or "The Importance of Good Pronunciation"...
The cost of living here is absolutely ridiculous, and I doubt we can afford to stay here for more than a year. As a result, I have become very thrifty. I only buy Eroski goods at the supermaket (this is not quite no-name, but close enough). Fruit, veggies, fish & pork are reasonable, olive oil and wine are very cheap. Beef and anything American - forget about it. Household goods are reasonable at Ikea, but thank GOD for the Chinese. They run .5o Euro stores all over the place. Though nothing is less than 1€, you can find kitchen & bath stuff, bedding, plants, dried goods, small electrical appliances, etc. The only problem is the store owners speak the absolute worst Spanish I have ever encountered. You know the old Cubanos in Hialeah? Well, they speak academic español compared to these Asian immigrants. And if their children aren´t around to translate, good luck communicating! So here is my story:
The second day we were here, Ingrid decided to blow dry her hair with her American dryer using a converter. BAD IDEA. It sparked, smoked and threw the circuit breaker. God forbid she leaves the house with a wet head, so my task was to go find a hair dryer. Where else, but Chinese Euro Store. You need to visualize these stores. They are usually in the basement, there´s no ac, the Chinese pop music is blaring, the aisles are tiny and PACKED to the ceiling with stuff, and because they are so wary of shoplifters, they follow you all over the store like a shadow. I promise to take a picture of some. Anyway, the lady, who said ¡Hola! when I entered, is following me and smiling and humming along to the Chinese song. I couldn´t find the hair dryers, so I turned to her and asked in my kinda decent Spanish, "Señora, tienes secadora por el pelo?" (Do you have a clothes dryer for the hair?) I mean, dryer for the hair should have clued her in. She shows me a clothes line. Ok, so at least she gets the drying part. I said, "No, no por la ropa, por el pelo" (no, not for the clothes, for the hair). She just stares at me. Now we have an audience (some Spanish lady is watching us and smiling) and it´s 110 degrees, and as any good ESL teacher will tell you, acting it out always works. SO, I grab a glass, hold it my head and say, "Pelo mojado, macchina con aire calor" (wet hair, machine with hot air), and start making electrical noises with my mouth (like ZHEEEEEE) and moving the glass around my head. BINGO! She runs around the corner, beckoning me to follow, and voila, there are 5 different types of hair dryers! The Spanish lady is laughing. So, I chose the cheapest one (15€ or $23US - AND THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE A DOLLAR STORE!) and go to the register. I say Hola, the man says hola, and then he says (or at least I heard) Aléman? (German?) By this point, between the heat and the cost of the stupid hair dryer, I was not in the best of moods. And to be asked if I was a German (no offense to my German friends) was the last straw. I angrily replied, Aléman? Aléman? Do I look German? ¡No Soy Aléman! Soy Americano, Italiano, y Frances! Tengo piel café, pelo negro, por favor, señor! (German? German? Do I look German? I´m not German. I´m American, Italian, and French! I have brown skin, black hair, please, mister!) I took my bag and left. When I got home and told Ingrid how stupid the Chinese man was to assume I was German, she looked at me and said, "Why, what did he say?" I told her he called me Aléman! She burst out laughing, and as I told her the rest of what I said in Spanish, she was actually crying from laughing so hard. I was very serious and did not see the humor in this at all. When she finally caught her breath, she informed me that the Chinese man had actually said, "Algo mas?" (anything else?) But since he didn't pronounce the lg in algo or the s at the end of mas, to me, algo mas sounded like Aléman. I am sure the Chinese man went home and told all his friends what the STUPID American said to him when asked if he wanted something else to buy! I haven´t been back to THAT store since!
We had a great time visiting Jerome,
As a surprise, Christophe & Geraldine drove down from Normandy! It was 5 amazing days in France eating great food, drinking lotsa wine & going to the beach in a 500-year-old town...
We also spent an afternoon in the old part of Perpignan where they were celebrating the 64th Anniversary of the American liberation from the Germans. Apparently, the whole world doesn't hate us after all!
