Breakthroughs and Broken Bottles

This week in autoescuela (my theory classes for a moto permit) we’ve advanced from vehicle lighting regulations to señales de circulación. Both temas seem pretty commonsense at first glance, but not so in Spain. For example, what do you do at an intersection if you’re driving in a lane that has a diverging arrow painted on it - one arrow pointing straight through and the other to the right? One would assume you could either continue straight or turn right. But what if there’s also a sign post with a yield sign below a sign of an arrow curving off to the right? The arrow indicates that you can only turn right and so cancels out the straight arrow on the road. The yield sign means that you don’t have the right of way, but there’s also a green streetlight, so you really do have the right of way. Unfortunately, this is no hypothetical question; this contradictory intersection exists somewhere in Madrid.

After a class period introducing some of the intricacies of traffic signals, we took a 40 question quiz to see how much we retained. I missed 17 questions and was feeling pretty depressed until everyone else shared the number they got wrong. Only one other woman had only missed seventeen. The rest were at twenty-some. Taking into consideration the language barrier and the fact that kilometers and kilograms (and euros for that matter) still don’t feel like real units of measurement, I’m impressed by my somewhat decent score.

I’m getting settled into my ETA role, too. Mondays are surprisingly my favorite day of the week, mainly because I get a lot of time to chat with the profes. The first hour of the day I spend practicing conversational English with the new social science teacher, who’s crazy passionate about history and archaeology, though this doesn’t seem to come across to the students. I’ve also started giving private lessons to a biology teacher who’s preparing for a specific English test. I spend the rest of the day with the segundos in history and English.

This week, though, Tuesday was the day in which I felt I was really getting into stride. My first hour I spend pulling segundos out of English class to work on speaking activities. The second hour I do the same with the bachilleratos. This Tuesday went much better than last week with the older students. Though they had a sub, she and I were immediately able to come up with activities for them. She kept most of the class to work on question writing exercises, while I pulled out 8 students at a time to do practice interviews. And then came science class.

Every other week I’ll be running the class period so the kids can hear a native English speaker. This week I was teaching on density. The teacher had said he would be with me for the lesson, as I’m not supposed to be with an entire class by myself; however, I got to the classroom, and he hadn’t shown up. A little confused, I got the kids to explain to me what they’d learned the class period before about mass and volume, and started to move on to density. The profe arrived (he did have a legitimate reason for arriving late), and as we watched a video demonstration of the density of different liquids and talked about it. I was pleased that the kids were attentive and that the first lesson I’d prepared for the group was going so well. With a few minutes left of class, the teacher pulled out a small plastic bottle of water and an identical bottle of mercury, explaining that mercury’s density is 13.6 times that of water, and handed the bottles to a student to pass around the class so that the kids could feel the difference.

The profe kept talking as the kids passed around the bottle, and I thought, “Not good, please, please, please do NOT let them drop the mercury.” But they’re 12 and 13 and clumsy and can’t help it, so of course one of the girls, surprised at its weight, let the mercury bottle fall to the floor, and instantly the entire class was circled around the spill wanting to play with it.

“Guys, it’s TOXIC, get AWAY.” The teacher and I shoved them into the hallway, and he sprinted to get clean-up supplies from the lab while I took off to alert the jefe de estudios. The other teachers heard the news quite nonchalantly.

“Oh, no big deal. When I was a kid, I played with mercury, and I turned out okay. The students will always remember density now!”

We repeated the lesson on Wednesday for the other group of segundos, minus the mercury. Maybe it makes for a less memorable lesson, but at least I don’t have to worry that we’ve poisoned the students.

