The Thirteenth Week

Week 13- Germany

            This week was the week before Easter, and in Sevilla it is one of the biggest celebrations of Semana Santa in all of Spain. The streets are not big enough to hold the number of people out there waiting to see the processions. The night before the celebrations begin, people sleep out on the streets and you can see the chaos beginning. Everyone is dressed in the Sunday best all week, and those responsible for carrying the pasos are covered head to toe in white or black KKK-like outfits. (I have a hard time explaining this word in English, but here it goes- A paso is a float like thing that belongs to a specific church. The top of it has a weeping virgin or Jesus on the cross.) These pasos are kept inside their church all year and planning this week is like preparing for the Super Bowl. All semester we could hear the bands practicing their Semana Santa ear splitting, trumpet-dominant songs. This week is talked about all year, and every non-practicing Catholic Spaniard squirms with excitement when the topic comes up in conversation. We had a whole week off of school for the holiday, so naturally I leave. I head to Berlin.

            When I book flights, I go with whatever is least expensive, and if that means I have to wait seven hours in an airport, then so be it. I left Sevilla at noon for Barcelona on a Ryanair flight that only cost seventeen euros. Then waited and waited and waited in one little terminal for close to seven hours. My trip to Berlin took half of a day, and if I had taken a direct flight it would have been four hours. I stayed with a friend, Jace, who is studying in Berlin for the semester. When we finally got to his home stay, it was already 1:30 am. I always wonder what I actually do during whole days like this one if I didn’t sleep, and usually the answer to that question is eat and go to the bathroom. I have this strange problem where I always buy something (usually snackums) in an airport, and if you leave me in a terminal with only one Duty Free store for more than five hours…I am going to end up buying Tucs and orange flavored chocolate because the wrapper is pretty. I don’t even remember being bored, which I should have been.

This terminal was full of a bunch of Italians and Americans waiting for a flight to Milan, and the plane was late. People were getting really rowdy and antsy, talking louder and louder, asking each other nonsense questions, “If the plane is late does that mean we are going to be delayed?”, “Oh my god. Did I pack my neck pillow?!”, and my favorite, “Why is the plane late?” No one knows lady. They haven’t said anything over the loud speaker and your ninety-year-old father and his suspenders don’t know either, so stop asking him. Finally the announcement is said first in Spanish, English, and then Italian, “The gate for flight number 442 to Milan has been changed.” One massive shocked groan that sounded like a question was heard, and people run off in all directions. Unlike my flight to Dublin, where everyone knew the general direction of the gate, people here had no idea where to go. People were going down stairs, running into walls, yelling at each other, it was chaos. No one had a clue where to go. The next announcement comes three minutes after the first, while everyone is still trying to figure out how to get out of this terminal maze. First the embarrassed flight attendant in English simply said, “Oops. Nevermind.” Then in Spanish he gave a little more detail, “Sorry. Stay here! I said the wrong thing.” Then in Italian he said something that could have been anything. The groan this time was basically visible, leaving the young flight attendant blushing and staring at his shoes. About an hour, or more, after that Milan flight had left, this extremely confident Italian Stallion and his sunglass-wearing, gum-chewing girlfriend walk into the terminal and ask me, “What gate is it for the Milan flight?” I responded in Spanish, although they were speaking Italian, telling him that the flight was gone already. I pointed to his boarding pass, showing him the time and pointing to a clock, expecting him to realize that the lunch break he took was over an hour too long. Nothing. Just a couple head nods. I took him up to the front and told the flight attendant to explain the situation to him. After standing up there for about ten minutes he comes back to all the chairs and sits down. They wait, and by the time my flight is boarding, he and his girlfriend are trying to board my flight. This is when he finally understands that he missed his flight…he yells at everyone and starts pointing to me as if I was the problem. The flight attendants ask me to come to the front of the line and ask me if I had told “this man and his friend that they could just get on the next plane and that it would take them to Milan.” Of course I did not, although I wish I could take credit for that. I thought they were joking. I was the last to board, and our flight was delayed because of the Italian couple that liked to play the blame game. I got out of it by saying, “I do not know how to speak Italian.”

The first morning in Berlin started off with a couple of warm croissants and a visit to the Brandenburger Tor, Reichstag, and the Holocaust Denkmal. We took the underground right to the Brandenburger Tor, so that when you walk up the steps of the metro it occupies all of your vision. A lot of people don’t like being labeled as a tourist, but I love it so much I might as well be wearing a fanny pack and white tennis shoes with jeans. I linger long enough to get all the photos I want and then linger longer, just because I can. One thing about that though is that you always get asked to take photos. Crossing the bridge in Triana (my barrio in Sevilla) can sometimes take me twenty minutes on a Sunday, just because I get asked to take so many photos of families, ladies and their dogs, and people pretending to be pondering life while gazing off into the distance with their rear facing the camera. At the Burger Tor, this one American couple realized that I spoke English so they asked me to take their photo. Directly behind them was a man wearing a bright red helmet, but he did not have a bike or anything. I took the photo and set it up so that it would look like the man asking for his photo to be taken would appear to be wearing a helmet. It was perfect. I gave him back his camera and showed him the photo with a very straight face. He says, “Oh can you take one more? It looks like I am wearing a helmet.” Yes. This time I was going to take a real photo, except the helmet wearing man must have read the other half of my mind and photo bombed so well, that I wish I had a copy of this photo. (Photo bomb- sneaking into other people’s photos and looking ridiculous). The couple realized what was going on, laughed heartily, and then invited helmet man to join them for a photo. It was a beautiful tourist-helmet union.

The Reichstag is a beautiful building that looks different from all the other architecture in Berlin. There is an amazing bright green lawn that stretches out in front of it. Earlier in the day, Jace and I had bought a huge bag of Flips for 49 cents. Flips are peanut flavored chips, but they are the kind of chips that are more like poofs made from a mysterious “corn” product. We sat out on the lawn munching on the Flips for as long as our gums could hold up (if you eat too many, they can make your gums bleed…even with this advice, you can’t stop eating them). Then next stop was the Holocaust Denkmal. From a distance this memorial looks like a bunch of concrete slabs and you think, “There has to be more to it”, but once you get there you realize there isn’t. It is just a ton of concrete. It is interesting though, because this denkmal is supposed to make you feel overwhelmed. As you walk deeper and deeper into the concrete garden, the rectangular slabs get taller and some angle ever so slightly. Finally, when you get to the middle you feel small and kind of like you are hiding, because you can only see straight down the row you are standing in. Below, is a museum with personal stories of Holocaust victims, letters written to families by concentration camp victims, and photos. After too much concrete and too many sad stories, we needed a pick-me-up. In Berlin that means beer and currywurst. Curry36 is supposed to be the best in town, so of course I insisted that we go there. Ordered currywurst with French fries and no mayonnaise on the fries, please! I got the look that you only get from Germans, “No mayonnaise? Why.” I had seen the mayo mountains on the other currywurst eater’s fries and I just couldn’t do it. So what I think needs to make its way to America from Germany are Flips and currywurst, but the Flips have to come with a warning label (Warning: may cause gum damage. Eating peanut poofs may lead to an unhealthy addiction).

