had a great culture class yesterday, the other girl was sick and i chose this as my opportunity to ask jesus questions of serious import...like, do you think spanish women are more promiscuous than american women? and are spaniards more likely to cheat on their significant others than americans? sounds silly now, but these questions have a wide variety of answers and i think speak to deep seated cultural truths.
for example, when the whole monica lewinsky scandal came out, nobody in spain understood why we cared. as jesus says, "every politico has his amante, and his vida privada is hi vida privada, why do i care if there was semen or no?" it's not so much that one is able to make generalizations about spanish women or men,n because every person has his/her standards, it's more that the cultural attitude towards sexual relations is more open and relaxed, and thus the need for games and manipulation is much less.
this lead into a very interesting comparative discussions of our respective close personal friends and their relationships and how these things work differently here and there. for example, it is strange for a spanish man/woman to try to set his/her friend up with someone. The thought of bringing my friend on a date to meet my boyfriend's friend is so ludicrous to them that they actually find it laugh-out-loud funny. Spanish people would never put that sort of effort into organizing a situation, they are so relaxed (as previously evidenced by their utter lack of productivity, which, having embraced, i am enjoying immensely)that it would never occur to them to do anything more than let the chips fall where they may.
oh, and it's totally ok to sleep with people the first night you know them. in fact, un rollo por una noche is quite common. To explain this, jesus recounted me the story of his first date with an american girl. They went to a movie (to him they just went to see a film but for her they "went out to the movies," something which he emphasized was very different) during which she reached for his hand, there was some footsie. long story short, at the end of the night when she leaned in for her first-date kiss, he straight up asked her if she was going to sleep with him or not. (i'm assuming at this point this very polite american girl was grossly offended). to him this is normal, there are no formalities, no games, no need to dance around the subject, let's do it or let's not. if not i wont waste my time.
Ah, if only we could all be so liberated with our sexuality...
Today, as shira was still sick, we had the opportunity to continue our private discussion, although this time we stuck mainly to school-related topics. (as much as i love our moderately inappropriate cultural discussions, i can only talk about sexuality so much with attractive spanish men before i need to change the subject...quickly). although we did get into a great discussion about everyone in my class and how we feel about them. at the end i thanked him for our chats because i enjoy them so much, and he said yes well he doesnt really talk like this with his students and i probably shouldnt tell everybody else we were gossiping about them.
To put the cherry on top, he spoke english to jamie and i (briefly, but the most english we've heard him speak since we've been here) and it was adorable. Me being jeanne's daughter, i felt the need to tell him how great his english is (that and since he told me yesterday i was one of the most gifted students he'd had in 12 years, i felt it apropos to repay the compliment). typical spanish, he denied denied denied--if you accept a compliment in spain everybody thinks you're being snotty...you're supposed to say, no no no really no...and then say thank you. during which time the other person must insist on the compliment (i forget about this ALL the time and find myself saying, politely, thank you, which to them is horribly rude...ah, one can only do so much). anyway after 4 or 5 "no my english sucks" i told him that jamie and i thought it was foreign and hot and he should use it more often...that was my american way of convincing him of the compliment when in reality is should've just said the same thing over and over. he turned bright red, said thank you in english and ran away. TOO funny but a great end to a series of discussions of cultural differences. you can take the girl out of california, but you cant take the california out of the girl, no matter where she goes...alas...
oh, going to barcelona tomorrow for the fin de semana...woohoo, will report back.
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