Almost every night {casi todos los noches} I eat dinner with my host family, and conversations are very interesting. Considering that my family does not speak English, it’s a great way to speak Spanish (I have no choice to speak English). The only phrase my host family knows in English is “Oh my God!” They love saying this, and it’s hilarious because they say it all the time.
In Spain, dinner is not eaten until 9:30 pm or later, and after dinner we eat fruit (watermelon, peaches, pears, etc.) and talk about various things. It’s funny because, as we all know, you shouldn’t talk about religion, money or politics in America, but in Spain those are topics muy interesantes {very interesting}, and of course, my host family has spent many nights asking me about my opinions on Trump, the Bible Belt, and other things (“Oh my God”).
Tonight was especially funny. I dined on various types of sausage, beans, potatoes, watermelon, and bread. My host family asked me how my classes were going, and I informed them on how today in class we talked about the different indigenous languages in Spain, specifically the language “Valenciano.” Valenciano is a language specific to Valencia, and although children are now learning it in school, my host parents were prohibited from speaking it growing up because of the dictator named Franco.
We ended up also talking about another indigenous language called “Catalan,” which is a very hard language to learn considering it combines components of French, Italian and Spanish into one. It started becoming hilarious when my host mom began talking about the language and her opinions on it, and my host dad got very flustered and said “Oi, no se porque estamos hablando de este lengua! Ella le encanta hablar de eso, pero no sabe nunca!” In other words, he said: “I have no idea why we are talking about this language. She loves talking about it, but knows nothing of it!” However, the funniest part was after he said this, he looked at me and said “Oh my God!”
I am still laughing about this, and it feels good to be at a fluent enough level of Spanish to understand when people around me are joking. I wasn’t able to do that when I arrived! More dinner conversations to come.
Also, my host family was kind enough to give me a shirt from a famous 8k race in Valencia! I ran with my host dad the other night (he is a marathon runner), and it made my day to receive the shirt.