Post V: Strawberry Shortcake's Conspiracy Against English Learners

I'm sitting here at the kitchen table and watching Julietta shuffle cheese slices as if they're cards. She is perfectly content to relax here and pretend that they are the flash cards we use in the academy. With great confidence and authority, she places each cheese slice in front of her and solemnly declares a color.

"Black"
"Orange"
"Blue"

etc. This is exciting, because Juli is not much of an English speaker. Because she is younger than Flor, she doesn't generally make the effort to use the English that I am sure that she knows. Flor is eager to proclaim her English knowledge to the world, Juli less inclined to do anything so intense or demanding as proclaiming. I'm glad to see her off in her own little world and doing this, though.

It's been a couple of rainy days in Fuenmayor and everyone is feeling it. No one in this family, or even in this village, is particularly used to stretches of gray days and it takes all of 48 hours for the climate to start effecting moods. The village itself seems more forbidding on the nights of these rainy days, like it's a dangerous place only when the sky is falling. I'm on the fringe of sensation here, because I have such a marvelous love affair with terrible weather.

As to the title of this blog post, there is a television show called "Strawberry Shortcake", which is really high up there on my list of "Childrens' Shows I Wish Were Possible to Put in a Blender". Either way, it is about the marvelous and fruit-filled adventures of Strawberry Shortcake and her equally adorable friends- with names such as Peppermint Fizz, where can one go wrong? Well, first of all, my students watch this show. This is marvelous because they are watching television in English. It is not awesome because Strawberry Shortcake pronounces the word "very" as "Berry", which is probably supposed to be cute or something. Unfortunately, my four year old classes are bouncing around saying "Berry berry good" "berry berry hard" "berry berry happy".

Post VI: A Room of One's Own and "The List"

Now that I'm flying solo on apartment living, I'm able to take the many lists and Vogue/Elle/Harper'sBazaar/National Geographic/Travel Magazines cut-outs that were stacking up on my desk top and put them on the walls with the sticky-tack that we use to hold up worksheets in the academy. That stuff is absolute magic. It's nice, not only because I was never one of those girls who could get away with posting my interests all over my bedroom walls in constantly rotating boy-band bulletin format, but also because I have officially moved myself into what was once Niall's room, which is larger than mine and has a peachy paint color that makes it seem brighter and far more open. Other benefits? A larger closet, full-length mirrors, a creepy view of the neighbors' apartments, and power outlets that are closer to the bed. Aside from those things, and more importantly, the light bulb in my old room was dead and now I don't have to bother to change it. You better hope your kids are never as lazy as me.

Maybe at some point I will post a picture of my shrine wall to editorials, but for now I'll give you the text of what is on the hand-written pages pinned up on the closet front where I can always see it. Written on yellow legal pad paper that I bought at the airport, I sat down and wrote this on my very first evening "home".

--

Okay.

I know that you're not looking forward to the next three months nearly as much as you should be, but remember that if you fail to take advantage of every moment of it, the only loss is yours. Set goals for both routine and spontaneity!

- Go to Logroño more often

- Get in touch with your pals from Zaragoza and coerce them into going dancing

- Get off of the bus in Navarette and explore

- Take more pictures for your parents' sake and your own

- Be sure to get to Seville! (and Granada and Toledo and San Sebastian)

- Take more walks. Know this village better than you know your own hometown.

- Set a goal to run 4 times a week

- Cook something new and exciting every so often, try for once a week

- Spend your evenings on worthwhile things

- Keep the apartment spotless

- AND Make it home! Bring in the candles and the cheap stick incense!

- Really dedicate yourself to your work, both in teaching and in preparing for it

- Do NOT countdown

- Use your planner religiously

- Do NOT put things off- organize properly and promptly

- Find Make time in your day for God (Also, why is this halfway down the list! Priorities, kid.)

- Write letters promptly

- Mail letters within two days of writing them… not a month and a half later

- Work on some free writing contests

- Trytrytry to do your back exercises at LEAST once a day

- Set goals for your evenings, lest you end up wasting them

- Dress well - look good - be clean and professional

- Speak Spanish as much as possible

- Let yourself relax at night and turn the computer off if you aren't writing

- Read. Readreadread.

- War and Peace

- Great Expectations

- A Game of Thrones

- En la Sombra del Viento

- Go to sleep earlier

- Wake up earlier- sleep past nine only on the weekends! You are wasting day!

- Lights! "This isn't a counsel house"

Each day happens once and each moment in it? The same.

