beliefs

Unpredictability

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

You can’t predict this. That your day will begin before dawn and end later than most people in America would consider working. Hell, in Spain, too, though they sure as hell don’t mind hiring me to work that late!

There was no way of knowing, before I came here, how much homework my daughters would have. How intimidating and complex it could be, while I sit with my translate app ready to look up the English version of words like slither, spinal, and homonym. How much time this would take out of the exceedingly brief time I have with them each day. How I could lose sleep over how early I need to set the alarm, because what if Mythili fails her science test or Riona doesn’t have a chance to read aloud to me or Isabella can’t retell the story of Jesus saving all and bringing his followers to the kingdom of heaven when she’s never heard these stories in English to compare them to??

This isn’t my singular problem. I have come up with a new theory (yet again) about Spain. Since I spend most of my day not with my family but with Spaniards, I hear all kinds of stories and details about their culture. Students commonly spend 4-5 hours a night completing homework, and parents often take classes themselves, for professional development, French, English, you name it. Not because they’re looking forward to a salary increase, mind you. Because they want to learn. Week nights are essential to their incremental increase of knowledge.

Studying and working so intensely, especially between the days of Monday through Thursday, are as much a part of this culture as sacred meal times, siesta, and family-only weekends. Yes, they may live for vacations, but they work their asses off in between times so that they can enjoy them!

So when I had a few clients tonight mention to me that next Thursday is (yet another) fiesta, and “will you be working?” I almost answered no. But I’m just too damn American. I want to say, “You do realize that if I don’t work, I don’t get paid, right? And that I have a family?” But I just tell them, “Yes, I’m working,” to which they respond with, “OK… well it is a holiday, so we’ll call you next Wednesday to let you know if we’re taking a trip or not.”

It’s almost laughable! I can’t imagine planning a trip the day before I take it! Just like I can’t imagine allowing Isabella to put off her religion homework till Sunday night, or letting Mythili get by with just a 7 on her lengua exam (that will never happen again!), or allowing Riona to skip out on circling all the letters her teacher wants her to focus on enunciating this week (though this is not required).

I couldn’t have predicted how complicated our lives would be here. The impossibility of presumptions that I could have made, most of which would have been untrue, would have made a long tail that followed me across the sea and would have been chopped slowly away with each new day. Fortunately, I was too busy giving up my previous life one heartbreak at a time before boarding that plane, so I didn’t have any time to predict anything at all. And that is why I am still able to set my alarm for the exact right minute and suck the marrow out of every brief moment of life that does not involve a frenzied cycle across town, trying to explain an overly-litigate society to Spaniards whose schools don’t have proper fire alarms, or translating food wheels for a seven-year-old. Instead, I can look forward to next week’s fiesta in Benidorm, a trip I planned weeks ago, have already booked and paid for, and beats out all predictions–impossible to make–about how intensely I would love my vacations!!

Trust the World

/ lovizmytrio / 3 Comments

Yes, I trust the world. Back home, I don’t lock my car, don’t even have a key to my house, and leave valuable items in plain view at my desk at school, anything from cases of Girl Scout cookies to my Smartphone. My general attitude about life is, most people can be trusted, and would rather not deal with the hassle of stealing. And overall, most people are good.

Constantly I’m admonished for this. “But what if…” fill in the blank with horror stories. It’s all I ever hear. Horror stories from personal experiences, media tales, and the like. “All it takes is one person,” I often hear. It’s true. All it takes is one person to be a shithead and steal my stuff, or to be psychotic and kidnap and murder a ten-year-old girl, but how many millions of us are there? I mean, BILLIONS? Do we need to constantly think that we will cross paths with these horror stories?

The ironic thing is, I have actually had things stolen from me. I had two bicycle tires stolen right off my bike when I was in high school. The bike was locked, but the tires weren’t. Right during the middle of the school day even! And our house in Denver, when I was fifteen, was broken into one night while we were gone, and many items were stolen, most importantly the charm bracelets whose charms my sister and I had collected each year at Christmas (such a bullshit thing to steal, not even worth much!). When I think back to both of those incidents in my life, things were not good for me or my family. We were having many problems, and sending out endless negative vibes.

