This is where you should be now

When it´s Christmas eve and you are on a crowded bus, in a place (Granada) that you used to live but now feel disconnected from, surrounded by strangers (some of whom maybe should bath soon), half car sick from the jolting stops, you do not feel in the right place. You miss your traditions. Your very own tradtions, however small.

But then later after making gingerbread cookies, you take a walk with an old friend. And you end up at the Mirador de San Nicholas over-looking a beautiful view (one of the most breath-taking ones you´ve ever seen). It is dark. The sky is all the arker for the contrast with an illuminated Alambra, with an almost full moon. It is quiet, quiet even though there are bells ringing. You are cold, but you like how it feels.

On the way home you stop at a church, right on time for midnight mass. You´re nervous, you´re not Catholic, but as you walk in you´re scooped up by nuns. You sit in the front with them, you sing Christmas carols with them. You listen to the service with them. It is new to you and you love it´s grammar, it´s history, it´s joy. Afterwards the nuns invite you back into a small room in the church. You sing more, you all eat chocolate and you drink liquor. Nuns play drums and guitar! Nuns love chocolate! Nuns drink liquor! And you are the only Americans and they make you sing the english part of "Feliz Navidad" so they can learn the words. You are laughing to hard to do it properly, but no one minds.

Just before 2am you walk home. You are exhilarated you are refreshed. It reminds you of swimming in the ocean late at night, of the waves, of the calm, of the thrill. This is where you should be now.

Warming Up

It has gotten cold here! Well, not Minnesota-cold, but cold nonetheless. Cold enough that I have had to take action. One such action was the purchase of a new coat. It is from Zara, it makes me feel classy, it is warmer than my old coat, and if you are interested I am willing to talk about it at much greater length. Another action in the war against the temperature? The mulling of wine. Yum. And what a great verb "mull" is, let's try to use that one more often.

Another good way to warm up is in the glow of friendship. That's right, I said it. And on that topic I feel like I'm starting to actually have Spanish friends! I mean really we are still hovering around acquaintance-ville (population: many) but this weekend I had this nice feeling of actual friendship, based on conversations that plumb below service level pleasantries. I'm really excited by the idea that I can make friends in Spanish! Like, I can express myself well enough in a my second language to seem like a person who is interesting enough to merit full on friendship. Wow. Like, wow.

Also, warming is the glow of impending holiday cheer. I spent today talking to my students about Christmas and in many ways their celebrations sound very familiar to American ears. There is even a Basque Santa Claus named Olentzero. Olentzero seems merry enough, dressed in a traditional Basque outfit, puffing on a pipe and bestowing gifts on well-behaved children, but he is rumored to be a drunk. A drunk! Yeah, so while I was leaving Santa ginger bread cookies, the little Basque children were setting out wine or champagne for Olentzero. Huh.

Your new nickname

Today I discovered that Spain, though sadly anti-peanut butter, is pro-honey roasted peanuts. Good call, guys, good call. They were just sitting there at my local super market in the frutos secos section (literally this means dried fruits but it is used to mean nut and the word nuez, which I was taught for nut, is ruthlessly ignored). They are so good. They call themselves "cacahuete frito miel" and the package provides the useful translation of "fried honey peanut." Aw.

I can't stop my brain

So, lately, I haven't been getting enough sleep. I mean, it's not like I'm terribly busy but I came out of the weekend tired and it is impossible to get enough sleep during my mini-work week (I mean, honestly, I cannot go to sleep early enough to wake up rested at 5:30am). This has led to a series of...mishaps:

1) Run in with a tree
(This is only a presumed run-in because I have no memory of it but I did discover a lot of sap in my hair yesterday afternoon. I have, then, inferred that I had some contact with a sap bearing plant based on the persistent stickiness of a small section of the back of my hair. I did not take immediate action on this front, aside from a pony-tail to keep me secret, but maybe I should have because this morning a very vigorous shampoo and generous conditioning proved ineffective in the removal of the offending foreign substance.)

2) Broken Knife
(You know that one really dull knife in the kitchen, come on there's one in every kitchen, you know, yeah, that one. Don't cut bread with it. Especially not day-old bread. Especially not before 7am. Yeah. Because the handle might snap in half and somehow wound your unsuspecting index fingers in the process.)

