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

el día de la investidura

Today marks a wonderful moment in US history. It is a day that I know I will look back on in the years to come and be glad that I was somwhat a part of it, as one of the "fellow Americans," albeit not present and if only as a spectator, watching the procession from miles and miles across the Atlantic Ocean (al otro lado del charco, as the Spanish say, their version of "other side of the pond").

After a long day of work, both in class and out of class, during the school day and after, I raced down at 6:00 PM local time (midday in Washington) to the sala de profesores where the rest of the profesorado was currently on break from the first of their once weekly marathon sessions of English learning that they are obliged to take as a part of the EU's bilingual school plan, and asked where the nearest available television was located). I dashed to the multipurpose room and turned on TVE 2, and right at that moment Mr. Obama was about to begin his speech.

As he spoke, a newscaster translated his address, and yet I did not find it anymore distracting nor too difficult to listen instead to the English behind. I will say that I was humbled and moved by his speech, and I will also say that I commend him for his own humility and the very effortless way he does seem to be able to unite traditional views and feelings with a sense of reknewed sincerity, security, and solidarity. It was a momentous occasion to be sure.

And to wrap up the day, I participated in a three person interview with the local Cadena SER that was doing a piece on reactions from different perspectives, in this case one recent cubano import and  local balonmano sports hero, one ciudadrealeño living in Miami, and myself, one estadounidense currently living in the Ciudad. 

He is a man with whom people feel comfortable. In whom they can put their trust. In whom they want to put their trust. It is not wholly new, but rather is a calculated and magistral union of real and current views with more traditional and deeply rooted US of American ideals. And just about wherever one goes, the salient message and feeling seems to be everywhere and in every corner of the world: something different and good is in the air.

felíz año nuevo, y que les pase bien!

Flamenco and Fiction

Having a house guest has made my life busy this week; it also has sent me on adventures around Granada rather than sitting around on someone's sofa eating chocolate and immersing myself in the fictional lives of the characters on the American TV shows we watch on DVD.

Last night, I went to a flamenco show with my out of town guest, LL. The venue was cave-like, in one of the oldest areas of the city, and there were under 15 people in the audience, all perched on little stools. LL and I nursed our complimentary drinks and waited for the show to start. As we chatted about post-college life, I wondered what to expect from the performance. Most of my knowledge of flamenco came from television specials featuring dramatically made-up women, an Andalusian exchange student in high school, and a strange Lorca play I'd seen in DC.

When the artists came out, they weren't any different than the ordinary Spaniards I see on the street: a youngish man with dark spiked hair, skinny jeans, and sleek track shoes; a guitarist with hair tied back in a ponytail, a hoop earring in one ear. The performance was unpretentious, but the musicians were skilled and the music impressive, filling up the tiny room with elaborate finger-picked patterns, vocal trills, and nostalgic poetry that didn't strike me as so different from the dolorous tango lyrics I'd heard in Buenos Aires. Every time the music crescendoed suddenly, the British lady sitting next to me got a startled look on her face.

After the opening number, two other men (the rhythm section) and a young woman (the dancer) went to the stage, and the five of them arranged themselves to fit in the small space. The performance continued, now with intricate clapped, stomped, and snapped rhythms. The lyrics slid together into a string of sounds, but I could still interpret the emotion they expressed: raw, despairing, occasionally hopeful. I found myself staring at the faces of the performers: the dancer with her rigid, anguished expression; the guitarist, his face lit from time to time with a goofy, delighted smile; and the singer, his mouth in a perpetual smirk, his eyes fixed on the dancer. You know that expression: "eating someone up with your eyes"? Yeah, it was kind of like that. Despite the lack of rings on the appropriate fingers, I imagined that both were in committed relationships with other people, but were sleeping together.

After the show, I asked LL what she had thought of the performance, and whether she'd noticed the charge between the singer and dancer. She hadn't. I admitted that I wasn't sure what the narrative of flamenco is, whether that tension was part of the performance or the private lives of the performers, and she nodded, mumbling a polite response. We moved on to other topics.

Nevertheless, the impression has stuck with me, and I'm still thinking about those strangers on stage -- not my invented story, but that act of creation we take part in every day in every one of our interactions. It's the haziness between acting and reality, fiction and truth, following me around even when I'm not studying literature.

