¡Feliz día de acción de gracias!

I hadn’t realized how much I love Thanksgiving until this year. I’m missing family and our traditions, though some of us Americans are preparing a feast for tomorrow night. I’ve made Aunt Margie’s cinnamon apples, and my little apartment still smells like them. This year I’m most thankful for family and friends. Those of you in the States: I miss you terribly. Those of you here in Spain: I’m so glad we’ve met, and get to share what’s turning out to be an incredible year.

Our feast!

In honor of the holiday, I wanted to share with you the poem I read with my segundos this morning -- they had to fill in the rhymes for me, before enjoying some rather crumbled but still tasty chocolate chip cranberry cookies, which they probably now think are traditional Thanksgiving food.

“Thanksgiving” by Edgar Guest

Gettin' together to smile an' rejoice,

An' eatin' an' laughin' with folks of your choice;

An' kissin' the girls an' declarin' that they

Are growin' more beautiful day after day;

Chattin' an' braggin' a bit with the men,

Buildin' the old family circle again;

Livin' the wholesome an' old-fashioned cheer,

Just for awhile at the end of the year.

Greetings fly fast as we crowd through the door

And under the old roof we gather once more

Just as we did when the youngsters were small;

Mother's a little bit grayer, that's all.

Father's a little bit older, but still

Ready to romp an' to laugh with a will.

Here we are back at the table again

Tellin' our stories as women an' men.

Bowed are our heads for a moment in prayer;

Oh, but we're grateful an' glad to be there.

Home from the east land an' home from the west,

Home with the folks that are dearest an' best.

Out of the sham of the cities afar

We've come for a time to be just what we are.

Here we can talk of ourselves an' be frank,

Forgettin' position an' station an' rank.

Give me the end of the year an' its fun

When most of the plannin' an' toilin' is done;

Bring all the wanderers home to the nest,

Let me sit down with the ones I love best,

Hear the old voices still ringin' with song,

See the old faces unblemished by wrong,

See the old table with all of its chairs

An' I'll put soul in my Thanksgivin' prayers.

I might be far away right now, but in spirit I'm "home with the folks that are dearest and best."

(And Maggie - I stole your picture from a couple years ago. Thanks for having them online!)

Let's Talk Culture Shock!

I’d been trying to outrun it, saliendo de la ciudad on weekends to stay one step ahead of it, but this week, it caught me.

Or at least that’s what I’m blaming the past week’s oversleeping trend on.

And only in Spain could one show up two hours late to work on a Monday morning, and hear, “Must’ve been a good weekend, huh?” from a smiling superior who means it in all seriousness without the slightest tinge of sarcasm.

And yes, yes, it was a good weekend. I spent Sunday drinking hot chocolate (REAL hot chocolate with a mound of whipped cream on top, not the omnipresent pudding-consistency Spanish chocolate one dips churros into) with another Fulbright while reading traffic law, wandered back towards Tribunal to drink tea and catch up with a different Fulbrighter, and then knitted and read for a bit before falling asleep. Needless to say, I wasn’t expecting to open my eyes to daylight at 9:25 am Monday morning.

Tuesday I was so going to do better, and I would have made it to school on time except for the madhouse in the metro. The circular wasn’t running, which somehow threw off the 10 line, too, which of course meant that everyone in the world was squished into the Metro Ligero. On Tuesday night in Spanish class we practiced constructions with subjunctive mood and ojalá. My example sentence: Ojalá no venga tarde a la escuela otra vez mañana. Let me not arrive late to school again tomorrow.

I made it on time Wednesday, but only because I managed to get myself out the door and to the metro in fifteen minutes, a record that ojalá I never have to repeat. On my way back from school, I bought an alarm clock, since the two alarms I’d been setting on my phone were obviously not doing the trick.

What my body was trying to tell me, though, was not that I needed an alarm clock, but that I needed to rest. Maybe I did need the extra sleep, but more than that I needed to pause and reevaluate where I’m at and what I’m doing here. Most of the other Fulbrights I see often have told me that they’ve had similar moments in the past couple weeks.

Culture shock, for me at least, manifests itself physically, probably because I tend to try to write it off for as long as possible. It’s not that I’m not happy here; it’s not homesickness. So I’m feeling a little weepy while I work on Thanksgiving lesson plans - I’m just feeling far away, right? It’s hard work adjusting, but I know I’m fortunate to be here in Madrid, and I think that’s part of it. Everything seems to be going a little too well right now. But that’s my suspicious mind. My body says just relax. It says listen. It says no, really, I’m going to make you slow down.

So I did. Most of my friends were leaving the city/country this weekend, but I really had no plans. Friday night I decided I needed to get out of the Madrid too, as I’m realizing I’m not a city girl. If I stay here too long, I start to feel like I can’t breathe. So I looked up the train schedule for Ávila, a town I know little about, aside from the fact that it was home to Santa Teresa, the mystic poetry writing nun who founded the Barefoot Carmelite order.

But if there’s one thing traveling will always remind me, it’s that I can’t control everything, as much as I like to try. There was no train to Ávila when I got to the station -- apparently I had looked up the schedule for El Escorial instead. I got on the train anyway, and an hour later stepped into a vivid fall day in the Sierra Guadarrama. I strolled up and down tree-lined paths in the gardens of the Casita del Príncipe, a gift from Rey Carlos III to his son and daughter-in-law back in the day, and made my way up to El Escorial, a massive building housing a monastery, basilica, royal palace and mausoleum of the Spanish monarchs.

Maybe a gorgeous day outdoors was what I needed, or maybe it was meeting up in Madrid later with a few friends to see Harry Potter and follow it up with cocktails. In any event, I’m feeling ready to take on this week.