I spent a lot of time wandering Berlin alone or with a family friend who lives there named, Noemi. I thought I saw a lot of Berlin, but by the time I actually looked at a map of the whole city, I realized I had only seen about a fourth of it. Nonetheless, I saw amazing things. I even saw a street named “Dickhardstrasse”. I took a nap in Treptower Park by the Soviet Memorial after having fallen down the steps at the top. Saw all of the important buildings that make up the Berlin skyline. Checkpoint Charlie was crowded with people, but still surreal to see. I was walking around in the open Templehof Airpark filled with jealousy as I watched people flying kites. Then while I was in the bathroom, my phone rings and it is a number I don’t recognize, but let’s be serious, I don’t recognize any European numbers. I answer it with me mixed language hello. In Spanish the woman says to me, “Ahhhhh! (excited scream- no hello or anything before) It’s here! It’s way bigger than I thought…(enter anything you want here, because at this point her voice was so high pitched and she was talking so quickly that I had no idea what she was saying)…So? Why aren’t you happy? You are never happy for me.” She never took a breath. I said, “I am happy for you! You sound so excited. But my name is Kathleen. I am in Germany right now and you have the wrong number.” “Well, why didn’t you tell me earlier!?” “Sorry.” Click. So I went from being this girl’s best friend in the whole world, to being in a permanent fight with her.

All of this site seeing was not done in one day, because Jace and I went to Munich for the weekend, then back to Berlin for a couple of days before I had to leave. Munich. So different from Berlin. It’s like comparing Barcelona and Sevilla. Berlin is a big city trying to compete with other big cities and is very modern versus smaller city that holds on to their traditional cultural identity by wearing lederhosen and drinking beer for breakfast. (Side Note:  I need to genuinely thank my Aunt Mandi’s family who took care of us while we were in Munich. All we needed was a place to sleep. We would have taken a couch or the floor, but instead, we were treated like royalty. They are the most hospitable people I have ever met.)

So how did we get to and from Munich…ride sharing. It’s basically like paying to hitchhike. Signed up online, paid some random German thirty euro to drive us all the five plus hours to Munich, and away we went. We met in front of what seemed to be the normal drop off-pick up area…McDonalds at seven in the morning, met him and his mini van, and piled in. The mini v was full, and I was sitting in the middle between Jace and an Asian German. Our driver, Darius, worried me only a tad. It was smooth sailing for a couple hours, then he got sleepy, and then the Red Bulls started making their frequent appearances. He drank four Red Bulls in three hours. His fingers didn’t stop drumming the steering wheel for one second, and we made bathroom stops every thirty minutes. One of our bathroom breaks was along a stretch of highway surrounded by empty rolling hills. We stopped at a gas station convenience store place, and all took a stretch break. After we had all gone to the bathroom we were standing around trying to communicate, then we realized my Asian German friend was not with us. It was like he had disappeared. He ended up being gone for thirty minutes and then just showed up out of nowhere. No one questioned it, we all got in the car again, and the next stop was Munich. This day was a very long day…

We made it safely to Munich and were picked up by Sara, Mandi’s cousin. She called me on my peanut sized Spanish phone and said, “Ok, I’m in the white BMW SUV.” I thought, “Oh my gosh, I smell so bad…I can’t get in her beamer!” So I put on my deodorant for the third time that day and it was only one pm. I am a disgusting being. We walked around Munich for a bit, tried the white bratwurst in a mini bun. The actual bratwurst is a foot long, and the bun is probably four inches long. Germans can’t do math, I guess. I saw my first lederhosen at the bratwurst store (I don’t think that’s what you call the place you buy bratwurst, but…). My first lederhosen…a man wearing forest green shorts that look like umpa lumpa overalls, a white button up short sleeve shirt with a little bit of a frilly collar, a hat with an extra tickly feather poking out of it, and a fake leg. Fake leg and lederhosen…a name for my German rock ballad that I will make someday.

Sara, Reza, and Ali are siblings and they own a restaurant and a nightclub together. We spent a significant amount of time in their restaurant, Café Mozart, but I had no problem with that. We were like bar flies and they were continuously feeding us. “Are you guys hungry?” (five minutes after we have finished a giant pretzel). “Ehh, no I’m ok.” Then a giant schnitzel, salad, and potatoes would show up in front of us. Let me warn any future Mozart guests. If you order the schnitzel, you will get Schnitzel Drunk. I was not that hungry, but I still ate some of the schnitzel that was the size of a small table. Jace ate all of it. After it had all been eaten, Jace could barely stand, everything was funny, and he desperately needed some water (and no alcohol had been consumed). I could have said anything and he would have laughed. Luckily a funny man was in our presence and all I had to do was point him out. Sitting behind Jace was an old man, so old that he looked like he was made of play dough. It’s fine if someone looks like they are made of play dough, but now put some white hair on him. Good, but only put it on one side of his head. This hair falls down like a normal person’s hair, the hair on the right side of his head… looked like he had purchased a bag of hair, rubbed glue on that side of his head, took the hair in a bundle in his hand and stuck it onto his head. At first I thought maybe he was one of those old men who was artsy and want-to-be-modern and down with the young ‘uns, he was definitely not. His hair, on only one side of his head, was sticking straight out in every direction. If he had just been asleep, then he gets a pass, but if not, he just gets a thumbs up for originality. I have never seen anything like it. I wanted to touch it. I pointed it out to Jace and said something like, “Do you think it requires magic skills to have hair like that?” Jace, being schnitzel drunk, laughed so hard he had to leave the restaurant. We left from there and did more touring. Later that night we went with them to open up the club, Living4. So Jace and I were there at 9:00 pm with them and left at 3:30 am. That is the longest I have ever been in a club and you could see it in my eyeballs, which were shut. We danced the night away until we could not move anymore. We then sat on a couch near the coat check, and Jace kept closing his eyes and falling asleep. I needed to stay strong for both of us, for our dignity, otherwise we could never wear party pants again! We would be a disgrace if we fell aszzzzzzzzz. I blinked my beet red tear-filled eyes once and they stayed closed. I fell asleep sitting up, in a club. Sara walks over to us and asks if we are ready to go. I wake up and convince myself that it only looked like I was blinking for a really long time. We go back to the house, fall asleep, and hope that we never have to wake up again. We were up at nine drinking coffee and eating breakfast, and another long day was about to begin.