So why do I still trust people? Why do I always think, It’s not going to happen to me? Because ever since I put that thought in my head, it doesn’t. I truly believe that there is some truth in positive thinking, sending thoughts out into the universe, and expecting that things are going to be OK, only to discover that… well, yes, they are going to be OK. I mean, look where I am! I had the rug pulled out from under me two weeks before the school year started in America, and I gave up the chance at a huge salary increase, full benefits, and living like kings in an apartment complex with a pool cheaper than our mortgage, to come to Spain for a salary that’s not even enough to pay for one person’s living expenses, let alone five. But here we are. I trusted in the world, and the world helped me out, giving me a salary comfortable enough for us to live on and enjoy this country.

But that’s not all. Due to the financial crisis, and perhaps the culture here, I have been forewarned by all about the epidemic of thievery. By more than a few people, I was forewarned to not even bring the bicycle, as it would surely be taken, my U-lock no match for the bolt cutters they would have here, that we wouldn’t even be able to leave the bike outside a store while we shopped!

As usual, I decided to go against the grain and bring it anyway (I was already breaking every other sane person’s rules anyway). I brought the bike, and I do lock it everywhere, but I consistently leave the helmet and saddlebag still attached. Everyone has told me to stop doing this, that these items will be stolen, but I just have to disagree.

I was planning on seeing gypsies everywhere I went. Not because I’ve seen a series of ridiculous movies, but because my Spaniards told me this is what I should expect, especially “in this region.” Well I don’t know what a gypsy even looks like, or how sneakily they can creep up and slit open your purse (again, others’ horror stories!), but the only time anyone in Cartagena has approached my Camelbak? It was on the street, yes. I was walking between tutoring appointments and a lady came up behind me and told me my backpack was partially unzipped, and she zipped it up for me!

See what I mean people?

But yesterday takes the cake. We have this little thing called a debit card with every penny of thousands of dollars we brought from America attached to it. I was being a responsible parent and went to the bank yesterday to DEPOSIT money into our account so we could pay the light bill (everything in Spain is completed via direct bank transfer). Well, I somehow forgot to retrieve my card from the ATM, and didn’t notice until about six hours later.

I know, I know… I can hear all the people screaming at me! “What if??”

But that’s just it. In almost the same moment that I noticed my card was missing, I noticed a voice mail on my phone. The lady in the bank had my card and was keeping it safe for me. Of course.

This is not luck. This is not a coincidence. While I have been surrounded by people I know always feeding me horror stories, I have managed to escape almost every tragic moment imaginable. No one has ever smashed a window in my car to take my purse, or steal the iPod I left sitting on the dash, with the keys to the car sitting right next to it (yes, I do that too). Yet these things seem to happen to everyone I know. Why? Because they’re so fucking afraid that they’re going to happen!

I really believe there is some truth to that. Yesterday, when I discovered my card was gone, I called Bruce and told him to check the account. Then I went on with my life and tutored a girl for an hour, not even thinking about it, and Bruce sent a text saying nothing was charged on the account, and did he want me to have him cancel the card? I told him not to. I wasn’t the least bit surprised. It was only a brief panic when I lost the card, not a “the world is ending now” crisis. I knew that everything would be OK, as always, because I trust the world, and the world trusts me, and my place here in it, no matter whose soil I place my trust in.

Beautiful Little Boxes

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

I have a schedule posted on the board in the English department’s office. It pretty much lists the twelve classes I will attend each week, all different levels of students ranging from ages 12-18, with correlating levels of English (seventh graders being the lowest level, twelfth graders the highest). However, since Spain has a different way of labeling students and grades, I haven’t quite memorized the various levels, nor knew, during my first week, what ages I would encounter until I entered the classrooms and asked students how old they were.

On my schedule in the English department are beautiful little boxes where the teachers can write the topic of the day. Beneath my schedule is a plastic funda, (I don’t know this word in English), where teachers can put photocopies of activities or, in most cases, of the textbooks that they make the poor students purchase, that we will be discussing that day.

