This past Thursday, I went into Weber to speak with the Director of Consumer Practice. We discussed a Powerpoint outlining the agencies credentials in both English and in Spanish. It was amazing to see the American influence in this presentation – a presentation that is used to convince clients that they should choose Weber for their PR needs. He told me that the style of speech used comes directly from that used by the U.S., and is designed to make an impact in the Spanish market. There was quite a bit of Spanglish intermixed such as “2000s”, “Do-ers”, “ranking”. For example, it might say that “Tenemos lo mejor ranking del mundo”. At this point, I wanted to find out what do those who know little to no English think about these types of presentations. He called these “Anglocismos”, and then described to me how there are different groups of Spaniards according to their understanding of English. He said that for many of the people, the words just become something they just associate with a particular brand or meaning, even if they don´t know English. He told me a funny story about the airline company, Vueling, who uses a lot of Spanglish in their marketing. He says that when people start using Spanglish, the Spanish say “Estás haciendo Vueling”, basically that they are acting like Vueling! Kind of funny to me. It was a great experience and I am excited for our five remaining sessions. He also invited me to join the online community, Internations.org, a group for internationally minded people. You can join a network within the community (for me, Madrid) and learn about activities coming up that are open to people of all nationalities. He invited me to go with him that night to one at Santiago Bernabeau, the futbol stadium, but I was babysitting and unable to make it.

Other than that, I went to a few clubs this weekend and really can see why they call Madrid the city that never sleeps! Today, I went to the pool with my host family. Maria´s dad is a retired corporal of the Spanish army and belongs to a military club that has a pool. It was a great time just laying out and relaxing in the sun! And it just continues to blow my mind how smart Eloisa is. She speaks Spanish so well for only being three years old, and the things she thinks to say can be so funny! Also – I forgot to mention before – Francisco has learned how to walk in my time here! When I first came, he crawled everywhere and you could sometimes get him to take a step if you held his hand. I got to see him take some of his first steps and now he walks absolutely everywhere. The kids are precious! So weird that I will be leaving everyone and everything in 18 days. I miss everyone back home, though, and am ready to see you all!