Valencia

After two and a half short months in Spain my Christmas vacation started this past Friday. After a rowdy faculty Christmas dinner and few hours of sleep Brandon and I headed up to Murcia where we joined Anna, another auxiliar, and left for Valencia. After some initial confusion while checking into the hostel and trying to establish that Brandon wasn't a wanted criminal we headed out into the historic heart of the city for pizza and a night tour.









The next day we did a marathon tour of the same area, the central market, the restaurant/bar neighborhoods, all the little stands selling local products and handicrafts, all the big plazas, and all the crucial monuments. We enjoyed breakfast at Starbucks (I missed American coffee) and a lunch of paella, cerveza, and pollo. At night we did a DIY bar crawl with some Australians we met in our hostel and some Spanish kids we met on the street. The bars are more expensive than in Aguilas but definitely more fun. There was a Brazilian band playing and I got to sing along to some songs in Portuguese (not to brag about my polyglotism or anything). On the way home I learned the word "battler," Australian slang for someone between a loser and a trooper.









The next day I somehow was the only one with a hangover after a mere four or five drinks. My body rejects alcohol I guess. As a real battler I carried on to the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciencies. The name is in Valenciano, the local language. This place was amazing. If you are ever in Valencia, go just to see the architecture. Inside there is a theater, a science museum, and an aquarium. We only went into the aquarium because the place is so expensive. Admission there was over 18 euros with a student discount.









In brief Valencia is fantastic because of the following reasons: horchata, paella, seafood, beaches, architecture, nightlife, shopping, linguistic diversitry, and a dried riverbed that has been converted into a park. Go there.

Click on the title of the blog to see my facebook photo album.

Let it snow(ish)

I’m writing this from my living room in Granada, the electric heater blowing warm air down on me as I sit on the sofa, bundled up with tights under my jeans and a heavy sweatshirt. Our table wears its three layers of winter tablecloths, and underneath the space heater is chugging away. The windows are fogged up, but if I get up close or crack one open—as my flatmate did just moments ago—I can see the sleet, yes, sleet falling outside.

Welcome to southern Spain in the winter.

The other day I received an email from my best friend’s father, and he said, and I quote: “Baltimore is rainy and cold today-I’m picturing [you] warm and sunny in the south of Spain. You needn’t correct me if that’s wrong.”

I won’t correct him (though he may be reading this, and if so, I offer my apologies), but I think that you all have the right to know the truth: Granada in the winter is not warm, nor exclusively sunny. This city, located in a valley surrounded by the Sierra Nevada, is known for the most extreme temperatures in Spain, according to my flatmate. In the summer, I’m told, the heat is often unbearable, and in the winter, it’s not uncommon for temperatures to dip below freezing.

Though the weather here is positively mild when compared to the Midwest or northern Europe, the almost universal lack of central heating does require some rather creative solutions to the cold. One is the use of long, heavy tablecloths, under which hide legs and space heaters. Sometimes, the heater is built into the table. I’m also a fan of the electric blanket (perfect when switched on fifteen minutes before bedtime), and have taken to going for a run when I need to get the blood running to my frozen hands and feet. When you add to these the ordinary techniques—coats worn inside, tights or leggings layered under pants, laptops lying on one’s lap, cramming onto small sofas with three of your closest friends, imbibing a constant stream of hot beverages—it makes for a rather comfortable winter, overall. Still, waiting while the laundry hangs to dry is a rather long and laborious process.

The sun’s supposed to reemerge tomorrow, and by midweek the temperature’s predicted to reach fifty again: more normal weather for December in Granada. Until then, however, I’ll keep layering on the clothes and tablecloths, and hope that the freezing rain doesn’t make the paving stones too slippery. You can bet they’re not salting the pavement.

física o química... some sort of strange obsession

Among the many things I've been up to lately (going to Aguilas, Barcelona, and London in the last three weekends being among the chiefly notable "things"), I have found myself becoming more and more confident and natural in my own práctica del idioma (loosely, "usage of the language"). In the past few weeks I've had many moments of fluid and coherent conversation in Spanish.  I don't find it a matter of vergüenza (shame) to admit that these moments come in between others that are not as great or as glamorous, for instance one in which I found myself studdering just trying to ask a Spanish couple if they'd been waiting long at a London Italian restaurant we were in last Friday night, but it's all a part of this happy progress. Granted that like my fellow bloggers I came to Spain with a bit of prior experience living in a Spanish-speaking environment, and thus I'm a bit more used to this process. Two steps forward with a step back de vez en cuando (once in a while), entendés? As I like to describe it, it's like starting up a car in the cold: the car moves regardless the temperature, of course, but it usually takes a little time for it to warm up.

