Let me out of this country!!!

What a bummer. It has been raining this whole week, and according to the forecast, it ain't stopping till Tuesday. Ruined what was going to be a glorious beach weekend in Malaga. Now I am staying home the whole weekend. What a lovely beginning to my last full week in Spain, one which is going to be the busiest that I have had in my whole 8 months here. I have about a million make-up classes to teach in addition to my normal ones. If I didn't have only 12 days left in this soggy part of the world, I might just run away. I could probably hitchhike my way to Lisbon, cut my hair short, adopt a cockney accent, and get a job as a cabin boy on a freighter headed across the Atlantic or something. But since my airline ticket is bought and everything is starting to wrap up, I guess I'll just stick it out until the 30th. But what a looooooooong twelve days it's gonna be...

I am sitting in my room with the door closed, and still Ruben's cigarette smoke is drifting under the door. Also, the bang-bang-bang sound I hear coming from the bathroom tells me that he is shaving. How can a person smoke and shave at the same time? That sounds incredibly difficult. Well, since he goes through about 3 packs a day, I guess he has had a lot of practice. Sure won't miss that.

Here's a list of things I won't miss about living in this apartment:
the flute player next door
everything smelling like smoke
gay sex noises at 7:00am
Spanish TV
roommates stealing my food
Ruben listening to the same song on repeat for hours (that is no exaggeration)
neighbor's wi-fi (that I bum off of) turning off around midnight every night
trying to decipher my other roommate Charo's Andalusian accent

Here are a few things I won't miss about Madrid in general:
no free refills in restaurants
the "th"
teaching English
the metro
Spanish women and their scary scolding way of talking to you
several of my students
being lonely

Here are some things I will miss:
bocadillos
Spanish tortillas
free tapas
big pretty buildings everywhere
H&M and Zara
several of my students
peace and solitude

...Ok, I am totally not going to miss THAT. Just now, I got a call from Charo, who has been staying in Granada for the past two months. She did the unbelievably annoying thing that many Spanish young people do, which is to call someone with your cell phone and then immediately hang up so that your phone won't be charged for the call. Then the person receiving the call has to call you back, therefore being the one who has to spend the money on the call. I am wise to this, and so I didn't call her back. If she wants to talk to me, she can just call me properly and use her own stupid minutes. She did the call-and-hang-up thing three times. The fourth time my phone rang, it continued to ring for awhile, so I answered it. And all I could garner from the conversation was that she wanted to know which day I was leaving, something that I have told her at least 20 times on various occasions since moving into this apartment in September. Either she has a terrible memory or she's a complete idiot. I am banking on number two.

Ants In My Pants

Usually, the phrase “ants in your pants” refers to being anxious or excited about something that you are waiting for. And while this certainly applies to me, because I have four more weeks in Spain until I go home to the States, I want to use this phrase in an entirely different context. The literal one. You see, Friday night after a shower, as I was getting ready to meet some friends for dinner, I selected one pair of jeans from my “worn once already” pile and pulled them on. As I browsed the closet for a shirt, I felt some prickling sensation behind my left knee. I started scratching, didn’t think anything about it, and finished dressing. The spot continued to itch, so I pulled my pants back down to see if I could find what was making me itch. I saw nothing, shrugged, and forgot about it. Five minutes later, the itch was back, only now it was a few inches higher. “WTF?” I thought (“F” standing for “fire engine”, of course). Off came the pants once again, but I still couldn’t find anything foreign in that area of the pant leg. Well, I really wanted to wear those pants, because they were the ones that make my butt look good. So I scratched a bit more, pulled them back on, and headed out for a long and wonderful night of pizza, trivia, and dancing.

