Week 30

By Aaron
Lost in Translation: Joni has done her fair share of shopping at various stores in Madrid, and this week she set out with the mission of exchanging a product at Primark. For those of you who don't know, Primark is huge. It is a five-story building, and each floor has enough products to fill several stores. This being said, there is no obvious place to make returns/exchanges. Joni had diligently studied the appropriate terms necessary to exchange her sweatshirt for a different size, but she hadn't anticipated having so much difficulty finding where to make the exchange. Joni was quick to realize it would be much easier to ask where the customer service desk was rather than to search for it herself, so she did. The first response seemed very clear - "la puerta planta." Or so she thought... She didn't really know exactly what this meant, because literally it means "the door floor." That kind of made sense to her though; perhaps there was a service desk right by the entrance that she failed to notice on her way in. She went all the way downstairs and didn't see a service desk. She asked someone else, and they provided the exact same information. Joni figured she just didn't understand what "puerta planta" meant, so she decided to go up a level. Nothing. She wandered around for a bit, in search of any signs, and then decided to ask yet another person. Upon receiving the third piece of advice, Joni finally figured out that she had misheard the previous speakers. They had actually been saying, "la cuarta planta," which means "the 4th floor," and makes a lot more sense! At long last, she found the service desk and successfully exchanged the product with no language issues. The main take-away from this experience: Joni needs to practice her listening skills. Accents are difficult. 

Exploring the City: Keeping with the theme of shopping, we went to Xanadu!  Perhaps not quite as wondrous as the name implies, this mall on the southwestern outskirts of Madrid was pretty impressive.  In addition to making us feel like we were back in America (parking lots e'erwhere!) the plaza contains an indoor ski slope, a massive foodcourt, and yes, even an El Corte Inglés.  What do you get for the sprawling commercial center that has everything?  A sprawling commercial center that has everything, I guess.  I mistakenly thought this would be a very short trip, but with a seemingly endless bounty of bargain-basement-priced stores Joni had other plans.  This did offer up ample time for podcast listening and blowing through my backlog of Pocket articles, so I can't complain.  At any rate, it was a fun experience that the €7.20 bus fare will probably prohibit us from repeating.

Winter-themed putt-putt.

Indoor ski slope.

Mickey bread!

Memorable Meal: This week we were graciously hosted by our friends Alex and María (not pictured here, because we are not great about remembering to take pictures for this portion of the blog).  The couple lives about a 5 minute walk away from us, making them easily our closest-in-proximity friends in the city.  We neglected to mention Joni's natural distaste for a large portion of Spanish cuisine, but Joni tried several things far removed from her natural palate. We sampled something that resembled paté but made out of ham (like pureed and seasoned ham that had a bit of a cream cheese texture).  I saw this at the church coffee hour this week, and decided it was a little too Spanish even for my (somewhat) adventurous taste buds.  But I tried it, on a crispy raisin-speckled toast chip, and it was not bad!  One of the stranger things I've had here, and I'm certain it's an acquired taste - it was and will continue to be a tough sell to Joni.  Then we had a salmon/cheese/asparagus dish that María prepared...and Joni liked it despite her aversion to all fish!  This was followed by a creamy concoction made of potatoes, egg yolk and mushrooms, a glorious mix between mashed potatoes and soup (I was the welcome beneficiary of Joni's mushrooms).  Perhaps the tastiest bit of the meal was a sweet-potato mousse that approximated pumpkin pie with a spicy kick.  The bar was set incredibly high, but nevertheless we look forward to hosting our friends in the near future.

En la clase: With the Oscars set to air this Sunday, our classes took the theme of nominated movies and ran with it.  Students were generally aware of the awards ceremony but, as was the case with the Super Bowl, the time difference alone makes it difficult to follow the live broadcast (the televised portion of the affair kicks off at 2:30 AM Madrid time).  Even so, Joni's actor students in particular had a lot to say about actors in the film.  We both utilized a game where students had to listen to an acceptance speech and identify the actor.  This fell rather flat, even with the actor students, since dubbed films obviously do not have the voice of the original actor.  I think it's becoming more common for Spanish people to see movies in the V.O. (version original) but there is not the same recognition - even for someone like Denzel Washington whose rich and distinctive tone would be easy to spot with the utterance of a single word.

Final Notes: On Friday evening we will welcome our first 2017 visitors - Sarah, Leah, and Jacob!  We're excited to see where their week in Spain takes us, and it will certainly be ample blog-fodder for next week.