One thing that I've added to supplement my understanding and immersion in the language this time around has been spending a little time in front of the television at least once a week. I say "supplement" because I do not think that television is the best way to straight up learn a language; for that you need context, conversation, and the ability to ask questions and check understanding in an interactive environment. It is certainly a fun way to test one's understanding, or at the very least, test one's comprehension of vocabulary.

Discussion of television's didactic uses and advantages or disavantages aside, watching television is something that at home in the states I never really did with too much regularity, and when there was a show that I did want to watch, it was usually in the comedic, cartoonish, or historical vein (Quite the spread there, huh?). True to form, I do find myself watching comedy shows and the occasional Garfield and Friends rerun on Saturday mornings. Plus I have been known to watch whole movies some Saturday and Sunday afternoons and all programs, and movies for that matter, that were written and produced in English are dubbed entirely in Spanish.

But the show that I've quickly grown addicted to is Física o Química (literal translation Physical or Chemical, as it pertains to relationships). It's a weekly drama about students and professors at an instituto (high school) in Madrid. It's the kind of thing Fox would run (or maybe the WB if it thought to be a bit more daring in its on-screen explict amorous behavior), complete with beautiful people, overly exaggerated situations, giving way to exaggerated problems, allowing for exaggerated acting-- you know, the sort of situations that could be so easily laid to rest with just a little bit of honesty-- but then, that's what makes a show like this so successful. And of course it's the show that all the pibes, chavales, and cool tíos y tías (slang for kids, teens, and cool and other assorted people) watch when they should be doing their homework on a Monday night. It's quite a bit of the pop-cultural tortilla española. hehe.

What's more, it's become something of a weekly tradition with my flatmate Mario and me: at 10:15 we sit down and watch the end of El Hormiguero, a comedy variety / current events show hosted conveniently just before FoQ (the popular abbreviation for Física o Química, and also the name of a fan-magazine about said show) on a rival channel so it can also grab some good pre-main event ratings, Mario with his computer and university classwork in front of him, me with usually just a bottle of water of my dinner if I haven't already eaten by then, and usually a bag of sunflower seeds between us.

The show starts at 10:30 and ends a little after midnight, as do other popular "prime time" television series. It's not actually much longer than an hour, but the commercial breaks add on extra time of course, each break's length is actually predetermined and told to the viewer as it is about to start, promising to take no more tha "30 seconds" or "one minute" or sometimes "5 minutes" (the imagination races to think what would happen to the channel's ratings should they go even a split second over this strict time limit...).

It's good fun, and I haven't missed an episode since beginning watching in mid-October. It recently finished up its second season, so naturally I had to ask a few questions about previous episodes, but it's pretty straightforward: girls like boys. boys like girls. some boys like multiple girls. some girls like multiple boys. sometimes professors like students... etc, etc. Sometimes someone comes down with some unfortunate disease, is found to be participating in some unsavory extracirricular activity, but it's all in a day's work for these characters.

Check it out for yourself, if you'd like. It's worth a gander.

Have a good week! Chau for now,

-Nick

links:

Official Homepage of the show

Física o Química on the Antena 3 webpage, the network that broadcasts the show.

El Hormiguero, for good measure (kind of a Jay Leno meets Conan O'Brien meets the Muppets type of show)

* note: all linked pages are in Spanish

Física o Química, Monday nights at 22:30 Spanish local time. check satellite listings (maybe?)

Keeping it Real

After almost a year of living abroad, I'm finally proud to say I'm American. I know what you're thinking: "radical Obama supporter. . . a la Michelle." Well, let me assure you that, while the results of the election are certainly a factor in my new-found patriotism, they're not the only one. The entire nature of my experience in Spain has encouraged me to take a look in the mirror and accept, for better or worse, my American nationality.

