All kinds of different

Okay I expected the language difficulties and the different food and schedule but there are so many little things that are just, well, weird to me in Spain. For example, the calendar begins on Monday not Sunday each week. The regular paper size for copiers, printers and even notebooks is more narrow and longer than ours. Which means it doesn't fit on my fun clipboard that I always use when teaching. The toilets in public bathrooms don't have a seat and some have the tank up high on the wall and you pull the chain to flush. Others have a button on top of the tank too small to push with your foot. Almost no one has a clothes dryer but they don't really need it because the climate is so dry the clothes dry in a short time on a clothesline outside apartment windows. The elevator has 2 doors. The inside one slides open and closed automatically like you would expect but the outside one is on hinges like a regular door that you have to push or pull. Almost every time I take it alone I forget this and stand there waiting for the door to open for quite a while before realizing that the elevator arrived some time ago!
The language is problematic because I learned Spanish in South America, which is quite different than that of Spain. Think about the curious words used by the British and Australians. Today I described a woman on our team as a female monkey! Quite different than what I meant to say--that she is blond! The word was correct in SA but my Spanish hostess got a good laugh and shared the story with everyone. I referred to the car as a carriage several times before she eventually pointed it out to me. Guess she isn't aware of my royal heritage! Even words I expected to be universal among Spanish speakers like computer and "cute" are different. My hostess Susanna says if people weren't told they would assume I was South American not North American. Although sometimes they look at me like I'm from outer space when I try to communicate.
The money is different too and I'm constantly pulling out my phone to use the currency converter. Europeans carry more coins than we do and the bills are different sizes. At the ice cream shop today I ordered a coke light (which does NOT taste like diet coke!) and didn't quite understand the price (which it turned out was way too high-1.80 euros for a bottle) and while I was trying to figure out the coins, the clerk reached over and took 2 euros out of my hand. I guess he was a little too busy to wait on me to look at each coin individually!
Every day we experience something new. And every day something that was new begins to feel a little more comfortable. By the end of the month we might just fit in. Okay maybe not!