Rosalia, my crazy Senora.

I am not getting along with my Senora. All-in-all though, I've started letting it roll off my shoulders because I, and only I am in charge of whether or not this is a hostile environment. And nobody can 'make me feel a certain way.' I am in charge of my own feelings. And I'm going to choose that it isn't a hostile environment.

In any case, it makes a good story to tell what happened yesterday. This is a copy/paste of the email I sent my parents about it. I couldn't type it twice. It's pretty unbelievable. All of the conversations I've reiterated in English, but they weren't.
::
Last night my roommate and I were seriously yelled at! I still can't believe it. What happened was, earlier in the day we asked her if she wanted to go to church with us. And she said that she had gone yesterday (saturday) but that she'd go again so we didn't have to go alone. Jacqulyn and I were then like "oh we can go alone, it's not a problem" and she said "you don't mind going alone?" we said no, and then she gave us directions on how to get there. But apparently, we interpreted that as meaning that she wasn't going, when she still planned on going with us. So when it came time for us to leave, Jacquelyn and I walked out the door. When we got to the bottom we saw it was raining and went back upstairs to get umbrellas. When we got back up Rosalia (my senora) was there yelling "You left without me???!!! Well, if you don't want me to go, FINE! GO BY YOURSELF I DON'T CARE!" and Jacquelyn and I were shocked and we were like "I'm sorry I'm sorry, we thought you weren't going, of course you should come" And she continued saying "It is a real problem that you don't understand me when I speak; that we can't communicate! This is a real problem for me! You don't know any Castellano because you speak in English all day" (not true, by the way.) And she just kept saying "you don't understand me, you don't understand me!" (which is, by the way, her catch phrase) and we kept trying to insist that it wasn't the words we didn't understand, just that there had been a 'misunderstanding' and that it could happen even in your own language. but it was like we hadn't said anything at all. She was just yelling at us. "How could you leave without me! Why don't you listen to me!" As if we would ever be malicious towards her! I'm a little upset at this point about the way we were being treated and I said "The reason we thought this was because you asked us if we minded going by ourselves." Now, of course this whole thing is in Spanish, so I was paraphrasing her because I didn't know the exact words she'd used (which I probably should not have done) and she got six inches from my face and said "DO NOT SAY THAT I SAID SOMETHING THAT I DID NOT SAY!" And after an awkward pause, Jacquelyn and I just turned around and walked out the door and off to church. It was a ludicrous situation!

THEN!!!!!! THEN!!!! We were in church and when I turned around to pass the peace ROSALIA WAS SITTING BEHIND US! She'd come to church anyway! So I felt better when I saw that and thought "oh she realized we didn't do it on purpose and decided to come with us." but the real reason was to spite us, which I figured out when she dashed out of the pew at the end of service and wouldn't walk home with us. And so Jacquelyn and I are walking about 20 feet behind her discussing whether we should catch up to her when she turns around (I guess to see where we were) and I waved. She stared at me, and then TURNED BACK AROUND as if she hadn't seen me! So then we HAD to catch up because we couldn't act like we were ignoring her (even though that's what she was doing to us) and so when we were walking next to her, Jacquelyn made some small-talk remark like "oh, it was a different priest than last time" and she wouldn't respond! She gave us the silent treatment the whole time except when she said "When I was young I went to mass everyday." Then when we got back to the apartment it was dinner time and she sat with us at dinner and acted like it never happened!!

Doesn't that sound like a horrible situation!!!!??? How could she possibly think that we'd done it on purpose? Not to mention that every single time that I don't give her a response that's verbal enough she puts on a high-pitched and loud voice "No me entiendes, no me entiendes!" which is starting to get me so annoyed because I DO UNDERSTAND! I understand 99% of what she says, and the other 1% is the occasional vocab word, which I'll ask her (but God forbid I ask her twice...) The one thing I really needed to work on here was being comfortable speaking and she enforces the exact opposite in me by making me feel like I can't speak at all. I would consider myself almost completely fluent, and she acts like I don't know a word. Even just 30 minutes ago she called me in to tell me that the entire collection of Picasso's work from Paris is on display at the Reina Sofia museum until March 8th. And I said "Ya lo vi" and she promptly put her head in her hands and repeated to herself loudly "no me entiendes, no me entiendes!" because she couldn't possibly think that I had understood her because I hadn't been to the Reina Sofia. NEWS FLASH, ROSALIA! I went three weeks ago and saw it and we talked about it at dinner! So I had had enough and said, quite forcefully, "Yes, I do understand you Rosalia, there is a picasso exhibit brought from France to the Reina Sofia until March 8th. I saw it already." and she just looked at me and said "well, there are a lot of picasso's because half of them are just little drawings." and I said "si." and went to my room.

This is what I have decided: That I can not allow her to intimidate me from speaking Spanish because she makes me feel like an oaf, and lowers my self-esteem with my speaking capabilities (and Jacquelyn too!) I can't even ask her to repeat something (like directions or anything) without her saying "WHY DON'T YOU LISTEN TO ME WHEN I SPEAK TO YOU!!" She is frustrated so easily by us, for NO REASON. This is really not the position for her if she gets mad at us for asking questions. The point is, it's HER and not US and so I have decided to let it not upset me, because it's just too irrational to be taken seriously. If this is what 60 year old Spanish women are like, I'm glad I'm not ever going to be one. And don't worry, I'm still perfectly pleasant and polite to her and put on a cheerful face, because I don't want to influence her to make things worse for us.

I am pretty cheerful, because I just can't let an irrational person bother me, because it would be a waste of my emotions. Plus, I leave to Andalusia in the morning and she's already gone to bed, so I'm not going to see her until I get back next Sunday. so haha.