Dan Janal | Publicity and PR Leads Blog

We met a famous Spanish actor today in the immersion section of the class. Juan Anillo spoke about his life as an actor and actively tried to get me to ask him questions in Spanish. He seemed like a very warm and personable fellow. I got his picture with me. I hope I can upload it to my blog. It will have to wait until I get back home.

Interesting fact: We say “break a leg” to actors for good luck. In Spain, they say “Mucha Mierda.” You can use Google translator if you need to.

My iPhone doesn’t work here. That is, the data is mucho expensivo (Spanish!) so I turned the phone off. I can take pictures, but can´t send via iPhone. I figured how to transfer pix to laptop, but it appears that the connection is so slow that pix might be a
problem to send. A yousendit file I wanted to send to a client said it would take 25 hours!

The school teaches grammar and conversation in the morning. In the afternoon, they deliver lectures so we can build our listening skills. I understood most of a 2-hour lecture on the Spanish news media (it’s growing! People read newspapers here, unlike the US.) Also, the papers are very partisan. No fair and balanced news here. People buy the paper that reflects their opinions. And yes, Rupert Murdoch owns papers here. Is he King of the World?

Class is getting easier. My head still spins at the end of the morning. It is good. To learn a language you really need a lot of drill and repetition and speaking. Before I came to Spain, I listened to many hours of Spanish language CDs. That was good for building vocabulary and listening skills, but when you have to speak, it is like starting from square one.

The teachers are very good. I’m getting more comfortable in restaurants and trying to think of stories to tell using Spanish. If you try hard enough, you can make verbs do a lot of work for you!

I was going to go to the Thyssen Bornesmisaz museum for an hour, but it was so good, I stayed for four hours!

Travel writer Rick Steeves says it is a museum filled with major works by minor artists and minor works by major artists. There´s a lesson to be learned there. Think about it.

Reasons it was so good and ways to enhance your next vist to a museum:
1. Audio program. Never enter a museum without one. It really adds a lot of commentary you’d never know about that enriches the experience.
2. Rembrandt’s self portrait. First thing I saw. Major work. Major artist. Sorry, Rick. You got that one wrong.
3. I got exposed to German artists from the 1500s onward. They are very good!
4. Discovered Fauvism. Or at least liked it this time.
5. Discovered German Expressionism. It’s very good.
7. I wore out two audio programs. I guess most people don’t listen to too many commentaries.
8. Not too many tourists. They’re áll at the Prado. I’ll be there later this week. Steeves says that´s where the major art from major artists appear.

And the big reason:

9. The people in the portraits smiled and seemed joyous. Not all, but many. It dawned on me that in every other museum I´ve been in, nearly every portrait showed a person who was somber, reflective, contemplative or depressed. This realization alone made the trip to the museum worthwhile!

So far, so good!

Madrid is a very pretty city with lots of grand buildings adorned with decorative sculptures or intricate grillworks. There are lots of good pictures to be had here.

Everything is fairly close together and the subway stops are every where.  It is easy to get around.It is also very hot so walking under trees to get the shade is worth it.

My hotel is better than I expected. Thank goodness for reviews on Trip Advisor and Hotels.com. I got a great rate and a quiet room. If the only words I knew in Spanish were ¨no fumar¨then those were the right words to make sure I got a no smoking room. A little Spanish can go a long way.

Internet is odd. Without it, I feel disconnected. I have free WiFi ( pronounced WE-FE) in the hotel and can send and recieve email and web pages. But on my iPhone, all data and email are charged extra. Tough to get used to. I´ve heard of people raking up thousands of dollars in roaming charges in foreign countries, so I set my phone on airplane mode to be safe. 

Speaking of differences, here are a few:

1. People wait for lights to change. They don´t cross against the light.

2. No aggressive panhandling.

3. Coffee is small – even at Starbucks.

4. McDonalds has a fancy cappucino area (no, I didn´t eat there. )

5. Every restaurant serves paella. 

6. Lots of big cars, like any American city and traffic seems manageable, although Í´d never drive anywhere outside the US or Canada.

7.The keyboard is different. Forgive the typos. 

8. I saw a bullfight on TV. Absolutely disgusting. Sounds cool until you see a bull withering in pain, bleeding, dying. Too add insult to injury, they drag the dying bull out of the ring by attaching a rope to his horns and hitch it to a pick up truck. Yuch.

9. Surprisingly, I understood most of a 2-hour lecture geared for all levels of speakers. 10. Surprisingly, all the Spanish I studied before coming here is difficult to speak. Theres a big difference between book learning and actually using it.  Hopefully after a week, that will change. 

10.First thing I saw when emerging from the subway: Ginormous billboard for ¨¨Sex en Neueva York II¨ with Sara Jessica Parker. I wonder if it is better in Spanish.

More tomorrow.