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