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​Yo No Speaka Espanish

Well not much surprise here, but my lack of Spanish has played into my embarrassing moments while in Ourense. When I found out I would be moving to Spain I had an emotional flashback to embarrassment. This likely stems from the fact that I had lived in Vigo, Spain for a month in 2010. During that month embarrassment made up roughly about 58% of my emotions. Excitement, fear, loneliness, and pure ecstasy were playing their parts in the other 42%.  But embarrassment definitely stood out. I’ve had the “Deer in the headlights” look more times than I can count. The “Uhhhh-duh” face, the “I’m an idiot and don’t know going on” shoulder shrug. The “I got nothing” shake of my head.  The “I just fucking want to buy this banana” plead in my eyes. It happened three years ago and when I got my letter of acceptance, I knew that a flood of embarrassment was going to be joining me on the trip.

However, the humiliation is humbling.  I have gained a lot of perspective from this emotion. I gained appreciation for those who have taken time to help me. The ones who are kind enough to slow down and patiently try to rephrase something in a way that I can understand, such as both of my host families. I realized I wasn’t as patient with people as I had previously thought. And sometimes not patient enough with myself.

And while it results in a lot of quite car rides, conversation in hand gestures, and  “lo siento”(I’m sorry) and “no entiendo” (I don’t understand) being muttered often, I appreciate the embarrassment caused by not speaking the language.

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Faceplant

That being said, there is embarrassment caused by things unrelated to language. I find this more difficult to appreciate… The air is crisp. The tips of my ears red, my eyes watery, and the scene is breathtaking. Fall is one of my favorite times to run.  Because of this, and because there is loose discussion around the possibility of running a marathon this summer with my brother and sister, I have been outdoors running quite a bit during my time here in Ourense.

Now when I say “run” I clearly mean “jog” at best. But I’m use to this.  My pace is slow, an I have ran like this for years. I have no embarrassment about it. I usually run around the city, in and out of alleys, up and down narrow streets. And, occasionally I will even run through the indoor/outdoor mall. Now the mall hallways open to two parallel streets.  You can look at it as an indoor mall that just opens to the outside, or an outdoor mall but the street is covered by a roof.  It’s a little of both.   Thus not making it really clear if this is an appropriate place to be jogging. But in this game, here is where I play my “I’m foreign” card.  I think “what’s the worse that can happen?”. They tell me not to run inside and I say “no entiendo, lo siento” and run far far away.  And since no one ever said anything I continued to run through the mall...
 

Until the day I ran through a group of old men in front of the entrance…and fell face first. Thankfully my arms caught me, I jumped up, brushed myself off and ran away like an idiot. This embarrassment I could do without.  Two days later I did it again, but this time at night on the trail and no one saw me. But either way, something is telling me I might want to reconsider training for a marathon.

 

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Bloody nose

 

Fine, maybe just because I fell a few times doesn’t mean I should stop running. But how about blood, can I stop if I’m bleeding!? And I don’t mean from my falls. I have always gotten bloody noses easily, so you would think I’d be prepared…yea, not the case.  And you could think, “oh maybe she just hasn’t had a bloody nose in a long time, people forgot, she will be prepared next time”... yea, not the case. I have probably had at least four bloody noses, while running, since I’ve been in Ourense. Usually I run in fairly secluded areas, so no one has really seen me try to awkwardly stop my nose from bleeding while continuing to run. It’s a lot of running with my head looking at the clouds, some sniffling, and doing my best to not look like I just got mugged. Given this had happened four times, you would think I would at least be prepared when I was running with thousands of other people in the Ourense 10k…yea, not the case. Two kilometers in, went to wipe off the infamous sweat moustache, and instead rubbed blood across my face.

Cute.

 

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No Soup for Me.

 

I would like to think if I just stopped running I could prevent embarrassing moments. But we all know that’s not the case. I wish I could argue that it’s all because of a language barrier. But that’s not true either. No, sometimes it’s just me. Call it forgetfulness, stupidity, or immaturity but embarrassing shit is nothing new. It’s an everyday occurrence. For example, the other day I went to the grocery store. I had 10 euros and my debit card my pocket. I gathered a week or two supply of groceries and went to pay. It was about $20 euro so I gave her my debit card. I hadn’t realized until this point, but I had yet to use my card, so I suddenly got worried it wouldn’t work. But it went through, and I was relieved… until she asked for my pin. *Insert “Uhhhh-Duh” Face here.* I had written my pin number down, and of course left it at home. I made a few failed attempts at guessing the number then tried (in my best Spanish) to explain I lived close by and I could go get my number. But she told me the store was closing. So I had to void everything and have the cashier re-ring up item by item until I had the closest to $10 without going over. And while I enjoyed playing this real life The Price is Right, it was embarrassing nonetheless.

 

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It won’t stop

 

I’m not sure if this will be an open blog that I continue to add to during my time here or if I will choose to keep my embarrassing moments to the least amount of people as possible. But regardless what I do with them, they will continue to happen. Maybe it is not using the oven for a month because I don’t know how to turn it on, or trying to go to school in my slippers. It could be staring at a Spanish keyboard trying to find the  @ symbol. Or making a purse out of what I thought was a water bottle, but now I just look like a raging alcoholic because it’s supposed to be used for wine. Whatever it may be, embarrassing shit is going to keep on happening….and may the humiliation keep me humble.