Fast forward to this morning, Sunday morning. I feel a bit itchy in the same leg region again, and without thinking, I reach down and scratch. And find about 20 raised bumps all over the back of my thigh. Ant bites. Gotta be. We have had ant problems for a few weeks now, and I have learned to be careful about what food products I leave lying around. But how they got into my pants (nicely folded in the closet), I will never know. After applying copious amounts of cortisone, I hope my leg will stop itching soon. Until then, I am at war. Ants, beware. I have a can of bug spray and vengeance will be mine…

Of Semana Santa (Holy Week) and the Honduran That Came With It

Ahhh...the roller-coaster of emotions that is life. It is Easter Sunday today and I am sitting at my desk contemplating the vast and complicated laziness that has overcome me since I put Joaquin on an airplane back to the States yesterday morning. This past week has been packed with all sorts of interesting experiences, and I will do my best to relate them all in as truthful a way as I can, though I may have forgotten some stuff. So here is an account of the best Spring Break of my life:

After several months of begging, pleading, threatening, and blackmailing, I finally convinced Joaquin to come to Spain and visit me for Semana Santa, a week in which I had no classes and which just happened to coincide with his Spring Break. I picked him up from the airport on Friday the 14th and thus a week of blissful blissyness commenced. The first day was spent eating and napping, which was just fine with me. The second day, Saturday, we went walking around Madrid and saw all the most famous and iconic spots in the city, such as Gran Via, Plaza de Espana, the Royal Palace, the Cathedral of the Almudena (which we went inside), and then on to the Plaza Mayor, where we had a really cheap lunch of bocadillos (sandwiches) at a little bar called Casa Rua. Then we walked over to the Puerta del Sol, and up Calle Preciados to the Callao metro stop, where we headed on back to my apartment. It was a long and exhausting day, though I think that Joaquin enjoyed it, as did I. One of my favorite moments of the day happened when we were sitting in the garden in front of the Royal Palace. Joaquin looked up at the palace and said, "It's amazing how much they built with my gold. Give me my gold back, bastards!" I guess he's still a little bitter...

Sunday, we were real real lazy at getting up in the morning, and though we had major plans for doing all the cool free stuff that Sunday in Madrid offers, I think we actually left the apartment around 4:30 or 5:00. We headed straight to Retiro Park, where we walked around and looked at all the people and strange spectacles (such as magicians, fortune tellers, puppeteers, and cartoon characters making balloon animals) which filled the park. It was a nice stroll, and I took some pictures of Joaquin at the Plaza de Honduras near the big lake. We saw the Crystal Palace too, and also the statue of the fallen angel, which is apparently the only statue in the world of Satan, or something like that. Took a picture of that too. Then we headed out of the park towards the Prado Museum, which I thought closed at 9:30, but actually closed at 7:00, so we were too late. I was disappointed. Then we walked to Plaza Cibeles, the most iconic plaza in Madrid, I think, and on to my 2nd favorite tapas bar, El Tigre, where we had one round of drinks and a free plate of fried stuff, such as croquetas and patatas bravas. After that, we joined some friends at the San Gines chocolateria for churros and chocolate.

Day four was Monday, and Joaquin wanted to visit Santiago Bernabeu, which is the big soccer stadium where Real Madrid plays their home games. If any of you are familiar with the world soccer scene (called football here of course...and in the rest of the world too, actually) you know that Real Madrid is a really big deal. It was chosen by FIFA as the best football club of the 20th century, and has won more cups and trophies than I can even remember. Anyhow, Joaquin is a huge fan, and we went to take the stadium tour, where we visited the trophy room, the dressing rooms, the place where the team sits during the games, the box seats, and of course the gift shop. I learned a whole lot of stuff about Real Madrid during the tour because Joaquin is a veritable fountain of random facts about the team, and he shared them all with me. We took loads of pictures, and my only regret was that we couldn't see a real game there because the team was playing in Galicia, in the far northwest of Spain, during Semana Santa. After the tour, we went to J&J's Bookstore/ Coffee Shop where I bought another Clive Cussler novel. Dinner was kebabs, that strange mediterranean/middle eastern/who-knows sandwichy thing that you can find in shops on every street in Madrid.