In other bottle related news: Alcalá de Henares, hometown of Cervantes (author of Don Quijote) is the place to go for tapas. With each copa de vino or caña de cerveza, you get to choose from a wide selection of Spanish foods to nibble on. My day trip there last weekend with Sam, another Fulbrighter, and her roommates went something like this:

-Arrive in pueblo

-Get coffee

-Wander to cathedral

-Tapas

-Take tour of Universidad de Alcalá

-More tapas

-Visit Cervantes’s home

-Tapas again

-Check out the shops

-More coffee

Posing with Sancho Panza and Don Quijote

This weekend’s proving to be rainy and cold (luckily I finally got a space heater since our piso only has a radiator in the living room), ideal weather for making soup (stovetop foods are preferable as our piso lacks an oven as well), updating the blog, and museum visits. Coming up next weekend: I turn 23, which somehow sounds so much older than 22, and take my first solo trip, a weekend in Andalucía to check out the Royal School of Equestrian Arts and watch an exhibition of Andalusian horses. More updates (and pictures of gorgeous caballos) to follow!

Escuela, Segovia y otras cosas de la vida diaria

Yesterday, on a bus navigating the suburbs of Madrid with a Spanish archeologist/historian turned secondary school teacher and forty-five segundos (the 12-13 year olds) on our way to visit the ruins of a Roman villa in Carranque, near Toledo, I had another “This is my life?!? It’s pretty cool” moments.

On Monday I had given the introductory lesson on Roman housing to give the kids a background on what they’d be seeing. I presented to each of the two groups of segundos, which was the first time I’d done more than talk about myself, observe the actual teachers or take smaller groups aside. I think I’m still a guest in the kids’ eyes - they listened intently without talking (a first in one of the classes). When they started to get a little restless and chatty, all I had to do was look disappointed and wait for them to calm themselves down, which they were quick to do.

I’ve now been in the school for ten working days - I’m getting my schedule down, learning the teachers’ expectations of me, trying to learn the names of the segundos, cuartos and first year bachilleratos. I’ve been working to prepare well in advance for each lesson, but am learning flexibility as few things ever go as planned.

For instance, on Tuesdays I pull out small groups of the first year bachilleratos (the 15-17 year olds) to practice conversational English. Technically, bachillerato classes aren’t in my contract - I’m only supposed to be working with the secondary students - but the bachilleratos (this class in particular) need help preparing for their oral exams. This past Tuesday I showed up, and the teacher did not.

In Spain, the students stay in one classroom while the teachers rotate in and out. If a teacher doesn’t arrive, some of the teachers who don’t have class during that time have guardia, which means they will take over for the absent instructor. So when I got to class, the guardia asked me what I normally did with the students. With the holiday the week before, I’d only had one day with them, and the teacher had told me never to prepare anything on my own, as she would always have a speaking practice for me to work on with six of the students at a time.

So the guardia sent me out with the six boys sitting sullenly in the back of the room just to chat in English for an hour. They start out by telling me their names and three things about themselves. The generic answer: “I’m Jorge. I’m sixteen. I like football and girls.” So then I ask them what there is to do in Boadilla del Monte, since I don’t know the suburb at all. “Drink. In the park.” Is there anything else to do? Apparently not. So I ask if they go to the city to have fun. Yes. What do they do in the city? “Drink. In the park.” I’m looking for travel recommendations, so I ask where they’ve traveled. All over. And what did they do in these places? “Drank. Smoked.” I need a better back up plan for future classes.

With Wednesday’s bachilleratos, who’ve been studying descriptions, we played a celebrity guessing game. I gave each of them a celebrity name, which they stuck to their foreheads, so that they couldn’t read the name but everyone else could see it. Then they had to ask yes or no questions to the group to find out who they were: Lady Gaga, Robert Pattinson, Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie...it was fascinating to find out which celebrities they knew and which they didn’t. It’s not only an ocean that separates our cultural references, but a five to ten year age gap too.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be beginning a research project on US states and preparing lessons on chemistry with the segundos. I’ll also be teaching las clases teóricas de informática - the theoretical aspects of computer class - to the cuartos and celebrating Halloween with them.

