My good friend Tammy asked me a few questions that I thought were interesting.
Q: How’s your Spanish coming along? And his English?
A: I am almost fluent in Spanish now. His English is decent. He can speak pretty well but understanding people when they converse is difficult. When people talk they use a lot of slang, idioms, and they talk very rapidly. That has been pretty hard for him. I have the same problem when I am in Spain but I do a better job of catching words here and there and understanding what is being said and discussed. Manolo tends to just tune the entire convo out as soon as he gets lost.
When we talk together, he talks in English and I talk in Spanish. Whenever we have trouble finding the correct word we just say the word in our native language and the other tends to know what the word is when translated. We also use my iphone which has a translator app for when we both don't know what the word is translated. Manolo is a talker! and we never have times when there are silence. Very rarely is there a time when one of us can't say what we want to and we talk about everything (marriage, politics, religion, cultural differences, etc).
Q: Are you thinking of moving to spain at all?
A: Sometimes I do think of moving to Spain. I love America but I do love Sevilla as well and the great family/social network that Manolo has over there. If we ever had kids I would most def want to raise them over there where his HUGE family lives within 10 minutes of each other (in the Triana neighborhood of Sevilla) and every night is spent eating dinner with friends and/or family. His family has a country home and a beach home. These are all things that we just don't have in the States. The one thing holding me back is my career. I'm successful in what I do and I make a lot of money BUT I also work very long hours. I would like to have kids one day (sooner then later) and it worries me if I will be able to balance my current career with family but then again the thought of leaving behind this career scares me ...
Q: How does he like life in SD? And his job?
A: He likes SD and his job. I'm lucky that he came to America not expecting it to be anything like Spain. He has traveled quite a bit (Egypt, Cuba, etc) so he knew that each country is different and that includes the good and the bad. He thinks our grocery stores have a lot of selections and he is surprised that there aren't guards at the doors of every store, market, etc but he appreciates that America is so safe. He doesn't like that so many things in America are so highly regulated (music downloading, where to walk on a hiking trail, etc) but that is because Spain was once ruled by a dictator (Franco) until 1975 and his family happens to be very anti-Franco. He misses being able to walk to the grocery store to pick up a gallon of milk and wishes we didn't drive so much. He doesn't understand why we don't hang out with friends for dinner during the week nights and why we sleep in 8 hour chunks of time (in Spain they take a nap in the afternoon, eat a late dinner with friends, and then sleep for 4 hours before going to work at 8am the next day). He does like America a lot though and is currently worrying (a lot) about whether his work visa will be renewed in January.