This is how it should work: the day before the lesson, my beautiful little boxes should be filled with notes, copies should be underneath in the funda, and I can enter each of my twelve different subjects prepared to teach.

But let me review the teachers’ day in Spain. Yesterday I think it was 98 degrees (haven’t quite learned Centigrade yet, but I’m guessing over 40). Please note: no air conditioning. Students remain in the same room, together, all day, waiting for various teachers to filter in from all over the building, a pile of books and chalk in hand. Each teacher has at least three preps, usually five, and the schedule for all varies from day to day. There is not one moment of consistency. You cannot expect to go in and teach level one English during period two, five days a week. It will be three times a week, and the time changes depending on the day. Hopefully you can appear in the correct classroom at the correct time with the correct materials. So far, I have not succeeded in doing so.

I have not a qualm in the world then, when I return home and tell Bruce about my day, and he replies with, They are taking advantage of you because you showed them that you’re too good in the beginning, and I shoot back with, You have no idea what it’s like for them.

Today I had a plan for one of three classes, as one teacher put her copies in the funda and wrote her topic in my beautiful little box. I attended the bilingual meeting, where I was again reminded that I do not speak nor understand Spanish, other than when the music teacher (my new favorite person) spoke in a clear, slow, perfectly-understandable accent. I heard bits and pieces of conversations, and one somewhat heated debate involving menus, prices, and places to eat, having to do with, perhaps, everyone getting together on November 9? My goal for the end of the year: to know what happens during these weekly meetings!

I attended the first, prepared-for class. The teacher wanted me to run the entire show, beginning to end, and I felt confident that I at last understood my job. I am the only one who speaks English with perfect authority, and I only have these students once per week. They need to hear the native speaker. No matter what it is I have to say. But more importantly, the teachers? God do they need a break!!! We learned about multiculturalism in Britain after a brief lecture by me (while the teacher ran an errand) about the letters being the same in the words SILENT and LISTEN… high schoolers… ugh…

Moving on to the next class, I appeared on time, before the teacher, of course. She came in and saw the math scribbles on the board and asked me if I needed chalk, holding up the two tiny stubs of chalk that remained below the chalkboard. (Might I remind everyone that there are no overhead projectors, not even the transparency type??) Sure… I replied… what might we be doing today? (She hadn’t filled my beautiful little box, so I hadn’t the slightest idea, though I was immediately relieved to see a group of middle-school-aged kids, my home). All About Britain, she replied, and when I asked if they’d already started to read the book, she didn’t understand me. We switched to Spanish, but let me tell you. I may have trouble understanding Spanish, but at least I don’t claim to be a Spanish teacher, God forbid!

Luckily for me, this appeared the be the same lesson that was minutes-before thrust on me on Monday with a different teacher, so I perfected it quite nicely today, thank you very much! (I decided to omit his absurd terminating requirement of having one student at a time read aloud a sentence in English and translate, for the whole class, the Spanish equivalent… translation truly just doesn’t work most of the time). The teacher today? She sat in the back of the room fanning herself and not saying a word. Total trust after less than a week? I’ll take it.

On to lesson three, where I received the most beautiful gift of all time. First, there’s a fifteen-minute break for everyone in the school before the last period of the day! Second, I’d made questions for this particular text one day while sitting on the beach, and had printed them for the teacher, who, surprise surprise, never had time to make copies. I guess you will have to write them on the board then she told me… I stared at my palms, whose chalk dust I had just washed off in the bathroom. I suppose so… I admitted, crestfallen. But when we walked down to her room, voila! Smartboard, projector, computer. Do you have this room every week, for this class? I asked, more excited than a kid just arriving at Disney World. It was about the best gift I could imagine receiving. I pulled out my flash drive, asked the tallest boy in the class (high schoolers again??) to reach up to the ceiling and turn on the projector, and I felt like a real teacher again! I could type! Change fonts! Add colors!! Use a pointer, highlight, underline, everything I feel like every student needs, but ESPECIALLY second language students. How lucky the teacher is, in a room that has such a beautiful gift, one whose description would never fit into a beautiful little box, because words could never fit the gratitude that filled every moment of that oh-so-perfect American lesson.