I’ve been keeping busy outside of school too. Last Sunday, Leah, Charleen and I took a day trip to Segovia, simply because I wanted to get out of the city (only four days after returning from Galicia) but didn’t have the energy to plan a bigger trip. I could move to Segovia. In fact, if I ever became a writer and got a book deal, I would rent an apartment in Segovia to use as my writing studio. The city is tranquil and gorgeous and full of history. We spent the afternoon wandering from the Roman aqueduct to the cathedral to the Alcázar palace with a break for lunch (Cochinillo, a Segovian specialty - roasted suckling pig - very tender but very pork-y) and dessert (Ponche segoviano - a moist cake with marzipan crust and a carmelized pattern on top).

My need to get out of Madrid had me worried - after all, I’ve still got eight months here, but I think it was due to aftershocks of coming back from five days on the Camino in the middle-of-nowheres of Galicia, which the occasional twinge in my right ankle continues to remind me of. Perhaps I shouldn’t have tried to break in my new Spanish four inch heels the night we went out to celebrate our return to the city. This week, though, I’m starting to feel more at home here. I can finally understand most of what the driving class instructor shouts at us in the fastest Spanish I’ve ever heard in my life. (“Si no es prohibido, repito...si no es PROHIBIDO, REPITO...SI NO ES PROHIBIDO...es permitido.) I can find my way around the city on foot and by metro by myself without getting desperately lost. As the weather’s changing, a few of us Fulbrighters are starting a knitting night on Wednesdays at a fabulous used bookstore/bar/café. Last night, Janel and I went to an amazingly fun concert featuring three Spanish groups. And today I got my official residency card and am currently writing this while sitting in my favorite café with wifi just down the street from the Prado.

I’m on my way to being madrileña.

Segovia - see why I want to live there?

Se hace camino al andar

My new friend Leah and I took advantage of our first puente, the long weekend due to the Fiesta Nacional de España, to walk the last bit of the Camino de Santiago from Sarria to Santiago de Compostela, a distance of roughly 115 km. According to tradition and legend, the body of the apostle James rests in the Cathedral at Santiago, where the route ends. The first pilgrim, Gotescalo, Bishop of Puy, made the journey in the year 950, and those who’ve followed have established the Camino’s place in the traditions and history of Spain and the Catholic church. Then you have pilgrims like me, neither Spanish nor Catholic, and we make the Camino our own experience too.

Cuéntame que te trae por aquí.

Day 1: Sarria to Portomarín, 25ish km

We arrive in Sarria around seven in the morning via an overnight bus from Madrid, not quite sure what to expect. Our first task: find coffee, as neither of us got much (if any) sleep in the bus. Our second task: find the Camino! The bartender at the café points us on our way, and we make our way through silent cobblestone streets to the old part of town. We pass albergues from which other pilgrims emerge, begining their traipse to the edge of town; we pause at an ancient church just long enough to take a few pictures and adjust our packs then join the rest on the dirt path that leads through fields into the Galician forest.

Why are we here? I suddenly realize that Leah and I haven’t discussed this. I’d heard about the Camino in my Spanish classes and knew that I wanted to do part of it while here in Spain, but I had been planning to stay later into the summer to do so. Had Leah not suggested doing it over the puente, I wouldn’t be on this path right now. But what made Leah want to walk? It turns out that we’re both in it to prove it to ourselves that we can do this. Also, from what we’ve heard, the Camino changes lives (if you let it), and we’re curious to see how this might happen. I think that’s a tall order for a four day hike, but we’re open to seeing where this takes us.

I’m in search of some clarification too. I’ve been questioned lately about faith and signs from God, and I’m quite sure I’m not the one with the best answers. If walking a route that the faithful have followed for eleven centuries can afford me a bit more perspicuity, I’m all for it.

