¿Vale?

I think that “vale” is the most used word here in Spain. I always thought it meant “do you understand?” or “do you agree?” but here they use it for everything. Walking down the street I hear “vale, vale,vale” over and over again. I think it’s used as a filler such as “like” or “um” in English... J

I’m slowly beginning to pick up on the everyday language too. I’m getting used to hearing Spanish all the time, so it’s becoming more natural. However, I still have trouble when I’m trying to explain something or have a conversation with someone. There are so many words I don’t know!

Last Friday we went to Madrid! There were so many things to see and do there; we literally walked for miles! While Madrid was exciting, I actually think I prefer Segovia, because it’s much easier to find our way around and walk everywhere here.

One of the highlights of our visit to Madrid was getting to go on top of a building (I can’t remember the name of it) and look out over the whole city of Madrid. 

Another highlight was getting to tour a palace that was built in the 1700’s. We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside, but it was incredible! The current king and queen live in a smaller palace (which was something else new that I learned: Spain still has a king & queen! Like England, they are a constitutional monarchy. I felt kind of dumb that I didn’t know that before haha…).  But, past kings & queens of Spain lived in the palace.

Living in Spain has definitely been an adjustment. There are so many things that are different here than in the U.S., such as the concept of time. People here move slowly and there never seems to be a rush to do anything. When we go to cafés, I order coffee but don’t pay for it right away. Everyone just pays sometime before they leave. When we’re ready to leave, I go up to the counter and ask “¿Me cobras?” which means, “can I pay you now?” and then the barista asks what I had and I pay for it. 

Also, the stores and restaurants don’t really have set hours. When we ask places what time they close, we get an answer like “Probably 12 or 1…” 

Oh, and for the past 2 days we didn’t have any hot water. I’m still not sure what happened, but all of a sudden last night we had it again (which was very nice considering it was snowing when we woke up this morning…) 

Well, this is getting pretty long, so next time I’ll write about food/meals…which are also VERY different from at home…¡Hasta luego!