3) Spilled Nescafé/Shattered Nescafé Container
(First of all, this item was brought to my house and I have consumed none of it, though, in my European incarnation I am not strictly against the consumption of instant coffee. Secondly, who would have thought that shoving lots of food items haphazardly onto one shelf at increasingly bizarre angles would ever result in catastrophe? Not me, apparently.)

Well, today I've protected myself from further exhausted clumsiness through over-cafination. Yup, I've had 3 cups of coffee today. Interestingly, I did not pay for any of them. Though, I may be sleepy, I am clever. However, my cleverness not withstanding, I should be able to buy my own coffee for a while since the Basque government has finally (but, finally!) decided to pay me. So far I've used this money for: smoked salmon, mushroom ravioli and Hagan Dos chocolate ice cream. Maybe, soon I will buy clothes/shoes (one of my favorite conversational subjects is how I need better shoes for when it rains).

Oh, and lest I forget: Happy Hannukah! I have a tiny menorah with tiny candles (thanks to my lovely mother) and I just borrowed Carlos' lighter sneakily without asking. Oh, I do love tradition.

Potato chips, museum trips, linguistics

1. At home I eat potato chips, oh, maybe, once or twice a year. Usually because somebody else has bought them and brought them to a party that I am attending. In Spain I eat potato chips, oh, maybe, one or twice a WEEK. That's because here they are made with olive oil, and, ergo are very delicious. Also, I spend a lot of time waiting in the Beasain train station with a vending machine as my only companion. I like to think that the olive oil makes them healthier, too, but I have no idea if this is actually the case.

2. I went to the Guggenheim on Thursday with a few classes from my school. It was pretty amazing and I had that same feeling that I get whenever I go to museums, namely, "why don't I go to museums more often?" I wish I'd had more time to wander freely and to hang out with the amazing, massive, and amazingly massive Serra sculptures, but instead I had a guided tour of "Art in the USA: 300 Years of Innovation" conducted entirely in Basque. One of the teachers on the trip translated a lot of it into Spanish for me, but it was still a pretty strange experience: American art history through the prism of Spanish-Basque culture. Huh. It was funny to have this Spanish woman telling me things like "in the 1920s Jazz was becoming very important to American culture" or, even better "this is a picture of George Washington, the first president of America." What? Who? Really? I've never heard of him.

3. Generally, I tend to reject the Sapir=Whorf hypothesis (which at my level of understanding amounts to the belief that the language we speak shapes the way we think in pretty clear-cut and unbending ways) but I do have a tendency to import certain grammatical structures from English into Spanish. There are certain ways of saying things in English which are so intermingled with my sense of the logic of how things work that it is difficult to get rid of them. For example, the present progressive: common in English and appropriate in a variety of circumstances ("I am drinking tea," "I am teaching English") and rare in Spanish, generally being restricted to what is actually happening in this very moment ("I am drinking tea," but not "I am teaching English," rather "I teach English). And yet. I use the present progressive all the time in Spanish because to me it just....sounds right. I don't know that thinking in the present progressive really shapes my wider world-view that much, but still it is an English construction changing how I conceive of something. Then again, probably as I start thinking in Spanish more (presuming that this will indeed happen) the good old P.P. will leave me alone. I'll keep you posted Sapir and Whorf.

A sequence of words, often alliterative, difficult to articulate quickly

Yup. This week is tongue twister week for the students at Txindoki Alkartasuna and for the most part they are eating it up. I may have blown my heretofore assumed coolness by revealing that I can say "Betty Botter bought some butter..." at warp speed, but I think it's worth it for the resulting laughter. Whatever. It's kind of a neat skill. For the first 15 years that I possessed it (or maybe more like 17 ), it was regarded as supremely annoying. Now is its moment of redemption.

Also enjoyable: in trying to understand the phrase "selfish shellfish" at least three students have independently guessed that "selfish" means fish seller. They are so smart! Though, unfortunately, also so wrong, at least in this case.

