This week I got to check off two items from my bucket list.
On Thursday night, we went to MadCool festival, where I got to see one of my all time favorite bands , The Backseat Lovers. We staked out the stage they were playing on for four hours before their set. I was psyched when we made it to the barricade. By the time they came on I was shaking with excitement. Seeing them live was one of the best nights of my life and I am so thankful for the opportunity. After seeing the Backseat Lovers, we went to check out Muse and Weezer. Both were pretty cool live and brought good crowds and lots of dancing. MadCool was my first musical festival, and I had such a great time with my friends.
My second bucket list item was going to Pamplona for San Fermín, also known as Running of the Bulls. San Fermín is a week long festival that consists of bullfights, 24-hour long parties, and a race through the streets. We arrived in Pamplona at 6pm on Saturday and left at 11 am Sunday morning. Even in our short time there, we managed to pack so much in. We danced all night and then in the morning, we got to see the people running the streets, although it was so crowded I missed seeing the actual bulls running. I was super bummed that I didn’t actually see any bulls but at the same time the atmosphere and the energy of the night made up for it. I had a blast and got to spend my Sunday napping.
During our last couple of weeks in Madrid, we are trying to fit in all the things that we haven’t done yet. One of those was visiting the city’s famous art museums. This week, we checked the Museo de Reina Sofía off our list and got to see works by artists like Picasso and Salvador Dalí. I’m not always a museum person, but this one was very cool and interesting. Plus, it also had air conditioning, which was a big seller for me.
At work, things have been winding down for me. The biggest groups of the summer have come and gone, many of my coworkers are taking their vacations, and I am finishing up all my final projects. In Spain, people get a lot of vacation time, and my coworkers are taking full advantage of this by spending some of the next couple of weeks at the beach or in the mountains to escape the Madrid heat. I am a bit jealous, but it is cool to see the cool places they go.
This weeks theme is low and high context communication and how they compare in a work environment.
Spain is a low-context communication culture, which means that more is implied than the words that are said. This kind of communication relies on a strong understanding of situations, emotions, and the crowd you are with. On the other hand, the United States is a high-context communication culture, which suggests that we are very direct and we say what we mean. I personally have not noticed this as much at work. My boss is not from Spain, and he has worked in a couple places around the world, and I have found that his method of communication is very direct and communicative.
The one thing I have noticed with communication has been that when they say tomorrow it really means in the next couple of days. I have felt that the concept of time and what “on time” is very different than in the United States. For example, if I am supposed to be somewhere at a certain time, I am going to be there five minutes early, and I would expect the same of anyone that I was meeting. Here in Madrid, it is very different. If something needs to be done by tomorrow, it really needs to be done by next week. Simply, they have a very different concept of time and urgency. However I don’t consider this a problem for me. I would say it has lead me to being “accidentally productive” in a couple instances.
The biggest issue I have had regarding communication is my instinct to agree. When I am not sure what someone is asking me, I tend to nod or just say yes and see how far it gets me. One time I was with my host family before dinner, and my host mom asked me if I wanted to pray with her and her friends. I was unfamiliar with the word “pray” in Spanish, and I couldn’t figure out what she was asking me. I told her yes, and she was so excited and told me to come kneel with them. Thankfully, her daughter was there and quickly asked me in English if I knew what I was agreeing to. That was a big turning point for me. From there on out I made a more conscious effort to ask more questions and to ask for clarification.
As my time here starts to approach its end, everything feels like its speeding up. I thought that the weeks were going by fast before, but now they are in turbo mode. I blinked and it’s mid-July?!