--

I can't avoid the great yellow eyes of the list staring at me from wherever I stand in my room, but it's good to write them down a second time. Am I missing anything?

Post V: Daily Life and Beginning Nepali

It is easy for me to forget where I am, particularly because I am in a village, where the motions of daily life rarely stray. Here, I am a part of the pattern of things. They know my face, we joke about rising meat prices in the street-side markets, the teachers know that I am a pair of safe hands for the girls to be passed into. I make the three block journey to and from my apartment several times a day and, more often than not, someone in transit will honk to get my attention- more frequently there is a shout of "¡Profe!" Profesora. I am a temporary, but subtly acknowledged part of the community here. It is this fact that makes it so easy for me to forget that I am anywhere but home. It will strike me at odd moments, turning a corner and seeing the vineyards rise up in the cracks between houses, or looking at a street sign and having to translate it (at this point, things as basic as street signs tend to read as thoughtlessly as English)- suddenly it hits me. I'm in Spain. I'm in Europe! France is next door and the foothills of the foothills of the Pyrenees are casting their shadow over daily life. It's difficult to absorb.

Either way, to write it down or say it out loud is grounding. I'm in Spain. Estoy en España. Vivo en España. En este momento de mi vida, mi vida es España.

Let's see if I can make that same statement in Sanskrit in four months. I'd better get to some serious work on that. Right now I'm just figuring out how I'm going to go at it . It's in my nature to want to learn the language completely, which means starting with the written alphabet- but it may be more judicious to start with the standard phonetics so that I am able to do some very basic speech communication when I get there. This is about letting go of a known way of doing things and going at a language from a different direction. What do you think?

Also- in the form of Sanskrit that the Nepalese people use there are 36 consonants and 18 vowels. In most languages there are maybe three times the phonetic sounds attached to a single unit than the written form of a letter. To be honest though, knowing that makes me even more excited to dig in my heels on this language!

Post IV: The Coffee Conspiracy

*Note- written before the fact (January 18th, 11:30 AM) and updated later

I am making a goal of finding out what strange process goes into the making of coffee here in Spain. Questions will be asked, interrogations will be held. Let me let you in on why I feel so passionately about this topic. When you order a coffee at an exorbitantly high price, expect a cup of roughly the height and volume of a three-year old's fist. The punch on the other hand is a bit stronger than that of a three-year-old's fist. If you've ever been hit by a three-year-old, then you know that this is saying serious things about the oomph going into one of these cups of coffee. 

In the United States, if I drink a coffee I am a bit (more) wired (than usual). This is a coffee of about five or six times of the drink to be had here. Yet, it makes me a shaky wreck that is magically fluent in Spanish- or at least has confidence like she is. Sometimes I dance. I wish I were kidding.

Sherlock Holmes would suggest foul play and, following in the footsteps of great intercultural detectives before me, so do I. I am possessed of the opinion that when you order coffee in Spain you are actually just ordering espresso and that they find it hilarious to watch confused Americans jitter around the airport, buying everything that they twitch on.

Post III: Spanish Women... and their Shoes

*Note: Written without wireless (Jan 18, 11 AM). Updated after the fact.

Spanish women are wonderful. They start off with a saucy adolescence, mature into fun-loving, but also highly capable young women and age incredibly well, both body and soul. They have a certain something about them that makes you expect them to catch a rose between their teeth at any moment… not a stereotype. I am convinced that I have cracked the code though. The secret to the fierce dignity and flash of these women is in their shoes.

To be precise, it is not in their shoes, but beneath them- if you consider a heel part of the underpart of a shoe. Spanish women wear heels everywhere. In Madrid, in Bilbao, in Seville- it seems to be a unifying factor for mujeres of any degree of class and sophistication in this corner of the world. I walked into Terminal 4 (Domestic Flights) of Madrid's Barajas airport, where the only people that seem to speak English when you have a question are you and God, who is possibly himself still looking for your gate, and the first thing that I noticed were the shoes. Wedged lace-up black boots. Stiletto-heeled knee-high suede pieces. Everywhere, everywhere amazing shoes. And not just incredible shoes, but women that were wearing them well, like they were born to walk on these devastatingly attractive little height machines. It doesn't matter what size or make she is, I have yet to see a single woman here that does not wear heels like a complete and utter professional. Either way, it was at that moment that I was officially glad to be back in Spain.

