Talking to Strangers

utterly irrelevant to the rest of the post but LOOK

People who know me well would laugh in the face of anyone who called me shy. People who know me really well know better. I am actually a bit terrified of making friends. You can imagine how much I've enjoyed the enormous amount of socialising Erasmus involves (If I hadn't come here with people from my own university I have a strong suspicion that I would still not have opened my mouth to speak). Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't like people (I like some of them) but if I'm sitting in a room with people I don't know talking around me the idea of getting involved is like standing in front of a cliff and being told "Climb that". A consequence of this is that when I do manage to turn to someone and ask what last night's homework was and in the process find out their name and where they're from I do a mental victory dance. That's a small advantage of being the kind of person who worries about small stuff; when things go wrong it's a disaster but if it works out I get excited about things that no normal person would.

Recently I've been trying to talk to more people on my own. Now at this point I'm realising that this post makes me sound an utter freak but here, this is a problem for some people. I hope. Last week, after succeeding in making small talk for 5 minutes (pats self on back) I agreed to go to an Intercambio or Language Exchange in order to improve my spoken Spanish with a girl from one of my classes. Well, I tried. The idea of going to a pub where I kind of knew someone and didn't know anyone else nearly didn't let me out the door, but I made it. Then I tried to tell myself I couldn't go because I didn't have cash. But I kept going. Then the ATM was broken. But I kept going. I could buy something on my card. I would go in and talk. It'd be great. I turned the corner.

And the bar was shut.

Now it turned out later that the intercambio was just half an hour later than I had been told but you cannot IMAGINE the dejection this caused. Walking back home I resolved never to try anything ever again. Not really, I did see that this was funny considering how much I psyched myself up for it. This week I made it back (with a friend) and managed an hour and a half of small talk in English and Spanish and apart from feeling like it'll be of benefit I had fun. So there you are. One fear conquered.

Highlight of the evening was talking to a middle aged Spanish man named Pedro about the economic downturn and how "during the boom times we went crazy, there was no need at all to build so many houses and apartments, they're all empty and useless now, it's stupid". There was a lull in the conversation, so I asked him what he did. He was an architect. What was my sympathetic reply?

"Not a good time to be you then."

No wonder I'm so good at making friends.

Besos chicos x