Unlike Madrid, Galicia smells like fall, and I’m reminded of a moment in my childhood: when I was six or so, I had a brownish-red kitty surprise stuffed cat. The surprise part of the toy was that this cat’s belly velcroed shut so she could give birth to five little brownish-red kittens. One fall day, I had taken the kitties outside to play while my mom raked the yard, and I lost a kitten in one of the piles of leaves that Mom had been raking up and dumping over the ravine in the backyard. I was heartbroken. Why had I taken a little leaf colored cat outside when it was so easy to lose? My six year old self knew I would never find it. Mom suggested that we pray about it, so we asked God to find the missing kitty and put it safely in my little red wagon in the garage, which is exactly where we found it later that afternoon.

It sounds too simple, but I think if there’s a lesson in that story, it’s that at six years old, I knew that finding that kitten was something I couldn’t do on my own. At twenty-two I’m sure that most of what I’ve accomplished I haven’t done on my own. There’s much larger forces at work.

La muerte iguala a todos; la peregrinación hace lo mismo a los vivos.

Day 2: Portomarín to Palas de Rei, 23ish km

I roll out of bed at 6:40, much to my sore muscles’ dismay. My body asks my brain if I’m crazy. Quite possibly. As Leah and I pick our way through the dark morning with the help of my flashlight, down some rocky slopes and across a narrow bridge that leads into the woods, I begin to limber up. Today, I no longer question my backpack. I no longer blame it for any of my aches. It’s not: My backpack is straining my back, my shoulders. It’s simply: My back twinges. My shoulders throb. My chest pulls tight. This bag contains everything I need - nuts and dried fruit to snack on, a couple shirts, soap and shampoo, a pocketknife, my sleeping bag - but in exchange, it weighs me down, holds me back. No matter - now it’s just another part of myself.

Today, though, I mostly manage to divert my brain from counting kilometers and inventorying pains. I get songs stuck in my head, mostly, “Follow the Yellow Brick Road,” and the roquera tijuajense Julieta Venegas’s “Andar conmigo.” I’m thinking of friends, wishing I could be back in Michigan for Alison and Bryan’s wedding, imagining where I might find myself after this year in Spain.

We make a few new friends along the way too: a father-daughter team from the US via the Philippines whose wife/mother accompanies them on the journey via the spiritual exercises they’re working through, a gay couple from England who are currently unemployed and spending the next several months traveling, a few Spaniards from around Madrid, one of whom asks if I’m French. I’ve been getting that a lot lately. He says it’s my accent. I seem to be slowly losing my American-trying-to-sound-Mexican Spanish (Bueno ¿Qué onda, guey?) and picking up a lispier European Spanish (Vale ¿Qué tal, tío?).

Today’s not a particularly profound day. We’re just sharing the Camino and enjoying each others company (when not complaining about our pobre piernas y pies).

El Camino de cada uno es diferente.

Day 3: Palas de Rei to Arzua (that’s Ar-thu-a, with the Spanish lithp), some 30 km

Today turns out to be our most challenging day. Leah starts out in a bad mood, and I’m pretty sure I’m not helping. I’m trying to distract her by pointing out all of the cool things we’re passing - Look you can still see the stars! And check out the perfect spider web on that tree! Oh my, a cow! I think I’m becoming my mother, who spent family road trips during my teenage years pointing out all the animals we passed, while I did my best too-cool-for-this act. In my favorite voicemail from her, she’s driving back from Ohio, and saying, “Hi, Emily. You’re probably at work right now, but I just wanted to let you know...OH LOOK! DEER!”

Much of the Camino today goes up and down hills. Mostly up hills, it seems, and just when you think you’ve reached the top of the slope, you turn a corner and you’re only halfway there.

Today we also determine that the distances in my map book are wrong. Unfortunately for us, we figure this out as we reach the distance marker we thought we needed to be at only to realize that this village in the valley is not Arzua. No, to reach Arzua we have another 3 km to climb, which doesn’t sound like much, but will mean another 45 minutes of subiendo after already walking farther this day than any of the previous days. Though we pass pilgrims soaking their feet in the river that runs through the valley, we know that if we stop, we won’t be able to make the last few km today.

