Pause...and reflect

I took this title from a weekly assignment I give my summer Study Skills students. Since the program where I am currently teaching is about to end and the new school year is about to begin I thought it was time I took my own advice and reflected on my experiences teaching English in Spain after the pause of summer.

I’m about to begin as a first time teacher in a private school in Baltimore, Maryland teaching Spanish I. I feel in a way like I’m just picking up where I left off, teaching a foreign language to high school students. Of course, I’ll be teaching a different language in a different country. But teaching FLs is basically the same anywhere. You have to combat the urge to speak in the first language while instilling in the students the value of foreign language learning. It’s not an easy task no matter how important the language is, nor how “bright” your students are.

When I look back on my experiences in Spain, however, I don’t focus on the teaching aspects, as I’m sure you could have guessed by reading the themes of my blogs. Rarely did I have much fodder for reflection from my 12 hours a week as an assistant English teacher. Rather, it was the lifestyle there that most inspired me. As I am stuck indoors working more hours than contracted for, I miss the sunshine of the south of Spain, yet I shudder at the thought of stepping out into the muggy mid-Atlantic summer humidity. The five minute walk from my car to the office is all the time I care to spend outside. I miss those days when I had hours to lounge on the pebbly Mediterranean beach, basking in the strong rays. No longer does my skin come close to matching the caramel tones of my mixed bf. In fact, his beautiful Brazilian mother asked me when she saw me why I was so white if I had just come back from Spain. Two months had gone by.

It’s sad, but paleness is a fact of life on the East coast, and it’s not because we don’t have UV rays. Our workaholic culture keeps us under fluorescent bulbs from 9 to 5, effectively eliminating all the hours of peak sunlight from our existence. It could be that my recent nostalgia for Spain is just a vitamin D withdrawal, but I think it has more to do with that Protestant work ethic than anything else. With my boss demanding attendance sheets and my new job demanding contracts and fingerprints while I juggle family and social demands I feel like I’m “meeting myself on the road,” as my mother so aptly put it.

It’s times like these when I need to stop and remember how things are in Spain. I remember those Sundays when we couldn’t even buy a light bulb because every store was closed. The national culture demands that citizens take time to spend with family and friends, or just relax on the couch during siesta. A tradition that was at first frustrating to me, a hard-working American accustomed to having around-the-clock accessibility to common necessities, later became a blessing. I learned to relax, to go play soccer on the beach without wondering what time it was, using only the setting sun to tell me when it was time to call it a day. I learned to take naps during the day without scolding myself for being lazy and unproductive. And while I have to tailor these lessons to American culture now that I have been reintroduced to it, I don’t think they are entirely useless. When I get the feeling that I am meeting myself on the road, I know that it’s time to take a Spanish Sunday to lay around and say “no” to social demands. If my year in Spain was a necessary step in my life’s journey, I think it was to teach me this lesson: pause…and reflect.

Summer in the City

In the winter, swathed in blankets and layered clothes, it's easy to forget that Granada is in one of Europe's southernmost regions. But then May rolls around, and the meters-thick snow on the Sierra begins to disappear, the scarves are packed up, and short sleeves and sandals make their first appearances. By June, the heat has come to stay. From nine in the morning until nine in the evening, temperatures hover above 30 degrees (85 F), and even at night the heat can still seem stifling. In the afternoon, the city is dead, the true utility of the siesta finally apparent: when it's close to 40 (100 F), all you can do is sprawl sweating on the sofa, hoping that the open window will catch a breeze. The few people who are out cling to the shadows like vampires, cooling themselves with fans and lingering before the air conditioned storefronts. All is quiet; all is still.


In the heat, social taboo fades. Bare legs make an appearance (and not just among the teenage crowd), young men sweat shirtless on balconies, and flip-flops (once relegated to the beach) become the default footwear. Among females, attire can perhaps be best summarized by the Regina Spektor lyric: "Summer in the city / means cleavage, cleavage, cleavage." Propriety is a word gathering cobwebs in the back of granadino brains, to be pulled out and dusted off in mid-September.