The next morning was my first attempt at cooking something edible during Joaquin's visit. I chose French toast, which the cooking of sounded pretty basic and every competent woman I asked had assured me that it was the essence of simplicity. Therefore, I went into the task a bit overconfident, and what resulted was another kitchen disaster to add to my list. For some reason, the bread kept sticking to the pan and would not cook through. It just remained squishy and icky and inedible. So I got mad, gave up, and made him a grilled cheese sandwich for breakfast instead. After that, we went walking to the Plaza de Colon and then spent a couple of hours in the National Archaeology Museum, where I was delighted to find that Joaquin is as much of a dork as me when it comes to old artifacts. Maybe more so. Dinner was at De Montaditos, a really cool restaurant where you can order little tiny bocadillos of different kinds, and which are pretty cheap. We each ate about 4 apiece. I think I had 5. Yummy.

Wednesday brought laziness and sleepiness again, and we got a late start. Lunch was at a small bocadillo place in Ciudad Lineal, about a 5 minute walk from my house, where Joaquin found that he really liked fried calamares. Then we went to the library and got a movie to watch later. After that, Joaquin wanted to go pick up some souvenirs, so it was back to the center we went. And I am not proud to admit it, but I finally lost a bet. There was this keychain in one of the shops that we had seen before, and Joaquin said it was the Costa Rican flag, but for some reason it looked funny to me, so I disagreed. The Thai flag is just like the Costa Rican flag, which the colors reversed, so I deduced that it was the Thai flag. Yes, yes, I know that doesn't make much sense, for I am guessing there are a heck of a lot more Costa Ricans who visit Spain than Thai people. But it really didn't look right. So before we left to go souvenir shopping, I had looked up the flag in a book, and Joaquin turned out to be right. It was the Costa Rican flag. Well, the bet was for ice cream, so after shopping, we went to McDonalds and I had a vanilla cone. For some reason, Joaquin didn't even cash in on the bet, so I am still the fatty one of the relationship. For dinner, I made a couscous casserole which turned out pretty good, surprisingly, although I burnt the cheese on top. Then we watched the movie I had gotten at the library, Memento, and I was glad to learn that there are actually a few movies that both of us can enjoy at the same time.

Thursday, we went to Segovia, which is a very cool town about 1 hour and 20 minutes to the west of Madrid by bus. It has a Roman aqueduct, a huge cathedral, and a medieval castle. I had gone there over Christmas break with Mom and Katie, but it was still interesting the second time around. We went on a tour through the castle and climbed the tower, though it was so windy that I thought I was gonna be bald by the time we decided to climb back down. Inside the castle were suits of armor, tapestries, and even the thrones where Isabel and Ferdinand sat. Maybe they were sitting there when Christopher Colombus asked them for money to fund his epic voyage to the Americas. Weird thought. We got hungry by the end of the day, and so we stopped in a little restaurant where I had paella and Joaquin had lasagna. Then we got back on the bus and headed back to Madrid. Dinner of pasta and boxed wine was at Biz's place, and we had a nice discussion about politics and probably several other topics I don't really remember.

Sad day, Friday. It was Joaquin's last full day in Madrid. We slept late and then finally got going around 4:00pm, I think. After a quick run to the chino for some party supplies for the night, we went to McDonald's for food and then saw a procession of some statues of Mary and Jesus that went down the main street in front of us. This was my first time to see a Holy Week procession, though Joaquin said they are common in Honduras too during Easter time. At the head of the procession was a huge rolling float-type thing with a big statue of Jesus on the cross, guided by many people dressed in purple KKK uniforms. At least, that's what I associate those pointy hat things with. I know that those costumes are traditional for Holy Week in Spain, but I couldn't help but to feel creeped out, watching them walk solemnly down the street, their faces completely hidden except for two eye holes in the mask. At least the costumes were purple. If they had been white, I would have run. To any Southerner standing around with their boyfriend-of-a-different-race, that's a lynching waiting to happen. After the procession passed on by, with drummers and trumpeters, women holding candles, a huge statue of Mary, and the majority of the church's congregation following close, we headed back to my apartment to get ready for the little party I had planned for that night. I prepared some little appetizer plates, none of which required cooking, so they turned out ok. Then Cate, her boyfriend Seth, her friend Ellen, and Biz came over and we sat around snacking and sipping on various liquids. It was a short party with an early end, because we still had to get Joaquin packed up for his 7:55am flight the next morning. We got all that done, took a short nap, and then called a cab and left for the airport. It seemed our driver was an ex-Formula One racer, because we got there in no time. After lots of hugging and sad smiles, Joaquin was gone.