Only now, looking back, do I realize that when I traveled to Mexico and Argentina, I did so with the naive and impossible hope of actually becoming a local. The reasons were three-fold: 1.) I'd heard my parents' accounts of the ugly Americans they'd been embarrassed by during their own travels and was determined not only not to be one, but not even to be associated with any that my local friends might have at one time met themselves. 2.) I desperately wanted to speak fluent Spanish and without the American accent that made me cringe whenever I heard it on anyone else. And 3.) I was bored with America and thought everywhere that wasn't home was better. I remember passing local children in both countries and envying them for their perfect Spanish as well as for other cultural traits I assumed they took for granted, like the ability to move their hips to salsa or to make tortillas from scratch. In short, I wanted to be Latina.

In Spain, my perspective and goals have changed. Becoming Latina is, mercifully, no longer my objective. I speak a level of Spanish that I'm happy with and have accepted that I'll always have some degree of an accent that my Spanish friends have deemed either mild American with a Mexican lilt or Puerto Rican, despite my never having been to Puerto Rico. I have made some great American friends who have done much to lift the stigma I once held against my fellow Americans abroad, as well as who've given me the opportunity to honor American traditions like Thanksgiving which, only after celebrating in these friends' company, did I realize how much I loved. And finally, I am, probably for the first time ever, truly interested in American politics and current events and no longer shy about discussing them with locals.

You don't have to live in America right now to realize just how critical this moment in our history is. In fact, living abroad and seeing Obama's name and the word "crisis" on the front page of every newspaper each day probably makes me even more aware of this reality than I would otherwise be at home. The interest that Spaniards and the local international community take in American politics is both astounding and, for me, contagious. The days prior to the election, nearly all of the teachers at the school where I work knew how each candidate was doing and what the latest news was. The day after Obama won, I was congratulated over and over again as if his victory were my own personal achievement. Never before have I been more aware of my country's influence in the world, nor of my own responsibility for determining what that is. As a British friend of mine recently lamented, "When America sneezes, the rest of us gets a cold."

This isn't to say that I've come to see America as the center of everything; in fact, my opinion is quite the opposite. Getting my news through outside sources like the BBC news Podcast and local Spanish newspapers makes me realize just how self-absorbed as a nation we are, relative to most European countries. While these news media offer in depth (and much needed) analyses of the economic situation in the U.S., they take nearly as much time on the wars in Africa and the bombing in Mumbai which, for huge numbers of people, are much more immediate concerns than the looming American recession. If it's true, as my British friend suggests, that the rocks we throw send some of the biggest ripples through the world, I think it would do all of us some good to remember that we're not the only ones with an arm capable of rocking the boat. 

... In the meantime, I can't wait to be home for Christmas!

Video on the world's reaction to Obama's victory

Video on Cuba's reaction

Photo albums

I don't have anything insightful to say at present but I have awesome photos:

Alhambra

Granada

Murcia

Mojacar

Living in a place as inspiring as Granada....

...it's really no wonder how Sarah is drawn to participate in the 50,000 word novel writing contest this month.

I myself, like Paige before me, went down to the heart of Andalusia this past weekend to visit Sarah, see Laura as well (who was also visiting that weekend -- come to think of it, I think it was due to some well placed peer pressure on Paige's part), and of course to take in the wonderful sights of the city and the immediate surrounding area. Thus I can say with certainty that if just touring its many elegant avenues, the even more numerous smaller passages, and its near countless winding alleyways and narrow cooridors compelled me to write as many pages in my personal journal as I did-- not to mention take as many photos of my surroundings as I did-- imagine, then, what it would do to live there for a far more extended period of time!

I came down by bus on Friday and came back to Ciudad Real by train on Sunday night. Both traveling experiences served to give me a more solid idea of the difference in efficiency and facility of each mode of transportation, but more importantly-- at least for my ever-hungry traveler's spirit-- it gave me time to pause, look, and reflect on the gorgeous and multi-faceted terrain of the Spanish landscape. Especially coming in by bus.

