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Do you know what's awkward?
Going to a party with a bunch of people you don't know, and being assigned to two of them and expected to talk with them for most of two hours.
In other news, we had the first Velada Internacional for the compañeros de conversación program last night. Don't get me wrong. I think that compañeros de conversacion is a good program to have; we'll meet more people (and also practice our Spanish - but I'm doing that most of the time). And I can't think of a particularly better way of kick-starting it than throwing a giant party and sticking all of the people involved in the same room. But that doesn't mean that it wasn't really awkward. In fact, as one of the girls pointed out, it was kind of like being on a blind date - only they were double-teaming you (and actually, while we were each assigned two compañeros/as, there was also a waiting list, so program people would come around occasionally and shove more Spanish people in your direction. There were points where I was in the middle of a semicircle of five Spaniards (literally in the middle; I was practically sitting on the table)).
- One of my conversation partners, while he seems like a really nice guy, was about as talkative as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
vorindi would be if you stuck her in a large party where she didn't know anyone. (Which is to say, not very.)
- Just about my first interaction with other conversation partner included the following exchange:
Him: "Have you seen a bullfight? No? You should see a bullfight. The bullfights here in España are very good."
Me: "Um, no. I'm not actually sure that I want to see one."
Him: "Oh, but you have to see the bulls! They are excellent! To me, I think the bulls are very important; the people need to have something to aficionar; the bullfights are good for this."
Me: "Um. Aren't they kind of risky? Er, peligroso?"
Him: "No, no, not at all! You just need to see a good bullfighter."
OtherCompañero: [stage whisper] "Yes, very."
Me: "No, it seems peligroso to me, especially with the local ferias, cuando es todo el pueblo, y no solo un matador . . ."
Him: "No, you just need to see a good bullfight."
It should be mentioned that this whole conversation was wobbling in and out of Spanish.
And actually, I'm very sure that I don't want to see a bullfight. While I have no particular fondness for bulls, I have absolutely no desire to watch an animal tortured to death for sport. I do refrain from calling it a barbaric custom, since there's all sorts of crazy-complicated layers of cultural what-have-you involved, not to mention American culture-imposing. In short, as a guest, I'm not going to carp about the way they clean. But I'm not going to a bullfight, either.
-We were in the same restaurant that we were in for the meet-the-profs copa; the one we were crowded in with 50 people. And this was probably three times that number. They did open up another room, but it wasn't that big. Luckily I wasn't actually trying to mingle; it was hard enough to slip through the crowd to go to the bathroom.
-My abilities to create conversations with strangers seemed to be on vacation (not that I can truely blame them; they've had a lot of work lately). I did okay at keeping a conversation going, but when we reached the logical end of a particular topic, somebody else needed to start one (luckily bullfighting aficionado was good at talking and asking questions). This may have had to do with the fact that while I knew that they were older than me, I didn't know if this meant students or Actual Working Adults. And I was unsure enough that I couldn't think of any not-awkward questions to figure this out (I mean, you don't want to ask someone who's been out of school for 15 years, "So, are you a student?" And they were in that stage of indeterminate-appearance adulthood where I really couldn't tell how old they were. And while I have conversation-starting questions to ask students (well, mostly Smithies), and conversation-starting questions to ask Actual Working Adults, I don't have that many questions that work for either. And fewer in Spanish (maybe I should work on this)).
-Being sung at and happy-birthdayed by two rooms almost completely full of strangers (and thirty people you do know) nearly two weeks after your birthday has past. Luckily there were two of us. And the cake was excellent (I've noticed that both ice cream and cake here often has these cone-shaped twists of thin plate chocolate on top; I approve).
-And I just find these standing-up dinners to be really peculiar.
However, I did eventually figure out that they were both students hoping to become English teachers, and quiet guy seems to have a good sense of humor if you can get him to be un-awkward enough to talk, and the other seems to be a right proper geek; video games and fantasy and sci-fan (not the introverted sort of geek, though (luckily - otherwise we would have been treated to even-more-awkward than it was already).