Katja, Ali’s girlfriend, was like our personal tour guide the whole time. So it was now Sunday and I decided that we needed to go to Hoffbrahaus. Katja joined us. We sat at a table with four loud hefty German men. They convinced me to order a liter of beer. Being a tourist makes me blind to things. If a sign says turn right, I turn right. If someone tells me I have to drink a liter of beer because I am in Munich, then I order a liter of beer. Katja got a mini beer and lemonade mix. She enjoyed it thoroughly, while Jace and I felt extreme pressure to finish every bit of ours without using two hands. While we enjoyed a giant pretzel and other traditional German foods, we had the pleasure of listening to some pretty awful music played by men wearing extra fancy lederhosen. I think this music made people think that they were more intoxicated than they really were. I kind of whispered under my breath, “I wonder when they practice” and Katja says, “I think they are practicing now.” When it came time to paying the bill, Jace and I said that we would like to pay for her food this time. We were prepared to say the typical, “Oh no, it’s the least we can do. You have been so great…”, but she never gave us the chance. We said, “No, no, we’ll pay for yours. We are –“ and she says, “Ok.” If only everyone could make it that easy. There was no awkwardness and no pulling of teeth to get her to say yes. I loved it. She was so funny the whole time we were with her. At one point we saw a little red headed, rosy-cheeked toddler wearing baby lederhosen and socks with ruffles, and she says, “That kid is weird.” I couldn’t stop laughing.

When we had to head back to Berlin we did the ride sharing deal again. We left Monday morning, but Jace had class at noon. So we left at 3:30 am. Our ride this time was a little BMW hardly big enough for two people, but I managed to slip into the back seat made for people with no legs or head. The whole ride, my head was angled forward so that it wouldn’t hit the glass, and my crunched up legs had no feeling after a couple hours. I toughed out a neck cramp for three hours. Nonetheless, it was still the nicest car I had ever been in. Our driver this time, was a very serious businessman with no sense of humor. He traveled from Berlin to Munich every weekend for his girlfriend. Normally the trip to Berlin would take over five hours, but we got there in exactly four. The Autobahn is both wonderful and terrifying. The first time our driver got the car up to 200 kmph Jace and I made the cough clearing out your throat noises that clearly means, “Holy crow, I am nervous. Please slow down.” At one point we were traveling at 225kmph, but after awhile, it lulled me to sleep. He dropped us off as far away from the city center as he could have at an Ubahn station that wasn’t even open yet. There were no bathrooms open either. I don’t remember how we got back to Jace’s home stay or how long we waited or even if I went to the bathroom anywhere (I really had to go…I remember that).

The real story from this trip comes from me trying to get back to Sevilla from Berlin. I flew from Berlin to London Stansted to Sevilla. I left at 9:35 am and was suppose to be at the Sevilla airport at 9 pm. Once again, flying cheaply means it takes more time. I had a layover in London for seven hours. One of the worst things about traveling with really strict bag restrictions, is that I usually don’t have space to pack a book, so I couldn’t even read! In the airport I found myself sitting in the only restaurant with tables…a Burger King and wishing it was anything else but a Burger King. I scribbled, I people watched, I postcarded, I pretended like I didn’t speak English, I ate a whole can of sour cream and onion Pringles, and I brushed my hair twice. After all of that, I had six more hours to kill. I actually don’t remember being bored, which confuses me because I really didn’t do anything. I watched a man drop a twenty (pound) on the ground and it fluttered underneath the table to where is Santa Claus belly wouldn’t allow him to reach it. My table was on one side of him and a table with twin five-year-old girls was on his other side. As he dropped the money he said, “Eh I don’t need it.” Without thinking I bent over to grab the money, and was so close to having it in my hand when he says, “Oh they can split it.” The little five year olds pop into my vision, crawling on their hands and knees with food in their mouths and on their faces. The one reaching for the money looks at me and says, “He said it was OURS!”, then she puckers her lips and does the shoulder lift head tilt as she grabs the 20 pound bill. Fine, take it. I can survive on Pringles.

The flight from London to Sevilla was fine until we were above the airport in Sevilla. I was sitting at my window seat looking out at the giant clouds wishing I could play on one that looked like a rhino, and then five minutes later I was looking at the same cloud, and then five minutes after that I was looking at that damn rhino cloud again. Circles. We were flying in circles. The pilot announces over the loud speaker, “Excuse me ladies and gentlemen, but there seems to be a problem on the runway. Another airplane’s front tire snapped off when it landed and they are working on getting it out of the way. We will have to circle for another 15 minutes.” Oh, fifteen minutes is not a big deal. “Sorry, they are having real issues with this plane and we need to circle for another fifteen.” That fifteen turned into thirty and then another fifteen and then, “They say it will be off in thirty more minutes, but we don’t have the gas for that.” That was the whole message. I sit there kind of laughing, wondering why the number of babies on the plane seemed to have increased since the first announcement. Crying babies everywhere, worried old people, no free drinks, and a laughing Leen…then the second half of the announcement, “We are going to have to land somewhere else.”

Away we went. To where, I had no idea. We land after thirty minutes of extra wiggly flying, and it is now 11:30 pm. We are at the Jerez airport. I get off the plane, walk inside, walk through “customs”, and into the airport lobby. I have no clue geographically where I am. No idea. It turns out I was about an hour and a half away from the Sevilla airport, which is another thirty minutes to the city center. We were told to wait fifteen minutes for buses that would take us to the airport. What’s another fifteen minutes… I wait and make friends with a German kid, who spoke no Spanish. We waited as other planes landed at Jerez too. Taxis were lined up outside the airport, and after waiting for two hours I decided to ask the cab driver how much it would cost to take a cab. 120 Euros. Nevermind, that’s a flight. I waited another two hours and decided that I would have to sleep in the airport. Just then buses pull up. Ryanair would board last. People in any other country would be freaking out, but the Spaniards here were totally together until one specific moment. Nobody had complained, wine had been consumed by most, and families with children were already on the buses. A woman got on a bus and had to give up her seat for a very pregnant woman who was breathing heavily. The woman that got off the bus just let loose, and everyone else realized how long they had been waiting. Pushing, yelling, furrowed eyebrows, heel stopping, cigarettes, hair flips, finger pointing…it was a madhouse, and I was beaming as I watched spit flying from one woman’s mouth as she yelled at the woman she appeared to be friends with five minutes ago. I didn’t know that crazy was contagious, but it is. It works like dominos. The lady in the front gets mad and yells at her neighbor, then the one listening in over the neighbor’s shoulder gets yelled at for breathing on the neighbor’s neck, then there is a screaming baby that didn’t quite make it on the last bus. Crazy is contagious.

The bus took us back to the airport, but I needed to go into the city. Usually there is a bus system that runs from about 5 am to 3 am, lucky for me it was 4 am. I begged the bus driver to take five of us back to the city center, and he did! I told him that I didn’t have enough money for a 22 euro cab, which was true. I had six euros. I ended up needed to take a cab from the train station where he dropped us off. I told the cab driver after two minutes in the car that I only had six euros. He stopped the cab and said, “No.” I gave him one of these, “Uhhhhhhh porfa!” He didn’t like my whinny please and told me that I had to pay. I usually hide money from myself while I travel, and I found a rolled up fifty in the hip belt of my pack! After being overcharged for a cab ride and eating a soggy bocadillo Manoli left me in my room, I went to bed. I was suppose to be home around 9:00 pm, but I got home at 5:35 am.