In non-tongue-twister related news, I went to a lovely Bloc Party concert in Bilbao this weekend. It rocked at just the right level for me: at no point was I frightened for my life but I did frequently feel inspired to jump around. After the concert the venue turned into a club and not just any club but a club full of Spanish hipsters. We could have been in New York, we could have been in Minneapolis, we could have been in Seattle, but actually we were in Spain and maybe that's why we stayed out way too late. We caught the 5:54am train home (to my friend's house in a town near Bilbao) and had to deal with a lot of very drunk teenagers. I have, I believe, in the past complained about the drinking age in the US but now it strikes me as entirely appropriate. Teenagers should not drink because drunk teenagers are really annoying.

Hamaiketako

This is my favorite Basque word that I've learned thus far. An Hamaiketako is like an early lunch, it's when you eat delicious food at 11am. Hamaike means 11, and tako? I don't know, but I like to imagine that it means delicious food.

So this week I've had two hamaiketakos at school. The first one was with my favorite and smallest (only 7 kids) class. It was potluck style and they were all so cute with the things they made. Everything from tuna sandwiches to muffins to tortilla. I brought chocolate chip cookies and one kid (one of the many Jon's, a basque name which is amusingly pronounced like 'yawn') was all "Oh, it's like chips ahoy." I responded in a friendly manner but I thought "Oh, you poor boy, you are only exposed to lame american culture. These cookies are NOT like chips ahoy."

The second hamaiketako (how many times I can I use this word in one post? well, let's see)was with my fellow teachers in celebration of a few birthdays (god only knows who's). This one was just so overwhelmingly Spanish, what with the tortilla de bacalo, the chorizo, the ridiculous amounts of bread and oh, did I mention the wine? Yeah, there was wine. Can you imagine the entire faculty of an American high school drinking wine together in the middle of a school day? Yeah, I can't either.

So, yes, my life here definitely revolves around food. And speaking of which: Happy Thanksgiving! We are doing a cute little ex-pat style dinner tonight and yesterday I made 3 pies (2 pumpkin and 1 apple) for the occaision, so I'm pretty psyched. Oooh and we used the extra pie dough to make these amazing little vegetable empanada things. Just the dough filled with sautéed mushrooms, onions, eggplant and spinach. Way better then the sugar-cinnamon cracker things that I usually use extra dough for. I highly recommend them.

But, back to hamaiketakos. What I really like about this word is its elegant specificity. It's becoming clear that I'm only in the learning new languages game for moments like this, moments when you can say something in one word that your native tongue would need several words or even several clauses to express. It's Occam's razor for words. Why say 'to take advantage of' when you can use 'aprovechar?' Why say 'food that you eat at 11am, that's not lunch because you'll still eat lunch at like 2 or 3 and certainly isn't brunch because everything is savory and probably includes wine because why wouldn't you want to have some wine half way through the morning' when you can say 'hamaiketako' and call it good? Also, why not say 'hamaiketako' all the time? It's fun.

Seriously, come on

OK. So it is 6:45 am and I do not want to be awake right now. And yet. So, body I have one question for you: what's up?

I admit that I allowed you to catch a cold and that congestion can make sleeping more difficult. I also admit that yesterday we consumed more cafinated beverages then usual (two cafe con leches and two earl grey teas). I just wanted them for their warm, throat-soothing abilities and I thought that since we had them all before 6pm, that things would work out. We didn't go to bed until 1am. And weren't you tired by then? You didn't want to keep reading (even though we're re-reading "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" and it is so pleasantly familiar, like getting back in touch with a friend and remembering that you forgot how funny he can be) so I turned out the light. And pretty quickly we weren't feeling so conscious anymore.

But. Then. A mere four and half hours later, zing, wakefullness re-emerged. I tried to wait it out, to ignore your protestations, but I gave in. I got you water. I took you to the bathroom. I blew your nose. But you remain steadfast in your refusal to go back to sleep.

Cada loco con su tema

This is a phrase that I overheard last night that I'm pretty sure I've come across previously, though I can't remember in what context. Anyway, I reallly like it. "Every crazy person with his theme" or maybe to be more coloquial "Every crazy person has their thing" or "Everyone has their own obsession." OK, I'll stop with the endless 'ors' of translation.

