Don’t get me wrong, we love it here (of course we’re still in the honeymoon phase), but sometimes, at the end of the day, our brains hurt. So many things are just different enough, and I’m not even talking about the language—I’ll get to that later.

Some things are common whenever you move, wherever you move. Where’s the best place to buy bed linens? Kitchen gadgets? Wood glue? Yes, we have asked ourselves all these questions in the past week or so. (If you’ve been reading, you know that we defaulted to IKEA for the kitchen gadgets.)

We are wanderers, so we’ll recall that we saw a place, but won’t be sure exactly where. Nor do we remember the name, just a general sense of where it might be. So we wander some more. Sometimes we find it, sometimes we don’t. Did the Mercadona (supermarket) carry Diet Pepsi, or was it the Consum, or El Corte Ingles? Do we care enough to go on a treasure hunt? Are we willing to pay €8.00 for Mrs. Renfro’s salsa at the Taste of America store? I joined a club of expats and we went out to dinner with two of the couples I met. Part of the conversation centered around Things We Can’t Get Here. Lactaid, more than eight (expensive) Advil at a time, ranch dressing (the other couples were Southerners), normal-size jars of tomato sauce (I just make it instead), Frank’s hot sauce. (Just to name a few and why doesn’t the aluminum foil or plastic wrap come in a box, let alone a box with metal teeth to cut it?)

Let’s move on to bed linens. First of all, everything is metric and they have a million different size mattresses and pillows. When we walked into a mattress store and asked about sheets, I was very proud that I knew the Spanish word (sabanas). But, of course, the saleswoman was talking about fitted sheets, top sheets, pillowcases, duvet covers and, phew, we had no idea what was going on or which sizes of which items were on sale. Did you know that pillow cases come in multiple sizes?

We resorted to going to Primark, where we didn’t have to talk to anyone and we could get inexpensive sheets and a comforter (why spend a lot of money when our plans only extend to a one-year lease?) No one talked to us until we got to the cashier. What a relief!

Now, I can go into a bakery, order my loaf of bread and my treat (yummy! Also we found rye bread this week! Yay!) and say that I don’t want the bread cut, but I can’t really understand everything the guy who came to change the air conditioning filters said. Or be sure I’m understanding the woman who called to say when the mattress would be delivered. I’m using my English teacher skills by picking out the keywords and praying I didn’t miss anything important, just like my students. We’ll see how it goes when the oven repairman and the plumber come. Luckily, they all communicate when they are coming in WhatsApp and I can certainly understand (or translate) their written language.

As an aside: If you speak just enough so it seems like you understand, people will assume you understand and speak at their normal pace which is way faster than you can probably understand. It’s almost better to speak hesitantly and with a bad accent.

I’m also trying to remember to say “vale” (pronounced vahhlay) instead of “claro.” Both are filler words that basically mean OK or I get it, but you’ll hear vale here all the time, while claro is much more Latin American. I always ask for people to speak Spanish to me and sometimes they do. Then, embarrassingly, I may not have understood them at all. Oops. Nevertheless, I keep trying although sometimes they want to practice their English instead. Spanglish is an excellent language.