To come into an Andalusian town by bus is to be given a long, warm, and disarming welcome to, for my knowledge, the most beautiful region of all of Spain, which furthermore captivates the traveler in such a way as to not ever want to leave. Picture multitudes of rolling green hills, orchards of olive trees in every direction, as well as the rough but elegant curve of desert sands and high rocky mountains-- ALL living together in peaceful, natural, symbiotic harmony. It is a magnificent treasure to behold. And completely encantador - charming - (though as wonderful a word as it is in Spanish, in English I don't find the translation is as strong a word as I'd like to employ. Bah, such is life.).

Then of course there's the trademark and emblematic impression of the white-washed housing communities, which are the start and nucleus of most every Andalusian town, big or small. They are themselves beautiful and precious to look upon. Or at least I, for one, was smitten.

But enough of glowing introductions. The town of Granada is itself a treasure, as I think I've already said, both cosmopolitan metropolis and renewed crossroad of diverse cultures and backgrounds. I stayed very close to city center and so was able to get a taste-- both literally and figuratively-- of these aspects which make Granada the veritable pomegranate of bursting color and flavor from which it draws its name in Spanish. Northern African and Middle Eastern flavors and delights-- vices, yes-- and traditions are quickly becoming treasured pasttimes of this once great Moorish city, and thus everywhere there is the smell of kabob, hookah, and the sounds of darbuka and tambourines and tiny cymbals.

The food: delicious. The tapas scene: stupendous. The ice cream: tremendous... but I'll spare you the juicy, delicious details... The main landmark attraction (the Alhambra): as Paige rightly put it, no wonder it was considered for the list of one of the great wonders of the world. Sweeping vistas, humble halls, elaborate detail in every column and wall facade, impressive gardens, and a plethora of fountains is how I will here sum up my trip to that venerable last stronghold of the old Moorish guard. Though to break it down by its individual features does no justice to the place that is truly made all the more mighty and majestic due to the sum of those parts.

I would write more about Granada here, but I do believe that over time Sarah will give all a sense of the place and its climate and so I do not need to say much more, except to add-- at no small aside, but rather as a means of giving thanks and gratitude to that same lady-- that I much enjoyed  my weekend there in large part due to her help, coordination, and recommendations.

So for now I sign off with a few lines about this current week, a few photos of my past weekend, and a little more about what the outlook for the next few weeks holds in store. First off, this week is progressing beautifully. I feel that my ability to manage in the classroom, if not managing in my speech, is coming along smoothly, and I am feeling overall more comfortable with the situations that I am faced with. Yesterday I was acknowledged and complimented on my work by one teacher in particular whose opinion I respect and admire. It was after what I similarly felt had been my best in-class time to date in which I had both kept their attention for the majority of the time, and had more importantly explained and taught a good deal of material that they seemed to understand and comprehend.

In the weeks to come I've got some fun out of Ciudad Real travel planned. In two weeks it's off to a certain southeastern province of Spain to join in celebrating the birthday of fellow blogger Laura B, and then the last weekend of November I'm going to Barcelona to meet up with an old camp friend, see the sights as well as take in a Spanish fútbol game: Espanyol v. Sporting Gijon. Should be a blast.

Chau for now, and long live Granada,

-Nick

poetry like only the passage of a dozen centuries could have created

"la elección del mundo"

On Tuesday, November 4 as I climbed into José Ángel's car on our way to El Robledo for the day, there was the usual Spanish salutation of "Good morning" followed by the equally customary "How are you" that sounds more like "How are jew?" in his wonderfully slurred English-Spanish mix, that I purposely do not call Spanglish not for fear of copywright infringement but rather due to it's more Iberian and less Mexican / Central American source. But on this Tuesday, the fourth of November, 2008, he added an extra solitary word, with the inflection of curious interrogation: "Obama?"

Living in Spain during this period of election speculations and preparations has had many advantages and disadvantages. Namely, I'd like to state that one advantage is that there was (and still is) never any lack of investigative journalism done on the subject of what's the latest in United States politics, and thus even if Friday night's Presidential Debate isn't spoken about in the newspaper until the Sunday morning edition, you know it will make the front page and be given at least three pages of space for review and opinion. The main disadvantage is not that what happens on Saturday Night Live is only given but a paragraph's summary in print or broadcast journalism (in fact, that such things are reported at all is something to consider), but rather that being six hours ahead all the time meant having to decide whether or not to sacrifice the time in between midnight and six AM, Wednesday, November 5 in order to watch the minute by minute coverage of the results as they came in. Whilst I was anxiously checking washingtonpost.com at 1 in the afternoon on Tuesday, I had to frequently remind myself that people were only just going to the polls with their Starbucks coffee and Dunkin donut (or donuts, if they wanted to be generous to their fellow line-waiters).