Before I left for the day, I checked my schedule again. Someone had scribbled in, All About Britain, in the box for today (a little after the fact, I think). I also had a note on my desk from a teacher saying he wouldn’t be in the class I share with him tomorrow, but could I do the same lesson as Monday? (Well, the cultural liaison explained, Since everyone realized right away that you are an actual teacher, not like these teacher assistants we’ve had in the past, we have great trust in you…It’s up to you, though, if you want to do that…)

I couldn’t explain to her, in English or Spanish, what I do, what I have done, for the past seven years. I couldn’t explain it this morning in the meeting when the history teacher asked me if I knew anything about American history and I tried to say, in front of all, in my broken Spanish, that I co-taught that subject for seven years. I couldn’t explain to my colleagues back home what it is like to be a teacher in Spain. All I can do is be the best teacher I know how to be, to fit myself into a beautiful little box, and hope that when the box is opened, the students on the other side will see the world in a different way.

What I Miss

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

There are things I miss so fiercely that my heart aches. A good long, cold and isolated bike ride, breath steaming out of my lungs, coming across the deer along the fence, the perfect mountain view tinted by rays of morning sun, everything just coming into the dawn of a new day. My mornings, solitude and strength building me up for whatever I might face, knowing that I could face the world after that ride.

My recliner. Chosen by me, ridiculed for being too large, but so thick, soft, a perfect armrest I once used to nurse all my babies, it leaned back perfectly, laptop in lap, movie on screen, book in hand, the perfect piece of furniture for every situation.

My Hyundai. Not the car itself, its junky no-lights-on-interior nothing to brag about. Just the freedom it provided, piling the kids in on our latest adventure, trekking across town to the museum, the zoo, the reservoir… how I miss the ability to go anywhere, anytime, for them to share that freedom with me, to be able to explore the world without limitations of bus schedules, car rental fees, and finances.

The telephone. Being able to pick it up and call my friends, my parents, my sister, anyone, without having to worry about an eight-hour time difference, without thinking, what a fucking shitty day, I need to talk, and knowing that I can’t talk to anyone, any time, about all the things in life I need to talk about. That it really is just us, the five of us, and we have to figure out a way to be everything for each other in every moment, whether it’s my girls’ fierce insistence on me spending my last dollar on school uniforms I can’t afford because they already stand out enough, and they need to fit in, or Bruce hating his inability to communicate anything, or me running into one problem after another with the principal (what IS it with me and principals???).

Wal-mart. God, I never thought I’d say that. Wal-mart, I miss you! I know I cursed you every time I walked in, ridiculed your inability to keep items in stock, criticized your exploitation of Chinese products, your destruction of the natural environment. But I wish you were here to save me when I can’t find a decent store to buy what my girls need, to be open when I need to print out a bus ticket or make copies for lessons, to take back all my items without a receipt!! TO BE OPEN ALL THE TIME!! Even Sundays!

Microbrews. I don’t think any description needs to follow the smooth taste of a home-brewed Hefeweizen straight out of the tap from Dry Dock.

My oven!! AN oven. No homemade pizzas. No baking chicken or potatoes. No broiling steak. But above all and everything, never a chance, for a whole year, to make a single batch of brownies. I can almost feel the melted chips sticking to my tongue, the tiny crumbs at the bottom of the pan pinched between my fingers, the smell that filled the house for hours…

Again, my words, my beautiful words. Trapped here in this blog, lost to everyone here who thinks I’m just some stupid American who’s timid and speechless. Oh, how I miss my words.

Dear America: Love Your School!!

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

You are so lucky!! I have always known this, and tried not to take advantage of your wealth. I mean it. We don’t have all the typical luxuries that many Americans have, especially in the past 9.5 years of having children and only one salary to support them, one TEACHER’S salary. But still. Now that I’ve been here, I realize day in and day out how SPOILED we are. We have a huge home with a huge yard, two cars, the ability to go anywhere at any time, and jobs that ROCK!

