Where I've Been

Sorry that it's been a long time since I've blogged, but my laptop was in London for about two weeks. You know, just chillin. Hanging out with my Kindle and the other thousand pieces of lost luggage at Heathrow. It was good. I think we both grew as people.

I left my laptop in a bin at security in Heathrow. They make you go through again because they're serious as hell about security in Britain and security in Spain is a joke--you leave your shoes on, don't take out your electronics and you can get almost any liquids you want through as long as no one actually sees them. The flight was late getting in because no one in Spain understands the concept of places to be and people to see, and I had like forty-five minutes to make my connection in London. Which if you been to Heathrow you know isn't even enough time to physically get to your gate, let alone eat a sandwich or pee. I was running to the gate, but safely got on the bus out to the plane, and then realized that my backpack was feeling kind of light.

No MacBook.

No Kindle.

Shit.

I thought about trying to go back, but I wasn't prepared to miss my flight. By this point I wanted to go home way more than I wanted my stuff back. So I got on board, hyperventilated for like half an hour about all the files that I might have lost forever, then for another fifteen minutes I berated myself for never backing things up. That got boring so I had an Advil PM and two of those mini plastic bottles of Pinot Grigio, put on The King's Speech and slept like the dead for the rest of the flight. Helpful tips!

The thing is, though, it didn't ruin anything about coming home. My boyfriend was waiting for me with irises and a Dunkin Donuts iced coffee. Here's pretty much how it went:

8:00 pm I wheel my luggage through the exit, see Cam.
8:00:05 Random lady: There's a smiley girl!
8:00:07 Other random lady makes connection between me and Cam: AWW!
8:00: 10 Me: Hi.
8:00:12 Cam: Hi!
8:00:125 We're making out, random ladies are applauding, and oh em gee this is just like Love Actually you guys!
8:12 Random ladies start getting veeery uncomfortable. It had been like three months, okay?

My family was at home waiting for me, and my little brother and cousins had painted a big Welcome Home sign. And it was pretty much as awesome and warm and fuzzy as I thought it was going to be. It was totally possible that my computer was lost for good--although luckily it's not--but when I'm not blogging about random shit I occasionally write some serious pieces, a few of which I thought were starting to be kind of not terrible. There was some stuff on there that I really didn't want to lose. Thankfully it's all back now, after a lot of abusive emails and for some reason multiple faxes...I won't get into that shit though, you're welcome.

But bizarrely, there was a huge sense of calm that came over me somewhere in the middle of my second airplane bottle of Pinot Grigio. (And I might have utilized the red balloon trick a couple dozen times). Especially for someone who a.) sometimes pretends to be a real writer and b.) never backs anything up because she is really unbelievably DUMB, losing a computer is kind of a big fucking deal. But even though everything I'd ever written was quite possibly gone, I had a weird moment where I just decided it was going to be okay. I was finally on my way home, and it was all going to be okay.

I Fall Down a Mountain and Decide It's Time to Go Home

I think maybe the universe is trying to tell me that it's time to get out of Spain. A group of about ten of us went hiking in the Sierra Nevada this weekend, which was stunningly beautiful and should have been a pretty much perfect day--except that I took one of the more epic and embarrassing wipeouts of my life. I'll explain.

I was really excited to get out of the city for a little while. Although I think I could definitely be a "city person" someday, city life has been getting me down a little. They're building the new Metro system right near my house, so every weekday I wake up to power saws screaming as they cut through cement, which is fun; and I'm also really allergic to whatever probably toxic dust all that excavation is kicking up. Then on Thursday my roommate and I walked a corner right near our house to find a morbidly obese guy beating off in the alleyway. I needed some fresh air.

The Sierra Nevada is absolutely gorgeous, and so totally different from any other mountains I've ever seen. (It's been awhile since I was a six-year-old geologist toting a L.L. Bean backpack of rocks, but I still have an appreciation for a good glacial formation). It was a gorgeous day, and everyone was in a good mood because our finals are mostly done and we don't have much to do except enjoy our last few days in Spain.