Thus, upon waking on Wednesday the 5th, to the sounds of my iPod playing "Hail to the Chief" (not by poetic happenstance, but rather on purpose), I rushed to the living room of my apartment as soon as I could, flipped on TVEspaña 1 and let the results come as they would.

Furthermore, if the coverage and attention given this election by the Spanish press and public is any indication, the status of the United States is certainly one of great importance, or, at the very least, great interest, for better or for worse. As a few of the professors at el Valle remarked on Monday during our weekly professor's luncheon, the election is not just for the United States, it is "la elección [más importante, supuestamente dado las opiniones de ésta gente] del mundo" (the [most important] election [given the opinions expressed by those present] for the world). It is worth echoing an observation already mentioned that to look at today's edition of El Mundo makes one feel that he or sshe has not really left home as, because they can see page after page dedicated to the summary, discussion, and minutae of the election results and the people who made it possible (if not for the obvious difference that all such information is conveyed in Spanish and not in English). In particular, the Op-ed section today either centered around speculation about what will be the first moves of the President Elect, how he will have to go about proving that he can bring the change he has promised, or was simply just thinny veiled elation and relief upon receiving official word of the new face of the United States.

I've even learned things -- if not just rediscovering things -- about the political history of my own country here through this press. It's a neat thing for anyone here to experience... assuming of course, that this "anyone" comes from the United States.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Before I log off and go to bed, I feel I need to say one other thing about this week that I couldn't think how to tie into the the above discourse, though it is related. While sharing some tapas on Monday night with a few British friends in the Plaza Mayor, I was approached by a man who asked if I was from the US. When I answered affirmative, he told me that he worked for the local branch of a national radio network, Cadena Ser, and that they had been looking for Estadounidenses living in Ciudad Real to come in and speak on the topic of the election's outcome this Wednesday evening, but that so far he had been unable to find anyone. Long, lucky story short, they interviewed and recorded me last night at 7:00 PM local time and broadcast it this afternoon at 1:00 PM. I was unfortunately not able to listen in, having still been in classes with the kids, but I was told by the mayor of El Robledo (the town where the school is located) that it was a very nice interview (the station told me they'd send me a link to find the online archive feed, but I haven't received anything from them yet. When I do, I'll be sure to post it with a translated transcript).

My, my, my... first local broadcast news and meeting the President of the region, now a one on one interview on the local branch of their national public radio system. What's next? A guest appearance on Física o Química, the number one hit teen drama on the air in the country right now (and also the subject of what I had planned to talk about -- though still can next time -- before deciding that election-based content was clearly a more important matter to discuss)? One can dream, eh?

All right. A picture or two of the last few days, and then I'm out. Chau for now,

-Nick.





