‘Canalla’

Spanish people like to describe Madrid as ‘canalla‘. It’s an untranslatable word. It can be like ‘swine, underhanded, naughty’, with both negative and positive meanings. You just have to walk around the city for few hours, and you will probably end up with two or three funny anecdotes: Maybe some eccentric character stopped you in the street and told you something inusual, or maybe some elder told you her inheritance problems with her sister at the underground, ore maybe some guy offered you a personal poem in exchange for money.

Madrid is a secure and social city, and that makes the capital of Spain unique, just because security fact is usually associated with personal isolation.

This is an example of what gives to Madrid the canalla‘s meaning, it happened to me yesterday: I was alone, walking down Montera’s street, a famous street full of prostitutes (don’t imagine Montera as a suburb-street, it’s situated in the most expensive neighborhood, at the center of the city) when some girl stopped me, and without saying anything she started to caress my cheek looking at my eyes, and she said:

– ‘I would suck your cock for free!’

As the contrary as you might think, I felt flattered, and I apologized saying to her ‘Sorry, I’m gay‘, and I continued my way with a smile.

Zhao’s way

Zhao, my Chinese Dynamic Macroeconomics teacher has become my new educational boy-toy about Chinese way of being.

I have learnt that if he pushes me violently, it means he is kindly asking me to move away because I’m on his way (seriously, that discovery meant an important improvement in the relationship). Now I’m investigating the reason of why he doesn’t cuts his cheek’s hair. It’s a pretty long and thick hair, and when he is under any light, the hair shadows all his face in a very disgusting way.

The last thing that surprised me was his way to mark the correct answer. In Spain we prefer to circle the correct one, in US they use ✓. But… how about the newcomer superpower? Let’s see…

A crooked rectangle above the answer! (You can see another one in the previous question)

It seems that we have a long way to have a full-understanding of their way of thinking. And since they became the second world’s superpower few months ago -surpassing Japan-, we have to do it quickly.

So, do you fancy a visit to the chinese supermarket? Last time I went I saw noodles for 0,75€!

Receive a letter from the Three Wise Men

On Christmas, all spanish kids write letters to the ‘Three Wise Men’ (Reyes Magos) asking for toys and presents, so that on the night of the 5th of January the Kings enter the houses across the country delivering all the presents requested.

If you write ‘receive’ in Google, it will suggests you ‘Receive a letter from the Three Wise Men’. I wonder how many spanish kids searched that, trying to make real contact with them.

Cute.

[Discovered by kierosersanta, thanks!]