So anyway. Our guide for the day was named Paco, and he was pretty much a typical Spanish man in that he chain smokes and doesn't understand boundaries when there are college girls around. We had a beautiful trek to the top of a fairly small mountain, where we stopped to take some pictures. Paco was taking a picture of the whole group, and was still holding my camera.
"Here," he said, to me, pointing to a stone marker--about three and half feet tall, to indicate the summit--"This is a funny picture. Get up on this." So I do it, thinking he wants to take a picture of me standing on this thing, surrounded by the mountains. "Okay," says Paco, "Now, when I say 'ya' you jump, ok?" ("Ya" means "already" but it's kind of an all purpose word that means "Go!" or "Done" or a number of other things). Now, this seems dumb to me--not even necessarily dangerous, just lame--but I think, whatever, isn't going to hurt anything.

Yeah, no.

I jump, and immediately slip on the loose gravel and rocks on the ground and fall forwards on my hands, which would have been fine except that we're on a mountain--so I roll at least another six feet. I scrape pretty much the whole right side of my body, throw out my shoulder and knock the side of my head on a rock. For 1/50th of a second I think about that horrible book about people dying on Mount Washington, but then I get it together enough to form the words "OW!" and "FUCK." My friends all run over to help me up and make sure I'm okay, but Paco kind of ambles over and hands me back my camera. "The picture didn't come out," he says, puffing on his sixth or seventh hand-rolled cigarette of the day. "You're supposed to jump slow."

Dick.

I assess the damage, which truth be told isn't anything too terrible, although I'm a little nervous about the whole head trauma thing. There's some blood and I have a couple of unholy bruises, but nothing much worse than that. Thing is, I'm kind of a baby. I do not play contact sports. I have never broken a bone, or even needed a root canal. (I also occasionally fall down a WebMD wormhole late at night when I'm sick, so I have an active imagination for things like concussions. Although at least this time it's probably not throat cancer. With WebMd it's pretty much always throat cancer.) I'm also kind of pissed, because although I might be a baby about pain, I'm not a baby about hiking. I grew up in goddamn New Hampshire, and this asshole and his precious little hipster cigarettes just made me take a full-on Sandra Bullock wipeout. I look like freaking Legally Blonde-goes-hiking.

The rest of the hike was beautiful, and although I was waiting to faint or throw up or something I didn't. Like I said, low pain threshold/overactive imagination. In the end it was nothing that Advil couldn't handle. Anyway, point is, I feel like it's time to go home. This whole week it's felt like when Spain wasn't grinning at me and jacking off, it was hitting me over the head with rocks. And if that's not a sign I don't know what is.

On Coffee

If you want to understand the difference between Spaniards and Americans, all you need to know is how we take our coffee. When I'm at home, coffee isn't really something I think about a lot beyond "I need it" and "please give it to me" and "now." I'm only a fledgling journo but I've been drinking newsroom tar long enough to singe my palate pretty completely. I drink whatever's around--a medium black from Dunkin Donuts if I ran out of time in the morning, the coffee my dad made at 6 a.m. when I finally roll out of bed at 11 on a Sunday, and in a pinch even the coffee somebody at the office made last night, warmed up and accompanied by a piece of cold pizza from production night. (Breakfast of broke college journalists everywhere) When I have to get Starbucks--only when nothing else is around, I'm a Dunkin girl always and forever--I say I want a "medium" because I'm just a dick like that.



But the Spaniards. Oh, the Spaniards. Coffee here is an event. The tiniest hole in the wall coffee shop has beautiful, elaborate espresso machines. You might see espresso machines like that in New York City, but I'm willing to bet you could count on one hand the number of beautiful brassy steampunk confections we have like that in New Hampshire. You can only get espresso--straight up, cut with a little milk (cortado) or with a lot of milk (cafe con leche). There are cups, saucers and tiny spoons, not styrofoam with a plastic lid. But that's just details.

The more philosophical side--coffee as a metaphor for life, if you will--is that to-go coffee is an oddity here. (Actually, eating and drinking anything on the go is pretty uncommon.) While Americans are bombing around with our venti lattes with a shot of Adderall and screaming into our Blackberrys, Spaniards actually sit down in the cafe, read the paper, talk to their friends, have a little cafe con leche and maybe a croissant, and--when they're good and ready--eventually head to work. And this is pretty much how everything in Spain works. The waiter will bring you your food when he's good and ready. My history professor will roll into class whenever he feels like it. Those old ladies have a gossip fest in the middle of a busy sidewalk will get out of the flow of traffic when they're damn well done talking.