Until then, there's not much to do but sit back, sip a cold drink, and, when the sun starts making its downward slope toward the horizon, take a leisurely stroll to the nearest ice cream shop and get yourself a scoop. You'll be in good company.

The International Relationship (Getting Personal)

Over Semana Santa (Holy Week), I had a brief reunion with my boyfriend, a sailor in the Navy, after seven months of separation. His ship came to southern England, and I had a week off work so I booked a cheap RyanAir flight and met him for what I thought would be a story-book romantic getaway. Although we did have a great time together, it wasn’t really the novelistic reunion I had fantasized about. It was complicated finding each other, emotional, busy, and way too short. I felt like no sooner had we said hello than we were saying goodbye again. Thus is the nature of the International Relationship.

According to my experiences, the term “long-distance relationship” doesn’t quite express the challenges implicit in trying to make a relationship work overseas. Long-distance relationships evoke an idea of “he lives in New York and she lives in Philadelphia; they take the train to see each other on weekends, but the trip sure is exhausting and don’t they spend a fortune on phone calls!” An international relationship (especially one in which one of the parties is unreachable by phone because his current residence floats in an undisclosed location in the middle of the ocean) brings more challenges.

Not only must you contend with the distance and the expensive phone calls, but the cultural barriers that separate you. While I am beginning to think in Spanish and get accustomed to eating lunch at 3 pm, my boyfriend is trying to bargain with Arab merchants in Dubai and find a way to pass the time between ports. We are both having experiences of a lifetime (for better or worse), and I can anticipate problems when we are together again and try to share our experiences with one another. I will never be able to understand his journey, nor he mine, yet mine is a journey I cherish and which has helped form me as a person. How can you love someone and not wish to share such a thing with him?

For two people as young as my boyfriend and I (22), an international relationship seems to be a step that many deem too serious. One of his ship-mates called me “Mrs. D” when he met me, and judging from his stories it seems that anyone who remains faithful to his partner during his time at sea is considered virtually married to her. Why did we choose to stay together in spite of a barrier no less vast than oceans and continents? Naïve love? Habit? Idealism? Fear? Probably all of these, among other emotions that are more difficult to express. Only time will tell if we made the right choice and it was worth it to hang on.

The scariest part isn’t the goodbye, however, but the reunion. When we are together again, will things be like “the good old days”? Will we be head-over-heels like the kids we still really are? Or will the physical oceans and continents become metaphorical ones? As Kundera warns me (it’s okay to laugh at what a cliché I’ve become, so go ahead), “metaphors are not to be trifled with.” I don’t doubt that it will be challenging to express to one another all we’ve learned and experienced being in separate countries, but in the story-telling perhaps we will see a new side of each other: a curious, open-minded side that has only begun to crave the seat of an airplane or the salt air of the ocean from the deck of a ship. Perhaps this distance has given us time to grow, to explore and know ourselves in that way that all young people in the twenty-first century must go through like a rite of passage. Speaking for myself, I have most of all learned how much there still remains in the world to see and know, and how much the felicity of your journey depends on the company you keep. So in the end, the metaphorical vastness of our international relationship could very well open the door to a new journey together. After all, as Kundera said “A single metaphor can give birth to love.” ;)

"Portugal is the country next to Spain"

These words of wisdom were spotted by my friend Amy on a tourist shop tee-shirt in Sintra, a village outside of Lisbon. We were on the penultimate day of our Easter holiday to Portugal, and over the previous week we’d traveled the country up and down in our tiny rental Citroën C2, from the green rolling countryside in the south to the steep winding streets of Porto in the north.

It hadn’t taken us long to realize that, despite sharing a peninsula with Spain, Portugal was radically different from its neighbor. Every day brought new discoveries: “Look at the trees!” (along the highways, on a mountainside in Sintra, in Lisbon’s parks and plazas), “But they speak English!” (even in the rural gas station along the isolated coastal road), “They share the sidewalk!” (on narrow, crowded city streets). Without realizing it, we’d begun to see Portugal as what it was when compared to Spain; that is, our valorizations of all that we saw and experienced were based not on what Portugal was in and of itself, but how it measured up to our past six months in Spain.

