Security guards patrol the cercanías trains, moving from car to car, looking for suspicious unattended luggage, people with their feet up on the seats, and panhandlers. Some of the panhandlers, dirty and disheveled, merely pass up and down the aisle mumbling, palm outstretched. Others proceed to give a speech upon entering the car, sharing their tales of unemployment, sick family members and pregnant wives, before collecting money. And last week there were a couple of guys who got on at Méndez Álvaro, whipped out their guitars, and began to serenade the rest of the passengers. But before they had finished their song, we stopped at the next stop and their song was cut short as they caught site of a couple of security guards waiting to board the train. Luckily for the musicians, the guards boarded the car behind ours, so the guys had time to get off the train before they were spotted and fined or arrested.
At the supermarket there is an entire aisle, both sides, devoted to canned fish and seafood. There is also an entire refrigerated aisle, again both sides, dedicated to yogurt and yogurt drinks. There are several aisles of wine and half of an aisle for UHT milk (the kind that doesn´t have to be refrigerated and doesn´t expire for several months), but there is only an endcap for fresh milk. The cereal aisle is broken up into three sections: sugary cereals, muesli, and corn or bran flakes.
If you had never spoken to a Spaniard, you´d think they were a very serious and displeased lot. They almost never seem to smile in public, not even when speaking with their friends. And it´s more than not smiling, they actually seem to make an effort to look unimpressed or displeased with everything. Whereas Americans will flash you a smile to show you they are friendly, the Spanish version of friendliness toward strangers is a blank expression and a "dime" (translated as "tell me"). But, as Shannon and Kez's experience getting locked out of their former apartment proves, Spaniards will go out of their way to help a person in need...much farther than most Americans, including myself, would go. And once you get them into the classroom, office or bar, they are all friendliness and smiles. And it's not the fake kind of friendliness and smiles you can run into in the States, where people are sometimes only friendly because they feel obligated to be so and their smiles are thin and don't reach their eyes. They're absolutely genuine as far as I can tell. My students always greet me with a smile and remember to ask how I am in return. We often laugh in class...at my jokes, at my confusion, at some of their sillier errors.
Speaking of silly errors, I've had a couple absolutely hilarious ones. One of my private students read the word "tights" as "tits" the other day. And in my pre-intermediate class last week a student was trying to get his classmates to guess the word "rice" and he didn't know the word "grain" but we had talked about peppercorns, so he improvised but slightly misremembered the word and said, "it has lots of porns." Oh my.
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