But it's just so true. And I think that it is true in three ways. And here they are:

1) As I grow up I start to find the connections between all of the seemingly diverse subjects that I find fascinating. It's like "oh, I like words and I like people and I want to know all about both and about their interactions." I'm just trying (allbeit clumsily) to access this theme from a variety of angles.

2) Everyone has "a thing." A thing or, two, or three. Everyone likes River Pheonix, or biking, or chess, or vinegar, or prose poems or something. We share or hide our quirks as the mood strikes, the theme we are crazy about.

3) Everyone has "their thing" in that everyone has hang-up(s) which they keep re-encountering. More and more you find yoursef following the same patterns of behavior, oh, it's hard to avoid your theme.


In other news, my housemates really need to clean the kitchen, joder. Gross.

Obviously, I should read poetry more often

You cannot control your laughter.
You cannot control your love.
You know not to hit the brakes on ice
but do anyway. You bend the nail
but keep hammering because
hammering makes the world.

-Dean Young from "How I Get My Ideas"

Second Order Feelings

I'm in a good mood and I am happy that I'm in a good mood. I'm in a good mood because I just remembered that I know how to take care of myself! I know how to sleep in a bit and then get up and make tea and delicious scrambled eggs. I know that, actually, you don't need a toaster to make toast, you can just use a pan! I know that it's fiction week on Slate and that I can read lots about books. I know that I have a book that I want to read and that there is a hot shower waiting for me whenever I can manage to get out of my pajamas. I know what bands to listen to in order to amplify my happiness. I do.

Today I've just got this growing sense that I know myself well enough to seek out the things that I need and want. I know things about myself that are not circumstance dependent, things that I can always come back to. And even when I have trouble explaining myself to others (oh, say in Spanish, for example) I stilll...well, I still have myself. Maybe that is the sort of sentence that will make me cringe when viewed from a week's distance, but there it is.

And, although I'm not crazy about Myla Goldberg as a novelist (OK, I've only read "Bee Season" but that book gets pretty messy in the end) I do really like this quote of hers from Slate about books that you are supposed to have read, but haven't:

"As much as I admire and value intellectualism and experimentation, I've discovered that unless a book has a throbbing heart as well as a sexy brain, I feel like the story is a specimen in a sealed glass jar and not a living, breathing creature I want to take by the hand and talk to for hours on end."

Yeah, exactly.

It was peculiar in its ease

Every week (OK, I like to generalize it hasn't been very many weeks yet) I don't want to go to work on Monday. My ridiculous four day weekends lull me into a level of relaxation that is difficult to shake off. But then once I start work, it's fun! It's like bath time when you're a little kid, you don't want to get in and then you don't want to get out.

This week I've ben talking about Halloween with my students. Actually, I've been giving them lame Halloween themed jokes and then we try to figure out what they mean. The biggest hit so far? "What do you get when there's a witch in the desert? A sandwich!" Yup. I think that it's popularity is due to its breath-taking simplicity...or something. The students are pretty cute. They actually get excited when they understand a joke. Today I heard some of them talking about the "sandwich joke" in the hall. Oh , yeah. Also, I've been giving them candy, which can't hurt. Though the portion of my budget spent on candy is getting a little ridiculous.

The week in review (OK, yeah, the last 2 days):

Best Moment:
Me: What did you do this weekend?
Student: I looked up Seattle on google earth and saw the Space Needle.

Worst Moment:
Student (in Spanish): I don't understand anything that you're saying.
Me: OK. Sorry. I can say it again more slowly...
Student (in an annoyed voice): I just don't understand any English.

Weirdest Moment:
Student: Have you ever been to the Playboy Mansion?
Me: No. Um....no.

I other, non-teaching related news, I am becoming a master soup-maker. Last week was lentil and this week is mushroom. It's really all about chicken stock and garlic. Delicious.

I wanted you nearer

Sometimes it just sneaks up on me. Things are going along just fine, I had pie for breakfast (this should insure long term happiness, no?), took my new (free) bike to be fixed, went out to lunch with a friend but the next thing I know: I'm feeling kind of sad. Kind of lonely. And then I'm on the internet (which can be lonely, too) and somehow I'm listening to Elton John (who knows how that happened). Yes, things have gone from bad to worse.