The Twelfth Week

Week 12- A visit from a Neener

            After spending an unhealthy amount of time (maybe twelve minutes once a week) pouting about how I wasn’t going to get visitors, I received word that my Neenie was coming. Immediately I turned into a psycho planning freak. She would get in at five on Thursday afternoon and leave the following Wednesday morning. I had five and a half days to show her all I could in Spain. There is a problem with this thought process though. I wanted to go a million miles a minute, but Spanish culture and jetlag had different ideas. This leads us to problem number one.

            I went to meet Neenie at the airport, which is a twenty-minute bus ride from the city center. I was so excited and so prepared (I had Manoli make her a bocadillo). I was soaking in the sun drinking a cup of my love (café con leche) and realized that I had not given Neenie my phone number. I only use this phone to call people and hang up before they answer so I don’t get charged or to answer calls from Spanish crazies with the wrong number telling me my prescription is ready. I was walking to the bus stop when my phone rings. I didn’t recognize the number, and when I don’t recognize the number I do this weird thing where I answer with a “Hello” that is in between English and Spanish. It’s actually something I think through, but every time I hear how my “Halah” comes out, I am surprised. I answer and it’s my aunt (how did she get my number?), “Leen?” She too was surprised by the deep grunt of a hello that she heard. “I missed my connecting flight. They told me I could have one phone call. The next flight gets in at eight o’clock.” No problem, she can have her bocadillo as more of a dinner kind of thing then, I guess.

Time passes and I decide to leave for the airport. I get there and the TV says that they are delayed, but it doesn’t say for how long. Madrid is not that far away, so this shouldn’t be too bad. Her flight didn’t get in until after eleven! I am not complaining, because this whole situation was so funny. You have to know that the Sevilla airport is tiny. I literally had about sixty yards of space to pace while I waited. I ate her bocadillo and enjoyed it, even with the guilt I had to swallow at the same time (that was my fat moment of that day). I was so bored that I went to the bathroom probably eight times (after time number four I noticed that I didn’t even have to go…I would just go in the stall and stand there or wash my hands). I also wrote in my journal while I was there, and I think I was going crazy, “Hurry up plane. Why must you insist on doing this to all three of us in the airport waiting. If you don’t get Neenie here safe and sound, I will kick your wheel…hard.” She made it and we took the bus back to the center. I have to mention this, because it makes me laugh every time I think about it. When Neenie got off the plane she said to me, “God, I must have been on the retarded plane or something.” I laugh because it’s funny to hear a special education teacher say something like that. I also thought she was referring to how it left late and had so many problems with getting to Sevilla. Then I look around at all the people who had just arrived on the same flight, and about eighty percent of them were special! She wasn’t kidding! She just can’t get away…even on vacation. This is something that I feel bad joking about, but I just couldn’t believe how funny it was. Please forgive my cruel humor.

When we got back to the city it was so late that Manoli was asleep, but she left us bocadillos. When I was at the airport I had to call her and tell her that we wouldn’t be there for dinner, but I had the wrong number. The person who answered said, “Who is this? And why are you calling me?” They sounded really upset, but I had never talked to Manoli on the phone before so I figured that maybe she just sounded different and continued explaining myself. “Hi Manoli, it’s Lin. I’m not going to be home for dinner. There was a problem with her plane and now it’s late.” I was interrupted and told, “Look, I am not Manoli, honey, but I hope that plane gets there soon. Don’t call me again.” Oops. Eventually Manoli got the message. We took our sandwiches out to the bridge and ate them at the churro stand. I was wearing my pajamas, which I never ever ever do here, because I know I would get ridiculed. We bought churros, and the churro guys decide to comment. “Are you sleeping out here tonight? Those are your bedclothes, right? Hahaha Guinness shirt and star pants.” I looked so good.

I made Neenie get up the next day to go to a breakfast meeting with some kids in my TCU group, our on site coordinator, and me. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that. She was Sleepy McSleeperton thanks to jetlag. If she hadn’t gotten that Seven Up for breakfast, she may have just plopped her head right down on the table and never gotten up. At this little breakfast I got a tostada con aceite (bread with olive oil) and told her that this is how I was going to eat my bread from now on. Two days later I got bread and butter for breakfast, and she called me out on it. Oops, I guess I am a liar. Later that day, we left for Granada.

I love riding buses here, because once you leave the city, it’s like one giant campo with rows and rows of olive trees and little white pueblos on top of hills. After three hours on the Supra bus (basically means that it has air conditioning, gracias por dios), we are in Granada’s bus station. I walk up to this guy with maps and other resources that will only confuse a traveler more, and ask how to get to our hotel. I am speaking to him in Spanish and he is responding in Spanish, so I repeat everything in English to Neenie. She points to something on the map and laughs, “The Grandma Segway Tour”. Then the kid behind the desk says in perfect English, “Yeah that’s really popular.” Instead of asking him the obvious question, “Why? Segways are not designed for grandmas…are they?” I say to him, “You speak English”, not in question form, but as if he didn’t know this about himself and I was revealing a hidden truth. I was able to guide us to the street that our hotel was on, which is saying a lot for a directionally challenged person like me, who still gets lost in a car even with the help of Cynthia (my GPS unit). It seems crazy that we would be staying in a Best Western, but let me say that I almost peed my pants I was so excited. We were on the best street we could have been, full of tapas bars and restaurants. The hotel came with real breakfast! I ate too much, but I wasn’t mad about the cramps in my full stomach. I even got more than three minutes in the shower, without the knock and, “Lin…una ducha más corta. Vale?” It was so nice compared to my moldy dank room that I didn’t want to ever leave.

Eventually we did leave and wander around the city a bit looking for a restaurant. After an hour of wandering we ended up two doors down from our hotel at a place that served a pitcher of sangria and an “assortment” of tapas as a fifteen Euro deal. We saw many things on this street, including a drunk man pretending to only have one arm and asking for money (which he got, along with kisses), a man in a cow costume, another in a lady bug costume (or a man bug costume?), and probably six or seven different bachelor or bachelorette parties (one group had shirts on that said, “Please help. His life is over. The wedding is next week.”). We ate at this restaurant twice in two days and ordered the same thing, because it was so delicious. That night we went back to the hotel and watched a movie on TV in Spanish, but instead of trying to actually understand what was happening, or just listening at all, we added our own dialogue. We kept this up for over thirty minutes. Talent. (Actually, if you know what we were saying you would probably use the word “mental”.)

We went to Granada to see the Alhambra and once again, I didn’t make reservations. Nonetheless, we got there, but I was tired and everything made me laugh. We were walking behind this couple and the woman was wearing clog type shoes. Her shoe slipped a little and rubbed on the ground making a funny sound, if you know what I mean. I can’t explain this very well, but it was so realistic sounding that I silently lost it. It was like cracking up in class when you know you shouldn’t (the best kind of laughter). I put my hands on my knees and let out a giant silent laugh, luckily the couple couldn’t see me, but Neenie of course did. She let out a little giggle that made me laugh audibly. The couple was discussing it like there was something wrong with her shoe, and they finally noticed that we were trying to hide our laughter. The man chuckled but only slightly, because his wife gave him a look. The Alhambra is always nice, but this time there were more people (tourist season) and a lot hotter. I didn’t lose my ticket this time!