Let me tell you about what it’s like to be a teacher in Spain. To be a student in Spain. You will have, more or less, the same hours as in America. But the similarities end there. Students, you have to buy, and carry across town, all your textbooks. Your parents will put forward 300€-400€ every year just for this. Teachers, you can say goodbye to the dream of having your own classroom. You’ll move around all day, toting books and supplies, to white-walled, un-air-conditioned, packed-to-the-gills classrooms with teenage body odors seeping into every moment. And just when you thought you could make an amazing presentation to your students on the first day of school with the PowerPoint you spent hours preparing, filled with special effects and links to important sites crucial for their understanding? Sorry! There is not a computer here. Not a projector. Not even an old-fashioned, transparency-laden, ten-years-back projector, nor a screen! (Don’t even MENTION a document camera, please, or I might die!) A whiteboard? Please, a whiteboard? Of course not! Everyone loves the feeling of dry chalk dust on their palms for the rest of the dashing-through-hallways day! (Just in case you were under the impression that you could tote your Mac and projector from America and use Wifi to access everything you ever needed–God forbid you have such an idea!–I might add that Wifi pretty much doesn’t exist here, and if it “does” it’s a lie, sham, scam, and disappointment, because you might wait five minutes for one page to open!)

A couple of hours will pass, and it feels like it ought to be lunch time. A siren announces that it’s… not lunch time. Oh, I’m sorry, your parents can’t afford to feed you? Sucks to be you, no free-and-reduced lunch forms to fill out here! No cafeteria! Perhaps your parents packed you some pan and you can wander around the school for thirty minutes counting down till your main meal at 3:30, after the last bell.

If you’re a student and you need special services, such as, um, Spanish as a second language? Special education? A teacher might just come and pull you out of class every day with a small group of other students, a mixture of all types of needs, and you will neither know why nor have a single phone call or form sent home to your parents.

I know what you’re thinking, America. Sounds a lot easier, doesn’t it? There’s no stress about decorating classrooms, arranging desks in a special way, filling out paperwork and attending IEP/ELLP/MEETINGS! But come on! Just try it for one day, and you will be forever grateful for what you may have thought was a desperate situation, a no-respect, get-me-out-of-this-profession situation. Trust me. One day in a Spanish school, and you will learn to LOVE your job, your board of education, your rights, your Americanism!!

And that, over everything, I think, is why I’m here. 🙂

Our Latest Spain Adventure

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

With handlebars barely within her reach, a bike seat that doesn’t allow her feet to touch the ground like she’s used to, and hand brakes only (also new), it is a bumpy one-mile ride to the beginning of our latest Spain adventure. Isabella, nine, is anxious to be a part of something here, both with me and the people of this city. She lives to belong.

This is the cheap bicycle we bought for Bruce at Carrefour, the one with crooked handlebars and a pedal that already fell off and is now on somewhat crookedly as well, its bearings stripped after a single repair. We move along side streets until we reach the bike lane, having to stop only a few times for hazard-lit cars whose drivers are greeting friends, delivering fruit, or just not in a hurry.

No one here is ever in a hurry. After a fall and a few precarious turns by Isabella, we are ten minutes late to the park. However, as cyclists of all ages continue to stream in, it becomes clear to me, once again, that this is not America. There is no liability form to sign, no registration fee, no separate event for kids and adults. And there is certainly no reason we should begin on time!

After another twenty-five minutes of waiting, we begin, five hundred or more, to stream out of the park. We fill the street with trailers, tagalongs, training wheels, baby bike seats, and a speed slow enough to walk. North to the first roundabout, over to the main Alameda, where we move along the palm trees toward the harbor, our safety enforced by neon-green uniformed policemen who stand at each corner. “It’s like being in a parade, just like the one last night!” Isabella announces, reminiscing the 11:00 p.m. march across town of people dressed in B.C.E. Roman and Carthagenian robes, kilts, skins, helmets, and furs. (Yes, I said 11 PM, where every age from little Roman toga-bearing babies and seventy-year-old crowned queens lit up the streets with their drums and song).