It sounds romantic, I know. Everyone taking their time, connecting, enjoying. I don't have any data on this, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's a part of why Spain has the second highest life expectancy in the world, despite the fact that they all smoke and live on cured pork products. (I'm generalizing, but not a lot) People are less stressed, less wound up. They know how to chill, not just when they're on vacation but any old time of day. Which is lovely, if that's what you want to do too. If you have to actually get stuff done, the cafe con leche lifestyle can get frustrating fast--especially to black coffee Americans like me. I walk literally twice as fast as most people here. I don't really have a lot of patience for people who don't understand how a sidewalk or a line in a grocery store is supposed to function. I would, on occasion, like to eat a meal in under two hours.

But although my frustration with all of this gets amplified on days like today when I have a considerable amount of actual shit to get done, I remind myself that pretty soon I'll be back in the land of road rage and people murdering each other over children's hockey. And then, I remember to have--and really enjoy-- a cup of coffee. Nice and slow, the way the Spaniards intended.

Wapatoma

Here's something. I live in a country where topless sunbathing is totally chill but walking down the street in anything other than an actual potato sack is license to be catcalled and whistled at and just generally creepily harassed. I mean, I'm used to working in Manchester, where the most hitting-on I ever had to deal with was an occasional, appreciative two-syllable "da-yum" from a guy in a doo-rag, or a barista shyly telling me that he likes my Wilco shirt. I am so not equipped for this.

And really Spain, what the fuck? I guess I think I'm decently cute, but I normally dress in a way that Barbara Bush the elder would find appropriate. My style is probably best described as "cool librarian" or on a more casual day, maybe "artsy camp counselor." But apparently it doesn't matter that I'm walking down the street dressed like Peggy Olson (but cool Manhattan Peggy with the lesbian friend and the new haircut, not sad Brooklyn Peggy). I'm an American girl, and that's all the go-ahead these assholes need. Part of the problem is that literally everyone can tell that I'm not Spanish. I have a big round Irish pancake face and practically albino skin--and American girls definitely get the brunt of the creeptastic shit that goes down on the sidewalks of Spain. (Spanish men think we're all MTV girls). And no matter how Continental I try to dress, I still end up looking about as un-Spanish as speedy service in a restaurant.

Now, I've been working on my bitch face. When I walk alone in the mornings I pop in my headphones (yes mom, volume low, not trying to get hit by a bus) and put on my sunglasses whether I need them or not. There's ways to avert some of it, but especially as the temperatures are starting to edge into the eighties and skirts and dresses are becoming more the norm, it pretty much is a cemented part of the daily routine. (The only surefire way to avoid it is to be walking with a guy, but we only have three on our program so they're in short supply as chaperones) There's no one type of guy who'll do it--some of them are fifteen and some of them are eighty-five. Typically it's a group--guys the world over are just more dickish when there's a bunch of them (not a stereotype if it's always true). Sometimes it's just a whistle, sometimes it's a full-blown speech about "beautiful American girls." Once or twice it's been bad or weird enough that I tossed off a "leave me alone" or a "fuck you" but usually the only sensible thing to do is ignore it and keep walking.

Unfortunately, the truth is it is part of the culture. One of our Spanish professors was shocked when we tried to explain to her that in the US only certifiable creeps yell things at random girls on the street. I won't say it's everyone, because I've met plenty of perfectly nice and polite Spaniards too, but it's a whole hell of a lot more than any city I've ever been in in the states--as in, it happens to us every day. And it's getting really, really old.

People (most of whom happen to have testicles) try to tell you that this is just a part of the culture, that's just how they are, try not to let it bother you, they're just "appreciative." Well, fuck that. For real, it blows. And saying that it's part of the "culture" is the most inane argument I've ever heard. I mean, for christssake slavery used to be part of our culture. And when two guys follow my roommate and me for four or five blocks making kissing noises and mumbling things about "guapas" and "bonitas" at 2 o'clock in the morning, that doesn't feel appreciative, that feels fucking scary. Flamenco guitar is part of the culture. Getting harassed on the street is getting harassed on the street. File this one under "things I will absolutely not miss about Spain."