I just want coming here to have been worth it. I want any growing pains that I experience here to teach me things, worthwhile things. And sometimes I think that that is happening. Other times I think that I have just sent myself far away from everyone I love for no reason. I have friends here now. They are nice. But I've only known them for a month and...it's not the same.

I want to be the kind of person who can make herself feel better. I do have strategies for this (mostly involving food and music) but sometimes they don't work. I want to be the kind of person who doesn't need other people to make her feel better. But maybe I shouldn't want that. Maybe that kind of person doesn't exist.

I'm going to go run errands and try to feel like a part of this place again. Yup. Oh, but tomorrow I'm going on a day trip to France and that's pretty cool. A day trip. To france.

Little Mac o'mine

Things my computer can't do:
-Join most wireless networks
-Burn CDs
-Download Skype
-Walk

Things my computer can do:
-Impress Spanish teenagers with it's color (white) and size (small)
-Allow me to use the vast possibilities which the internet offers (through an ethernet cord, mind you)
-Process words
-Be my little friend

All and all I'd say I'm still happy with it...but you know....yeah.

El cinteron de seguridad salva vidas

Seriously, without the shrinking power of the dryer my pants were falling off. Falling off! But now thanks to H&M all is well.

Maybe someday I'll actually write about, oh, you know, my job. Suffice it to say that I like my kids...mostly because they laugh at my jokes. I think that might be the main reason that I ever like anyone.

I want to take out the trash...

but I can´t because the Basque nationalists knocked over our dumpster.

I´m an ennumeration fiend

New Lists Today!

Interesting things about my living situation:
-I am the only girl out of four people and the only non-spaniard. So far I´ve only met two of them and they´re both nice and willing to explain the lame jokes in the spanish television shows that we watch.
-My apartment is on the fourth floor and there´s no elevator. Calves of steel, baby.
-The washer is still broken. I haven´t done laundry in two weeks. Yesterday, I bought 4 new pairs of underwear (at "Women´s Secret") and now I should be OK for a little bit longer. One pair is bright orange. I´m not sure how this happened...in the store they looked coral, I swear.
-It´s near a mall called "fnac." I´m sure this stands for something but I have no idea what. As a result I go around singing a song (well, sort of a song) that goes something like "fnac-a-nac-a-nac, fnac-a-nac-a-nac-a-nac."

Skills that I´m improving unexpectedly:
-My jay-walking abilitiy. Everyone does it here and I think I´ve finally recovered from the incident several years ago when I got yelled at by a Seattle cop for this same action ("THE FLASHING HAND MEANS STOP"). Also, I spend a lot of time walking around with a fellow auxiliar de conversación who is from New York. What doesn´t kill you makes you stronger (yesterday I had a near miss with a bus, hmmm).
-My text-messaging ability. It´s way cheaper than calling. So I´m finally joining whatever century it is that we´re currently enjoying. My hatred for abreviations means that I´ve got to compensate with mad speediness. Or that´s the plan anyway.
-Stair climbing (see above).

Interesting things about San Sebastian:
-It´s on the beach. The beach is the center of all well-being, so that´s nice.
-It rains a lot here! I know, I know, I´m from Seattle, blablabla. But, guess what? In Seattle it only drizzles. Here it rains hard. For hours. I need to cough up the euros to buy some boots.
-I already recognize all the homeless people. And then there´s the guy (I don´t think he´s homeless, he seems awfully well-kempt) who reads "poetry" with a microphone on the street, accompanied by some warm 106.9 style elevator music.

Books that I´m currently reading:
-Goldbug Variations (Richard Powers, I love you, but you´re bringing me down.)
-El Asesinato de Roger Ackroyd (Agatha Christie in Spanish! Thanks, San Sebastian public library!)
-Poetry in Spanish (Slooow-going. I aspire to translate some of it. So far, I´ve translated a total of: one poem. And very poorly at that.)

