Out of all of the things that i will take out of my experience here in Valencia, (My relaxing time on the beach, the amazing friendships I have built, life lessons and my new found appreciation for my health), the one thing that I take, with utmost pleasure, is Pepe.
Pepe Navarro, was one of my closest friends in Spain. He was a hilarious, beautiful and compassionate man: without a doubt, one of the most interesting people I have ever met. Pepe Navarro, my 74 year old “compañero de café” or “my morning coffee partner”, would meet with me every weekday, half an hour before work at a small café that was on my way to the university. There, we would discuss the versatility of tomatoes, his experience during the Spanish civil war or museum expos that were showing downtown.
Would he not have began a conversation about his grandfathers oranges, that lucky morning in July and would I not have taken the time to listen to what he had to say, I would never have become so close to this perfect stranger who subsequently made my mornings so pleasant.
So for that, I take Pepe: The immortal figure who will always remind me to take notice and appreciate the wonderful people who surround me and make my life so much more pleasant.
jueves, 28 de enero de 2010
Tempest or Tourist
WHO AM I KIDDING
I can't pass for a Spaniard.
I may not stand out of the crowd so much in Valencia where people tend to be of a darker completion but so many other elements me give. I walk differently, talk differently, My attitude is totally different as well.
I DON'T WANT TO BELONG
Because of the sudden influx of immigration being experienced in Spain since the last century, several anti-immigrant sentiments and chauvinistic attitudes have boiled up. Immigrants including Latin Americans are discriminated against and although I had not been subject of any racism directly, seeing it happen to others hurt me all the same. Why would I want to belong in a society that in order to assert their superiority tramples on the humanity of others with a simple snare. This everyday differentiation and hierarchicalization of "us" and "them" make is extremely debilitating to the moral of the outsider who just wants to belong and contribute.
I'm glad that I cannot pass for a Spaniard, because by clearly being of Latin American descent in the way i speak, i represent those minorities that are discriminated against and change many peoples minds about outsider on their behalf.
This is something i felt i have accomplished and will continually try to accomplish.
My room mates sister actually came out and told me: "Before knowing you, i had a completely different idea of who Dominicans were"
Mission Accomplished!!
I can't pass for a Spaniard.
I may not stand out of the crowd so much in Valencia where people tend to be of a darker completion but so many other elements me give. I walk differently, talk differently, My attitude is totally different as well.
I DON'T WANT TO BELONG
Because of the sudden influx of immigration being experienced in Spain since the last century, several anti-immigrant sentiments and chauvinistic attitudes have boiled up. Immigrants including Latin Americans are discriminated against and although I had not been subject of any racism directly, seeing it happen to others hurt me all the same. Why would I want to belong in a society that in order to assert their superiority tramples on the humanity of others with a simple snare. This everyday differentiation and hierarchicalization of "us" and "them" make is extremely debilitating to the moral of the outsider who just wants to belong and contribute.
I'm glad that I cannot pass for a Spaniard, because by clearly being of Latin American descent in the way i speak, i represent those minorities that are discriminated against and change many peoples minds about outsider on their behalf.
This is something i felt i have accomplished and will continually try to accomplish.
My room mates sister actually came out and told me: "Before knowing you, i had a completely different idea of who Dominicans were"
Mission Accomplished!!
To change or not to change
Not to change my eating habits!!!
-In Spain breakfast consists of a glass of juice or a coffee... “un cortado”, as they call it. ---This is followed at around 11AM by "el almuerzo" which in general is a baguette sandwich of some sort.
-At around 4, they would have a "merienda", (a snack): more coffee some sort of bread AGAIN.
-Finally dinner at around 9PM which is always accompanied by... you guessed it... bread.
I will not have dinner at 9PM. Spanish people may enjoy it but personally I cannot go to bed right after having eaten. I tried it and it has completely messed up my digestive system. I actually have breakfast in the morning. I have oatmeal or cereal, or and omelet or fruits... as soon as I wake up... not 3 hours after.
I never thought I would ever say this but... I'm so tired of bread. I don’t understand how people here are so freaking thin. All they eat is bread
OK, Fine. To change a little.
Isn't it funny how much your person accommodates to your surroundings. Living in Valencia, where people go out dancing at 2am and come back at 8am, just in time to wash their faces and go to work, I have to say i don't feel that I have become contaged.It must either be my gluttony for sleep or my utter disinterest in being up all night in heels. Plus, there's the annoying constant beeping sound I hate.
