Spain is a fine country, but just like with any other country, the customs differ from those of the United States. For this weeks blog, I wanted to mention a few of the greatest culture shocks that I’ve experienced from being in Spain so far.
- Dining Etiquette
In Spain, or at least in my homestay, there seems to be utensils for practically every kind of food. In my homestay, we have three different sizes/kinds of forks, spoons, and knives each. Each kind of utensil has its specific uses. For example, the knife that you use when you’re eating fish isn’t the same knife that you’d use for eating turkey. In addition, not as many foods that are eaten with your hands in the States are eaten with hands in Spain. After lunch one day, my host mom asked if we wanted fruit (fruit is often eaten as “dessert”). I asked for kiwi, and my host brother asked for a banana. As I was eating my kiwi with a spoon, which is the same as how I’d eat it in America, I look over to my brother, and see him eating a banana with a fork and knife! Everything from peeling the skin to eating the inside was done with a fork and knife. I was super shocked to see that. I never would’ve even imagined that there are people that eat bananas with a fork and knife.
Perhaps the greatest shock related to this topic was the time at which people eat. On the day that I moved in to my homestay, we had lunch at 2:30pm and it ended around 3:30pm. Afterwards, I took a nap that lasted until around 7:30pm, then browsed the internet for a while until it was about 9:30pm. I thought that maybe my family ate dinner without me because I was asleep, or that we just weren’t eating dinner that night for some reason, so I went over to the bathroom to brush my teeth. 10 minutes later, my host mom calls me for dinner, and I was like “¿Qué?”. Then I recalled one of the conversations I had with my host mom earlier that day, and I realized that she did mention that we eat dinner around that time, but I just misheard her.
- La Siesta
Everyday, from about 2-5pm, most shops and businesses all across Spain shut down for the siesta. In fact, it’s not uncommon for businesses to stop their services 15 minutes before they’re actually scheduled to close. “Siesta” means nap in Spanish, but in this case, it’s referring to the hours from lunchtime until work starts up again. Some people do use the time after lunch to take a nap, others use it to spend time with friends and family. During the first week I was here, I would end up taking a siesta after lunch unwillingly because my family would give me so much to eat for lunch that I would just be so tired afterwards, but after communicating to them that the food that they give me is sometimes too much, I’m not too tired after lunch, and I mostly use the siesta to either do some work or browse the internet.
- Don’t Smile
For the most part, in Madrid, people don’t smile at strangers, and I learned this the hard way. I like to smile a lot, including at strangers, and having grown up in a friendly neighborhood and having attended Hamilton these past two years, it’s normal for me to smile at people I don’t know and have them smile back, but this culture doesn’t exist in Madrid and I often forget that. For the most part, people walk with their head straight, not minding anyone else, and if you happen to make eye-contact with someone while you’re walking down the street and you flash them a quick smile, they most likely won’t smile back. They’ll probably just go back to looking straight ahead, and if you smile at someone and they do smile back at you, they’re probably not a native because apparently smiling at a stranger here means you have certain intentions towards that person. This is definitely one of the things I miss the most about Hamilton – that even though you don’t know everyone, the community still feels like family because of how friendly everyone is towards each other, even people they don’t know.
