Party Week & Many Small Differences Between Barcelona & D.C.

This week I participated in two parties, one at my language school, where students across 60 different countries got together and had a wonderful meal.  The second was a party that I hosted at my home for my Shambhala friends here in Barcelona.

International Food Day at EOI

EOI, or the Official School of Languages in Barcelona, hosts an event one day each Fall for the students who are learning Spanish to prepare a dish from their own country and bring it to share with others.  I decided to make Country Corn Pudding.  For the last two weeks in my Level 4 class we spent a lot of time on the topic of food in Spanish, reviewing different Spanish recipes and learning how they are constructed grammatically.  We also learned a lot of vocabulary about kitchen and food items, which has already come in handy in my day-to-day routine in Barcelona.

On Thursday we did not have class, but rather met around 10 am with our dishes in the large hall at the school and were grouped together according to native languages (the Americans were with the Australians and the English).  At 11 am the eating

began (which is much earlier than when people have lunch, which is around 2-3 pm).  Each dish was accompanied with the recipe, translated into Spanish, which was also a good exercise to do.  Toward the end of this food extravaganza some of the students shared their talents on stage, including a Hawaiian-American who danced native Hawaiian dancing.

Another House Warming Party

Originally, I wanted to have one house warming party and to invite all my local friends to it.  But that turned out impossible to do because my place is too small (it would have been over 40 people).  So, following the sound suggestion from my friend Jordi and divided my House Warming Party into 3 parties.  One for some of the friends I have met on my hiking trips, plus others that didn't fit into the other two groups, one for the group I meet with on Tuesday nights for dinner, and the third for my friends from the Shambhala group in Barcelona.  As most of you know Shambhala is a group that is dedicated to the practice of meditation and through that practice encourages the awareness of one's own basic goodness and the goodness of others.


 So this Saturday night my friends from Shambhala came to my house.  It's with this group that I get to have some feminine friendships in my life here.  The network of friends that I started with were all gay men.  And what I soon discovered is that between gay men and lesbians or straight women, there is not much social mixing (at least with the men that I know here).  And so Shambhala fills that gap for me with the women in that group.

The group here in Barcelona has more women than men in it and at my party, it just so happened that there were only 3 of us. The other 11 were filled with feminine energy that had a definite and intense party fever.  After we all ate and had dessert, we moved the coffee table aside and picked music that would definitely get the body to respond.  The dancing didn't stop until 3:30 am!  I tried to keep the music down for the sake of my neighbors.  But at times I thought for sure that a neighbor would bang on the door or the police would show up.  None of that happened and a good time was had by all.  The Shambhala folks here certainly know how to party!

Small Cultural Differences

I thought I would point out some of the small differences that I find between my experience here in Barcelona and what I experienced living in the D.C. area.  I don't want to generalize these differences between the two countries, Spain and the U.S., since my experience, especially here, is limited.  But I thought you would find it interesting to know that:

• The use of plastic sleeves to organize one's papers and documents is much more prevalent than file folders.  I actually find that plastic sleeves are much more handy and less likely for documents to fall out of them by accident.
• The paper in notebooks for adults always have a grid pattern, such as paper that we would use for graphs or geometry.  Lined paper is primarily used for children to help them with their orthography.
• Meals here, especially when not at work, are longer.  The Tuesday night group meal is always about 2 hours long and is only cut short because the metro stops running at 12 midnight.  Part of the length of the meal is due to the conversations that happen, many of them very intense and passionate, whether it is about politics or a movie.  And it generally happens that 2 to 3 conversations can happen all at once and much of the time those simultaneous conversations can cross each other, which naturally causes the volume to rise in order to be heard.  For a language learner, like me, at times my head spins trying to keep up with all of these discussions.
• In the U.S. baking soda is a typical item found in supermarkets.  Not so here.  You can only find it at pharmacies and is usually 4 times more expensive.
• Except for yogurt ice cream, yogurt is usually a food that is eaten at breakfast.  Here, it is more of a dessert.  So in supermarkets you will see variations of yogurt, including combinations of yogurt and chocolate.
• Most microwaves here do not have a digital display.  I believe the reason for that is to cut down on electricity costs.  People therefore prefer to purchase non-digital microwaves.
• Homes here are much more open to the immediate environment than in D.C.  The windows are open without screens.  Compared to the D.C. area, there are very few flying bugs, so screens are not as necessary.  Also, the weather is generally more pleasant.  Right now, at 10 pm, the temperature is a balmy 68 degrees.  It will get colder over the next few weeks, but nothing like D.C.  But in general, homes in D.C. and other U.S. areas are generally more sealed off from their environment and we like our homes to be individually climatized to suit our comfort.  Partly because of utility costs, Barcelona homes are much more open, which allows both the weather and the city noise to enter the home.

I'll continue to keep track of differences that I see and will occasionally write about them.