The night of San Juan in Valencia however was a party that I couldn't pass up. Europe best DJs and 200,000 people on the beach celebrating a day which is generally celebrated in all of Latin America. Saint John’s night, during which bonfires are lit and jumped over to take away all of the bad experienced in the previous year. But nowhere is it celebrated like in Valencia.
For this I was willing to get home in at 8am to wash my face and go to work.
-In Spain breakfast consists of a glass of juice or a coffee... “un cortado”, as they call it. ---This is followed at around 11AM by "el almuerzo" which in general is a baguette sandwich of some sort.
-At around 4, they would have a "merienda", (a snack): more coffee some sort of bread AGAIN.
-Finally dinner at around 9PM which is always accompanied by... you guessed it... bread.
I will not have dinner at 9PM. Spanish people may enjoy it but personally I cannot go to bed right after having eaten. I tried it and it has completely messed up my digestive system. I actually have breakfast in the morning. I have oatmeal or cereal, or and omelet or fruits... as soon as I wake up... not 3 hours after.
I never thought I would ever say this but... I'm so tired of bread. I don’t understand how people here are so freaking thin. All they eat is bread
OK, Fine. To change a little.
Isn't it funny how much your person accommodates to your surroundings. Living in Valencia, where people go out dancing at 2am and come back at 8am, just in time to wash their faces and go to work, I have to say i don't feel that I have become contaged.It must either be my gluttony for sleep or my utter disinterest in being up all night in heels. Plus, there's the annoying constant beeping sound I hate.
The night of San Juan in Valencia however was a party that I couldn't pass up. Europe best DJs and 200,000 people on the beach celebrating a day which is generally celebrated in all of Latin America. Saint John’s night, during which bonfires are lit and jumped over to take away all of the bad experienced in the previous year. But nowhere is it celebrated like in Valencia.
For this I was willing to get home in at 8am to wash my face and go to work.
miércoles, 1 de julio de 2009
Voice... I mean Head of International Relations
THE Head of the International Relations Department, very sweet middle aged woman, kindly scared the living daylights out of me the first time we met and she still gets me till this day. “What does she do?” you might ask.
SHE HOLLERS. She hollers as if she lived at the top of Mount Everest in a constant struggle to communicate with the rest of civilization that lives miles below.
The funny thing is that initially, her seemingly harmless charm draws you really close to her. But after our first exchange of words, I learned my lesson: Stand a few meters away.
SHE HOLLERS. She hollers as if she lived at the top of Mount Everest in a constant struggle to communicate with the rest of civilization that lives miles below.
The funny thing is that initially, her seemingly harmless charm draws you really close to her. But after our first exchange of words, I learned my lesson: Stand a few meters away.
“What the Mo Fo???!!!”
Spanish society is so... different. Spanish people are beautiful, warm, outgoing and they talk like crazy. They value collectivity and are refreshingly active in their communities. On the other hand, I have also found that many are offensively direct, almost filterless, and most politically incorrect; in words and in actions.
Being educated in the Toronto Public School system, we are taught “If you have nothing good to say, don’t say anything at all”. We are taught to be conscious of and attentive to indiscrepancies that may occur in cultural translation.
I craved that sensitivity today when an international student approached the front desk on the brink of tears. When I asked her what was wrong they finally rolled down her cheeks. She swallowed hard and explained that the cashier who had just tended to her at the supermarket literally threw her change back at the counter.
Seeing her cry made me want to do the same. I may have proved a bit more tough-skinned in situations like this one, overlooking to southern Spanish aggressiveness which quite frankly bothered me too. Even so, I knew exactly how she felt.
Just an example of the uttermost importance that hospitality and manners hold. They make each moment. Also an example of why it is important to be open and tolerant. We don’t all share the same customs and we were not all raised in the same home. We were definitely not all educated in the Toronto Public School system.
Aware of this fact, one question has been pestering for a while...Can enough ever be enough for the consciously anti-cultural imperialist?
I often find myself puzzled, making grimaces in random places and mouthing “What the Mo Fo???!!!”
Being educated in the Toronto Public School system, we are taught “If you have nothing good to say, don’t say anything at all”. We are taught to be conscious of and attentive to indiscrepancies that may occur in cultural translation.
I craved that sensitivity today when an international student approached the front desk on the brink of tears. When I asked her what was wrong they finally rolled down her cheeks. She swallowed hard and explained that the cashier who had just tended to her at the supermarket literally threw her change back at the counter.
Seeing her cry made me want to do the same. I may have proved a bit more tough-skinned in situations like this one, overlooking to southern Spanish aggressiveness which quite frankly bothered me too. Even so, I knew exactly how she felt.