Five weeks left for me. It seems like both a long time and a short time when I think about it. I hope it passes quickly, because I am ready to get home and see all my family, friends, and Joaquin again. I also miss my good, comfortable Southern culture. Spain is nice, but it doesn't have sweet tea!

On Being Sick In a Foreign Country

This past week, I have been a 70 year-old woman with emphysema, pasty saggy skin, and bad hair. Some sort of throat and sinus disease befell me, and though I would have liked to stay in bed for hours on end, watching movies and napping, several things made this an impossibility. Primarily, the need to make money. Secondarily, the flute player next door. After a few weeks however, my throat thing, whatever is was, has worked itself out and I am now feeling much better, with only the occasional cough here and there. So, see? No need for a doctor at all. I would like to offer this as proof that doctors aren't always necessary.

When it comes to illness in general, I seem to have adopted the family philosophy, which states that unless you are likely to die or become physically incapacitated or deformed from said illness, you stay at home and get over it on your own. That being said, I have learned that the rest of the world doesn't really feel that way. For example, if someone else happens to be in charge of my well-being and I get a bit puny, it's off to the doctor I go. I hate going to the doctor. It is within the top five things I hate. This list also includes horror movies, people who talk about themselves a lot, my digestive system, and squash. So, as you can see, for me, going to the doctor is a last resort.

Thankfully, there isn't anyone in Spain that can make me go to the doctor. I am in charge of my own health, and I get to make my own decisions about how to best heal myself. It helps that I don't have a clue as to how to go to the doctor here anyways. My other foreign-country-doctor experience was quite dramatic, in that it involved a dengue-fever scare and a cup of my urine wrapped up in a Burger King bag so Joaquin couldn't see it. Too much drama for me. I prefer to stay in bed and sweat it out under my own covers. Which is what I am doing right now, because I just developed a righteous case of diarrhea and there is no other place I'd rather be than in my bed. I know I'll feel better as soon as I pull my Guatemalan blanket up to my chin and close my eyes. Let the healing begin.

Another potentially offensive (i.e. liberal) blog post- sorry

I picked up a free newspaper on my way to class this morning and settled down in the metro to read during my long commute to the north of Madrid. This edition was just chock full of bad news. The cover story was about the rise of prices and cost of living in Madrid. Ok, so that's bad news, but not exactly tragic. I continued flipping, and learned that 10 attempted suicide bombers were caught in Barcelona before they got the chance to blow up the public transport system. I don't remember if they were Islamists or members of the ETA (a terrorist organization based in Basque country), but it doesn't matter, because the good news that they were caught doesn't hide the bad news of what they intended to do in the first place. As I kept turning the pages, I saw that in the past 6 days, 5 people had been violently murdered in the province of Madrid, including a 20 year-old girl who was burned to death by her boyfriend in Alcala de Henares. I was so horrified by then about the apparent downfall of humanity, that I decided to hurriedly flip to the celebrity section and cheer myself up with the antics of crazy movie stars and royal people. And that's where lay the knife that plunged into my heart. As soon as I saw "Heath Ledger: dead at 28" I almost had an honest-to-God breakdown in the metro.

