My landlady is coming in a few minutes, and I’m dreading her visit. She wants to “see” what things she left in the apartment. “A whole wardrobe full and then some.” I want to say, “Please don’t buy anything else. I think your apartment can be considered ‘beyond furnished’ already.”
But I will try to smile as she pokes through my drawers and makes loud, unfiltered remarks. Maybe I will soothe my shattered calm with chocolate once she is gone.
The other day, I had a thought: Would it work best to be mentally present in only one world at a time? My feet are inevitably in two worlds right now, but does my mind have to be?
Yesterday, I was mentally in the States, shopping online for wedding paraphernalia, acting on a few decisions, buying a wedding gift for a friend, laughing with my bridesmaids about imaginary wedding disasters, and the like. When I needed a break from the screen, I returned to Spain, chatting with a shopkeeper, going for a walk, etc.
Today, I stayed in Spain, bouncing along on the bus to a meeting, setting up final healthcare appointments, and whatnot.
Now I am waiting for my landlady to come peer in my cabinets. Once she leaves, I have a handful of other projects I’d like to get to… after my chocolate, of course.
I’m not feeling particularly inspired to write on my blog. I asked J if he had any inspiration for me. He suggested that I write about Ecclesiastes, but only because he’s preaching through Ecclesiastes right now and that’s what’s on his brain.
I don’t have anything “ecclesiastical” to enlighten you with, but I remembered a poem I wrote many years ago. You may read it if you promise not to analyze it much; I think the only value I had in mind when I wrote it was face value.
"Vanity" The sun races across the sky Another day; another try. The wind circles as it blows Terrific sound; nowhere to go. All day trickling streams will stray To oceans same as yesterday. What’s the purpose to be me In light of so much vanity?
…
Well, since I copied and pasted this poem, my landlady swept in, summer dress billowing behind her. She snooped in the cupboards, teetered on a stool while trying to fix a blind that was broken long before I moved in, told me her moderately-unrealistic dreams for the apartment, and took the last payment of rent that I will give her.
I’m glad that’s done. I found that her presence eerily echoed the words of my poem. I could unpack that a little more, but right now, I feel depleted in a way that not even chocolate will alleviate.
The public health clinic was teeming with people. Where was she?
“Over here!” My friend waved me over to a corner of the waiting room. She rushed to explain her health problem, pointing to various body parts while keeping an eye on the door where she was to go as soon as her number was called.
My breathless mind tried to keep up with her Arabic. I was still drumming up passable Spanish vocabulary when her number was called.
We squeezed around an old shopping cart piled high with unsupervised medical supplies and stepped into the consultation room.
“What is the problem?”
I took a deep breath and launched into an unrehearsed explanation. Interpreting between two foreign languages is always a workout for me, and not a flattering one.
The lady at the desk was silent until I paused. Then she said, “You both realize that I’m a nurse, not a doctor, right?”
Actually, no. I had never been beyond the door in this particular public health clinic.
“Look, the only thing I can do is test and see if she still has the infection.” She handed my friend one of those flimsy plastic cups we use at children’s parties for juice or Jell-O. “Urinate in here and bring it back to me.”
Apparently dismissed, we squeezed around the shopping cart and wandered around the building in search of restrooms. Misplaced people were milling everywhere in a warm, concrete facility that smelled of metal and sweat.
We eventually found the almost unmarked restroom, nestled between consultation rooms. Then back down the long hallway we went, my friend trying to hide her cup of pee in a plastic bag she’d dug out of her purse. “There wasn’t any paper in there to wrap the cup,” she said. “I don’t want everyone here to see it.”
We wiggled around the overflowing shopping cart again. The nurse stretched on a pair of gloves, stuck a testing strip into the urine, and told us to wait outside. My friend turned and left, still holding her cup.
“Uh… can she throw away the urine?” I asked.
While I was still verifying this with the nurse-not-doctor, my friend lost her way and, unable to read, ended up in the men’s restroom. There was an unsettled man waiting outside when I arrived on the scene. “This is for men,” he said in Arabic when my friend emerged.
