My brain is not convinced.  Whenever I catch a few minutes of Spanish TV, it seems hard to believe that the words are actually coming out of the person who is speaking’s mouth.  I stare and stare like I am at an art museum to see if the movements align with the words cascading out of the person’s mouth.  I am one of those people who gets slightly annoyed with the screen and the sound get out of sync.  It’s not that I can read lips very well, but my brain somehow knows something is off and won’t let it be.

From Spanish classes in high school the only contact we had with “real” Spanish was through watching DVDs with the Spanish dubbing, so I naturally associate the TV and movies here with those experiences.   My host family here is always watching American movies that are dubbed over, so that doesn’t help to alleviate the habit.  It doesn’t matter if it’s the news or a sitcom or even a commercial that was obviously originally made in Spain.  It all just seems fake like part of the story is being censored (and that’s disregarding any translation problems I have), but it is quite an amusing mind game nonetheless.