Peacock Pandemonium

After lunch on Monday, Candace, Christin, and I decided to go to the Alcazar because we are the only people left in the group who haven’t seen it. We got there kind of late and had less than an hour or so to look around, but regardless we went in, it’s free for us since we’re residents, so we always have the option of coming back…and we definitely will.

The Alcazar here makes the one in Cordoba look like a trailer, seriously. It’s HUGE. The gardens are gorgeous, and go on forever, and inside them there are PEACOCKS. This amused us for a good portion of our time there. We stalked them, chased them, verbally accosted them (so they would put their tails up), and had a lot of fun. One of them got angry and literally chased us for several yards.

Another woman who was looking at the gardens was laughing hysterically as this peacock chased us, probably because 3 adult women getting chased by a giant bird is just a funny thing to see. She said something to us in Spanish but we couldn’t catch what it was.

We have two more students staying with us temporarily; both of them are grad students in medicine here for a Spanish program. They don’t lunch with us, which is the meal we eat with Ana and Antonio, but they do eat dinner with us, which we have previously eaten at the table by ourselves. The new students, even though they’re American, help facilitate more Spanish conversation at dinner, which I like. Usually we sit at the table and eat while Antonio watches TV, so its easy to sit there in silence while the television is on, but now that there are four of us eating and Antonio watching TV it’s a lot easier to get a conversation going. Tuesday night we talked about politics, so I was actually able to interject some things I’m learning in my classes.

I’m finding that Antonio is really funny, when we first got here we thought he only said like 5 words every day, and it was usually when correcting our Spanish, but I’ve found he’s a pretty witty guy. I can barely understand him at all when he speaks - It’s in Spanish, with an Andalucian accent, and he’s had surgery on his lungs so he speaks in a low, raspy voice. It’s pretty much an impossible task, but some of the gestures he accompanies with his words help a lot, and he loves to teach us things about what’s happening on the television.

I think my favorite thing is when Anna yells at him through the house, it’s the same cadence every time “ANTONIO!” and then a proceeding wave of Spanish at lightning speed I can’t understand. Every day at lunch we have to wait for her to serve Antonio and then we can serve ourselves, and after one scoop from the hot dish he always says “Basta” or “stop” and Ana makes fun of him and tries to feed him more anyways. He left the table to get her a glass today and she ladled more on his plate while he wasn’t looking, while mockingly saying “Basta, Basta” to us.

Some things transcend all language barriers.