In other news, I need to figure out how to say awkward in Spanish.
In other news, we had the first Velada Internacional for the compañeros de conversación program last night. Don't get me wrong. I think that compañeros de conversacion is a good program to have; we'll meet more people (and also practice our Spanish - but I'm doing that most of the time). And I can't think of a particularly better way of kick-starting it than throwing a giant party and sticking all of the people involved in the same room. But that doesn't mean that it wasn't really awkward. In fact, as one of the girls pointed out, it was kind of like being on a blind date - only they were double-teaming you (and actually, while we were each assigned two compañeros/as, there was also a waiting list, so program people would come around occasionally and shove more Spanish people in your direction. There were points where I was in the middle of a semicircle of five Spaniards (literally in the middle; I was practically sitting on the table)).
- One of my conversation partners, while he seems like a really nice guy, was about as talkative as
vorindi would be if you stuck her in a large party where she didn't know anyone. (Which is to say, not very.)- Just about my first interaction with other conversation partner included the following exchange:
Him: "Have you seen a bullfight? No? You should see a bullfight. The bullfights here in España are very good."
Me: "Um, no. I'm not actually sure that I want to see one."
Him: "Oh, but you have to see the bulls! They are excellent! To me, I think the bulls are very important; the people need to have something to aficionar; the bullfights are good for this."
Me: "Um. Aren't they kind of risky? Er, peligroso?"
Him: "No, no, not at all! You just need to see a good bullfighter."
OtherCompañero: [stage whisper] "Yes, very."
Me: "No, it seems peligroso to me, especially with the local ferias, cuando es todo el pueblo, y no solo un matador . . ."
Him: "No, you just need to see a good bullfight."
It should be mentioned that this whole conversation was wobbling in and out of Spanish.
And actually, I'm very sure that I don't want to see a bullfight. While I have no particular fondness for bulls, I have absolutely no desire to watch an animal tortured to death for sport. I do refrain from calling it a barbaric custom, since there's all sorts of crazy-complicated layers of cultural what-have-you involved, not to mention American culture-imposing. In short, as a guest, I'm not going to carp about the way they clean. But I'm not going to a bullfight, either.
-We were in the same restaurant that we were in for the meet-the-profs copa; the one we were crowded in with 50 people. And this was probably three times that number. They did open up another room, but it wasn't that big. Luckily I wasn't actually trying to mingle; it was hard enough to slip through the crowd to go to the bathroom.
-My abilities to create conversations with strangers seemed to be on vacation (not that I can truely blame them; they've had a lot of work lately). I did okay at keeping a conversation going, but when we reached the logical end of a particular topic, somebody else needed to start one (luckily bullfighting aficionado was good at talking and asking questions). This may have had to do with the fact that while I knew that they were older than me, I didn't know if this meant students or Actual Working Adults. And I was unsure enough that I couldn't think of any not-awkward questions to figure this out (I mean, you don't want to ask someone who's been out of school for 15 years, "So, are you a student?" And they were in that stage of indeterminate-appearance adulthood where I really couldn't tell how old they were. And while I have conversation-starting questions to ask students (well, mostly Smithies), and conversation-starting questions to ask Actual Working Adults, I don't have that many questions that work for either. And fewer in Spanish (maybe I should work on this)).
-Being sung at and happy-birthdayed by two rooms almost completely full of strangers (and thirty people you do know) nearly two weeks after your birthday has past. Luckily there were two of us. And the cake was excellent (I've noticed that both ice cream and cake here often has these cone-shaped twists of thin plate chocolate on top; I approve).
-And I just find these standing-up dinners to be really peculiar.
However, I did eventually figure out that they were both students hoping to become English teachers, and quiet guy seems to have a good sense of humor if you can get him to be un-awkward enough to talk, and the other seems to be a right proper geek; video games and fantasy and sci-fan (not the introverted sort of geek, though (luckily - otherwise we would have been treated to even-more-awkward than it was already).
In other news, I need to figure out how to say awkward in Spanish.