¡Listo!

This'll just be a post with complete random thoughts about Spain.

• I'm really working on my Spanish.  I really am.  And I think I'm getting better at speaking spontaneously, but I've had a surprising amount of English in my life while I've been here, so really, I think my Spanglish is improving the most.  Which I guess could be the first step to Spanish becoming the best that it can...?  I think it'll be fine.  Besides, I'll be here for four and a half more months.
• It's amazing to me how much more chill Spaniards are.  Even when they get visibly angry with you, it's usually the type of confrontation that they will forget about five minutes later.  For example, if you nudge a guy out of the way to go up to the bar, he will be angry at first and ramble off a couple of phrases of really angry Spanish, but then you string together some words and mutter, "Lo siento" or "Perdón" and he'll say "Me da igual," the Spanish equivalent for "it doesn't matter" and everything will be fine.  He knows you just want to get a drink and he's not gonna hold anything against you for that.  It's really interesting.  And I mean, if something does really bother them, they're going to get REALLY confrontational; at the same time, though, give it a day or two and they'll be back to normal.  I guess it could be the same in the US, but I generally think not.
• It could just be because I'm in Andalucía, which is a generally non-English speaking province (thank goodness), but I feel like a lot of Spaniards are actually really tolerant of Americans that make the effort to converse with them, even if their language and rhythm is broken.  Because a lot of them take classes in English (like my señora) and they understand how hard it would be for them to speak English in America.  So I think there's that extra level of sympathy there.  Which brings me to my next point...
• It is really difficult for Spaniards to even make the basic phonetic sounds for English sometimes.  My señora really struggles with it sometimes, to the point where she'll say a word or a phrase in English and we will have no idea what she's talking about.  And that just really emphasizes to me that English is probably one of the hardest languages to learn, because of it's crazy sentence structures, its unsystematic way for doing lots of things, and just difficult pronunciations.
• Speaking of English, I don't know why it didn't occur to me before I came, but there is SO MUCH American music here.  Top 40 blares on the radio, mi señora plays classic rock on her sound system or sometimes Frank Sinatra, and there is even some mixed into the usually foreign-sounding house mix in la discoteca.  The other night, "Pump It" came on, and threw everyone for a loop.  It's actually kind of crazy.  Also, there are movie posters everywhere of movies that were released a couple months ago in the States, but are just now debuting in Europe.  And they're all translated into Spanish.  Example, "Love and Other Drugs" = "Amor y otras drogas".  It's strange.  But then at the same time, it's not.  Because if the US is really the cultural superpower that everybody says it is, then it would extend over here.  I just didn't think about it.
• So far, I don't know that many native Spaniards.  Evidently, my señora is trying to fix this.  We apparently are going out with the kids next door tonight for a beer.  (I'll get to alcohol in a second.)  And when I say kids, I mean they are college students as well.  Hopefully, I won't appear too stupid in front of them.
• Here's the thing about alcohol here.  It's a social thing.  They serve beer at certain coffee shops.  It's normal for people to be drinking throughout the day.  Early morning is still weird, but people generally start having beer around noon.  That may seem weird, but here's the thing: here, it's not weird, nor is it really taboo.  People don't drink here to get trashed.  They drink because it's something to do while they catch up with each other.  All bets may be off at night, but people still don't even get completely trashed.  It's a really refreshing perspective on alcohol consumption that I think we should take up in the States.  The only thing is, that'll never happen in the US.
• It's amazing how much I've been able to keep in contact with people, considering I'm an ocean and six time zones apart from them.  I miss everyone, especially my family, because I don't feel like I've been able to keep in contact with them as much as some of my friends.  But I know we'll catch up soon and everything will be just fine.  I've never had any problems adjusting before, especially since we lived in the Information Age, and this hasn't really been any different.  Yet, I still miss everyone.