My X Rated Last Paragraph

Wednesday

Donna and Lennie decide they want to go to the market. This day they devote to shopping. I visit the modern Galician art museum. I find it a very disappointing use of space- not to discount the one artist that they exhibited.  I also visited the Museo de la Pobo Galgo house in the former Convent Igerxa de San Dominicos de Boneval (Dominican Nuns), the Galician people’s museum, really wonderful. They go into detail about old fishing techniques, farming, traditional dress, traditional music, ceramics, architecture, religion and of course music. Music is especially useful because they take apart each instrument and use the Galician word for that part. They do this also for just about every object used in the cultural areas mentioned about. Everything is fully and clearly illustrated. It is just what I like, learning with pictures.

Cano at 5 PM takes us to the peninsula. We see Jose and his wife and baby. He is a gaita maker and we see his gaitas as well as his took. We come in for a drink and a short snack of ox and pork sausage and a beer.  

 We stop at the Celtic ruins, Castro de Baroña.  Remarkable ruins in wonderful architecture of a people, the Galaeci, who lived on the coast about 2500 years ago. Gallaeci lived in castros, annular forts, with one or more concentric earthen or stony walls, with a trench in front of each one. They were frequently located at hills, or in seashore cliffs and peninsulas. Some well known castros can be found, in the seashore, at Fazouro. The Galaeci were skilled in metal work, especially gold. When the Romans colonized it in about 200 CE, the Galaeci participated in the Roman army and it is here where the language of Galician and Portuguese has its roots.  Also link to this blog under October  5, 2012 to find out more, and see some great photos of this amazing site. Also see my photos below.

On the way home Donna chats on and on with Cano. I love it. Since they are both nurses, they share a lot of interests and can compare different systems. It is interesting to talk to Cano about the two languages Spanish and Galician. He said that he has two parts of his brain to handle them both. He said that he feels no real connection to the Spanish or to a Spanish nationality. He feels that he shares much more with the Portuguese. It is almost as if they share a common language, but it is more than that. It is an approach to life.

A word about “X” in pronunciation: Many Galician words have an X. The X is pronounced like a soft J (ja). It also may be thought of as a really soft ch. When you pronounce them for yourself, you will find how close they are.  The X in Greek is pronounced “Key”, as in the abbreviation for Christ’s name- XP or “Key-Rho”. They stand for the letters Ch-r and an abbreviation of “Christos”, the Christ. They also have an X in Catelonia, and that is pronounced more like an “sh”, as in Eximple (pronounced ee- SHEM- pla). That is the district of Barcelona where I will be staying. One added note is that I had a Chinese student many years ago when I taught high school. She spelled her name Xoon. She said, “Just pronounce it ‘Soon’.” I don’t know the Chinese pronunciation exactly, by the “s” sound must be close.