We found seats in the waiting room. As much as I love to people-watch, it was hard to look around without feeling absolutely hopeless. Did anyone in the healthcare system really care about these people?
As we waited, the lady next to us asked if her number was on the screen yet. She couldn’t read; she could only hear the tone and see the digits move without understanding what they meant. I looked at her tiny slip of paper, the kind of ticket you get while waiting in line for olives at the market. It was hard to see that wisp of green-blue and not see my own personalized number on a freshly printed ticket from the private health clinic across the street. My initials followed by 524. Always the same. Always announced over the speaker while I sat in the air-conditioned waiting room.
Her number was 254. The number on the screen was 272. “It’s past,” I explained. By a good half hour, likely. She walked up to the desk and was sent to get another number and start the process again.
Meanwhile, my friend and I were called back into the consultation room. The overflowing shopping cart had been removed and this time we could walk in without yoga posing our way through the doorway.
The nurse told me, “Tell her that she still has an infection, but she needs to finish the week of antibiotics she got yesterday.”
Oh.
That was a piece of information I had been missing. My friend had apparently just been to the emergency room the day before, but wasn’t satisfied with the lingering pain from the infection. As if one dose of antibiotics should have removed her aching like magic.
It was hard to look at the nurse sitting at her desk and not feel absolutely hopeless for her. Was this what she dealt with day after day? Confused immigrants expecting or even demanding immediate fixes without understanding her role as a nurse, not a doctor or a magician?
My friend and I walked toward home. She pulled me into a North African store and bought a bag of fresh figs: big, purple, and sweet. On the street again, she handed me the bag. “I got these for you because you helped me today.”
We sat on the front steps of my apartment building until the hopelessness of the morning faded with chatter and laughter. Deep down, there isn’t as much that separates us as we sometimes imagine.
I just finished reading Anthony Doerr’s Four Seasons in Rome. Someone discarded it, and I picked it up, curious. This isn’t a book recommendation unless you happen to know that you like Anthony Doerr, but Doerr’s descriptions of life on the outside of a culture cut me wide open. I didn’t know there were words for these “in but not of” feelings.
Apartness and perpetual humiliation are part of daily life for those living overseas. Sometimes we talk about it too much. Often we don’t even acknowledge it but let our frustration become part of the existing barrier, like a thick moss growing over a wall we’re trying to ignore.
We are outsiders, always outsiders, chipping at the barrier that stands between us. And there are successes! Moments when a chunk of the wall falls away and we glimpse the other side…only to find razor wire.
“To be a nonfluent foreigner is to pass through one gate only to find yourself outside two more,” writes Doerr (p. 46). “We are humbled over and over–humility hangs over our heads like a sledgehammer… Oh, you think you’ve been here long enough to barter at the street markets? Guess what, you just spent €8 on three plastic clothes hangers” (p. 76).
After nine months in Rome, Doerr walks into a grocery store and makes an order without messing up a single syllable. “What happens?” he writes. “I get my groceries. No streamers drop from the ceiling, no strobe lights start flashing. The grocer doesn’t reach across the counter and take my face in her hands and kiss me on the forehead.” Instead, the grocer asks about his boys and speaks so quickly he can’t keep up. “…I miss 80 percent of it and sheepishly, stepping down from my throne of fluency, have to ask, ‘I’m sorry, more slowly, please?’” (p. 168)
For some, eventually the barriers do not loom so large or feel so insurmountable. But for many? “I know nothing… I never made it through the gates between myself and the Italians. I cannot claim to have become, in even the smallest manner, Roman” (p. 201).
True. Despite my efforts to integrate into the culture around me, my North American worldview remains mostly intact, placing me decidedly on the outside.
But if we let it, doesn’t living on the outside help us accept who we are? After all, like it or not, we cannot cease being a part of something. Not being a part of the culture we’re living in is because we’re part of another, or even several. Being on the outside can help us identify our own “inside.”
Apartness and perpetual humiliation are hard, but they are also opportunities to learn and grow.* And we need these opportunities to understand ourselves.
So I will try to be grateful. Even as my neighbor gives me a list of what is wrong with my couscous. Next time, it will be better. I can promise.
