The Kindness of Strangers

The kindness of strangers
Never was this phrase more true than today. We left Barcelona for Seville, and after finding our very lovely apartment, went shopping at the local mercado. What a trip!! 8:30 pm and everyone was at the supermarket. It was packed. We got inline to check out, only to discover we had to weigh all our fruits, and that could have meant getting out of the very long line and waiting another 20 minutes to get back in.

To make matters worse, as soon as the young cashier starting speaking to me, I got brain freeze. Any tiny memory I had of spanish just flew out of my head. Es stupido was all I could think to myself. How do foreigners who come to the United States do it?? How do they come to this country, get a job, navigate all the barriers, not the least of which is the language?? Trying to speak a foreign language is exhausting!!!! It takes so much energy to just live in a culture that is different than your own. I stood there just repeating "lo siento" and "mil gracias" until the cashier left her register, went to help Wayne weigh the fruit, came back and rang up all my stuff and then rang up the fruit, added it to our bill, then sent us on our way. She could have yelled at us or gotten really annoyed, but she was calm and gracious with us, these non-native speakers.

The next time I encounter someone who doesn't speak English, I hope to be as gracious as that lovely young woman, at the grocery store in Sevilla. Tomorrow, we explore the very heart of the inspiration for this sabbatical, the mosque/cathedral and perhaps the Alcazar, unless it gets too hot, and then we siesta and see it Wednesday.