watching the results, early wednesday morning on TVEspaña 1

An American in Aguilas

I’m surprised. I’m surprised to be the first one to write about experiencing the U.S. presidential elections from abroad. I’m surprised that every news channel broadcasts coverage of our election as if it were the Spanish election. As we speak I’m watching “Estos no son las noticias,” a comedy show similar to Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show. In today’s episode the (white) host has painted her face black and put on an afro in the spirit of “black democracy”. I’m surprised at the lack of a taboo in Spain. I’m surprised at the lack of a taboo in Spain on certain personal questions, such as who I voted for (other favorites include how old I am and do I have a boyfriend). Hell, I’m honestly surprised that Obama won! I thought for sure they’d find a way to take the vote like they did in 2000.
Being in Spain during this historic election makes me feel a little left out. I see clips on the news here of street parties in DC and I wish I could share the joy with other UMD students (a shot for every electoral vote that goes to Obama? Maybe not…). When I told my French roommate that I cried a little this morning when I found out who won, he couldn’t help but laugh at me. I may be a little melodramatic, but I think any American can sympathize with the emotional moment we are experiencing as a nation. If Obama lives up to his promises this could mean the end of Sarah Palin’s favorite phrase, the Bush Doctrine; the end of the War in Iraq, a new interest in social welfare programs and the environment, and a stable economy and international relations. I can tell you first hand that the world accepts us again. Not to mention the obvious, that our first African-American president has generated more support and enthusiasm than any presidential candidate I’ve seen in my (short) life.
As I pass students in the hallways at school, they give me high fives, ask me how I’m feeling about the outcome of the election, and shout “Go Obama!” and “Claro que podemos!” They ask difficult questions too: “Will the KKK kill Obama?”, “Is there really racism in the USA? But aren’t they supposed to be the most advanced?”, “Why does anyone support McCain?” (given the overwhelming international support for Obama, they find it hard to understand that nearly half the USA actually doesn’t support him). How would you answer these questions? As a mini-ambassador to a few hundred Spanish high school students I do my best, but there are some things that you have to experience for yourself in order to fully understand (and even with a lifetime of living in the States many American phenomena escape me).
Despite my increasing fluency in Spanish, I still can’t completely translate American social and racial politics, so I keep it basic: I think Obama challenges racism in the U.S., but only time will tell how much influence he has. Since America is a diverse nation, it’s only natural that there are people who differently, and we try to respect their opinions, even if they believe that the rich should have higher tax cuts than the working class. Most of all I think that many Americans are optimistic that change will come, and that the United States will live up to it’s reputation as “advanced,” socially as well as technologically. Claro que podemos.

Cádiz, City of Entertainers

My personal favorite from "Zombies go to class," the runner-up of my school's Halloween classroom decorating contest. The sign says, "I was killed by English."

Another decoration from the same contest. This one says: "Died dancing Shakira."

One of the greatest discoveries I've made in the last month is that Gaditanos, as the people from Cadiz are called, are not only incredibly kind but also extremely entertaining. I suppose this shouldn't come as that big of a surprise, considering that Cadiz is a city whose Carnival is one of the most renowned in the world, second only to Rio de Janeiro's. Gaditanos are, without a doubt, masters of fun as well as impressively creative.

More than that, they are performers, capable of turning every space into a stage and every moment, into a reason to laugh or break out into applause. For example, last week in the open-air market, an acting troupe of four men dressed in tuxedos and top-hats came parading through the crowd, carrying a coffin -- a skit nobody seemed to understand but everyone found amusing. Another time, my friend and I were walking behind two attractive women in the town center. As we rounded the corner, a man chatting with his friend outside a bar paused to deliver them an impromptu flamenco song. This was clearly not your average piropo, or catcall, even for these local beauties, and they stopped for a minute or two to give the man the attention they felt he deserved.

Maybe the best example of the Gaditanos' natural theatrical abilities is the Halloween celebration at the school where I teach. In an effort to create awareness about this originally Anglo-Saxon holiday, the English department sponsored a classroom decorating competition for the upper-level classes. To every one's delight the students went above and beyond their duty of decorating. Entering each room was like walking into a different scary movie. In the winning classroom, the acting was so stellar that I stayed in one corner, hoping to avoid the kids on the floor, pulling on the judges' legs and moaning like dead people -- it was that terrifying (and equally hilarious.)

While I enjoy most of the performances I see, I do wish I could understand the local manner of speaking better to absorb the wit of the actors. To help myself out, I'm reading a book called El Habla de Cadiz, a dictionary of local terms that also includes the phrases' etymology and cultural evolution. Under "Animacion," or "animation," it says: "En el peculiar sentido gaditano, es 'un estado de animo colectivo, una predisposicion a manifestarse en publico, a contemplar y ser contemplado." A rough translation: "In the peculiar gaditano sense, it is the state of collective energy, a predisposition to show oneself in public, to contemplate and be contemplated." 

What does this mean to me as a resident of Cadiz?  Mainly that I'm more engaged with my surroundings than ever, having been blessed with free access to a nearly endless series of "shows." As I say more often than anything these days, for yet another reason: ¡Que viva España! (Sarah, consider the competition for the best city started.)

Visit my Facebook page to see the videos of these performances and others! (Blogger is not behaving.) VIDEOS