To be fair, and as my roommate pointed out later, I had chosen one of the more sensationalist free newspapers available (it's also the one with the most pictures). However, all the news was still true and recent. And I have remained devastated through the rest of the day. From 9:00 this morning to now, almost 4:00am, the fact that PEOPLE KILL and that PEOPLE DIE has hung over me like a big black rain cloud full of killer bees, dirty hypodermic needles, and dynamite, ready to do me in at any second. And so what do I do to feel better? I download a sad and sentimentally depressing movie to take my mind off things. Quite appropriately I think, I chose Brokeback Mountain (remember- the "gay cowboy" movie), which I had been wanting to see for awhile but hadn't yet had the chance. Heath Ledger received an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Ennis Del Mar, one of the movie's two main protagonists of the same gender who fall in love one summer while herding sheep on a mountain in Wyoming. And I am not kidding when I say "Well done, Ang Lee" (he's the director, by the way). I really enjoyed this movie, and though it had a sad ending, it made me feel a little better about humanity. That is, until I logged onto the Internet Movie Database to read a bit more about the movie. And what I found was a message board full of lot of stupid people bashing each other's religions and lifestyles. So I felt inclined to leave my opinion on the message board as well. Here's what I wrote in response to a post entitled "I am a Muslim and I enjoyed this movie":

The true perpetrators of evil, violence, and hatred in this world are those who make blanket statements such as "Islam is evil" or "Christianity is evil," coupled with "My way is better." How can anyone with a human soul and half a brain possibly make such foolish and uneducated statements? You defend homosexuals as a group and condemn another entire group of people in the same sentence! Well, guess what. There are bad homosexuals, and there are bad heterosexuals. There are bad Muslims, and there are bad Christians. There are bad black people, and there are bad white people...I could continue for an hour.

When you say "Islam is evil," you condemn my college roommate, who is the sweetest and most gentle person I've ever met. Sure you are also condemning Osama bin Laden and a whole other platoon of bomb-strapped baddies, but along with them, you swoop up millions of other people who live their lives loving their families, helping in their communities, facing Mecca five times a day and just praying that Allah brings peace to their dangerous and scary corner of the world.

When you say "Christianity is evil," you condemn my mother, who has spent her entire life helping others and loves humanity with more love than should be possible for a mere human. Of course, you also get the Hitlers, the Crusaders, and the wackos who blow up abortion clinics with people still inside. However, you are also condemning every soup kitchen, every clothing drive, every house built for a homeless family, every charitable work that was supported by a Christian person or organization.

How foolish is all of that? Undoubtedly, there are bad people in the world. And believe me, you can find them in every little category that you put people into. So stop being a part of the problem, and start looking at people individually. Yes, our religions, cultures, sexual orientations, etcetera, form a part of who we are, but a human is so much more than his or her demographic information. Even if we don't agree with each other's ideas, I can still respect you as a human. Unless, of course, YOU YOURSELF try to blow me up. Then it's on.

An additional thought:
Brokeback Mountain was a really touching movie, superbly acted, well directed, and I enjoyed it a lot. I have also spent all of my 23 years as a member of a Southern Baptist Church. Go figure...

Strangely enough, I feel better now.

Why I Will Never Be a Domestic Goddess

Food is important. They say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. If that is true, I'd better get rich quick, or I might spend the rest of my life as an old maid. Good thing my boyfriend likes Hardee's and Waffle House so much. One of my new year's resolutions this year is to learn how to cook. My friend Katie got me two cookbooks for Christmas, and we have already attempted one recipe, which turned out to be pretty good. (See my mom's blog, humberfourthgrade.blogspot.com, for full details of their ten-day visit with me here in Spain).

Now, food in itself is not a foreign concept to me. Remember, there are two different realms of the act of food consumption: that of the actual preparation of the food, aka cooking, and that of the actual consuming, aka eating. I love to eat, and I consider myself quite good at it, as my boyfriend can certainly attest to. I devote hours everyday to thinking about food and its many varieties.