I am a cyclist. I have ridden three thousand miles in eight months, regularly ride my bike twenty-five miles to and from work each day, and have participated in a cycling event that took me over two mountain passes in the depths of the San Juans. But I certainly have never seen anything like this.

Like a slow-motion mob, we “ride” across town, weaving in and out of kids ranging in age from two to seventy (kind of like the parade!). There is no finish line, no lineup of booths promoting muscle milk or the latest carbon bike, no giant banners bragging about sponsorship. There are freestyle cyclists showing off, juegos tadicionales like hopskotch and jump rope, and all the families in Cartagena, gathered here at the city center to cycle their way to a sacred Saturday of family time.

I watch my daughter, who has mastered control of her handlebars, who leads me along what she calls “the Italian street” into and out of narrow “alleys”, who rides in circles with the other kids on the concrete at the center of a park, who asks to ride the long way home. We weave in and out of pedestrians, meander along the bike path past all the now-dispersed cyclists, and make our way back.

She has completed her first cycling event. I have completed my first cycling event in Spain. In our latest Spain adventure, where nothing is the same and everything is the same, we arrive home, unscathed, barely sweating, eight miles behind us, and all the miles ahead of us paved in love, in beauty, in the connectedness of belonging to a culture that cherishes their children far more than riding a bike over two mountain passes.

20120922-154714.jpg

20120922-154800.jpg

20120922-154904.jpg

20120922-154931.jpg

By My Side

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

Yes, this is surreal to me. For how long have I pictured my life like this, my family in a situation that is both wholly unique and someone daunting with each moment? Doubt, like the Queen’s Guards, has stood stolidly by my side from the moment I accepted this position. Now it hovers only lightly, more of an irritating mosquito buzzing about my ears at night, continuously waking me and yet impossible to find, to squash. I am here, and things are going well, better than I could have dreamed, with tutoring positions so easy to find that I am at the point of working well into the night (“You know, we Spaniards like to go to bed at twelve or one”) or having to turn people away. So we’re safe, secure, in a better position than we have been in months. We can stop the ticking on our credit card bill, pay for the necessities of life, perhaps even have a bit extra for a weekend trip to Barcelona or a day trip in a rental car to the beach.

It’s the small things, the GIANT small things, that get in the way. My girls’ school, my last choice, with the bars on the windows, the gate that keeps out outsiders, my oldest getting top scores in science and math on day four in a country where the language isn’t her native tongue?? The looks that cross others’ faces when I say the name of the school. When I tell them the part of town we live in. Irony is my best friend. After nine years of teaching ESL to poor immigrants who can’t afford to live in a nice neighborhood, own a car, or go to the best school, I am now one of those poor immigrants. I walk with the “Moors” (as they DO call them here) to the school. I try to argue with the Spaniards about Arabic/Mideastern students I’ve had in the States, how respectful they are, how dedicated to their studies. But no, not these, they respond. These people are poor, uneducated, don’t know Spanish, making the whole school have to dumb everything down… Boy have I heard that one before. Sounds a little like the world works the same no matter where you go. But what, at this point, can I do? Am I putting my girls in a bad situation where they will lose a year of good education? Should I still search for a different school and then lay down another exorbitant stash of cash on books I cannot afford?

Then remorse creeps up… I think about my last month at home, my sheer panic of unemployment, my frantic search for online jobs… that I wasted, all for naught. All the things I could have been doing, the people I could have spent my time with… sometimes I let my inherent sense of responsibility and control get the best of me. But then I play devil’s advocate for myself when I think, I did this to my family, and I had to find a way to make it work… I just wish I could have seen into the future, to know that things would be OK. I didn’t realize I’d be about the only American to step into this city where no one has even HEARD of Colorado, and are all in love with the idea of having an American teach them English!

And fear, fear stands by my side even as I walk around a new block, take in the view of a new apartment building that faces the mountains, see a new beauty I didn’t see the day before… fear is always there. Who is here to be at our back, to look out for us when we’re sad, to catch us when we’re ready to fall? We have done this almost wholly on our own from day one, and it hasn’t been easy. With me being the only one able to communicate, and my Spanish being nowhere near the level it needs to be to complete the most important tasks of setting up a home and getting my children properly educated, I fear what will come next as new challenges creep up. How alone will we find ourselves as time goes on?