Of course, not everything was a clear-cut comparison. The crumbling plaster and faded paint of old-town Porto was to Jinse the image of a decadent empire in ruins, the wandering ground of 19th century dandies with impeccable suits and hats jauntily tipped over wild, melancholy eyes—a description that reminded me of a word I’d stumbled across while doing my thesis research: ucronia, a conception of time in which the present landscape of the city stands as a monument not just of what is, but what could have been if the past had been different. Elaborate mosaic facades veiled in soot and splintered shutters bowed over cobblestone streets murmuring their nostalgia for something that almost was but was never fully realized.


I couldn’t find the right word in English to describe it. The best I could come up with was descuidada, a Spanish word that’s understood as untidy or neglected but literally means not cared for, as if something that was once precious was left to deteriorate, forgotten by its custodians. At night, when the old-town was near deserted, the few people we stumbled across gave the impression of lonely ghosts fated to forever wander the streets, whispering ancient secrets to the wind.

The historical center of Lisbon was a livelier place than the corresponding district in Porto, evidenced by the commentary of one guidebook that it’s known as the SoHo of the capital. Still, the air of nostalgia was not entirely absent, recalling the words of a Spanish friend who had described Lisbon to us as being like an old woman whose advanced age, wrinkled skin, and curved spine haven’t quite managed to erase the memory of her long ago beauty. The past was present unlike in any place I’d ever been before.

And there it was, another comparison. I wondered whether it was inevitable, that travel always be a weight and balance of similarity and difference, of identity not as essence but as comparison to the other. And so I posed the question: was Portugal really the protagonist of this story, or was it Spain?

The friend to whom I owe the description of Lisbon was one of the few Spanish people I talked to in the days before our trip who had actually been to Portugal. Many of our Spanish acquaintances with whom we shared our travel plans expressed surprise that we would go to the little country next door: Spain has beaches, Spain has cities, Spain has hills, and Spain has Spanish; Portugal is just the “end of the world,” that far western part of the peninsula falling into the Atlantic. Why bother?

The tee-shirt glimpsed in Sintra—black writing on a red background, typical Spanish colors—was in its own way reaffirming the value of visiting Portugal, poking fun at that common Spanish perception otherwise. In the midst of tourist trap cafes and Chinese-made knick-knacks, it was a wry metacommentary on that strange catch-22 of traveling, putting forth the question: will Portugal ever be not that country next to Spain, but simply Portugal, a country identifiable by what it is and not by its relationship to its bigger neighbor?

Art for all

Once there was a small, lost boy. He searched under rocks and beyond his shadow, but he never found himself. He played with the stars and whispered secrets to the clouds, kept by the wind. He called out to the tallest mountains and the oldest elders, but no one answered.

One day he was leaping planet to planet collecting dreams when he tripped over a can that rang like a bell. He took it and pressed its head, and a big flame of color flooded everything, and the ground was no longer the ground, nor the sky the sky, everything was color, color was everything. He looked at it and went blind from it. The boy was amazed. Suddenly a brightness made him close his eyes, and when he opened them again he saw a small boy in front of him, watching him.

"Who are you?" he asked. The small boy smiled and touched his hand.
"I'm your smile," he said gently, becoming light and melting into his arm, his shoulder, into him. The small, lost boy took a breath and looked up, smiled, and heard the wind tell him something beautiful.

Ever since that day, the boy has leaped from planet to planet hunting dreams and painting his path, and in this way reflects himself
searches for himself
finds himself.

The modern little prince in question is not a storybook character, but rather Granada-based graffiti artist Raúl Ruiz, commonly known by his nom de plume, el niño de las pinturas (the boy of the paintings). The niño, or Sex, as he also signs his name, is responsible for much of the graffiti in and around Granada.

