Never play chicken with a Spainard

See? Jacket looks pretty legit!

Finally got some shopping in last week! Molly and I hit up only a couple of streets, but they were sufficient to keep us occupied for several hours. The sales going on are coming to a close in the near future so it was necesario that we take advantage. I ended up buying a scarf, earrings, brown boots, and a brown faker-than-pleather-but-still-pretty-neat jacket all for 48 €! I think I’ve fed my shopping appetite for a couple weeks.

So it wasn’t until that shopping experience that I felt for the first time a minor surge of culture shock. During orientation we were warned that Spaniards have a different view of personal space, as well as customer service. In essence, they are both non-existent. I have been here for a week and I believe the shopping day was the first day I heard a Spaniard say “perdon” as she shoved me aside, and it certainly happens on a daily basis. Shopping in the crowded stores only elevated the number of occurrences; people tended to just brush roughly past you, grab your waist to push you aside--shop workers included, all without a word of apology. Back in the states, I would not endure this. In fact, I distinctly remember last summer browsing perfumes in an aisle and a store worker reached right in front of me to grab something, and that was enough to set my off. Let’s just say, said worker later felt my wrath.

 Allow me to delve into a bit of an analogy now in order to further illustrate this Spanish view of personal space. You know when you’re perusing a rack of clothes, moving rightward along it, and someone starts browsing at the opposite end of the rack, and begins to move towards you? As you each inch along eventually one person surrenders the rack and moves to another one, but only once you’re nearing the point of interrupting one another's personal space. I’ve always thought of it like playing “chicken”, trying to see who will go the longest without giving up or getting uncomfortable first. Now in the U.S., I pride myself on my relentless “chicken” stamina when it comes to clothes; if I want to thoroughly peruse a rack, I will finish it at my leisure and without interruption, regardless of whether or not I'm dangerously close to violating someone's personal space in the process. Well, that shopping day I found myself in such a situation, and decided to put my skills to the test here in a new environment. The contender was a middle-aged woman, moving at record speed toward me in a rack of dresses “rebajadas”. But I wouldn’t allow myself to be intimidated by her indifference toward me! I inched right along the rack toward her. But she kept coming closer. I slowed down. She didn’t. She showed no signs of stopping. Maybe I imagined things in the heat of the moment, but I SWEAR, once we were next to each other, close enough to violate the standard U.S. personal space bubble,  she reached BETWEEN my arms to look at a blouse. As if it was nothing. Obviously, I immediately threw up my white flag and relocated to another rack. Lesson learned: do not play shopping “chicken” with a Spaniard. Defeat is inevitable.

Anyway, the other part of the culture shock has come from customer service. Wherever you eat, you have to do everything in your power short of entering the kitchen if you want to order and receive your food! The same tends to go for clothing stores. So when I was shopping, you better believe there was no petty worker at the entrance of each store welcoming me in, no worker to set me up a fitting room, nor one to ask me if I was looking for something in particular. I don’t quite know how I feel about this yet. I think many people would agree that the amount of time store workers bother you in the U.S. is borderline harassment, but receiving no attention at all is not exactly optimal either! Hmm. In my Utopian society, I would have the store worker greet me, treat me with positive regard without hovering, run to my side to help me only when I needed it, and probably carry around my items for me…Aaaaaand I think I also just described my ideal man.

More later on our trip to Sevilla and Ronda over the weekend! c: