So David, our literature teacher from University of Oregon, gave us some good advice a while ago, and today I decided to actually listen to it. David told us that he studied abroad in Madrid when he was our age, and the best thing he learned to do when trying to get someone to help you (regardless of where you go) is to start off by saying "I'm sorry, my Spanish is kind of poor". Usually I have to much pride to follow this advice, as I like to be right as often as possible and I hate admitting I don't actually know what I'm doing (personal weaknesses, working on fixing those traits... haha). However, when you're in a foreign country and don't entirely understand what someone is saying to you, there isn't a lot of BSing you can do to act like you know what is going on. Therefore, today I used David's advice.
Last night we got an email from RyanAir that all flights for Spring Break have been canceled. The airports here have been having problems recently, and I believe some part of RyanAir is on strike about something. So anyways, we had to find a new way to get to Barcelona and back for Spring Break. This sucked, cause we already had all our plans made. But Laura and I spent 3 hours looking at all the other options and bugging Silvia (AHA, she speaks both English and Spanish and is one of the most adorable people ever!) to help us with some complicated things we didn't understand. Then when we finally decided on taking the train, our credit cards wouldn't work online. Silvia suggested going to the train station and doing it in person. She said my Spanish was good enough to not have any issues, but the whole thing sounded way more complicated to me than to just buy them online. However, we weren't left with a whole lot of options and Laura and I both live right by the train station anyways.
After searching the entire station for a good 10-15 minutes and completely missing the info desk right by the entrance, we made our way up to the counter. I started off by saying "I'm sorry, my Spanish isn't great, but we need tickets...". Just like David told me. Turns out he was right. The man was really nice and spoke really slow, so he was super easy to understand. We got the tickets no problem and finally went home.
Like I've said before, in Oviedo people rarely speak English. Many of the younger people are trying to learn, but most adults or people in stores will just look at you like you are an idiot if you don't speak in Spanish. And in their defense, that's fair-in the United States we do the same thing if someone doesn't speak English well. However, it makes life hard when you don't always know the vocab you need. After today, anytime I am dealing with a similar situation I will for sure claim my incompetence before trying to just act like a Spaniard (damn it) because clearly the results are better and way less frustrating.
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