I have so many emotions standing by my side, hovering around me as I face the world with the happiness and relief that are also there. All I can hope, as I go through each day, is that the exuberance, the surrealism, will never wear off, that I can pounce out my doubt, remorse, and fear and make this into the dream it was meant to be.

In Four Days

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

sun shined on every moment
as we walked along the beach
(when life was not a beach)
money and bus schedules
weighing us under water

oblivious,
our girls swam all day,
mermaid Barbies in tow,
searching for seashells

when in one week we were filled
with a box full of activity
registering ourselves as residents
registering our girls for school
registering for a new life

this week we worked a different tack
searching for a new response
to a computer without Internet
phone conversations i couldn’t interpret
and hope for something better

in four days,
the sun sparkling on travertine tile,
the sun sparkling on long walks
between lorikeets
and Roman architecture,
we have moved from survivors
to healthily employed,
dream-fulfilled,
satisfied Spaniards!!

The Spanish Siesta is NOT a Myth

/ lovizmytrio / 2 Comments

Today I left my girls in the park with Daddy, ready to ride across town (it’s only a mile) so I could put up flyers advertising my English tutoring. The park was new to us still, a dirt ground, a paseo of palm trees, bougainvillea, and hibiscus bushes intermittently spread among playground equipment. It was empty, totally empty, at 3:30 in the afternoon. The Spanish siesta is NOT a myth.

I pedaled across the ghost town of my city, seeing only a few cars. All the garage doors and persianas were closed up, waiting for tomorrow or the five o-clock hour. Only a few cafés were open and bustling with activity. I rode through the neighborhood adjacent to the harbor, at a slow pace as I still found myself mesmerized by all the shops, cafés, and architectural varieties. I managed to find fifteen poles/phone boxes to tape up my flyers, and came across the small park with the lorikeets that was close to one of the first apartments we looked at. Everything here, I realized, is becoming familiar to me. Soon I will know all the street names in my neighborhood, the major interchanges in other areas, and all the bus numbers we could possibly take to get across town. I won’t have to question which roundabout to turn left at, or which direction La Plaza de España is.

And while it is a relief, a burden lifted, at the familiarity of it all, there is also a sense of loss. Of fear. Eleven days into this new adventure, this almost still feels like a vacation. Yes, the four months of hell and paperwork beforehand kind of tainted the vacation feeling, but once we arrived, we’ve been eating tapas, spending the day at the beach, meandering around mesmerized by the warmth of the Spaniards, the intricacies of their city planning, and taking everything in with new eyes.

But tomorrow? Reality sets in for sure as the girls have their first day of school in their new country. Soon I’ll be working part-time and filling in the extra hours with tutoring sessions, and I will be traveling all over our city. And it will be ours, to keep, for a year.

So why am I afraid? Feel like I am losing something? Because I fear that with the newness wearing off, the vacation-like feeling disappearing, I won’t be so enthralled. I will be irritated with the deserted park at three, the dinner I don’t want to wait till nine to have, the cafés we can never afford to visit. And it might be just us. No family. No friends. Just the five of us, the girls getting into fights as they’re trapped in the apartment alone playing with the same old ten toys we lugged across the ocean, Bruce and I, trying to manage a lifestyle in a country neither of us are familiar with or accustomed to, the language barrier a thick wall that sometimes feels insurmountable.

It’s scary, isn’t it? Strange, unreal, many words creep up into my pedals as I take in the salty air, as the breeze from the Mediterranean pushes me up hill beside the Roman Theatre, as I come across a park, a roundabout, a beautiful view I haven’t seen until this moment. Am I crazy for choosing this, for putting my family in this situation? I’ve asked myself that thousands of times in the past months, and the only answer I can come up with, as we make ourselves at home, is that we’ll never know. There is no going back from the choices we’ve made. I will have to pedal further, see new sights, take in a different view, perhaps, to keep the adrenaline of the past couple of weeks burning in my blood, making me grateful for this amazing place, this amazing experience that I know in my heart we were meant to have.