Doerr, Anthony. Four Seasons in Rome. Scribner, 2007.
*Thank you, J, for your positive spin on life to remind me to keep on growing!
I had never used the BlaBlaCar app before. Surely a carpooling app couldn’t be as pain-free as it looked. But it was! J and I arrived at the Málaga Costa del Sol airport in plenty of time. We checked in and zipped through security and border control before parking ourselves just inside of the international gate area to people-watch.
We were some of the last passengers to board our flight. Why rush to constrain yourself to a seat that’s already reserved for you? Our 15 euro flight got us to North Africa safely. After we landed, J and I stayed in our seats rather than smashing ourselves against the other passengers in the aisle. We didn’t even stand up, necks bent at unnatural angles under the overhead bins. (Why do we do this?!)
A man who had been watching us announced to the other passengers: “These are the most intelligent people on here! They waited to get on the plane until the last and they are waiting to get off the plane too!”
As we waited in the customs line, I couldn’t wait and asked J, “What do you think of North Africa so far?” Wisely, he returned that he wasn’t sure if his first impressions were accurate and that he’d rather wait to give them.
We stepped out of the airport and were spat into North African culture where overly helpful taxi drivers swarmed. After hemming and hawing, we agreed to a ride for 150 dirham, 50 dirham less than the initial asking price.
Once we had been deposited in our friends’ neighborhood, I asked the neighborhood guard where the Americans lived. He pointed me to a black gate and told me how many stories up. Americans in that part of the world don’t have much anonymity, and that is what I had been counting on.
We joined the family, catching up on life, hanging out with the children, and feasting on a giant stir-fry for supper.
The next day was our day to tour the city. It was my chance to show J the world that had been mine for 16 months. We passed my old language school and I recalled the hours I had spent exhausting my sweat and tears while learning Arabic. We dropped by my old neighborhood too, even popping in at the little store around the corner to say hello and buy a Snicker bar just because. (We also forgot about that Snicker bar until it became a squished pile in the bottom of our warm and sweaty backpack.)
From there, we snagged a taxi to the old city. I could already feel myself shriveling into a prune. The weather was hotter than I had expected and much drier than either of us were used to. We couldn’t keep up with our water intake.
We descended into the heart of the old city to the renowned tanneries, avoiding anyone who was too helpful. In fact, over the course of the day we managed to disappoint a lot of hopeful shopkeepers, browsing rather than buying. At the tanneries, we stood at the lookout and peered down on all of the action. There was so much to watch at once. J shooed away an over-eager tour guide, preferring to figure things out on his own.
We hunted for a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, but the only one I remembered wasn’t serving lunch yet. So we bought street food instead: neems (fried spring rolls), briouats (a triangular, chicken filled pastry), kalinte (chickpea flan) sprinkled with cumin and red pepper, and olives with lemon and parsley.
We looked for a place to eat our collection, and finally found a sunny spot along the ledge of a fence. But first on our menu was activated charcoal. Three pills before and three after a meal. With street food on a warm day, I got pretty bossy about following the instructions. We took our time, munching and tossing olive pits at the trunk of a scrawny tree in the sidewalk. Even there in that scorching African sunbeam, our repast was delicious.
From my time of living in the city, I had fond memories of climbing up the side of a hill to a set of ancient tombs that overlooked the city. But how to get there? We stopped to ask directions. The shopkeeper gave us some of his life story for free as well as detailed directions, which I promptly forgot by trying to retain everything he said. No matter. We still had Google maps and what was left of my memory. We wound our way up the hill, admired the tombs and the view and then parked ourselves in the shade until my fantasy about a tall glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice overpowered the lure of a shady spot.
We spent a chunk of the afternoon perched on a restaurant’s third story, sipping orange juice, eating tagine, and watching people swirling in and out of the city gate below. Once we had cooled off, we meandered back to our friends’ house, with one last stop to buy an ear of roasted street corn.
The next morning, we envisioned ourselves arriving at the international church on time. Instead, with all of the careful packing that went into the morning–the gifts for a friend’s family, the trusty charcoal, and the Imodium, just in case–I managed to forget my wallet. My wallet which held our only local currency.
