My friend Bill went home to Vancouver and sent me an e-mail saying he was having culture shock.
It made me think about how used to life here I have become.
I have a long way to go before I have absorbed all of the things I'd like to from this culture, but there are some obvious ways in which I have become Spanish.

I stare at people. I ride my bike on the sidewalk. If a man looks at me, I haughtily walk past as though he doesn't exist. I turn around and look at people speaking English. I look people in the eye that pass me on the sidewalk. I don't watch where I'm going or if anyone is in front of me, but move slightly at the last minute. I walk really close to people.

I play a game with myself sometimes; I try to guess if someone is an extranjero, if they don't look obviously Spanish. Most of the time I can tell if someone is Spanish or not. Sometimes older Italian people look the same as Spanish. Some English people (like from England) look so extremely English - they have English features. I sometimes get English and German mixed up. I do this guessing when I am in the core of the downtown, as there are quite a lot of tourists there.

I never have to ask myself where a person is from if they are wearing a certain colour of red. It is common to wear red pants, and a blue shirt. There must be a dye made by a Sevillan company, or made by a Chinese company but only sold to factories that make clothes for Sevillans. This shade of red, I have only ever seen people wearing here, and it is relatively common. It is a striking, bright red. Men and women both wear pants and shoes that colour. I believe the people who wear these type of clothes are "pijos" (well to do, conservative, supposedly right wing, so I am told). They also wear khakis and polo shirts and sweaters tied around their necks. It has been in style to wear riding-type pants with tall boots around the city, as if they just stepped off a horse. Not super common, but the occasional woman a bit older than me, earlier this year. Very funny - very European. At home you can't judge a person quite so easily by what they wear.

Sometimes it is really easy to spot the foreigners: if they have really pasty skin along with blue eyes. There are occasional Spanish people who have very light skin, but there is something different about them. Or if they have blonde or light coloured hair and a shy look on their face. If they are looking down at the ground as they walk, rather than boldly staring at everyone passing. If they have a look on their face, even if you can't look directly at their eyes because they are not looking at the eyes of passers-by, that says, "Oh dear, I think people passing might be looking at me..." I saw a guy with a typically Anglo, uncomfortable look on his face. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was not Spanish. It was just a catch-all look of general discomfort in the face of other human beings in his vicinity. Self-consciousness, I suppose is the best way to describe it. At home I probably would not even notice someone with that kind of a look on their face, because I think it is pretty normal. I am sure I have had it many times, possibly chronically, in the past.

But not any more. Occasionally my face breaks, but I've generally become pretty assimilated here, into the way of doing things. Which means that your face has a look of almost haughtiness at times, but not quite. Other times you might be just purely existing and rather vulnerable, and passing people may be able to glimpse some deeper aspect of yourself, if they were so inclined to give a darn.
At home, you have to be so concerned about everything all the time. When you happen to come across another human being, you want to make sure that you don't bother them, that they know clearly that your intentions are not bad towards them. In general, your face must be guarded. But those things are not an issue here.
First of all, it doesn't matter what other people think, or if you are bothering them. Secondly, nobody is worried about anyone else's intentions, and nobody expects anybody to have any bad ones - at least not concerning interactions between strangers passing in the street. Nobody is really bothered by very much.

I don't know if you can possibly understand me. Many of these things you would not even realise exist until you live in another place. It is like being unaware that you live in the ocean if you are a fish, because you've never been outside of it.

I am not saying Anglo saxon customs or ways of being are all bad. I have met people here who have told me critical things about their ways and positive ones about their life abroad in London, for example.

On the street, Spanish (Andalucian, anyways) people start moving first without looking around them. When something comes up right in front of them, then they do what is necessary to not crash. We (before all the Chinese came to Vancouver and messed up or totally ignored our system) are aware from quite a distance, who is coming towards us on the sidewalk, and we subconsciously move so as to be sure to pass politely and carefully with the least bother to all parties concerned, so there are no sudden, last minute surprises when another human being appears out of nowhere, smack in front of you. This would make a truly Anglo person angry. It still makes me angry sometimes, if I am having a relapse.

The difference between Spanish and Chinese people in this regard is that if a Spanish person bumps into you, they always apologise in what feels like a genuine way.

It is such a pleasant, wonderful, lovely relief not to have to wear a helmet on a bike. And that wearing a skirt or men wearing a suit riding a bike is not out of the norm. And that nobody ever wears spandex or any other special biking clothing to ride a bike, unless they are on a trip to cross the entire country or something; unless they are biking as a sport.

I ride the bike on the sidewalk, sometimes through tables where people are eating. I feel guilt about this, but it is normal here. I also ride the wrong way down one way streets ALL the time, because it would be literally impossible not to.

There is much more to explain about how to comport yourself on a Sevillan street but I am staying up way too late, and already have probably adrenal exhaustion or something that I was just looking up because I am always too tired and lack sleep.