When I first came to Spain I had brought a single pair of "sensible" heels with me (and some ankle boots that apparently want me dead, not alive). Sensible is a word that American women use when they've given up on wearing amazing shoes and have decided that the definition of a heel should be no longer than one's thumb-nail. British women use it to describe more or less everything, I discovered in London. Westminster Abbey? A sensible piece of architecture. Phantom of the Opera? A sensible bit of a play. Anyway, I fell into the American "sensible" trap and that was a serious mistake. Sensible is not part of the fashion vocabulary for women in Spain (not just because they speak a different language). Fifty-year old women show up to pick up their children from school wearing perfectly tailored blazers, well-fit skinny jeans, and Lou-Vuitton knock-offs. I didn't think it to be much of an important part of my temporary identity though, until I legitimately had a student ask me if I had a problem with my legs, was that why I couldn't wear big girl shoes? A six year old picked up on my cultural fashion inadequacies. That's a low blow- no pun intended. 

Either way, I bought a couple of pairs of presentable heels. Now, the only one's left screaming to me are a completely ridiculous, where-will-I ever-wear-these-things pair of low-calf, red suede, leather-striped wedge boots. Every time I see them in the store in my size I quickly recommend them to the closest woman with likely looking feet, who promptly pins my alarming behavior to my apparent American-ness, and hope that she decides she loves them too. If she's Spanish, they'll have a good home.

Post II: Bienvenidas a Madrid

Note: Written without wireless (Jan 18). Updated after the fact.


Buenos días y gracias por volando con Iberia.

Good morning and thank you for flying Iberia.

Chirps the intercom when it inevitably becomes 6 AM Madrid time. Granted, it's 11 PM in Chicago, the city that we departed from, but details details. Either way, it's good that the disembodied voice that just initiated a full airplane overhead light revival is pre-recorded, or some slick-toned flight attendant would have a very grumpy group of college kids to deal with on this fine Spanish morning. They groan awake on all sides, unused to staying up this late unless there is alcohol involved, and the excited chatter begins.

Nearly everyone on this plane is headed for the international university in Seville, Spain for a four-month study abroad program. It is apparent that they come from colleges all over the States. Of course, with this enormous selection of college-aged gentlemen on the plane, I was seated to literally one of three old men. Still, no real reason to complain! The Germany native was an excellent conversational partner and we spoke on such topics as racism, the European college system, and I'm certain the strange sounds he made while asleep were a subconscious agreement with me that the breakfast selection was positively morbid. He's been to Madrid several times on such choice red eye flights and he had to agree that this morning's breakfast selection was decidedly lacking.

Menú (If you say it like it's French, it adds class)

• A plastic cup of non-pulp orange juice
• A muffin- apparently made out of compressed sugar and grain (bite-size!)
• A dry mini-sandwich smaller than a fist
• Deteriorating honey-dew
• A Kit-Kat bar

While the rest of the menu was a bit high society for me, I enjoyed my working class Kit-Kat bar and then promptly walked down the length of the plane- which effectively burned off all of the calories that I had potentially just consumed. You would think that on such a long plane they would be able to spare another inch or so of leg room. And that for such an expensive airline they would be able to afford more than three, slightly concerning televisions running down the middle row, that appeared to be prepared to disconnect from the ceiling should we confront turbulence. These are the questions that haunt us. 

Still, with all of this, it was the fastest international flight that I've had. We were flying over Spain before I knew it and I couldn't have been happier to see Madrid. I forget how enormous it is and, having never flown over it at night, was pleasantly surprised at the complex spiderwebbing of lights that seem to be the result of the particular urban layout adopted by European cities. It was a good thing to land to. And now to Bilbao!

Or rather, four hours of layover. And then to Bilbao!

Post I

NOTE: Written without wireless. Updated after the fact.

Here's to new beginnings- always new beginnings, always with the influence of history.

I write this from the the cabin of an Iberia airplane. It is 8:05 PM in Chicago.

9:06 PM in New Hampshire.

3:06 AM in Madrid, Spain.

7:52 AM in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Airplanes are neutral to time, it seems. The slight staleness of the air, the measured breathing of sleepers, and the deliberately gentle breathing of the awake- who can't help but to feel slightly guilty. Airplanes, like airports and train stations, are points of transience where hours of the day belong to two categories- hours spent on the plane and hours spent off. The more I go adventuring into the world (imagine me here with a safari hat and hiker's pack here, if you would) the more fascinated I become with these points of transience. They are all so different, as my commentaries on airports may reveal, but the feeling of them is the same. It confounds me a little bit, that all of these people gather in one place to do exactly the same thing- be somewhere else. It's a rare thing for people to be so unified in something, isn't it? It could be argued that there is very little single-mindedness in this, as the gathered are splitting off to the many corners of the world- but the point is that they are going. They are going somewhere. Their lives are happening. They are not static. They are moving, making a decision, stepping into something.