One thing about having visitors is that you need to be prepared for questions. One thing about having Neenie as a visitor is that you need to be prepared to act as a human encyclopedia. I think she takes the saying “Never be afraid to ask questions” very literally. I just don’t have the answers to “What kind of plant is that?”, “Where do those birds come from?”, “What are they doing up there?”, “How much does going to the bathroom over there cost?”…So I decided it was best to make things up. Neenie’s view of Sevilla is probably very skewed. For example, one day we sat outside the cathedral for about two hours just watching as sparrows swooped in and out of the windows in the tower and observing people (what we do best). “What kind of birds are those ones that are flying like hawks?” “They’re baby hawks.” I only wish Neenie knew less Spanish. I could have told so many fibs (I am not a liar- even though I think I may be a compulsive teller of false tales- **my stories in here are all true, seriously. I’m not fibbing.)

We have this homeless man that lives just outside of the nearest Chino to our house (Chino- one of those stores run by Chinese people that sells everything- notebooks, jewelry, plants, bread, socks, extension cords, robes, pam, and even candy necklaces) and we call him Mr. Harvey. He looks just like the actor that plays the pedophile in “The Lovely Bones”. He even has a perfectly groomed mustache. It was really late at night and I told Neenie to look at his house (its all made of cardboard and is shaped like a coffin- so naturally we call it “the coffin”). Usually Mr. Harvey is sitting up in his coffin, just looking around, or it’s all closed up so you can’t see him at all. I told Neenie that there was nothing to worry about, but when we turned the corner and looked at Mr. Harvey’s coffin, the scene was different. The top was completely open and Mr. H was lying on his back with his hands crossed peacefully over his stomach! He looked dead! It freaked Neenie out so much. It only made me slightly worried, because Harv is one of those homeless guys that has non-homeless friends and has an iPod. He was probably alive.

One night we went to this little chain restaurant called Cien Montaditos (100 tiny sandwiches), and that is where I introduced tinto verano to Neenie. Tinto may be cheating on me now, with my aunt! It’s ok; I still have café con leche during the day. Also at this little dinner outing I almost lost my life, well that may be a little drastic. I was enjoying a mini chorizo sandwich when a little tiny leaf from an orange tree flutters down onto the top of my hand. I turn my body ever so slightly and at that moment an orange jumped from the tree directly above my head. It smacked the table with a loud thud. There is no way to explain how an orange only three feet above my head was able to pick up the speed that it did between the two distances, but I’m surprised it was not flaming by the time it hit the table. The best was that everyone else sitting outside was laughing at me.

Another thing to note about this visit- I am in a language limbo. My Spanish has improved immensely, but is not good enough to say that I “speak” Spanish. The other half of this is problem is that my English is awful. I forget how to say words (which I see as a good sign) and often can’t get words out. A lot of the time I just make up words. I think I am trying to put a Sevillano twist on the English language by combining words and similar sounds to make words. I was looking at this man smoking a really skinny cigarette and I said, “Waow, look at his skinarette!” Other word combos we came up with throughout the week- “rampalator” (those moving ramps), “medge” (a maze made out of hedges), and “bom” (barf and vomit- couldn’t decide which to use, so I chose both.)

            Other things we did and didn’t do- Flamenco show, Bullfighting museum, Plaza de España, churros con chocolate (twice), complained about the napkins at restaurants (spill water…there is no hope of soaking it up. The napkins are the opposite of “the quicker picker upper”; in fact that’s how Bounty should advertise- “We are the complete opposite of these (show Spanish napkin)”). We did not go into the cathedral, although we did try on multiple occasions. Instead we bought postcards and looked at it from the outside for a really long time.

Random Observations

I now know why European men stand with their hands behind their backs. I always thought that it was just because they think they are fancy, but really it’s just a cover up. They do it so that they can either scratch their butt or pick a wedgie. Truth. I was clearly sitting too long on a popular street, because after I noticed it once, the sneaky butt scratches where everywhere I looked! The saddest part is that it has had a major effect on the Spanish male youth as well.

            A mother and her son were walking hand-in-hand from school when she stops abruptly and turns to him and says, “What is on your face?” He looks at his mom totally confused, “Nothing?” Now she is brushing back his thick bowl cut bangs and then pulls her hand back and points at him and says, “La varicela! (Chicken Pox)” He had red dots all over his face, but half of them were hiding underneath the chocolate ice cream blanket he made for them. She then so bluntly says, “Six years without a mark on your face and now look! You are like that bird (points to a pigeon on the street), full of disease.”

More word shirts- An older man wearing a shirt with headphones and a turntable that says, “I like beats.” I only wish it was a picture of beets laying down some beats. A grandma in a tie dye (which you never see here), “I am glamorous”.  

Manolisms

Manoli is coughing so hard that she can’t finish the sentence she started. I say, “Are you sick?” She stops coughing and says, “No, that’s the tobacco.”

When someone has so many porcelain trinkets in their house you always try to be extra careful, but that means that you will probably hit them. I was walking to the bathroom, Manoli trailing close behind me causing me to pick up the pace. There is a little poorly place shelf in the middle of the three-foot wide hallway, and I barely knock it as I pass it. The whole thing quaked like it had the shivers. I put my hand on top to stop it, which it finally did. She just looks at me and then down to my waist and says, “Hips.” Then of course she does her signature brow raise and strides past me.

“Too many clothes!” Ok, sorry…I’ve worn those jeans seven times and skipped washing them last week because I knew I would have too many clothes.  I take stuff out. The next day, “Are you wearing those again? I can wash them, you know.”

“I like it when you guys are gone because it’s like I am on vacation. I don’t have to clean, cook, or iron.” We tell her again, “Manoli, you do not have to iron everything!” By that we mean our underwear, which comes back from the wash as rigid as a piece of peanut brittle…hardly comfortable. “What?! Yes I do! I paid for that iron. Twenty Euros!” A twenty Euro iron, now wonder…

She said this to one of my roommates, who has gorgeous skin. “Your skin is so beautiful.” Sarah’s automated response, “Gracias”. Manoli carries on, of course, “You have the whitest skin I have ever seen.”

*More photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/19751197@N06/

            

The Eleventh Week

Week 11- Lisbon will you marry me?

            There is nothing better than traveling across country lines to visit a friend you haven’t seen in years. I was on a bus for seven hours before I finally made it to Lisbon. The bus driver was very serious about not allowing you to eat on the bus, but this one Asian girl must have missed the 35 signs all over the bus that had a picture of a burger and fries crossed out, because she was munching away on a bocadillo. The bus driver pulled the bus over and stormed back to tell her she couldn’t eat on the bus. Her response, “Oooooh?” I was laughing, because she clearly didn’t understand him and his face was about to explode. Without looking back he points to a sign behind him, thinking that it is the “No food” sign, but really he is pointing to a sticker on the window of a cartoon man in a squat position farting with a line through it. She sees what he is pointing to and starts to giggle with both of her hands covering her mouth, which is full of sandwich that she is still chewing. Like a kid throwing a fit, he runs up to the driver’s seat and sits with his arms crossed for about ten seconds before he pulls the bus back onto the freeway. A grumpy bus driver who doesn’t allow food or farts, I started to doubt his manhood.