A Simple Plan, Interchangeable Anomalies, and a New Side of the Coin

/ lovizmytrio / 1 Comment

So this morning I started out my day with a simple plan, telling my husband I’d be back in an hour: I was going to retrieve my girls’ school registration papers from the cultural liaison at the school where I will work, go to the bank, and go to the girls’ school. The cultural liaison was meeting her colleagues at nine for some coffee before work. I pedaled over on my “American” bicycle (a Fuji, I would explain later, made in China like everything else!), and arrived right on time, right on American time. While waiting for the Spaniards to make their usually-tardy appearance, I took a photo of the dumpsters here. Strange, I know, and not typical of a tourist attraction. But the segregated dumpsters that specify glass, plastic, paper, and trash are what make this place special to me. For one thing, all residents have access to them at all times. For another, why can’t America do this–segregate our trash (I mean, we segregate everything else, right)?? Perhaps if more cities adopted this idea, everyone would recycle!

After I took my photo on my iPhone, a nice Spaniard approached me and introduced himself as one of my colleagues. He already knew my name–though I think I blend in quite easily here in my Western clothing, with dark, curly hair, standing next to my fancy bike with my fancy phone make me appear all-American–and of course his name was Carlos (I think there are only four Spanish men’s names!). We were still waiting on Flora, the cultural liaison, so I sat down and ordered another delectable café con leche. All the cafés on all the street corners carry these tiny cups of espresso-like coffee that is quite simply a culinary orgasm with every taste, and I have found myself quite addicted to them.

We sat with two other colleagues who immediately began chatting away with me in fast-paced Spanish. I have learned to nod a LOT. Because all I do is introduce myself in Spanish, say a few simple sentences, and everyone assumes I’m fluent! I picked up most of what they were saying, but by no means all! There were quite a few funny moments over the next hour, especially when I thought they were asking if my bike was made in America, and when I said it was made in China, they laughed and said, “No, did you bring it from America?” to which I affirmed and received the response, “Wow, you brought your husband, three daughters, and a bicycle to Spain? Very unusual!” I would have liked to have responded with, “You will find me unlike most people you know,” but of course with my lack of vocabulary I just nodded and said, “Sí,” my current favorite word.

Finally Flora came, papers in hand, but I was not allowed to leave. No, por supuesto! After a time they all stood up, I discovered the bill had been paid, and we began to walk across the street to the school. Since I don’t officially start my job until October 1st, I was not expecting to follow them. After all, it was already past ten, and the Spanish work day ends at two, and it being Friday, I knew that two meant one, and I had to register my girls in school and go to the bank. But one of them said, “Come with us, Karen,” and before I knew it, they were clearing a space for me at the huge table where all members of the English department were having a meeting.

It was with deflated hopes when I quickly realized that the English department does not hold their meetings in English. Instead, Flora took charge of a fast-paced meeting where everyone began talking at once, sharing ideas, writing down book titles and schedules in these tiny little planners (not a single laptop!!), and throwing my name into every other suggestion. (“Karen knows all about the American culture, she can teach us!” “Karen can make a notebook of different food and clothing of the US!” etc.).

It wasn’t until almost noon when I heard my first English words of the day. Carlos engaged me in a conversation so he could hear how I speak, and broke into a ginormous smile when I began to talk. “Your accent is so easy to understand! I don’t know anything about Colorado, but I like it very much! Last year our native speaker came from Northern Ireland, and no one could understand anything she said! You are our first American, and we are so glad to have you.”

So… I barely made it to the bank, where there was a line out the door (everyone is restrained by the siesta schedule), and by the time we walked over to the school at 1:30, the secretary was locking up the building. All the same, she took my papers, noted to her assistant, “These are the Americans!!” and told us, “See you Monday at nine!”

No matter where I go here, or what I do, it always takes longer than I think, and the people are always nicer than anyone I’ve met anywhere. I am just as much of an anomaly to them as they are to me, bringing our interchangeable experiences to a new side of an old coin.

20120907-201019.jpg