I blame my busyness on my family having been here for the past 10 days. It was magnificent. They flew into Madrid last Friday (and Candice did too). Friday was mostly just a relaxing day; they had just flown about 7 hours across the ocean to a different time zone after all. Then, on Saturday morning, I gave Candice and my mom a tour of the Prado. I think I did a decent job having been there once before. We saw all the important and famous things. Later that day we went to a rookie bull fight. It was fun to go with my family. Then, on Sunday, we went to the Museum Reyna Sophia. I liked it a lot because it had Gurnica and three films by Buñuel.
My family was in Salamanca for 4 days. I felt bad because Salamanca doesn’t have too much to see and I had class. However, I think my family was completely satisfied with living like a Spaniard for a few days. They woke up late, relaxed in the Plaza, ate tapas and walked around. Then, we spent this weekend in Seville visiting our distant relatives. It was weird and funny hanging out with them. We have the strangest things in common, like the whole family loves Opera and all the men in the family like Westerns.
Another cool thing about having family in Seville is that they know where all the good places are. For instance, they took us to a really great Flamenco show. It was a little touristy, but we avoided the very touristy places. We also went to a Bullfight museum. Apparently bullfighting originated as medieval training. Nobles would be on horses and learn to fight bulls from there and only when the bull posed as a threat would the servants come out and distract the bull with the colorful capes. Interesante.
That was my weekend, and now I would like to digress into a pseudo deeper topic. I have an actual journal where I write more stuff like this, usually better and more intellectual, but I figured I’d give a light topic a try before posting other things. Let me know how you like it and what kind of posts you like more (aka, reply with something like “Virginia, I like hearing about your travel experiences” or “Virginia, I like hearing about your mental experiences” or “Virginia, nothing you write grabs me yet, keep trying new things”) hokay: My parents are fluent in Spanish, which is something I just recently recognized as a huge blessing. But, I’ve been in Spain for 3 months now and this weekend we were with my relatives speaking only Spanish. So, my family went to this Flamenco show on Saturday and I heard the guy in front of me talking in English. I was a huge creep and overheard him talking about having graduated with a degree in engineering and he said something about work and coming to Spain. I have a good friend who recently graduated from college with a degree in engineering and who is very interested in traveling. Therefore, I was intrigued. It ends up the guy at the Flamenco show in Seville is from Washington and is switching engineering jobs and has two weeks of vacation, so that’s what he’s doing in Spain. All this background leads me to a rhetorical question, sorry journalism majors:
Do you know those people that you’re never really talking to, both of you are just sort of talking at each other? Both of you are too busy thinking about the next thing you’re going to say. How does that happen? Is it because you’re worried about the conversation flow? Is it because you want to try to impress them? Or is it just because you really want to talk about yourself? Or is it just them? So I started to think about people that it’s kind of awkward to talk to. Maybe sometimes it’s hard to talk to someone because you’re really talking with them. Like, maybe the awkward people that aren’t worrying about what to say next are the only people really listening. Maybe not, probably not, but I kind of wanted to open up a dialog about awkward conversations.
Very truly yours,
Virginia
Despite the rhetorical nature of your question, I’m still going to respond, because I think this is an interesting topic.
Years ago, my father always told me that the best way to avoid awkward pauses in conversation was to ask people about their favorite topic: themselves. It makes sense – it’s the one thing we each know more about than anyone else, and so we avoid looking stupid (as opposed to talking about current events or art or literature or anything like that).
At the same time, I think the nature of a conversation is that the back-and-forth part of it isn’t exactly equal. There’s a big difference in having a heart-to-heart with someone (being the silent listener, absorbing all that they say, for however long that takes, and THEN speaking) or having a casual conversation where it’s less essential that you hold on to their every word. Most conversations occur because people want to share something with others, not necessarily have the other person respond back to them about it. But that’s just my opinion.