            When I got to Sete Rios bus stop, I realized I was an hour earlier than when I said I would be there (time difference, oops). I sent a text that probably cost me seven euros, and soon Fran was at the bus station to pick me up. I was looking at a map of Portugal pretending like I new where I was when she saw me. She said, “I knew it was you. I recognized you from behind.” True friends know each other’s butts. We picked up where we left off three years ago.

            Traveling to a place where you know someone is great, but traveling to a place where you know someone and that someone has a car is even better. I got to see and do things that I wouldn’t have otherwise. One day we spent driving along the coast where I found it necessary to climb on all the rocks I saw. One stop, Boca del Inferno (Hell’s Mouth), was where I tested the limits of my Steve Maddens’. The crinkly old fishermen walking across the tops of the rocks, like little nymphs, carrying buckets of bait and abnormally large fishing poles made it look so easy.

            Sintra, a little village up in the mountains about thirty minutes away from Lisbon city center, is a fairytale place. There is a palace so high in the mountains that the clouds surround it making you feel like you are in a giant swarm of white cotton candy, it also could have just been really cloudy that day. I honestly, do not know how to describe this place, because I can’t do it justice. The outside walls were attacked with the three primary colors and sculptures of mighty mermen. I am making this place sound like a clown university. In the same village is this famous bakery called Piriquita. I looked at the sign and said, “Ohh ok, like pee-ree-key-tah.” I was corrected. “Pee-ree-key-tuh”. Throughout the weekend I was being taught the similarities between Spanish and Portuguese, and even Fran’s grandma tested my abilities (even though I don’t think she knew she was). I was over at her house for lunch and I met her grandma, who only speaks Portugese, for the first time. She kisses me twice and starts rambling off in Portuguese. Then she stops and waits for my response. I didn’t know what to say, because I only understood the word “understand” and looked helplessly at Fran, who told her that I was from California. Her grandma turns back to me and begins in Portuguese again, like saying that I was from California means “Oh right down the street!”

            Food in Portugal rivals Spanish food. Their pastries could fight Spain’s pastries with their eyes closed, win, and then stomp all over them with their conceited pastry feet. Pastéis de Belém sprinkled with cinnamon are like little creamy pieces of heaven in the form of four million delicious calories. 

            One of my favorite things about Sevilla, or Europe in general, is what people have written on their t-shirts. They think that because it is written in English, that it is immediately trendy. These have been my favorite- “Sometimes is always”, “Green and yellow make orange”, “I love things”, and my all time favorite was- “I hate myself”. Excuse me, but either you need psychological help for your mental health issues or you need to learn English. Another favorite was seeing a grandma, probably in her 80s wearing a hot pink shirt with the words “Diva Girl” in rhinestones on the front.

I wish I had roller blades. Everyone here rollerblades as a form of transportation.

            I was walking down the street towards a church on the corner. Once again I see people gathering, but this time they were looking up. There is a massive tree in front of this church and they were trimming it. People stood there for minutes just watching. Two things about this- one, its funny that there is a place in our world where people can spend thirty minutes doing nothing but watch branches being cut from a tree. The second thing was that I am making fun of these people, but I fell into the trap too. I wasted over thirty minutes people watching and waiting for a chunk of tree to fall.

Manoli-isms

“There was this one time I had a girl staying with me, who was so strange, and she always wore her clothes covering her entire body. I told her that she needed to loosen up and give herself some space to breathe. She wore a low cut shirt one day and the next she had a Spanish boyfriend. Spanish men like big tits.” (She shows her palms to the ceiling and shrugs her shoulders)

“Manoli, did you know that experts say you are as tall as your arms are long?” Manoli, “What?! That cannot be true.” “Ok then, do you have a tape measure?” Manoli, “Right now? (She points to the TV ‘God forbid she miss three seconds of the Spanish news that is on repeat throughout the day’). We measure one of us, the numbers are the same, and she still doesn’t believe us. Measure another. Then we measure her and it’s off by one centimeter. “Hmmm…told you.”

“Love has no age.”

“God she has the features of a witch.” I respond, “Yeah because she wears black clothing all the time.” Manoli looks at me straight faced and says, “I wear black everyday.”

“Lin, have you been in love?” No. “Well hurry up. You don’t want to miss this feeling. What happened to your Spanish boyfriend?”

“Lin, come in here and look at this.” The ambiguity of what “this” is often worries me. I walk into the kitchen to see her poking the microwave like a caveman would a computer. “It broke. What am I suppose to do? I pushed one button one time yesterday and…BLOOOOOOOOM!” Apparently the microwave, which is also her oven, had exploded and now she was helpless. She got a new microwave that same day and had it installed immediately. “I don’t know how to work this. I don’t understand a thing. It’s too modern. Even for a modern woman like me.” I spent about 45 minutes explaining it to her, and she seemed to fully understand and actually enjoy the new stainless steel monster in her all white kitchen. The next morning I ask how the oven is working and she says, “I called my daughter to come help me, because I don’t understand it. I’m too nervous.” Manoli! Ughh. You can put metal in the oven! I said that at least 20 times. The time came to put the handmade pizzas in the microwave oven. I said, “Ok Manoli, push start. It’s ready, just push start.” She grips my arm, points out the visible goose bumps on her arms, and says, “No.” So I push the button. She ducks behind me, covering herself completely. The explosion she expected didn’t come, she lets go of my arm, turns away from me, and as she is walking into the living room she says, “Told you.”

The Tenth Week

Week 10-  One giant Manoli-ism (I will add more to this later- off to Portugal now!)

            When I walked into my room the morning I got back from Dublin, I smelled something weird. Our room felt funny and moist, which sadly enough isn’t that out of the ordinary. I was putting all of my stuff away in the 4:30 am dark, trying to avoid waking up my roommate, but this only lasted two minutes. I couldn’t stand the moisture in the air or the moldy smell so I turned on the lights to see what was wrong. First, I open the window, letting in the first fresh air our room had probably seen in a week. Then I flick on the lights, and my eyes quickly adjust to the extremely dim glow our single light bulb puts out. I look over at my roommate who is now fully awake, but I am distracted by the blue wall behind her. The entire wall was covered in water, the ceiling now brown with water stains, and our wall was actually squirting water out of its invisible cracks. This is my nonspanish speaking roommates take on it, “Yeah I noticed that there was water on the wall earlier, but it was only the size of my head so I wasn’t worried.” Oh, good. So it was now about 5 am and I was not about to wake up the fog horn snorer, Manoli, so I went to bed.