By the time we make it to Arzua, the first albergue we inquire at is full. We rush across the street - yes, they still have beds. We get pasta for lunch and I take the best shower I’ve had in Spain. (This is no exaggeration - to shower in my apartment you have to light the water heater, then decide whether you want hot water or decent water pressure as you hold the nozzle with one hand while rinsing and turning off the water while soaping.) As we rest, we discuss how far we want to be the next day.

Our decision: Santiago de Compostela, the end of the Camino, 37.5 km away, according to the marker in front of our albergue. We want to have some time in the city, and as our bus back to Madrid leaves at 2 pm on Tuesday, we figure we should get in on Monday night. This means ten hours of walking, so we call ahead to ensure that we’ll have somewhere to stay the next night. We also decide to take advantage of the albergue’s mochila transport service and send our backpacks on ahead of us. If we’re going that far in one day, we need as much help as we can get, though as I mention this to the guy from the US who’s been walking since France, I feel like we’re cheating. His response? Everybody’s Camino is different.

Before bed, I rub lotion into my feet, assure them that I love them and that they can do this. The Camino isn’t about rationality. We’ve all got to be just a touch delirious at this point.

Son tus huellas el camino

Day 4: Arzua to Santiago de Compostela, 40 km

This morning waking up I’m thinking of church. Before I set out on the Camino, I was talking with my mom, who’s concerned that I don’t have a church here. Here, as opposed to the US? I don’t feel that I have a church there either. The parish I grew up in split into two while I was in college, and at the time, I didn’t feel that the split involved me. And to be honest, I do all I can to avoid conflict and taking sides. But it’s left me unsure of how to label myself. As of late I’ve been saying I grew up Anglican, which works since there’s no differentiation between Anglican and Episcopalian in Spanish.

But I don’t want a label anyway. The denomination defines itself by its tradition, liturgy, creed, and for this, I identify as Anglican. Though I don’t always make it to church, I take comfort in the recitation of our shared beliefs and the telling of the stories that have shaped them. It’s tempting not to look beyond that, to gloss over the darker moments of its history, the illicit money that has funded it, the outside influences...I don’t expect perfection though.

I don’t ask it of anyone, actually. When you look at a church as a body of believers and break it down into individual members, that’s where you’re going to find the cracks. The struggle to live into one’s beliefs isn’t easy, and the failures that some might consider hypocrisy, I chalk up to our humanity.

Before I left for Spain, my friend Alison asked me what she could get me. I asked for a devotional because, in theory, I love the idea of organized spiritual lessons, though I don’t think I’ve ever actually completed any of the devotional books I’ve started in the past. Instead, Ali presented me with Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith, remarking that none of the devotionals she had seen seemed quite right for me and that perhaps Lamott’s journey could enlighten my own. In a sequel to Traveling Mercies, Lamott writes, “...the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.”

So back to the Camino: Today we’re making our way to Santiago. We’re uncomfortable in our ponchos, our stomachs are empty except for the dried fruit and nuts we’ve carried for eighty-odd kilometers and the ham and bread we saved from dinner the night before, my hair is a mess tied back in a bandanna, and we don’t really know where we are or where we’re going. Yes, we’ve got a map, but we know it’s flawed. Yes, there are markers along the path, but not with any real consistency. And our end goal is St. James’s grave, though we can’t know for certain he’s really buried there. We walk anyway.

That’s how I see life within the living church. The church (pick your denomination) has its creeds and its liturgies - its map. It’s got bishops and priests and the laity - its guides. But each of us still has to make our own way through.

I can’t prove God to anyone. All I have is my own experiences, and I’ll admit that I’ve filtered those through my expectations - I was looking for God. On this last leg of the Camino, as we wind our way through the hills of Galicia to St. James, we can’t ascertain that he’s really buried there. However, many have gone before us and many follow. Whether or not the legends of his burial are true no longer matter: the pilgrims make the Camino real.

