“Stop staring,” my parents would tell me when I was a kid. Growing up in the United States, we are taught that staring is wrong and rude. In Spain, that is not the case. When I first arrived in Madrid, I felt really uncomfortable because I was constantly being stared at. I started to take it personally and wondered why I was being stared at so much. Did I have something in my teeth? Was it my outfit? Did I look funny? Was it because I was obviously a foreigner? Well, it turns out that staring at people is a normal part of Spanish society. Unlike in the United States, staring isn’t strange! For Spanish natives, the American way of ignoring people and not staring is considered weird. In Spain, it is polite because people are naturally curious. It is culturally acceptable to stare for a full five seconds. In fact, the word “stare” in English does not translate to Spanish.
“Everyone takes a siesta,” I was told before arriving in Spain. A siesta is a mid-afternoon nap usually lasting between 2 and 5 P.M. So, when I got to Spain, I was expecting everyone to be sleeping during that time as part of the Spanish lifestyle. But now that I have lived here for four months, I realized that siestas depend on the person and their job. Actually, the main point of a siesta is to be able to rest during the warmer hours of the day and after eating a big lunch. I’ve noticed a lot of stores closed between 2 and 5 P.M.
