A Few Cultural Differences

Here are just a few interesting or different things  we've noticed about Spain.

1.  The Eating schedule is very different than ours in the USA.  Breakfast isn't that different, although most companies feed their employees breakfast at work.  Lunch is eaten around 2 p.m. and most companies pay for their employees' lunches.  Dinner is not eaten until around 9p.m.  If you walk by a restaurant between 5- 8pm it would be empty even if it were open (most don't open until around 9pm).  We are compromising our Utah dinner time of 5:30-6 to 7ish.  No one will ever convince us that 9pm is okay to eat dinner. 

Morgan's watch shows it is 7:50 and the place is empty.  It most likely doesn't even open for another hour.

I will talk about the typical Spanish foods in another post when I can get some pictures.  

 2.  School Stuff:  They do quite a few things differently here in the schools, some I've already mentioned, and here are a few more: *After the first couple of days of school the vice principal was concerned because Kaiya's  and Morgan's math teachers claimed they didn't know how to divide.  After I explained that they do know how to divide but just don't know how they do it here, she seemed to understand that they were just confused.   Once we figured it out how they do it here the kids were fine. 

On the left of the above picture it shows you how they divide here.  Do you have it figured out or do you need another minute?   To the right is their lined paper.  They write between the more narrow lines rather than the wider spaced ones. 

*More Math: Commas are used as decimal points instead of periods and periods are used where we use commas in numbers.  For example: $5.654 is a lot more money than $5,65 (the latter is just five dollars and 65 cents).  It really messed up Morgan's math homework before we realized  this. 

*Measuring: Besides using the metric system, they use the Celsius scale for temperature.  Today is 11°.

This is Mason's 1st grade science homework.  *Besides the cursive you can see that they teach British spelling as in "colour" and "neighbourhood".

*Writing: The kids learn cursive in preschool when they are first learning their letters.  Mason's homework is mostly in cursive as you can see in the above picture.  Kamree brought home something from school with a cursive letter L that she was supposed to trace.  Yes she is still only 4. 

*Kids are required by law to go to school from age 3 on, and not just for a couple of hours, but for the same length as the rest of the elementary kids.

*They don't have our yellow school buses here, but instead they have buses that look like tour buses with the nice soft squishy seats, and yes the families have to pay for them.

*You can eat lunch at school but it will cost you between $5-$12 a day.  If you bring your own lunch it will still cost you, just a little less.  


 3.  They speak Spanish here.  I know that is surprising but they do and we are trying to learn it and to teach it to our kids.  I expected more adults to speak English, but so far we have found very few.  The schools just recently started the bilingual programs so it is mostly just the kids that speak English well.

Here is our grandisima church!

The other day, as I was answering a Spanish language question, Mason announced with surprise  "Mom is smarter than dad and he is bigger than her."  Of course the rest of us have known that all along!

We had a Spanish teacher set up to come twice a week to teach the kids and Brent, but on her first lesson she quit halfway through it.  She claimed that she has never taught kids and she just doesn't know how.  We are still waiting for a replacement.  Most of church is in Spanish and more than half of School is in Spanish so we know that should help.  I've been working with the kids everyday after school for about an hour with the two older and about a half hour with the two younger kids. I have forgotten so much Spanish but it is quickly coming back to me the longer I am here.


4.  Most bathrooms in Spain, as well as the rest of Europe, include bidets.  So far Morgan is the only one that has tried ours in our home; based on the towel he used to dry off after, it didn't work so well for him.  I assume you don't want a picture of this.

5.  Sports.- Futbol, which of course is soccer, is the most popular sport here, and American Football is almost non-existent,  they do play baloncesta (basketball), and lots of other slightly different sports such as handball which is similar to basketball but they use a goal instead of a basket.

In gym at school, the kids have played dodge ball with only one ball, had outside gym, which is just another recess, or done acrobatics which we initially thought was gymnastics.  It is always done with partners and is a combinations of dance, tumbling and cheer leading.  It is very fun to watch if you want to google it.  It is also taught at the community gym along with figure skating with roller skates; our kids want to try both. 

Here are some of the beginning positions the kids have learned in acrobatica.

These were just a few things we could think of, but we know there are countless others which I'm sure you will see in future posts.