Things are wrapping up here in Madrid as I aprovecharme of the little time remaining. I’ll be on my way back to the United States four weeks from last Friday, and is it too clichéd to say that the parting will be bittersweet?
I’m definitely ready to be back, but felt a twinge Thursday when I was reviewing grammar with some of my cuartos, one of them asked when I was going to be leaving.
“July,” I told him.
“You’ll miss Spain,” he said.
“Yes.”
“You’ll miss us.”
“Of course.”
“You’ll miss the way we peel paint chips off the walls, stack our desks into fortresses on opposite sides of the room and start a paint chip throwing war.”
“Even that.”
To be fair, that particular habit of theirs only made its appearance once in my stay on a day when the students had convinced their substitute teacher that I should stay with them by myself (which happens to be strictly against the rules of the auxiliar contract but never actually enforced) when I had poked my head into the classroom to drop off some worksheets from the teacher. As I started scolding the guys, the girls tried to talk me into letting it go.
“Están en la edad del pavo (They’re in the turkey age),” they told me. “They can’t help themselves. Leave them be. They’ll finish studying at home. Let’s paint your nails while you tell us about American proms.”
I will even miss 2ºC, the class all of the teachers complain about. Last week the teacher was missing when I got to their class, so I got the class in their seats at least and went on a fruitless search. When I got back to the classroom, the program coordinator was with the students.
“I stopped in to tell them I could hear them all the way in Canada,” she said, which is probably true. “They’re a good group though, aren’t they?”
“Oh, they are,” I said, “One of my favorites. They’re just talkative.”
As the coordinator left, one of the students turned to me. “The teacher hates us,” he said.
“I don’t think that’s really true,” I responded. “She just gets frustrated that you guys talk so much. There’s so many of you, it’s a little overwhelming.”
“We’re just opinionated,” he said. “It’s a good thing.”
An opinionated class, yes. A good thing...not always in their case. Sometimes it just comes off as whiny.
My clases particulares, after school tutoring sessions, are winding down too. I’ve gone from six classes four days a week to two back to back classes on Wednesdays, though the class dynamics have gotten more eventful. Last week I had one girl (who had gotten to class the week before and announced that she’d thrown up three times that day and felt worse than before) sick with pneumonia, one girl who got a bloody nose partway into class and two friends who refused to speak because one had called the other bossy. She is, too, but she did not want to hear it and spent most of the hour sulking behind me.
So I’ve been spending my free time in search of a bit more tranquilidad as I try to make it to the last of the places on my list of must-sees. Last weekend, I finally made a trip to the Thyssen Museum to check out their permanent collection as well as the Heroínas (Heroines) exhibition, which emphasizes portrayals of active women in art. My friend Sam and I visited the Fundación Caja Madrid where the other half of Heroínas is on display.
This past weekend I visited the Museo de las Americas, which is my new favorite museum in Madrid. The collection begins with a display of excerpts from precolonial Spanish explorers’ letters and writings alongside artists’ renderings of the early American people. It continues into a room exhibiting novelties sent back to Spain from the “New” World, a collection of maps, displays on pre-Colombian lifestyles in the Americas and the changes brought by the colonization. Unintentionally, I visited after having taught my segundos about Columbus’s voyages this past week. (While preparing my presentation, I was corrected by the history teacher. In case you were wondering, the Spanish monarchs didn’t originally reject Columbus’s request for support because they were still warring with the Moors in Granada, but because they were “unifying the peninsula according to religious and cultural traits” by chasing the last of the Moors out of the country. Fine. In class I did manage to remember to say unifying instead of warring, and we quickly moved on.)
After my museum visit, I went to a flamenco show in which one of my American friends debuted. She has been dancing her heart out since she got here in September, throwing her whole self into learning this traditional and complex dance (and blogging a bit: http://loveandflamenco.wordpress.com). Her show made me wish I had learned flamenco until I remembered my one klutzy attempt back in college and contentedly sat and watched. But the low lighting, the guitar, the clapping, the stomping, the wailing singing drew everyone in. The last dancer of the night was the instructor who at sixty-five or so still stomped at incredible speeds while seducing the spectators with her grace and passion. She showed off the bata de cola, a long train, which she wore while twirling about during the first half and then slid out of, and, I can think of no other word, used to capotear the way a bullfighter maneuvers his cape to dance the toro to his death. Only this dance wasn’t about death, rather life in all of its magnificence, even as age waltzes on.
Feeling inspired by last night’s exuberance, I went for a run to Plaza de Colón today and made my way back via Paseo de Recoletos, where the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya had set up an outdoor exhibit. Cardio and culture at the same time? Something I will definitely miss when I get back to Michigan.
The beautiful mezquita/cathedral in Córdoba
Sam, traveler extraordinaire
Climbing the hill up to the Alhambra, mentally bemoaning the heat, the fact that I knew there had to be an easier path but had listened to street signs instead of my map...and then a pleasing view of the city below
My favorite picture from the Alhambra
