Posted by Jessica in Spain | 1 Comment
Adventures in Library cards
Library in Vilanova
It’s amazing how one normal everyday activity can turn into a crazy adventure when you are in a foreign country. On Tuesday we went to the local library here in Vilanova, our host had told us that other travelers in the past had been able to get a library card, so we decided to give it a shot. We brought along our passports and our address here in Vilanova, and hoped we wouldn’t need anything else.
There were three floors in the library so we asked the lady on the first floor, she sent us to the second floor, after waiting patiently in line the lady told us to go to the second floor, turns out in Europe the first floor is called the ground floor….Yay for more stairs…After waiting in line for the third time, the nice librarian lady just needed to see our passports, get our address, and an email or phone number. At first the lady had a solemn Spanish librarian thing going on but once Clayton smiled and dazzled her with his baby blues and smooth Spanish, she gave us whatever we wanted.
The only awkward part was when she saw our passports and asked if we were brother and sister….ouch! I guess we are going to have to start some of that famous PDA we’ve seen everywhere in Spain, maybe then people won’t ask if we are blood related. Sadly this isn’t the only time that has happened, since we have been together we have been asked that probably 8 times or more in the last nine years, so it’s not just a Spain thing.
Once we had our super legit library cards we went to use the computers to make a flyer advertising English lessons. Sounds simple no? Well think again, trying to use a word processing program that you are not use to isn’t that easy but try using that in a totally different language = super difficult. The computer and program where in Catalan, the language for this region of Spain. Everyone here speaks it as their first language, our host said it is a combination of Italian and Spanish, but to me it seems more like French and Spanish. Regardless we have encountered Catalan since we have been in Vilanova and we have been able to figure it out with a bit of time, it just made making a simple flyer into an hour long ordeal. The good news is once we had finished the flyer we felt very proud of what we had accomplished.
My super awesome Spanish library card!
I will say that constantly being around a foreign language is very exhausting. After getting a library card, making a flyer, shopping for food and stopping for cafe con leche, we were pooped. And that is how our adventures in library cards went on Tuesday. What about you, did you have a small task that turned into an adventure? If so I would like to hear about it.
Congratulations on your new Library cards! I am very proud of you! Sound fascinating to me to encounter the Catalan language and love hearing of your adventures.