May 25 (1)

So, how's my Spanish, you might ask. It's getting there, slowly but surely. My main problem during the first weeks was that I could understand maybe 70% of what everyone was saying to me but nothing would come out of my mouth. All the words would just fly out of my head the moment I had to say something. These days I can really put something resembling a sentence together, even if it's never anything too complex and I bet I get all the tenses wrong. The one thing that has surprised me here though was how nice everyone was to me when they realised I couldn't speak Spanish but I was trying. Most people don't mind repeating things, they try to guess what I'm trying to say, they're patient. I was dreading they might be a bit like I've seen some Frenchies act towards tourists but they aren't. I was told it's a Southern thing... although one of my Spanish colleagues said that she finds that even here people treat non-Spanish speakers, especially tourists, terribly.