Walk anywhere in the city, and you're likely to notice the art in the unlikeliest of places... beside the windows on gray stone shops, on the sides of houses, along roadside walls, among the winding streets of the ancient Albaicín neighborhood...

The city as museum.

Graffiti art is, by its very nature, ephemeral, fragile. The scrawled names of urban travelers, messages waiting to be deciphered, drawings, paintings, portraits, there one day, the next painted over with a fresh coat of paint, washed away with rain, faded by pollution.

It is subversive, challenging traditional definitions of public and private space, and how we use them. Its artists, urban guerrillas painting the city under the cover of night, fleeing policeman and thousand euro fines.

But if the city is a gallery, it's one with no explanatory labels and no artist biographies. The art must speak for itself ... not as a monologue, but in dialogue with those who view it. Perhaps it is for this reason that el niño has said that "it is the onlooker who makes the painting." After all, urban spaces are not static nor uniform: they are constructed by each individual as he experiences them. An artist can paint the city with his lived experiences, but once he has gone, it is up to the passerby to interpret what he sees, through a worldview that's his own.

Now it's your turn: take a digital stroll through some of el niño's art, and if you have the chance, come to Granada to make your own path through the museum.

"Making things I break, to put them together again, and to break them again, that's how I spend my time... and time runs out ... and life doesn't wait."

"Time doesn't exist."

Is it art, a social project, an act of rebellion...?
It's up to us to decide.

Check out more of el niño's graffiti on the obras section of his website, and don't miss the neat panoramas.

Carnaval Aguileno

It’s Saturday afternoon and there are at least two loud dance remixes blasting through the streets to accompany the dancers in the parade. It’s the fourth time the parade has passed down our street (the same people in the same costumes as far as I can tell) and we have to watch because the volume of the music makes doing anything else impossible. Carnival has once again returned to Aguilas.

Carnival started Thursday night, February 19 and has lasts until the last day of February. On the first night everyone in Águilas goes up to the castle on the hill overlooking the sea to lure down the musona, the muse of Carnival. The muse is a fantastic creature, half human, half animal, who must be led down to the center of town by her tamer. The tamer has a difficult job keeping the muse from running off the path and into people’s homes, and keeping her from “attacking” the children. She is a wild animal, after all. Meanwhile, all the Aguileños want to start getting drunk but the party can’t start until the muse reaches the Plaza de España, or “la Glorieta” as it’s referred to locally. Therefore, everyone makes it their personal responsibility to help bring the muse down by chanting, blowing conch shells, and ringing bells. The townspeople dress up in fur, feathers, shells, and a local sea grass called esparto.

La Musona

I was invited to participate in all this by my friend Violeta and her mother. We decked ourselves in esparto, potato sacks, and shell-adorned hats and hiked up the hill chanting and drinking cuerva out of plastic bottles. Cuerva, not to be confused with Cuervo, is a local specialty served only during Carnival. It’s something between jungle juice and sangria. Everyone has their own recipe, but most include red wine, lemon Fanta, cinnamon, sugar, and a mix of other liquors. Violeta’s grandmother had an excellent recipe with gin and cognac that I enjoyed a little too much.

For about the nine days of Carnival the Aguileños drink, dance, and wind their way through packed crowds thumping with the bass of house music. La Glorieta transforms from a quiet plaza with a fountain surrounded by shady palm trees and bougainvilleas to an outdoor dance club. Tents and bars- “chiringuitos”- are set up on the sidewalks. Everyone is in costume and it’s hard to tell if you’re looking at a man or a woman, a child or an adult, a white or a black person, a king or a beggar. The ironic thing about this is that Spain borrows many of its Carnival elements from Brazil, where the biggest party in the world is held every February in Rio de Janeiro. In Brazil, white people paint themselves black and black people paint themselves white to release some of the social tensions surrounding the role of race in daily life, or so say the anthropologists I studied in college. Brazil is similar to the U.S. in that it has a history of slavery and a legacy of social inequality. Therefore, in Brazil, when people play with racial identities during Carnival it has a purpose. In Spain, where that legacy of slavery doesn’t exist, it’s hard to justify or understand why it’s still okay for white people to pretend to be black. I chalk it up to a lack of political correctness and strict social rules about respect and diversity. In any case, during Carnival everything is turned upside down and inside out, and the alcohol doesn’t help.