I am always stepping into things. Even when I was very little, I was far too impatient for Adventure to come and meet me somewhere at her leisure. Resources for adventuring in New Hampshire are slim at twelve- less so at eighteen, though there are many who would try to convince you otherwise. It's incredible how much energy is put into making kids think that their choices are best made when limited to some anonymous authority's bulleted list of possibilities. Possibilities cannot be reduced to lists- they are literally innumerable. Still, it never seems to end, the constant influx of information that demands you to kneel to the almighty knowledge that different is wrong, walking from the beaten path will land you in trouble, and that a hunger for uncommon experiences is a symptom of adolescent restlessness- meant for the sole purpose of learning how to stamp out passions before they become you. The grinding gears of the social system considers this a valuable lesson to learn. God forbid that your passions guide your steps. The modern system of raising children is rife with unpleasant contradictions and the "Follow your dreams, but only if it fits in this box" is possibly the worst of all. But it's easier. Doing it the old-fashioned way is easier. Easier is always better. Easier is always better. There's a mantra for mediocrity. Record it and put it under your pillow at night. Play it back. Result? My generation.

Doing things differently is hard- especially when combatting so many years of social conditioning. Sometimes it is the kind of difficult that literally makes your knees fold and tears come without permission. Sometimes it is the kind of difficult where you become momentarily convinced that being alone is synonymous with loneliness. And sometimes it is the kind of difficult that suggests giving up completely. Suggest isn't really the right word- perhaps demand is more fitting. There is nothing so gentle as a suggestion when it comes to wanting to surrender. But for however much the pressure pushes down, I believe that there is something inherent, inexorable, indomitable in human nature that wants to push back. I am stronger than conditioning. I am stronger than propaganda. I am stronger than my anxieties. We need to believe that or it becomes far too easy to fold- and like in any boxing match with universal powers, every time you fall down, it is just the right amount of harder to get back up to deter one from trying at all. When people hear of what I am doing they refer to it like one would to some unattainable, exotic bird. But it's just another direction, not so amazing as people seem to think, just so very different from what we've come to expect of ourselves. I have the utmost respect for my peers who have gone immediately to college- I wish I were one of them on the daily, so I am not bashing structured higher education, but the suggestion that it is the only immediate path available following the tearful turning of tassels at a June graduation ceremony. 

I want to go to school, very very badly. I am never happier than when I am completely surrounded by the sharing of knowledge. With that in mind, it is how I must approach these experiences prior to my higher education. If higher education is college than this period in between structured learning environments is greater education. I am seeing things that some people will never see and I am living in a way that is relatively precarious, but unbelievably rewarding for all of its unpredictabilities. From now until the middle of April, I will be in Spain living España: Capítulo Dos, surrounded by the dry-soiled winter and skeletons of vineyards as far as the eye can see. The vines are as pale as birch when the winter finally chases out any autumn that is still left in their roots. I can choose to absorb this stark beauty or be conquered by the grayness of it. I can choose to learn from the amount of work that I am doing or have my back broken by it. Upon returning to the States I will be quickly off on the next adventure, a six-week journey to Nepal to research the Nepali language. From there, a return to the States to create a system of English education for the young students of Nepal.  From there? I haven't a clue. And that has to be okay.

It is perfectly alright to have not a clue of where you are going next, but unless you are doing something in the time between then and now you will never learn. We are the magnetic pull of our own compasses and experience, even if it is far from the end goal, only strengthens the accuracy to due North. When doing it differently becomes emotionally taxing, I remind myself of this. 

So what will you find here, in this space? Things that I find exciting about my research into Nepal, their culture and language, goals, hopes, lists, photographs, experiences from Spain, experiences. period., general miscellaneous thoughts, and maybe even a bit of poetry. If it sometimes sounds as if I am thinking aloud, then treat it as such. It's probably exactly what I'm doing. Sometimes I hate my thoughts, but at least I am having them.

So here's to thinking, inside and outside of the proverbial box- as long as it's sincere, as long as it's powerful, and most importantly, as long as the thought is covered with your own fingerprints- that your mind may be yours and your life the same.