Why would you sell a map with only half the street names on it?

I never thought the language barrier would be a very big deal. Turns out I was wrong. It is actually quite difficult to do anything more complicated than order a cup of coffee when you only know about 15 Spanish words. However I am learning fast, Rosetta Stone has been a great resource and necessity has proved to be an excellent motivator. 

Working on Rosetta Stone

If I am trying to order something in a restaurant or find a bathroom or get a code for WiFi I can get by just fine. However if Kristin and I are at a restaurant that has a menu without pictures next to each dish I pretty much just select an entrée at random. So far everything I have ordered this way has turned out excellent with one exception. Kristin and I were out at a restaurant called “El jardín secreto” or The Secret Garden. I first asked Kristin if she recognized any of the items on the menu, but she was preoccupied reading though the 40 plus options in the hot chocolate menu. The waiter arrived and I employed my usual random selection technique, and ended up deciding on a menu item with a description of moderate length. What arrived was a plate of squid filled catalones. Since then I have been a bit more careful with ordering and have started memorizing Spanish food vocabulary lists. My two largest language struggles have been reading menus and the checkout isle at the grocery store when Kristin is not with me. At the grocery store checkout counter there is no screen facing the customer displaying the total euro amount. Instead of providing an easy to read screen, the clerk announces to you your total in incredibly fast and slurred Spanish. So I usually just hand them a 50 and call it good. However more recently I have devised a new strategy. Customers are required to bag their own groceries. So as the clerk is ringing up my groceries I begin to slowly work my way around the counter as I am bagging until I am standing next to the clerk and have an extremely clear view of the total amount. This has been met with mixed responses all in Spanish, but it is quite obvious that I am a tourist and they usually just leave me alone.

It is extremely obvious that Kristin and I are not Spanish and when we first got here it would unnerve me how people would stare at us on the subway or the Renfe. So in response I began to just lock eyes clench my jaw and give them a look that said more than my limited Spanish ever could. This has been extremely effective and proved to boost my confidence until it almost backfired last week. Kristin and I were walking down the side walk of a main street in Madrid when all of a sudden a protester decides that he doesn’t want to join the thousands of other people in the streets he wants to walk right behind me and blow his whistle. At this point I am still jetlagged, it is 90+ degrees out and I am hungry. Overall my mood is a little sour but I was putting on a happy face and enjoying the beautiful city, until this idiot with the whistle came along and just started blowing. I have never heard a whistle used so frequently and in such close proximity to the back of my head. So I took Kristin’s hand and sped up hoping to distance myself from him. This didn’t work because we came to a cross walk and had to stop. The man once again appeared behind me blowing that whistle every 2 seconds. I lasted 20 seconds before I turned around to give him my look hoping that would be enough to get him to stop. As I turned my head the first thing I notice is the sheer size of this man. He was the same height as me and at least 80lbs heaver. 99% of Spaniards are shorter and relatively thin, it seems though that I had found that 1%. I must just be lucky. At this point I think so what if he is big, he still deserves my wrath. As these thoughts entered my mind my eyes fully took in the details of this man. He was wearing a shirt that depicted a man pointing a gun at me with text above and below that read, “I am going to F*** a stranger in the A**.”  He had a large oriental tattoo on his neck below his chin. His hair was cut short on the top and on the sides and in the back he had several feet of dreads. I immediately realize that the man standing before me is an individual extremely accustomed to making poor life choices and the last thing I wanted to do was to give him an opportunity to make another one. With that I turned around and worked my way to the other side of the crowd waiting to cross the street.