I can’t prove God. But I believe. And my God is bigger than any divisiveness.

Buen Camino

Day 5: Santiago to Compostela to Madrid, ? km (no longer matters)

Last night we made it to Santiago. But the Camino doesn’t end here. We’ve got to get back home to Madrid. We’ve got eight more months in Spain.

Los finales de un mes en Madrid

Bueno compadres, first, a brief revision to last week’s statement: Lest you think that two governments are funding mere frivolity in providing me with money for tapas, sangria, and maybe vespas, well, last week was another week spent outside of the classroom due to complications of scheduling.

Last Sunday, I took off for Toledo with Janel, Leah, and our last minute compañera, Casey, who just happened to be online as we were headed out of the piso. I intended to spend a day outside of the city before getting into the school routine. The day wound its way though twisting cobblestone streets to delicious traditional Spanish food, better company and impressionante views of the Spanish countryside.

On Monday, then, I showed up at school, expecting a brief meeting with my coordinator and the other Fulbrighters before sitting in on some classes, but no, the governing powers of above would not allow us to enter the classrooms until schedules had been revised and approved. Disappointed, we met a few of the teachers with whom we’ll be working, gave our datos personales to the secretaria, and headed back to the city.

What to do, then, with my time?

Tuesday I spent the morning searching for an autoescuela, hoping to find one that offered classes for a Permiso A1, the license one needs to drive a Vespa in Spain. After inquiring at a few, I found one! I enrolled on Thursday, and hope to get my theoretical tests out of the way in October or early November to move on to the actual driving tests.

I’ve also been taking a Spanish class on Tuesday and Thursday nights. Why, you ask, after 8 years of formal study, would I feel I need this? I want to brush up on my grammar, since I’ve only had literature and linguistics courses over the past three years, except for a brief grammar review last summer in Cuernavaca. Also, it’s fun to learn new phrases, like, “ser uña y carne,” which translates literally to, “to be fingernail and flesh,” or more generally to, “to be good friends.” Who would’ve guessed?

Perhaps you saw the news on Wednesday of the strikes throughout Europe protesting labor reforms. Madrid went on strike! One of the strikers’ main goals was to shut down transportation throughout the city, so I stayed in most of the day and started to knit a sweater, only going out in the early afternoon for a brief walk through the neighborhood, where almost everything was closed anyhow. We did brave the metro in the evening to join some friends for vino y queso before checking out a language intercambio night at an English language bookstore.

Thursday all of the auxiliares in Madrid met for a 10 hour long jornada de formación. Our day consisted of sessions detailing the organization of the public school system, the new literature and language curriculum, precautionary statements from the Embassy along with offers of their cultural resources, ideas on how to best support teachers in their classes, and, my personal favorite, activities to incorporate poetry into the classroom.

And finally, Friday night Janel, Marta, Hector, Fausto and I had a little housewarming masquerade party for a few friends.

During the first part of the week I was feeling a bit useless and wondering why I’m here if I’m not really accomplishing anything of substance, but as I look back, maybe that’s what I’ve needed as I’ve been settling into Spain. I’m coming to this after four years at Hope, which were an opportunity to explore academic and personal interests I’d never realized I had, but also at times felt like a giant checklist to complete before graduation: take this class, write these papers, read these books...So far in Spain, I’ve woken up everyday asking myself what I’d like to accomplish today. There’s no master list to the “Madrid experience.” Also, coming to Fulbright after working a few entry level jobs in which one’s productivity is measured by the number of referrals she makes or her ability to cajole customers into spending more is liberating.

But tomorrow I start class (for real this time). I have a full week this week, and then next weekend, Leah, a Fulbright researcher, and I are taking off to walk the last 100k of the Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage route through the north of Spain, since we have a long weekend, what with the Fiesta Nacional de España’s being next Tuesday. More updates after that!