“I’m sorry. We don’t have money,” I told the taxi driver. “Take us back to the house.” Obligingly, he made a loop at the next roundabout and waited outside while I dashed up the flights of stairs to retrieve my wallet. Any dreams of arriving at church on time were crushed.
Although the fellowship had changed since I had been there last, it was still charged with a buzzing energy of brothers and sisters in Christ uniting after a long week. After the service, I was able to reconnect with a few acquaintances before we were on our way to visit Chaimae and her family.
I was surprised by how Chaimae’s family remained unchanged. Throughout the day, most of the family dropped by, delighted to meet J and practice their English. They fed us breakfast and then fed us several courses of lunch a few hours later. That afternoon, J got a very long look into North African culture.
Our time in the city was drawing to a close. The next morning we breakfasted on eggs and khlea, a cured beef that tastes like a barn. I hung out in the egg section, but J preferred the barny beef. The guy has an inexcusably tolerant palate.
As we left the city, I looked out the bus window, wondering if I was saying goodbye forever. I felt nostalgic but realized I no longer had a lingering sense of belonging.
J and I spent almost a week in Mytown. He stepped into my life and met my people. Yes, I continued to feel the emotional dissonance of my meshing worlds, but assigning a name to the feeling seemed to rob it of its power.
“Does he have money to take care of you?”
My friends and neighbors invited themselves into the particulars of our relationship. They all had advice about where we should live, how soon we should get married and start a family, etc.– but they always expressed their approval of J in the end.
We found park benches to sit on and people-watch. We discussed things we hadn’t thought to discuss on the phone or through emails and messages. Sometimes we didn’t bother to do anything except “be” with each other.
But that’s not all we did. We had British breakfast at the port. And on the beach, I collected broken shells while he went for a jog along the shoreline. A teammate borrowed J for morning bike rides, giving him the chance to burn off some of his morning energy before I even rolled out of bed.
Late one morning, we bussed to a neighboring town’s restaurant where my friend cooks. She gave me a tour of the kitchen, lifting kettle lids and describing everything inside. She heaped our table full of food we hardly made a dent in: chicken with rice, lentils, beef and prune tagine, salads, fries, bread, vegetables, and tall glasses of orange juice. “I was so happy when you said you were coming that I cried,” she told me later. She expressed her appreciation for our visit by making sure that we were taken care of… right down to ordering our pirated taxi ride home.
We delivered birthday gifts to my neighbor boys. We went to the market and bought a buffet of olives and other pickled delights. And J chatted with the various Chinese store owners around town. His Mandarin was typically met with surprise and guarded curiosity… or even an expletive.
We spent a warm afternoon volunteering with the Red Cross, entertaining a group of children while the village women studied basic Spanish. The director had brought puzzles for the children, but the puzzles were too advanced for their ages. One little boy leaned into an open puzzle box and scooped the pieces to his mouth, pretending to eat them: “Om! Om!” he said over and over again. The other children weren’t too concerned as long as his appetite didn’t extend to their puzzle. There were some wild moments, some tattle-tale stories, and a mini lesson on forgiveness. A volunteer from another district had brought virtual reality glasses which entertained a few adults and children at a time.
Over the course of the week, we spent a lot of time at the center where J was staying, learning how to bump around in the same kitchen together while on task. J faithfully washed the dishes after our meals; I could probably count on one hand the number of dishes I washed when he was around. Our team met on Sunday and for a few other activities scattered throughout the week.
In the evenings, J would walk me home. And in the mornings, he would usually meet me on my way to the center. In fact, there was rarely a time that I walked that three-minute walk entirely alone. A delighted smile to greet me on the street was one of those small things that made me miss him terribly when he was gone.
And then, on Thursday evening, we finished our laundry, packed our backpacks, and attempted an early bedtime. The next morning, we left for North Africa.
I would sleep all day tomorrow, I decided. After a filled-to-the-brim month, my body was worn out.
Then the instructor from a nearby language school responded to an email that evening, asking to meet at 9 a.m. the next morning. I tried not to panic–“Nine o’clock on my day off!?”–and kept reading the email. “Or 12:00.” I supposed I could drag myself out of bed by then and agreed. But I must have been a little too agreeable because I ended up agreeing to start Spanish class the following Monday, although I hadn’t meant to.