Wonders of the Spanish Grocery Store:
-It´s super hard to find baking-powder (some on, guys, I just want to make pancakes).
-The milk is...unrefridgerated!
-There are a zillion kinds of "breakfast cookies."
-Goat cheese is cheaper than all other cheese, excepting processed-sliced.

All and all, things are pretty great these days. Maybe, at some point I´ll actually start working or somthing. Yeah, that might be good.

Invincible (oh-oh-oh)

In case you weren´t aware: I have secured a place to live. It is a place where I can leave all of my stuff! I place that I can settle into! And if I had a window, I´d totally have a view of the ocean!

So, far I´ve only met one of my housemates. His name is Carlos and he has dreadlocks. He also has a car and he took me shopping at this semi-distant mall place. So now I have sheets, which is pretty great.

Aside from having a place to live and having sheets, I am also comforted by how much people from home have been reaching out to me. I am an addict to social interaction these days, and when it comes from people who I know well (instead from the mildly creepy guy talking to me just now in the internet cafe, for example) it is all the more inspiring.

And lately, all I listen to is OK Go, MIA and reggeaton. That´s because I need to feel powerful. If you´re walking down the street with some semi-ridiculous reggeaton beat pounding in your ears, nobody can mess with you. That´s right.

When you read my blog are the header´s in Spanish or is that just for me?

Well, being in a foriegn country where you don´t know anyone well is really lonely. Shocking, huh?

I reached a bit of a low last night when I started crying while sitting alone on a bench by the river. I´d taken my book (Goldbug Variations) there to escape the annoying backpackers at my hostel and as I leaned awkwardly into the pool of light cast by a nearby street light, I was struck by my complete aloneness. If it sounds melodramatic, that´s because it was. Seriously, my emotions are way closer to the surface then usual and they seem to be adopting an annoying habbit of announcing themselves in a smi-public manner. After a successful interaction ending in a cup of coffee, groceries or a cell phone I am ecstatic. On the other hand, when people treat me like a crazy incomprehensible foriegner (this means you, lady at the ice cream place) it´s hard to keep the tears down.

Luckily, all of this has me thinking about neuroscience. What is going on in my brain? What neural-chemical form does all this interaction between my environment and my brain cells take? I´ve also fallen back on music as mood-regulating device and then I really wonder how that works. So these sounds go into my ear (cochlea, bla bla, I don´t remember) and then suddenly I feel way happier and much readier to take on the world?

In other news, I went to my little town and I really like it. It´s way less overwhelming then San Sebastian and, omg, most of the signs were in Basque. I totally heard people speaking it, too. Now, if the school there would just call me back then maybe I could start figuring out what I´m doing.

Commnity Vs. Independece (round something)

Reasons to keep a blog:
-Keeping in touch
-Processing emotional turmoil through the written word
-Working up "nonfiction chops" for possible future writing projects
-Creating a record of my time in Spain (for posterity and such)

Reasons not to keep a blog:
-Weirdness of sharing personal information over the internet
-On the other hand, if it isn't a very personal blog it might be boring
-I'm a terrible speller and soon the world (or like the 2 people who will read this) will know. I'm also no good with commas. For some one who identifies as a writer (at least aspiring) this is pretty embarassing.

Well, it's four to three on the pro side. So here we go.

I am in Madrid, Spain. I just finished a pretty useless and overwhelming orientation. I'm going to stay here for one more day and hang out with Jennifer. I also get to have lunch with Morgan who I haven't seen since last time I was in Spain. Tomorrow morning I'll head up to San Sebastian by bus and ...hang out there until Monday when I go check out the school where I'll be teaching. That's the plan.

In less logisticol and more theoretical terms (and who doesn't prefer the theoretical to the logistical), I've decided that this experience is going to be all about navigating between my drive for independence and my drive for community. I want to figure out who I am as an individual seperate from my Macalester community, seperate from my Seattle community. But I also don't want to lose those communities. And I want to polish my community creating skills. I mean, not like Sim City style, but my friendship making skills.

Other goals include: Improving my Spanish, figuring out how I feel about teaching and devoting time to writing projects on a consistent basis. Oh, and I want to learn BASQUE. Honestly, how much cooler would I be if I knew Basque? A lot. That's how mcuh.