I met up with Mary and Jeff in the only McDonald’s in Beauvais. It also happen to be the one place with free, strong and reliable Wi-Fi connection we could access in the small French town. The first school vacation break was fast approaching, and I knew Mary and Jeff were about to book their flight. I had originally made plans to go to Disneyland in Paris with another assistant.
“So, where are you guys going?” I asked, to which they replied: “We’re going to Spain!”
I froze. It usually takes me 5 minutes just to decide what kind of ice-cream I want to order, and yet it took less than the space of a second for me to suddenly declare: “I want to go to Spain too!”
A week later the three of us landed in Barcelona. I arrived injured, having hurt my foot badly the day before, but there was no way I was missing out on this adventure! I made it through the Old City walking tour by limping around, and was relieved when we found a restaurant, called “El Foro”, to sit down and enjoy our first Spanish meal.
After we were seated by a young male server, we were given our menus and the server walked away. As soon as we turned our eyes back to the menu, we were crestfallen to see that everything was in Catalan…I spoke and read Spanish fluently, but Catalan was as familiar to me as Latin. But we all spoke French, Mary had studied Spanish is high school, and we all had a knack for languages. So rather than accept defeat and shame by asking for the server to translate for us, we took on the task of deciphering and translating Catalan into Spanish, and from Spanish to English. It took us nearly 10 minutes to semi-decipher the menu, but we were too proud to ask for more time to make our choices. So the male waiter stood there, ready to take our order, but when we began it was painfully obvious that we were struggling. At that point the gracious server very politely took my menu and flipped the menu over, and didn't say a word. It was the Spanish side.
My face flushed with embarrassment, but Mary, Jeff and I all burst out laughing at ourselves. We quickly re-evaluated our choices and ordered very fine meals. And as the waiter walked away with our menus, the three of use couldn’t help but shake our heads and smile. Note to self: always flip the menu over.
