Salamanca

Miscommunication Mayhem

On August 11^th till August 14^th, after spending 4 days in Portugal, we headed to our first destination in Spain which was Salamanca. Salamanca is known as the “City of Universities” with many new and historical universities all over the city. As a group of 13 pilgrims from my church, we were assigned to different families to spend 4 days in this wonderful and beautiful city for “Days in the Diocese”, this is an event where we would be spending time in a city and tour the churches and cathedrals of that city, learning about their significance and history. Though it was only a short period of 4 days, the experience I got from living in Salamanca will stay with me for a life time. I and along with two of my close parish friends were assigned to live with an old couple whom lived just 10 minutes away from Salamanca in a small town called Villa Mayor. They lived in a rural area with their siblings, where each had a tiny house of their own around a large garden of home grown vegetables. One of the most difficult problems that my friends and I crossed when living with the old couple was the language barriers.

Isabelle, Alejandro, and I at Salamanca Renfe Train Station, just before leaving for Madrid (August 2011)

Upon our arrival at their house, we were greeted by Isabelle, the wife of Alejandro, our host. “Hola, chicas!” She said. Of course, at the time, I had no idea what she said. So, my friends and I just smiled and waved (it was only later on in the day that I found out the term “chicas” meant “girls” and not "chickens"). We were then invited into their tiny home to drop off our luggage and backpacks and to get to know one another. Unfortunately, the only problem we had was we spoke no Spanish and they spoke no English. 

My host family's beautiful home (August, 2011)

“Comjer……ahora…blah blah blah.”  After we sat down and attempted to introduce ourselves to Isabelle and Alejandro, this was one of the phrases they first asked us seriously. Confused and nervous at the same time, my friend quickly pulled out her iPod with a translation application, hoping to get an idea of what she said. Although it was rather unsuccessful, we did manage to find out that the term “comjer” meant “to eat” this term became one of the most important and most used vocabulary during our 4 day stay. This is only one of the many examples of me experiencing communication barriers. I didn’t actually realize this until living with Alejandro and Isabelle about how important non-verbal communication was. Oftentimes, when we tried to tell them something, we would often have to use actions to communicate our message through. This lead to major inconvenience because even just by telling them what time we need to wake up for the next day took us about a half an hour to try to let them know. But, even if they said “Ci” or “yes”, we were never quite sure if they actually understood what we were trying to tell them. Our miscommunications did not stop after the first day but got worse.

My friends Berenice, Jenny, and I (August 2011)

The next day at lunch, our host lady cooked us a very big full course lunch which was something we were not used to as Canadians. After eating a large plate of salad and “Paella” (a rice dish filled with seafood), she offered us a bowl of brown meat. We were unsure of it really was so we decided to attempt to ask her to make sure before consuming it.
“Oink oink?” I asked, trying to imitate the sounds of a pig.
“Non.” She said shaking her head.
“Moo moo.” My friend asked right after.
“Non.” She replied.

This got us really worried, as we started to guess other animals such as rabbits , cats, and dogs. This made us lose our appetite almost immediately. Fortunately, in the end, when we did the imitation of a pig once again, she finally nodded happily and said, “Ci.” However, all three of us no longer had the appetite to continue eating.

Being able to live with a local Spanish family was perhaps one of the most unforgettable experiences of my life. Not only was I able to experience the different lifestyle that they had, from eating full course lunches to taking a nap or “Siesta” in mid afternoon to get away from the scorching heat of August, I was also able to learn quite a variety of simple vocabulary that became rather useful for the rest of my trip in Spain.