Just an example of the uttermost importance that hospitality and manners hold. They make each moment. Also an example of why it is important to be open and tolerant. We don’t all share the same customs and we were not all raised in the same home. We were definitely not all educated in the Toronto Public School system.
Aware of this fact, one question has been pestering for a while...Can enough ever be enough for the consciously anti-cultural imperialist?
I often find myself puzzled, making grimaces in random places and mouthing “What the Mo Fo???!!!”
Not Too Different, Are We?
My Caribbean background has often caused people to attach a variety of erroneous typecasts to my person. While most of the time I have considered them to be annoying, comments such as, “but you’re not black” still make me laugh.
I like to think that, like most people, I’m not what people expect when they judge me according to my ethnic background. I actually don’t possess many of the most characteristic features accorded to a person of Caribbean roots.
I am:
1. Not laid-back
2. Not loud (when I’m sober)
3. Don’t have a mixed, semi-distinguishable accent or latch phrase, like “Ju know”.
4. And unlike many Latino-Caribbeans, I am capable of speaking,pure English and pure Spanish without difficulty, rather than the odd colloquial mixture of both, otherwise known as “Spanglish”.
Like me (or so I would to think), Spain, COMPLETELY defied expectations…
Being from a colonial and post colonial background, where I myself have seen many a new Spanish settler position himself above my mulato race with a simple scowl, I was under the impression the Spain must be characterized by a superior societal and cultural refinement.
It was with great and almost vengeful pleasure that I realized, “Dang, Spanish people are LOUD and rarely sober. They are ultra-laid-back with undistinguishable accents, mad colloquialisms and absurd latch phrases”… Not to stereotype or anything.
I like to think that, like most people, I’m not what people expect when they judge me according to my ethnic background. I actually don’t possess many of the most characteristic features accorded to a person of Caribbean roots.
I am:
1. Not laid-back
2. Not loud (when I’m sober)
3. Don’t have a mixed, semi-distinguishable accent or latch phrase, like “Ju know”.
4. And unlike many Latino-Caribbeans, I am capable of speaking,pure English and pure Spanish without difficulty, rather than the odd colloquial mixture of both, otherwise known as “Spanglish”.
Like me (or so I would to think), Spain, COMPLETELY defied expectations…
Being from a colonial and post colonial background, where I myself have seen many a new Spanish settler position himself above my mulato race with a simple scowl, I was under the impression the Spain must be characterized by a superior societal and cultural refinement.
It was with great and almost vengeful pleasure that I realized, “Dang, Spanish people are LOUD and rarely sober. They are ultra-laid-back with undistinguishable accents, mad colloquialisms and absurd latch phrases”… Not to stereotype or anything.
domingo, 21 de junio de 2009
Culguage
I must have been in preschool the first time I tried to have a conversation with my mother in English. “No te entiendo” she said with a smile asking me to repeat myself in Spanish. My mother a university educated woman who had lived for years and had even studied in Toronto refused to speak to me in English for all of my early childhood. Curiosity, the driving force of every child, eventually brought me to ask her how she could understand all my friends and my teachers when they spoke to her in English but she couldn’t understand me. At that moment she looked me straight in the eye and said, “If you loose your language then you will loose your culture mi hija”
CULTURE? I had never heard that word before, knew what language was, but culture... ¿Qué? Quoi? What now?
“The years before 5 last the rest of their lives”
Funny that my very first encounter with the concept of culture, was associated with language. I went to French school because I am Quebecoise; I went into Hispanic Studies to perfect my Castellan while discovering my ancestors’ still proclaimed yet distant heyday. Now that I think about it, language for me has been one of the most defining aspects of culture.
Yet again, now miles and miles away from my mom’s Dominican kitchen in the middle of my multicultural metropolis, the moral of the story has come back with a vengeance.
Catalan anyone???!!!
Catalan is a beautiful language, one of the many spoken in Spain. Sounds kind of like Spanish ...mixed with French ... and Italian. Hear in Valencia and in Cataluña, Catalan stands for so much more than words. ITS CULTURE!!! It’s the subject of activism, a reason for independence, a marker of identity.
It was shocking that one of my first assignments was to translate from Catalan to Spanish and English and kind of crazy that one of the secretaries in the department, despite speaking perfect Spanish, has not spoken a word of Spanish to me since I got there. Yes... she only speaks to me in Catalan. “What if I don’t understand?” you may ask. Well.... then she repeats herself more slowly. LOL.
Did I sign on to learn another language? Not really. But I did sign on to learn another culture. HERE, language: its culture!!!
Suscribirse a:
Entradas (Atom)