            The next morning I told Manoli, “Ehhhh, Manoli…we have a problem in our room. Come here, please.” She replies with the typical, “Sin favor” and walks toward our room. She walks up to the wall and touches it, only showing mild shock on her face. I say, “Look! Its even coming out of the wall! What do we do?” When she saw the water dripping out of the wall she takes in a quick breath of air like a gasp and walks away. I continue getting ready for class, thinking “Hmmm….I wonder where Manoli is going to put us when they have to replace this wall?” I looked out our window to see the what weather we had in store for the rest of the day, and I notice someone leaning out of the kitchen window. It’s Manoli with a broom in one hand and a burning Pall Mall in the other. She is smacking the window above ours yelling, “Marisol!...Marisol!...Ssss Marisol!” Marisol finally responds and I hear Manoli tell her to get down here right away. The two walk into my room as I am changing and rub the wall repeatedly like the water will just dry with one more magical touch. The two are standing about three inches away from each other, hands on hips, and talking at each other in voices that could be considered yelling. The thing about Spanish culture is that you can say something incredibly mean and rude, but if you add “Mi alma” at the end it swipes the slate clean. “Your pipes are ancient and you never take care of your place. You know I have American girls living here and I do all year. What is going on in your house up there? What in God’s name do you want me to do about this, mi alma.” The loud conversation lacking in personal space continued until I asked if I could get out the door, because they were in front of it. They step aside amazed that I was in the room. I see Manoli and Marisol give each other the double beso plus an arm rub as I am leaving. No hard feelings.

            I get back from school and Manoli tells me, “Lin, don’t worry it is being taken care of…her pipes broke and now its on the ceiling of my kitchen too! Horrible. I’m not paying a cent, ok?” I respond, “Ok, what do you want me to do about the room?” Manoli replies as if this response is so obvious, “ffffhu! (hand wave) I will paint the wall in the summer when you leave.” The wall is crumbling away and now has obvious cracks, not to mention black mold spots. I accept that I will have to be breathing in the mold for the next two months and say nothing else about it, until…two days ago. I looked up at the ceiling and notice a crack in the crown molding that looked like it needed inspecting. Obviously, I got up on the bed and poked it. This poke was like poking a baby. It was gentle and I was not trying to hurt it, but I did. With that one little poke, the entire strip of crown molding swung down, hitting the corner of the wall, and knocking off a picture of a boat with Christopher Columbus in it. The corner of the wall breaks off and part of the wallpaper and ceiling tear off too. Once again, “Manoli! We have another problem.” Now she is shocked. She asked me what happened and I decided this was a good time for a white lie. “It just fell.” She thought that it hit my roommate on the head and kept asking her if it hurt (she didn’t understand Manoli and just nodded). I had to explain that it didn’t hit her, but Manoli didn’t believe me.

            The other day I was walking back from the metro stop and I see a crowd of people and hear an ambulance coming from down the street. I don’t really bother with all the commotion, until I walk by the group of people on my side of the street. I glance at the road and keep on walking, but I feel someone grab my arm. It felt like someone was falling and needed to grab onto anything to stay standing. I turn to look at this little old lady with a church ankle length skirt on and obviously fake blonde poofy hair. She smacks my other arm with her free hand while the grip she has on my other arm tightens. She looks at me and says, “Look! You don’t want to miss this! This guy is crazy! Where were you going? Why don’t you care what’s going on! Look at him! Hey, honey, everybody is looking. You need to too!” I look and see a man lying in the middle of the road with paramedics surrounding him. The funny thing is, I couldn’t tell if the guy (who was homeless) had decided that the middle of the road was an excellent sleeping spot or if he actually joined my “I’ve been hit by a car in Sevilla” club. He had a jacket tucked under his head and he looked so content. I turn to look at the blonde haired lady and she is slapping her thighs laughing hysterically at the man in the street. She places her hand on her heart as she is laughing and says, “hmm pobrecito”. Thanks for making me see that, crazy lady.

Manoli-isms

“I used to go get waxes, especially when I was dating Antonio. You know, my armpits… but then I ran out of money and and had to do it myself. I bought the wax and heated it and then put it on my armpits. Then I couldn’t pull it off. I said ‘Mamá! Ouuuuuu!” So I left it on for the rest of the day until she tricked me and told me Antonio was outside asking for me. I went to open the window and she pulled the papers off! Horrible woman. It was horrible. Ahhh my mom (smiles).”

The Ninth Week

Week 9- Ireland. Paddy’s Day. 21^st Birthday.

            People didn’t believe me when I said that my name was Kathleen, half of me is one hundred percent Irish, and that my 21^st birthday was on St. Patrick’s Day. Many head nods accompanied by a Guinness raise were sent my way all weekend

             My trip to Dublin included a six-hour bus ride up to Madrid at 2:30 in the afternoon and then a flight the next morning at 11:30 to Dublin. Before I could leave I had to eat lunch. Usually lunch is at two or 2:30, and asking to eat early is an insult, but not eating at all is even worse. My roommate’s mom was visiting and Manoli made her paella (“The best you will ever have.”- Manoli), but the problem was that neither my roommate nor her mom speak Spanish. I had to try and translate between eating paella that was burning my throat as it traveled to my belly and bites of the giant crouton crunchy toast. Impossible. Then Manoli decides that this is a time to have a deep conversation with me about how she has been hosting American girls for 28 years and she still doesn’t know any English…Manoli, I have 15 minutes to be at the bus station, and it takes 20 to get there. I tell her as gently as I can that I can’t talk anymore, “No puedo hablar nada más”, and put my plate in the sink. Before I get to the door, Manoli wraps me up in a bear hug and plants two big kisses on my cheeks, and I know I am ready for my trip.

            The bus ride up was easy (running to the bus station was the worst part). They even showed a movie in Spanish called “The Garden” with Craig Ferguson in it. Awful movie. We stopped one time, meaning I couldn’t drink anything for the whole second half of the trip and if I did, I would be in trouble. I have a bladder the size of a hamster’s bladder, so this was a bit of a problem. Made it all the way to Madrid, and did so without needing to change my pants. Then I took the metro all the way into the city center to meet my friend from high school studying there. I stayed with her for the night, and came prepared with chocolates for her señora (who eagerly accepted the gift, even without the, “Oh you shouldn’t have”). We were in bed by 4:30 am, after celebrating another friend’s birthday and doing a little nighttime sightseeing. Believe it or not, I made it to the airport on time.

             When I was in line at Gate 31, Ryanair flight 7159 to Dublin, there came an announcement over the intercom. I was in the back of the line (meaning last to board the plane), watching Spaniards around me buying shirts that had the acronym DUBLIN using words in English and Spanish that made no sense (I only remember these ones being included- “Drunk, Besos, Leprechaun, and Irlanda”). I just barely hear the intercom and it says in English (Ryanair is an Irish airline), “The gate for flight 7159 to Dublin has been changed to Gate 25. Gate 25.” I take off, startling and confusing those around me. I am the first one out of the line with my peacoat and Osprey backpack flying everywhere. I turn to look behind me as I hear the announcement in Spanish and see a stampede of wild Spaniards running toward me. Some are running with their arms out like a T to prevent anyone from passing them, others are yelling because they don’t know where the gate is, and the overly prepared ones were trying to keep their Guinness hats on their heads. It was straight out of a movie and I was leading the pack. I had about a 15-step lead when I took a very little wrong left turn. I saw everyone in the front of the pack snake around the corner with me, then I saw the gate the on the other side. It was follow the leader/trample the leader and the gap between me and the Spaniards was significantly less than before. I reached the gate first, holding out my boarding pass and passport. When everyone else got there, I got booed. Then an Irish man came up to me and shook my hand and said, “Good race.”