My agreeable mood would be tested yet again. Early in the afternoon, my landlady messaged me. “The grandpa upstairs died. His funeral mass is at 6:30.” The “grandpa upstairs” had always been kind. I hadn’t seen him often, but when I’d stop by to visit, he’d invite me in to sit and chat. I knew his three daughters by sight, but attend his funeral? Why oh why had my landlady told me about it? I could no longer feign ignorance.
I pictured myself tromping into the Spanish funeral mass, outrageously uncatholic. What kind of rituals would they perform? Would I be required to take part? Goodness, what in the world would I wear? My only pair of dress shoes had long since passed their prime. I meticulously de-pilled my black sweater.
“It would be good to go, wouldn’t it? I don’t know your culture very well…” I tried, hoping that my landlady would say that it wasn’t a big deal. I wanted a loophole so I could conveniently lose my nerve.
“Yes, clearly.”
All righty then.
As it turned out, several of the pallbearers wore hoodies and sneakers, and I don’t think people bothered to notice my scruffy dress shoes at all.
Ramadan
All year long, we can pretend that we aren’t so different after all. Then Ramadan starts and suddenly we’re at a fork in the road. I choose one way and my friends choose the other. I catch myself lingering there at the fork, wondering how many want to go that way and how many go because that’s how it’s done.
Yes, Ramadan has a way of waking me up again.
A creep at my elbow
I was meandering to a local shop on a sunny afternoon when a presence at my elbow startled me. The presence wasn’t inclined to pass me. Oh brother. A creep. Adrenaline shot through my veins as decided what to do.
Then he greeted me. And grinned, like the twerp he can be sometimes, when he realized that he had successfully disconcerted me.
Interns.
Breaking the fast with pre-packaged cakes
The call to prayer sounded. Allahu Akbar! Time to break the fast.
Noura, the lady beside me, closed her eyes and whispered a prayer. I sat in my bus seat, still and alert, curious what the Muslims around me would do to break the fast. Or if the cantankerous bus driver would allow them to do anything at all.
“I don’t have anything halal!” The guys in the seat behind me frantically rustled through the plastic bags at their feet.
Ashhadu alla ilaha illallah!
Then they broke the fast with pre-packaged cakes, half dipped in chocolate. Hayya ‘alas-Salah!
After rustling up their own ftur, they began offering cakes to the Muslims around them. A sub-Saharan man declined politely. They threw a package to one of their buddies in the front and he caught it with a crackle. Then across the aisle to another buddy. Last, they peeked through the gap of the seat in front of them.
“Is she North African or Romanian?” they asked each other. My ethnicity was in question. Noura turned to me with a smirk. I smirked back.
I hefted my bag onto the closest seat as the bus lurched forward, nearly carrying the rest of me and mine down the aisle. But I caught the seat handle just in time and wrestled off my backpack.
It was one of those four seater sections of the bus where two passengers faced another two passengers. The kind of seat I typically avoid because I dislike riding backwards and letting my knees protrude into someone else’s territory. But today, the bus was full and at a quick glance, it didn’t seem like there were many other options.
The woman across from me, knees against mine, watched me curiously. I smiled and decided, given the close quarters, not to mention that I was still getting over the flu. I was trying to subtly clear the cough in my throat when her questions began, each in thick Andalusian. “Where are you from? Where do you live? What’s your name?”
Every time I replied, she broadcasted my answer over her shoulder to an elderly gentleman sitting a row back. He watched me with delight, his eyes peering between the clouds of white which were his head and chin.
“Where do you live in Mytown?”
“Close to Central Market.”
“SHE LIVES CLOSE TO CENTRAL MARKET.”
“Oh, Central Market!”
This was how the interrogation went as I bounced along backwards, feeling both annoyed and amused that everyone on the bus now had access to my personal data. She began to preface questions with my name, dragging my attention away from the window where I was pretending that I had forgotten she was there. I kept my answers to the point, swallowing back the coughing fit that kept swelling in my airway.
