Greetings Spaniards, take me to your Starbucks

It's always interesting when you find yourself suddenly looking at things from a fresh perspective. More often than not, when we see ourselves through others eyes we discover things that we had not realized before. I've been feeling pretty down and out about my Spanish. After two months in Spain I felt like I was struggling to be understood and that things kept coming out in English. I also had a general case of the blahs.

Yesterday a girl I lived with last Spring, who is studying in Paris, came to Madrid with her two friends. I took them out in the afternoon and the evening. Spending time with Americans who didn't speak Spanish, and especially Americans who haven't been in Spain for a while, was really shocking to me. "Un choque cultural" is a cultural shock (literally a "choque" means a collision or crash) in Spanish, a term that I think communicates the violence with which cultural differences sometimes can hit us. It didn't help that these Americans were, well, pretty married to their American ways. Just to give you an idea, we spent the first hour in the H and M shopping, and then they wanted to go to Starbucks.

I flatly refused, because this is Spain and not Seattle. I was not going to go into a Starbucks in Madrid, sit there lazily with Americanized coffee, and speak English. I offered to go back to my apartment and meet up with them later, but they said they wanted to do what I wanted to do. So I took them out for chocolate with churros.

For those of you who don't know this delicacy, when the Spanish youth get the drunk munchies or hung over cravings, they go to chocolaterias where they dunk churros (which are like long, plain donuts) into hot chocolate that almost has the consistency of melted chocolate chips. Basically the most decadent treat in the world, and unbelievably Spanish. Unfortunately I took them to one of the most popular chocolaterias in Madrid when it was rainy, and the only table we could find was outside. It didn't help that we moved tables after we had ordered, making the waiter incredibly grumpy. I actually became quite embarrassed as these Americans got fed up with the service (which was typically Spanish), upset about the cold and the rain, and started cussing all over the place. My friend asked an English buy for a cigarette and he joined our table where he started to spew all sorts of travel advice. We were so obviously American and tourists that I felt we stuck out like a sore thumb.

Then I made the mistake of taking them to eat at a Greek restaurant my Greek-German flatmate had found. Little did any of us know that it was not very authentic and involved dinner theatre with a drag queen in a toga and red wig who called herself Aphrodite. Had I been with just my flatmates it would have been okay and hilarious. One of the Americans, however, was Greek and he got more and more offended, even though he couldn't understand what they were saying. He complained about the food, about the show, and then all three of them freaked out about the price and got in the way of me sorting it out with the waiter by talking at him in English. I felt caught between a rock and a hard place. I both understood that in Spain this wasn't a big deal, but I also understood the American abhorrence of anything not PC. It was almost a relief when the three decided they wanted to go back to the hostel instead of going out. I didn't know if I had the strength to spend a night on the town with them.

However, spending time with the Americans helped me look at my situation with markedly different eyes. I noticed for the first time how fluent in Spanish I have become, how sometimes I speak in Spanish automatically, how it is almost difficult for me to speak in English at times. I noticed how European I am becoming, how comfortable I am with the culture, how easily and painlessly I take care of things like speaking to waiters and ordering food. I realized how independent I have become, how cool my apartment is, and how much I love Spain.

Probably hanging out in the US, I would have had fun. They seemed like really nice people. But here in Spain, encountering such bold Americanism was an enormous "choque cultural."