Friday, May 04, 2012

Chinese in Spain? Tell Me More.

Hola Meltingpot Readers,

I'm up to my eyeballs in research for another talk I'm doing tomorrow on Spain's Black history and current multicultural reality. But the pressure is on, dear readers, because I have to do the talk, wait for it, in Spanish. Yikes! The audience is going to be made up of local Spanish educators and I just know they are going to be judging my accent and waiting for me to screw up the subjunctive. How do I get myself into these things?

But on the bright side, el esposo will be joining me. After I give my speech, el esposo will be addressing the audience on ways to incorporate culture into the Spanish language classroom. This is the first time we've ever done a conference together. I'm kind of liking it. And I'm hoping if I screw up, he'll jump in and save me! He already translated my entire speech for me. I don't know how to be witty in Spanish in an academic setting.

So, where does the Chinese thing come in? Well, even though I'm speaking mostly about Spain's Black history, I'm also trying to get the audience to recognize that Spain has a significant immigrant population, which makes the country far more diverse than many people realize. So, I was just looking for examples and/or stories about the Chinese experience in Spain and I discovered this post from The Lonely Planet. It's not exactly enlightening, but the comments on the post are fascinating. So many of the experiences shared by Asians living in or traveling to Spain mirrored my own. Take a look and tell me what you think. I'd especially like to hear from other Asians who've had experiences in Spain, either positive or negative.

I'm totally listening.

Peace.

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