“How long have you lived here?”
“Six years.”
“SHE HAS LIVED HERE SIX YEARS.”
“Ah! Six years.”
Andalusians, pleasant as they are, have a way of reducing me to the feeling that I’ve just stepped off the plane. They pick me up like a stray. Under their burning curiosity, I get tongue-tied. Getting tongue-tied leads to falling behind in the conversation. Falling behind is a blow to my confidence, which in turn, makes me appear ignorant and lost. That’s when I try to preserve my fizzling dignity by looking for an escape.
Fast forward to not many days after my backwards bus ride to find a friend and me face to face with three abrupt police officers. This time, curiosity was backed by the authority of the uniform.
“What are you doing here?”
Suddenly, I felt as if I were wandering into territory that was not mine for the wandering. I was three and half blocks from home and I felt like they had found me lost.
“Where are you from? Holland? Russia?”
I had never been stopped by police officers before. I don’t even have a speeding ticket to my name (although, I can’t say I’ve never deserved one). A few questions in, I realized they didn’t believe we had done anything wrong, but they were curious who we were and why we were in this particular neighborhood. Their method was protection by intimidation. Not very effective, but very Andalusian.
Once again, the stray puppy was held up for examination and then sent home. Literally this time.
“Go home. You’ll get robbed here.” As if I didn’t live three and a half blocks away. As if I hadn’t been living three and a half blocks away for three years.
Sometimes, I just want to make a list of all of the things I’ve experienced and survived in life and hand it to the next person who tries to protect my presumed naivete. My list may not be long, but I’m guessing it’s longer than a stray puppy’s.
When I walk down the street, more often than not, I find myself walking behind someone with a smoldering cigarette. If I can’t speed around them, I try to get out of their wake but end up bumping into oncoming pedestrians.
Why does this happen so often, you ask? It’s not Murphy’s law, so don’t bother blaming it on him. Actually, it’s because so many Spaniards smoke.
One of the first things I noticed when I returned to Spain this fall was the smells. Cigarette smoke, cologne, cigarette smoke, body odor, cigarette smoke, car fumes, cigarette smoke–oh, and to break it up a little, weed.
I was walking home from the market one morning when a middle-aged lady stopped me and asked for a light. I was curious; did I look like I smoked? Or was it an assumption given my geographical location?
Last week, a group of us huddled in a bus stop, trying to hide from the chilly breeze within the three protective walls. Without warning, two of the ladies lit up, forcing the rest of us to choose between the chill or the fumes. Rude? Well, I’m in Spain and this is how it’s done among the young, old, rich, poor, and everything in between.
Until I start carrying my own tank of purified air, I suppose I will continue inhaling secondary smoke. It’s life here, for better or for worse, and I’m the one who chose to live here. I’m just saying that if I get lung cancer someday, it’s probably Spain’s fault!
Leaving Illinois–leaving family, friends, and church community–was hard as usual. Well, maybe even harder than usual. I flip on the electric kettle and wait at the counter’s edge while my Barry’s tea bag floats atop the milk in the bottom of my favorite mug. I’m back in Spain and life in the States feels far away. “Well, here I am. Alone again.”
My bags are unpacked. My house is relatively clean except the random projects strewn around the living room. I live downtown and it just feels so quiet.
Then again…
A neighbor (and her irritating dog) dropped by because I’d promised her chocolate for watching my apartment while I was gone. She apologized over and over again for killing my plants and insisted I take the remaining straggler with me before she killed that one too.
Another neighbor (a new one) dropped by to ask if my apartment was for rent. Umm…
Yet another neighbor dropped by to ask if I could pick up her daughter from school. She caught me during a salad laden with chia seeds. While we were chatting, I felt a seed swelling between my front teeth. I couldn’t subtly pry it out with my tongue, so there it stayed and I punctuated the conversation with seedy smiles.
My neighbor boy dropped by to visit, strewing cookie crumbs across the floor as he made his rounds, examining everything new in the house. “What did you miss most?” his mom asked him. “Her or her toys?” He grinned and looked away. But he pointed at me.