Things to look forward to:

• a new project with the segundos (more details to come - I’m very excited!)
• Thanksgiving at Sam’s (she’s only been planning this for the past two months, and I’m making Aunt Margie’s cinnamon apples, as no Thanksgiving would be complete without them)
• Puente in País Vasco with the girls
• Madrid’s turning on the Christmas lights they’ve been stringing through all of the plazas

Whirlwind Weeks

This work week ended with a lesson on the American Independence for my cuartos. No taxation without representation, the Boston Tea Party, the Declaration of Independence...they seemed interested and asked intelligent questions, including, “Isn’t there a political party in the US called the Tea Party? Does it have anything to do with the Boston Tea Party?”

Impressed that my students knew a bit about American politics, I tried to explain the commonalities between the two -- questions of taxes and limitations on government -- while their teacher commented on the Tea Party’s opposition to Obama’s health care plan.

Politics aside, since I last wrote, I’ve had my own independence movement of sorts.

Last weekend I celebrated my 23rd birthday by making my first solo trip ever. I had never traveled by myself without at least knowing someone at my destination or having a group to meet up with, but having discovered the existence of the Real Escuela de Artes Ecuestres (the Royal School of Equestrian Arts) in Jerez de la Frontera, Andalucía and the fact that their monthly exhibition was to take place on my birthday, the time appeared ripe. My guidebook had few suggestions for non-horsey entertainment, and I’d yet to meet any horse people in the city, so alone I went.

Though it started off with a night spent sleeping on the floor in the Barajas airport, I had a thoroughly enjoyable trip. I arrived in Jerez early Friday morning, dropped my stuff at the hotel, picked up a map, ate the best toast ever in a bar full of old Spanish men, and set off in search of the caballos. I got to the Escuela just as they started a video on the history of the horse in Spain. Afterwards, the group was to tour the facilities, visit the museums, watch the morning training sessions, wander through the stables, maybe pet a few horses.

I’m not certain we were supposed to touch the horses, though, as I don’t speak German. For some reason, the German speaking guide was the first to take a tour group, and it seemed that we were all supposed to follow, so I explained to another guide that I only spoke English and Spanish.

“You can still join the rest of the group,” he assured me.

“No, really. I don’t understand ANY German.”

Another girl by herself had the same complaint.

“Well, you two can wait for a Spanish or English speaking group, or you can go by yourselves. It’s pretty self-explanatory,” said the guide.

So we decided to tour on our own. I had thought the other girl looked familiar, and it turned out that we’d not only been on the same flight sitting across the aisle from each other, but we’d bumped into each other at the hotel that morning. In fact, though I spent most of the flight sleeping with my scarf wrapped around my head to block out the light, I had opened my eyes for a moment, noticed her horse-print bag, considered talking to her, and then fallen back asleep.

She was from Colombia, and also living in Madrid this year while studying communications. A dressage rider, she had spent the two months prior to her arrival in Spain riding bull fighting horses in Portugal. She had also found out about the exhibition and, not knowing anyone else whom it would interest, decided to come alone.

We checked out the museums and watched the training sessions, and decided to grab lunch before seeing the rest of the city. We ended up accompanying each other to visit churches, a sherry bodega (Jerez is the Spanish word for sherry), the cathedral, a couple mercados and a flamenco show.

Saturday we toured the Alcázar, a castle the Moors built and the Christians later adopted (Andalucía has a lot of Arab history, and most Spanish words beginning in “al” are Arabic in origin). Then we returned to the Escuela for the exhibition (no pics allowed, but YouTube “Como bailan los caballos andaluces” for a taste of it). Our question: Is watching the show more impressive when you’re a horse person and understand the precision involved in everything or when you’re not a horse person and don’t? Either way, I found the show captivating.

My new friend left for Sevilla to meet up with a friend from Colombia who’s there studying to become a bullfighter, and I hopped a train to Cadiz Sunday morning. I’d missed water, missed being ten minutes away from the lake, and I enjoyed exploring the port town alone. It was the most relaxing Sunday I’ve had in Spain. I suppose I could have been preparing lessons for the week. I could have been doing my Spanish homework or studying traffic laws. Instead I was watching fishermen cast off the old city walls, wandering through fortresses that had been protecting the city since the 16th or 17th century, observing the seagulls flying overhead and cats sunbathing on the rocks near the ocean, and climbing up the tallest tower in the city to take in the view.

I needed the break before this week. I’ve been taking on more at school as I settle into my role, and it’s definitely filling my days. I also moved into my own studio on Tuesday.

Before arriving in Madrid, I had thought about living on my own here. I’d only ever lived with my family, roommates or host families, never sola. I had set up a few appointments to see studios around the city when I got here, and adored the first one I saw, but felt that the landlady was pressuring me to commit too quickly on my second day in the city and let it go, also realizing that I knew almost no one here and didn’t want to isolate myself.

I happened to glance at idealista, the Spanish rental site, on Halloween morning just to see what was out there two months after my own housing search and saw that first studio was available again. Now I’ve got friends. Now I’ve got a life here. Now seemed like the time to go get it.

So now I’m living right off the metro line that takes me to the MetroLigero to get to Boadilla. I’m surrounded by clothing stores I will never be able to buy anything in if I want to pay my rent. There’s a lovely vinoteca/librería a few blocks away. Most of all though, I’ve got my own space, tiny as the studio is: pequeñito, pequeñito as I keep describing it to people here. It does have a futon for guests or, if you prefer, some of the floors of the building are hostals that rent apartments by the day. Consider that an invitation.