Choose Your Own Adventure

So I've pretty much sucked at blogging this past month. I'd like to be better about at least jotting things down as they happen, because I know I'm going to forget things in a year, two years, ten years. But fact is when the coolest stuff is happening you're living it, not writing about it. And I refuse to be one of those douchebag writers with a fifteen dollar Moleskin notebook in my pocket all the time, I'm sorry.

There's just about two months left in my time abroad, and I'm constantly vacillating between wanting it to slow down and speed up. On the one hand, I'd happily live in Europe and see the world one 8 euro Ryanair flight at a time. (Although if and when I'm ever making real money I will never fly Ryanair again. That shitshow is basically the Fung Wah bus of the skies.) On the other, I miss home. I miss my boyfriend, and my family, and my friends from home and from school. I feel like the world's biggest whiner--partying until 5 a.m., swimming in the Mediterranean...and here I am talking about how homesick I am?

But this was what I wanted all along, I think. To feel homesick, and even at times a little lost. Because every time that I beat down a purse snatcher on a bike--yeah that happened, long story--or share a joke with somebody from Morocco, or Mali, or Cuba, or stand in front of Las Meninas or inside the Alhambra, I am constantly bowled over that this is actually my life. My life is drinking sangria with the Sierra Nevada on my right and the Mediterranean at my left. My life is having breakfast with my boyfriend on the terrace of our rental apartment and looking at the Alhambra. It's crazy, and it used to all be out of my comfort zone, and it's all pretty amazing.

Whenever we're traveling as a group, everyone is constantly taking pictures of groups of people, and the sights, obviously. But once in awhile, somebody hands their camera to a friend and, almost a little sheepishly, asks if the friend will take a picture of just him or her--standing in front of whatever important, beautiful or famous thing we happen to be visiting. Because even though we share so much of this trip, we're all writing our own version of the story. We all want a little piece that says "I was here."

The thing about going abroad as a student is that even though you're in a large group that gets close very quickly, you're also you. You're a college student who's choosing to ditch the library and the dining hall and the warm Keystone for something totally new and unknown. You've got the balls to do that--and while it might not feel like a lot sometimes, it sets you apart a little. I think it's something very personal, choosing to push yourself like this. Everybody is looking for something slightly different, but we all wanted this challenge. We're looking to learn, and make friends, and travel, but for me at least there's also something bigger, something more inward. I don't know what to call it, really, but I feel it sometimes when I fall into bed at the end of the day just totally exhausted from speaking, reading and writing Spanish all day, not to mention absorbing the culture shock (which gets better but it doesn't go away). It's like going to bed after a serious workout, with all your muscles aching. They hurt because you broke them down and now they're slowly rebuilding themselves into something stronger.

At Home in Granada

If you've been keeping up with my trip on this blog (which makes you a member of a demographic of approximately three people) you know I've done a little whining about Spain lately, but I really have to say: I love this city. Here's why:

1. This weekend we went to a club that is in an actual cave. And I stayed out until 5 am and actually enjoyed it. I'm getting the hang of Spanish nightlife, although ending the night with some 6 am churros y chocolate like a lot of young people do still sounds like a terrible idea. We're starting to have the scene figured out a little better, and we all know our way around the city pretty well by now. In a lot of ways, it's starting to feel like home--not like my home, maybe, but home the way UNH is home.

2. This morning, I went to Mass in Granada's immense baroque cathedral, and was actually able to understand a lot of what was going on in the readings and the homily. It always feels like a victory every time I piece together something on my own--a newspaper headline or an ad or a scripture reading. That said, sometimes I was totally lost, and I had a new appreciation for the cathedral--even if you have no idea what's going on, at least there's a lot to look at. Which is exactly why it's so beautiful--back in the days when the Mass was in Latin the hoi poloi needed something to do while the priests were droning along. Obviously it's a good thing that the Mass isn't in Latin today and ordinary people can understand what's going on, but this kind of explains why my home church looks like a conference center.