Two in one: a white man becomes a black woman

On Friday night I was invited to participate in a parade/mob with my Spanish friends. My friend Ana’s brother played Don Carnal, another important character in the celebration. Don Carnal represents all the carnal pleasures of Carnival- the drinking, dancing, and crazy costumes- while Doña Cuaresma represents the sacrifices of Lent. The federation of Carnival associations elects the person from the best peña, or Carnival school, that will play each of these characters. Ana’s brother was chosen, so he hosted a big party at his home where friends and family gathered to start his parade/mob. Meanwhile, Doña Cuaresma had her own party and mob parade, and the two groups met in the main plaza to battle it out, the usual Temporary Pleasure vs. Eternal Salvation debate. Natch, I was in the Pleasure camp with Don Carnal.

Ana and her brother, Don Carnal

On Saturday the first big parade marched through the streets. This is the sort of thing you’ve probably seen in pictures of the Brazilian Carnival: beautiful ladies with lots of makeup and glitter, tight costumes, and huge feather headdresses. The Saturday night parade lasted five hours, and smaller versions were performed the following two days. Suffice it to say I was sick of the same four dance hits by the end of the weekend. Overall it was fun to see, and even more fun to participate in. After hearing “Just wait ‘til Carnival comes!” for five months, I can finally understand the excited anticipation.

Going Crazy with the Wind

In Cervantes´famous novel, the delusional Don Quijote wages battle against the windmills of central Spain, convinced that they´re giants. Probably owing to this story, the iconic Spanish windmill always seemed partly mythical to me, a creative device of an imaginative author, not necessarily something to be found in real life.

Here in Andalucía, however, it´s hard to ignored the windmills' existence since they crowd the rolling green hills as much as the orange and the olive.

Even harder to ignore is the wind itself, especially in Cádiz, whose proximity to the ocean only intensifies the air currents. The weight of the wind here is reflected in the language; locals have words to describe it from all four cardinal directions. It's never the viento, or wind, that's bad today, it's the levante, the wind from the East.

For better or worse, the wind is undoubtedly a key element of the local experience. This winter, for example, I've gotten used to feeling permanently off-balance. Even if I manage to adjust my body in such a way as to remain upright, a single turn down a different street means I've got to start the balancing act all over again. When I run on the beach I'm either twice as fast as usual with the wind at my back or five times as slow, as it pushes against my face and chest. After only a few minutes outdoors, my hair inevitably looks teased.

But none of these problems compares to the challenge of dealing with the wind when it's raining. In Cádiz, the rain doesn´t fall from above, it attacks from the side. This tends to render the umbrella a completely useless invention. 

Most natives forgo it all together, resigning themselves to the fate of getting wet. The alternative is to keep it pointed directly into the wind and adjust for its endless shifts in direction but in this case, the umbrella usually ends up serving more like a parachute before turning completely inside out and you end up resembling Don Quijote, fighting your own invisible giant.

As far as I can tell, there are two main ways of adjusting to this blustery environment. The first is to fight against it, whether that means moving your running route inland, plastering your head every morning with firm hold hair spray, or bulldozing the evermore dramatic dunes on the beach, all common practices in Cádiz.

The second is to take a cue from the windmills and harness the energy coming at you. 

Run three times as fast when you´re lucky enough to have a current pushing you from behind, learn how to wind surf or kite surf or fly a kite, meditate on the waves whose moods, dependent on the wind´s every whim, you might be surprised to find as infinite as your own. 

Most importantly, don´t worry too much when you´re told that today's levante is the kind that drives people crazy.

 

Short video clip of wind on the beach, courtesy of Russ Payne