No money all week. All we had to do was talk.... make conversation, and meet new people all day). The town of La Alberca was very charming. They have a “native” pig, which roams around freely through the village streets enchanting the tourists… as you’ve seen on the photo. Travis enjoyed petting it and was amazed by the warmth it produced. We had an excursion day to the town, and visited a fascinating museum as well as a real botella, a place where they bottle the Spanish wine. Travis took part here in a festive Spanish tradition- passing the botella. As you see in the picture, the object was to take the bottle filled with red wine and squirt it into your mouth. The farther the distance from your mouth, the more impressive (thus the need for the bib), and then the object is to see how long you can keep the flow of wine entering your mouth until you have to stop. Travis did great! We counted the seconds for each volunteer and he held his own by holding out for over 15 seconds. At this botella, we also had the opportunity to have tapas and try some of the famous Iberico Ham from this region. With all the ham we tried in Spain, this was definitely the best.

Similarly, during week two we enjoyed more cost-free accommodations, but this time in the northern region of Girona in Spain in a town called Pals. The village was nestled on a hill and was once a medieval fort, so it was interesting to walk around and explore. The Mediterranean Sea was also just a 5-minute drive away, and our excursion day included a trip to a quaint fishing port and town. Our resort was posh and stylish, to say the least. It was definitely the best accommodations we will experience in our year abroad. We only wished we had more free time to actually use the facilities and spend time in our lushly decorated suite. The chef of the on-site restaurant had a creative palate and very artistic touches in his presentation of the food. We were served everything from grilled octopus, squid, pigeon, duck, many types of fish, pork and more. And then there were the desserts…. Again- this was probably the best food we will dine on all year. It was rich and tasty, but by the end Travis and I were just dying for a simple, plain salad without fancy sauces and creams.

Because Travis explained our schedule and the details of the program to you, I just wanted to share a little bit about the great people and amazing hospitality we were embraced with. Truthfully, Travis and I feel like we’ve had two weeks of the Holiday season with our new Spanish “family” here. With 3 meals a day surrounded by different people and great conversation, we pretended to be celebrating our holidays early with this family, since most likely our Thanksgiving and Christmas this year will be spent on our own. It’s been a delightful treat. The Spaniards have been amazingly grateful to all of us “Anglos” for coming out to these programs to spend a week talking to them. (This surprised me because I didn’t feel like I was working that hard with it being so enjoyable to volunteer). Although they began the weeks very embarrassed to talk and ashamed by their broken English skills, it was fascinating to watch their confidence increase as they bravely embraced their speaking and presentation fears and gave it their best try.

It was very interesting for us to discover just how ashamed the Spaniards were of their lack of language skills. Here we are, from America speaking only English and the beginner/intermediate Spanish that we’re hoping to improve…. and then there’s them- most of whom already know several languages including Spanish, another Spanish dialect (like Catalonian, Galician, or Andalusian), and usually some French, Italian and Portuguese…. and they are embarrassed to not be speaking better English? It was sad to me, I wanted them to feel more confident about their abilities!

The one-on-one’s were enthralling, but also tiring. We figured out that we’ve probably spent over 40 hours each in the last 2 weeks having a 1-hour conversation with one other person. We just talked, talked, talked, talked... about all kinds of interesting things, to all kinds of interesting people, from all parts of Spain. So fascinating. About where they work, their families, their social life, their political views- there are no rules on what to talk about- it's just all about using English. For them, it is HARD, HARD work. It's like if Trav and I were told that we may only speak Spanish for a week, and not even be permitted to speak English to each other. The Spaniards are constantly translating in their heads so they can make appropriate responses with the correct grammar. For us, we just listen, talk very slowly, and gently correct when needed.

The fun parts of the weeks came in the delivery of the Spaniard’s ridiculous humor through their improv acting in the group meetings and the conversations at dinner. With their many grammar mistakes, many sentences just came out wrong creating a barrel of laughter from the group. The staff did a great job keeping us very active with a variety of activities and creative games. Overall, we laughed a lot more during week one, which I think came from the result of being surrounded by Madrillenos (people from or living near Madrid). We’ve noticed a huge difference in the Spanish people based on their region of origin. As we’ve explained before, all the regions in Spain have very distinguishable traditions, dialects, cuisines, and personality traits. This became very clear to us on the first week of our second program when we were surrounded by all Barcelonans. The people from Barcelona had a more “international” feel, which came with less openness, less warmth, and less ability to stay up all night long dancing the night away. Instead, they were more tied to their cell phones, checking in at work and with their families, and taking advantage of their siesta times to use their laptops doing work rather than catching some z’s. Although we really liked every Spaniard we met, we preferred the personalities and warmth of those coming from Madrid. We’ve also stayed in touch already with our new Madrid friends, whereas we probably won’t stay in contact with anyone from the second program. All this said- this confirmed to us that we’re really glad we chose Madrid originally to be our home for 2 months. We considered both cities initially back in our planning process, and we see that our experience would have been much different had they been in Barcelona. I’m sure it still would have been great (the city is beautiful and internationally fantastic), but I think we experienced the true, most authentic and Spanish historically based cultural visit in Madrid.

Before I close, I thought I should comment briefly on the Anglo volunteers. You might be wondering just who makes up the volunteers that fly to Spain to spend a week speaking English for free. The first week we were among the majority with over half of the volunteers being American. The second week, only 4 of us were from the US while the rest were from Europe and Canada. Here’s a little list of some of the more interesting of those we met:

-Mavis: A welsh woman from Wales, retired Special Education teacher
-Dennis: An author and creative writing professor of Texas Tech on sabbatical
-Linda: A married mom and emergency room nurse from Pittsburg
-Clare: A single woman from Ireland who grows produce and runs a farm stand
-Mandeep: A single self-proclaimed “retired” 39 yr. old from London
-Steve and Margie: Couple from Boston who loved sailing and the Red Socks
-Deckland: A young Irish chain-smoking student on his 5th Pueblo Ingles program
-Susan: A lovely widowed woman and English professor from Canada
-Anne: A recently divorced mom (1 week ago) from Manhattan Beach who was very difficult to work with
-Phyllis: A self-proclaimed author, English coach, psychologist, notary, actress, composer, poet and speaker of Finnish, French, Spanish, etc… from Canada. She was our least favorite of the 2 weeks as you might be able to tell from the unique things she liked to tell us all about herself and herself only.
-Elly: A young single gal from Bristol England who owns her own restaurant
-Clare: A single, businesswoman from Singapore who often volunteers with her church
-Larry: A retired IT guy from Colorado who enjoyed speaking of his endless travels
-Chris: A 24 yr. old youthful college student from Colorado backpacking Europe & hoping to find a job working as a ski lift operator in the Sierra Nevada’s of Spain

So, as you can tell, these interesting people definitely added to our experience here as well, as we all had interesting backgrounds and stories to tell. Well, I think that’s about it for our Pueblo Ingles adventures, and also the end of our time in Spain. We arrived back in Barcelona last night and I’m currently writing this on our morning flight to Portugal. Today we are landing in Lisbon, where we will be until Wednesday. We’ve heard many tips from all our new friends of where to go and the best sights to see, so we can’t wait to explore this new country! Travis will give you the lowdown in a day or two…

**By the way, if any of you are interested in volunteering for Pueblo Ingles sometime, we HIGHLY recommend it! Check out the website for more info: www.puebloingles.com