3. I think Sunday mornings in Granada are just the nicest thing ever. Everyone's out for a walk or on their way to church, or sitting around enjoying some coffee and breakfast with their families. There's some kind of outdoor market right near our apartment that's going on for the rest of the month, and this morning the street was full of musicians and guys selling balloons. Everyone is dressed up beautifully, including the kids. That little girl in a camel coat, red tights and Mary Janes and the two-year-old twin boys in duffle coats and loafers really make me wish somebody in my family had a little kid so I could buy tiny adorable clothes for him or her. I just love how everyone is truly relaxing. At home, weekends are for catching up with stuff you've otherwise been putting off all week--chores, errands, whatever. Here, everything's closed on Sunday. No grocery shopping, no Home Depot runs, no nothing. The only thing to do is sit in the sunshine and drink coffee. Bummer.

When Your Euro Trip Starts to Feel Like a Bad Trip

So let me say first of all that I love Spain. It's an unbelievably beautiful country, the people are all so nice, and I'm having a fantastic time learning Spanish and exploring the city that's still my home for the next three-plus months. But this was a fucking rough week.

We traveled to Madrid for four nights last week, from Wednesday to Sunday, making side trips to Segovia and Toledo. I loved the trip--it sounds silly but you can't help but be bowled over by how old everything is here. The aqueduct in Segovia has been there since Roman times and was only decommissioned a few decades ago. My dad laughed when I called Madrid a "new" city--only because most of the architecture is from the seventeenth century onwards. After a little time here it's easy to forget that they were building palaces in Madrid while the Pilgrims were practically living in mud huts. I visited the Prado, which was something I've been wanting to do for years, and it definitely was not a disappointment.

So throughout all of this I have kind of a low-level sinus ache/head cold. Which, whatever. I was perfectly able to get out and do whatever I wanted. Wasn't about to go run a marathon, but I was fine. But our last morning in Madrid, two girls from the group came down with a stomach virus, and long story short we spent five hours on a bus together and practically everyone in the group came down with either the cold that had been circulating or the stomach bug. Or you know, both, if you're me.

There is absolutely nothing like being sick to make you homesick. At a certain point you just want to puke in your own toilet and crawl miserably back into your own bed. My hostess Ana made a special trip to the store for melusa, a white fish that is delicious but definitely not what you want to eat on a queasy stomach. I didn't want anything to eat at all, but I had an aggressive Spanish matriarch trying to get me to eat fish in cream sauce absolutely insisting that it would fix me right up. I wanted my mom. I wanted to go home.

I didn't actually cry at the table, but it was a close one.

Another thing you don't realize--until you really need something, anyway--is that they don't have the same names for medicines here. I would have killed for Pepto Bismol but I had no idea if there was a Spanish equivalent or what it was called. Our profa Sarah recommended something called Primperan, which was supposed to help with nausea. Well, my roommate went out and got me some. Here are some of the possible side effects:

-Disminuacion del nivel de consciencia, confusion, alucinacion (Decreased state of consciousness, confusion, hallucination)
-Espasmos de los musculos de la cara, del cuello y la lengua (Spasms of the face, neck and tongue muscles)
-Problemas de coordinacion de los movimentos voluntarios (potencialmente irreversible) (Problems with coordination of voluntary movements, potentially irreversible.

This is something you can just walk into a pharmacy and buy, although to me it sounds like you could just inhale some lead paint dust and call it a day. I decided to take my chances with the puking.

Anyway. It was just a bug and I'm fine, but it was not a good time. On Tuesday I felt okay, so I went out because I wanted some fresh air and needed stamps and some girl stuff. Well. Let me just say that siesta sounds like a great idea to you but it sucks when you're puking in a Spanish Burger King because you've been forced to wander around for an hour waiting for the stores to open up again because they're all closed for siesta and all you want is some goddamn tampax. So yeah. That was my week, how was yours?