Cooking, to me, is like the German language. I know a few words and phrases, but having a complete conversation is thoroughly out of my grasp. For example, "Guten tag" (trans. good day) is like your basic peanut butter and jelly sandwich. When all else fails, shout "Guten tag!" smile, nod, and then run away. Pretty cowardly I guess, but a good alternative when you have no other alternatives. One step up is the "Wo ist die Bushaltestelle" (trans. where is the bus stop) which is your simple spaghetti in tomato sauce (the sauce being of the Ragu variety, of course). Simple enough, right? And finally, my favorite, the multi-purpose "Du bist ein dum Kopf" (trans. you are a stupid head) which would be brownies out of a box. Brownies are pretty hard to screw up, especially when all you have to do is add oil, water, and an egg. Even if they don't cook all the way through, the gooey brownie mix is still good licked off a spoon. I am proud to say that I can make a mean batch of Betty Crocker brownies, though the best of what I have produced couldn't hold a candle to Katie's brownies. Here's a list of a few other things I can make: macaroni and cheese, toast and jelly, and strangely enough, fried plantains. Those are hit-or-miss because I still haven't perfected the art of choosing good plantains.

And there you have it. The extent of my cooking repertoire. I guess I could blame my genes for it, because my mom has never had much of an interest in cooking either, nor her mom before her. However, now that I am no longer in college and have access to a full kitchen, my excuses for not being more creative are running low. I have absolutely no idea how to cook any meat products, casseroles, vegetable dishes, or (heaven help me) desserts (excluding aforementioned brownies from a box).

There is one aspect of food preparation that I have mastered. That is, the art of heating stuff up. I am the queen of the microwave. I can make baked potatoes, hot dogs, eggs, you name it, in the microwave. I don't consider that cooking in the least bit. It's more like cheating. Using my language analogy, microwaving is like plugging a whole German paragraph into freetranslation.com and in two seconds, Ding! The English version pops out, albeit a bit funky in places, but usually pretty edible.

"Media polla y una Fanta, por favor."

Ahhh...the joys of learning a new language. Even more opportunities to stick one's foot in one's mouth than normal. All these foot-in-mouth moments make for rollicking good laughs later on, but at the time, they seem nothing short of tragic. Of course, no one wants to be picked out as a foreigner immediately after sitting down in the best chicken restaurant in Spain and trying to work out how to order what you want with perfect grammar and accent before the waitress gets to the table. Sadly, when your waitress advances on you with a menacing (and very Spanish) "if I have to serve one more table of jackasses today..." look in her eyes, it is quite easy to forget the perfect sentence you just created and order a "media polla" instead of the plate of delicious roasted chicken that you came to Alcalá de Henares specifically to eat. You know what's even sadder? That grotesque situation happened to me today in Pollo de Alcalá, the famed warehouse-turned-rotisserie that all Canterburians have been talking about since Johnny B, Alcalá-aficionado among English teachers, led that first lucky bunch through the big blue doors. Any Spanish-speakers reading this should be shaking your head and laughing at me by now. Those of you who don't speak Spanish...well, let me enlighten you about what I ordered. "Medio pollo," what I wanted to order, means half a chicken. "Media polla" means half a penis. Now, I just want to clarify that I knew the differences in the two words beforehand. However, all language-savvy flies out the door when I am confronted with formal-type scenarios, where speaking correctly should be the easiest thing in the world. Give me a bar chat any day, and I'll spout Cervantes. Put me in a Spanish 101 situation, and I might as well be in Kazakhstan. I did learn one thing from the experience, though. If you're in a Spanish chicken restaurant, see your waitress coming, and know from the look on her face that your food is gonna come with a side of spit, ask for a media polla and fear no more. For you have just brightened your waitress's day immeasurably, because now she knows she's smarter than you, and making fun of customers behind their backs is one of the greatest joys of the job. Take it from someone who knows...from both sides.