As I was out and about this morning, I decided to make a list of the things I like about being back in Spain. The cons can go without mention this time.
The sunshine!
The accessibility to quality food, especially fresh produce.
Knowing my way around stores.
Having sales tax included in the price.
Living downtown where neighbors pop in and out and almost everything I need is within walking distance.
Good ol’ Spanish directness. (Yes, this can get annoying too, but I’m choosing the positive side today.) This morning, as I was standing at the hardware store counter, another customer plunked a packet of screws on the counter and said they were the wrong size. “How do we know you didn’t take some out?” asked the clerk, eyes narrowing. “There’s a screw of a different class.” Indeed, on a bed of bland screws was a gold-colored one. Where had it come from? There would be no getting around the fact that the package had been tampered with. I felt a giggle bubbling up but tried to swallow it down. Even in customer service, there were no niceties. No frills or lace bordering this conversation.
Amazon packages that arrive rápidamente with or without Prime.
Fast internet.
Cheap phone plans.
The reminder that God is here too.
The variety of people–colors, ages, personalities, nationalities–all piled into my neighborhood.
The late schedule. When I roll out of bed at 8:00, the streets are still pretty quiet, as if I’m not the only one reluctant to get started on the day.
My apartment. Knowing my kitchen–what utensils and pots and pans I have and what is in my fridge because I’m the one who put it there.
That’s all for now. See? I’m already feeling less alone and more… I don’t know… ready.
The Spanish classes of our language school took a day trip to Granada to visit the Alhambra. It was a gorgeous day and we had our own guide, which made the experience more memorable. My souvenir was two strips of bright sunburn on the back of my neck where I had missed with sunscreen. Hooray.
A Japanese classmate made me an incredible array of sushi. “You can pay next time,” she said with a smile. I went straight home and savored every bite.
A teammate and I redeemed Adra. (Read about our previous trip here.) We went without much of an agenda and ended up doing little, but enjoying it more. The fishing museum, the tunnels, the beach, and the baked cod with pisto were perfect.
I was tired on the day I went to visit friends in the countryside. The visit overwhelmed my senses and my language abilities. It was hard not to fantasize about going home and flopping down on the sofa for the entire next week. Then, I came back to a town gone crazy with Noche en Blanco and streets that were almost impassable even on foot and a stranger who thought it would be nice to take me out for a drink. Yep. Those are the moments my nightmares consist of.
Several months passed as I dreamt of a morning trip to a nearby beach town. I erased it from my schedule every time something else came up, which it inevitable did. Until one day… the chance came and I grabbed it. While waiting on the bus, I spontaneously invited a teammate and she came too! We delighted over our British breakfast. And then there was a second-hand shop and the stroll along the port before coming home to real life.
Kicking a ball around in Plaza Mayor with my neighbor boy brought a few other littles to play too. It was quite a lot of fun because these under-5-year-olds were about my skill level for soccer.
Our Spanish class met to buy our teacher a gift to celebrate the end of the school year. Someone had the bright idea of getting a classy looking bag for her teaching materials. Great idea! Except that I was completely exhausted by the time I got home. “How are we so indecisive?” I wondered. The more I thought about it, the more I realized it wasn’t indecision as much as overstated opinions. Most everyone said precisely what they thought and then acted like they expected everyone else to agree with them.
Stopping by to visit a friend turned into helping her pack her things for a sudden trip to North Africa.
The dentist charged me half price for my cleaning just because. I know I saved just over 20 euro, but with all of the other extra costs that come with returning to the States, it felt like a hug from God.
My baby neighbor boy has grown a delightful little smile that just charms the socks off of people. Well, off of me at least. 🙂 I’ve started wearing sandals.
A friend send me two bags of Barry’s Irish tea. Oh, how I savored those two cups of rainy Ireland memories!
I hauled almost 50 euros worth of olives back from the market last week. I did it with the assurance that my family will be beyond grateful.
That’s all for right now. The rest would probably bore you if you’re not bored already. 😉 My teammates have all gone back to the States and soon I leave too. You may or may not hear from me for the next three months. Probably many of you will see me instead. I’m looking forward to seeing you!
My Thoughts From Afar | 