Gorditas

Today we had a big gathering with our host families at Cafe Futbol, and we all at too many churros with chocolate. World travelers or not, we're still college students, and as such can't resist free food--especially when it's as tasty as churros. All of us girls are very conscious of what we're eating lately, and trying to calculate whether we're walking enough to work off the bollerias (rolls and croissants), pasteles (pastries) and of course, the churros. We do walk a lot, as does everyone here in Granada. It's a 20 minute walk to school from our apartment, and in addition to that we've been spending several hours wandering around every day, just getting to know our new city. I'm not usually one to worry much about what I eat, but still. The pasta. The sweets. The white bread at every meal. I'm also not one to abstain from good food when I'm on vacation, but I keep reminding myself this isn't a vacation--a vacation is a week, maybe two weeks. This is a whole semester, and all those carbs are going to add up.

It doesn't make us feel much better to try on clothes in Spanish stores--my size 4 butt just barely fits into a medium dress here. An extra-large pair of pants looks more like it would probably be about an American size 8. (Plus the fact that I'm really tall here, and my shoe size hardly exists--which is a very good thing, when you come down to it.)

On Sunday mornings it's very easy to spot who's American and who's Spanish--the Spanish women are in fur coats and beautiful shoes, having a little paseo (stroll) through the quiet streets, arm in arm with a friend or husband; and the American girls are out in running shorts and blonde ponytails, taking a jog. (which I should still do.) But it's not just that there's fewer fat people--I was ready for that--but nobody seems particularly worried about exercising or watching what they eat. Forty-year-old women unabashedly eat fried dough dipped in chocolate. (I mean I was used to that from working at Canobie, but those women weighed 300 pounds and were wearing Gretchen Wilson tour T-shirts.) Spanish women enthusiastically ooh and ahh over how good it is, without any of those jokey "diet starts tomorrow!" comments American women make--and they're mostly thinner than Americans, too. Looking at them, I'm not too worried. The food we eat at home is delicious and very healthy, we walk everywhere, and a treat here and there is okay. What a concept.


dear julia: buying new pants is not the answer. paseos are. also this movie sucked, except for the "eat" part.

History Lessons and Relationship Advice from Maricarmen

Today we got ourselves a caravan of taxis and went up into the neighborhood of Sacromonte, where there is a monastery and incredible views of the Alhambra. One of our professors, Maricarmen, sat us down for a short lesson about the history of Granada and the monastery were were sitting in. La Abadia Sacromonte was a monastery and a seminary, and it has a beautiful courtyard with a fountain and orange trees. The star of David is everywhere--on the walls, the ceiling, the furniture and even the priests' vestments--and Maricarmen explained that in this context it's not a symbol of Judaism but Solomon's seal, a mark of wisdom and mysticism. I won't try to encapsulate the multiple millenia that Maricarmen told us about, but one of the most interesting things we did was explore the catacombs beneath the church. These were used by early Christians during the second century to hide from the Romans who occupied Spain at the time. The patron saint of this area is San Cecilio, and his (supposed) bones were found in the catacombs and are relics at Sacromonte today. The bones were found beneath two stones, one black and one white, and superstition says that if a woman touches the black stone on February 1, the feast of San Cecilio, she will be married within the year (My roommate Athina touched it but the rest of us stayed a safe distance away). Conversely, if you're married and touch the white stone on February 1, your spouse will either die or otherwise disappear over the course of the next year--which I guess must have come in handy before Spain recognized divorce (It's a fairly recent phenomenon here, compared with the rest of the world). Maricarmen swears it works--she said (in Spanish) that if you ever find yourself married to the wrong person, you shouldn't bother to pay a lawyer--just make a visit to La Piedra Blanca. That way, she says, you at least get a vacation into the bargain.

the chicos, making us a classroom

Update from Spain

Hola todos, I'm in Spain for the semester now, so this blog is likely to become mostly about my adventures and misadventures in Granada. (There is such a thing as Spanish Cosmo though, so keep an eye out for that post) I arrived last night, and got settled with my host family. My senora's name is Ana and she's very sweet and a great cook. Got our hands on Spanish cellphones this morning, and had churros y chocolate at Cafe Futbol (basically donuts dunked in melted chocolate...super healthy.) After that we walked around a lot and found the Centro de Lenguas Modernas, where we'll be having class. Tonight we'll check out the nightlife, and tomorrow we'll have orientation at the Centro--before we start our five-hour-a-day Spanish classes with our profe Sarah on Monday. Hasta pronto.