            I am picked up at the airport by Dan and Aisling and I realize that I haven’t changed my clothes or showered in two days and smell like the cheese sandwich the lady next to me on the plane was eating (how very European of me). We start the unusually sunny day off with a drive all around the Dublin coast into Maldahide and Howth. This is my first time in a car (that isn’t public transportation) in three months, and everything was opposite! Roundabouts are weird to me already, but then add driving on the other side of the road to it and you get a flinching Leen throwing up her hands as protection from an oncoming car. I repeatedly looked for excuses as to why I looked like a total spaz, but once the “Oh, I thought there was a bee in my hair” excuse didn’t work, I had to admit that driving on the left side of the road made me nervous. I stayed the night at Aisling’s family’s house in the suburbs of Dublin, where I had family dinner, which included a cake, candles, and a birthday song for me. I ended up going to one of boy’s high school play that night. My first night in Dublin I went to a musical mash-up (Chicago, West Side Story, Les Miserables, and Mamma Mia) in a high school gym, but I couldn’t make it through more than half. I fell asleep.

            The St. Patrick’s Day parade was not what I expected, but the atmosphere was exactly what I was hoping for. Everyone in green. Faces painted. Guinness and Jameson everywhere. Irish nonsense being shouted in every direction at no one in particular. People were in every crevice of the city including window ledges a couple stories up. The Gaelic Games, hurling and football, were our next stop. I knew as much about these games as I do about shoe making…nothing, but give me a little time to observe and I can probably catch on. Paddy’s Day is the only day of the whole year you can see both games being played on the same day. It was there that I was introduced to the Ireland Chill. My bones were shaking. It’s so deceiving because the sun is out and the sky is clear, but its like you are having ice water poured down your back. The rest of the day was spent trying to get into the overly crowded pubs, eating at Joburger (my first burger in three months), and playing Cranium (not even the Irish know the people in the Irish version of Cranium- the makers of Cranium want to make losers out of all of us).

            One day we made a drive into the country and through a bog, but carsickness was a problem for one person in our group and the windy “are we lost?” journey out to the country was a quiet one. After our drive I was introduced to Irish scones and the proper way to eat them (with raspberry jam and cream). That plus a cup of Irish tea and surrounded by fields of green…I could have died and gone to heaven, but decided against it given that I still had to go souvenir shopping.

            I got to wander around on my own for part of the day Saturday and landed in St. Stephen’s Green, where I hid myself, from every other tourist, on a little bench in the very back of the park. As I’m sitting there, in the Irish rugby jersey I had to buy for a friend, I hear this yelling and cheering that sounded like a bunch of baby rhinos fighting. I decide that was a good enough reason to go see what was going on and cruised on over. I see a huge group of guys wearing rugby jerseys and warm-ups, doing rugby drills. I think, “Wow. People here really do take rugby seriously. I can’t believe that there are guys out here this early in the day getting ready for the game tonight” (Ireland and England were playing in the Six Nations later that night). I decided I would watch for a little bit, but then I realized it wasn’t just a bunch of “guys” making baby rhino sounds. It was the actual Irish National Rugby team. I recognized about 4 of the players (I learned the rules of rugby, by watching the Ireland v. Wales game, just before I got to Ireland so that I could be prepared). This Irish guy comes up to me looking like he is about to wee his ultra saggy pants, “Do you have a pen and paper? Please.” I tore off part of my Carroll’s bag and told him to go get me an autograph too. I don’t know why, but nonetheless this guy surprisingly brings me back the manager’s autograph. Watching the game in a pub next to a bunch of drunken Irish men was ideal. Before the game they were talking to me about what I was doing in Ireland and what I was studying. They went around the table and told me what they studied and one man at least 60 years old tells me, “I’m studying… Studying girls!” Laughing at their own joke they did the shoulder dip nudge with elbow clinks, as if it were a more subtle form of a high five. Their accents got harder and harder to understand with each glass of scotch or shot of Jameson, and at one point this is how I responded to one of them, “I’m sorry sir, but I did not understand one word you just said to me.” That same night I went to go watch Greyhound dog racing, where I won 2 euro and 60 cents one time and then lost every other time, while seven year olds were winning hundreds of euros with the single euro their dad gave them.

            The morning before I left started with a real breakfast- eggs, sausage, thick Irish bacon, hash browns, black pudding, real toast (not my usual breakfast toast) and tea. I felt it necessary to spend the last part of my day taking photos of St. Stephen’s Green, and I am so glad I went back. I have this ability to attract crazies like no one I know. It’s probably because I talk to them. I walk into the park and see this wrinkly old white haired lady feeding a swan. I think, “Oh what a great photo. I have to take it.” She turns around, ruining my photo, with her dog squeezed tight in her arms. I could have easily just walked away and acted like I wasn’t trying to take her picture, but instead I say hello. Why is, “Good morning” code for “Please, ma’am, tell me every personal detail of yours and while you are at it tell me everything you know about this swan here.” This lady was a character. She looked like a naked mole rat with a full head of hair. Her face was something I will never forget. She had crow’s feet in the corners or her eyes, as if she had been smiling constantly for her 79 years, but I never saw here smile once. Her eyebrows only had about three scraggly hairs apiece and always seemed to be raised at the ends but furrowed in the middle. The wrinkles in her forehead wrapped all the way around her eyes creating deep bags. Her eyes were the color of a pale gray blue with some yellow flecks and always seemed to be looking in a direction other than where she wanted to be looking. That’s creates a good mental image of what this lady’s aged face looked like…now throw a handful of dirt on her face. Dirt. Not dirt like, “Oh you have a smudge of dirt on your cheek”, but dirt like she had been buried in the earth for decades. She went on to tell me how the “wife” swan was gone and the “husband” swan was so sad that he couldn't even eat and that he would float from spot to spot around the pond looking for his “wife”. She was so worried that he was going to leave at any moment, that I was worried that this lady was going to faint. I walk around the park with her, and she realizes that she can’t see the swan anymore. “He’s gone. That’s it. He left. He will never come back again. He went to go look for her. Doesn’t he know she is dead? Oh no. I have to talk to the park guards.” I could see him on the other side of the pond making friends with the other ducks, but apparently her daytime eyesight was severely damaged when she spent the last quarter of a century in her home under the earth. She eventually saw him after I literally led her to him. Once she knew he was safe, the topic switched to her dog. Well, it was her sister’s dog but…the story goes on. I ask what his name is. “Well his real name is Teddy, but I can’t call him Teddy. I have a friend who has a dog named Teddy, so I call him Teddy Bear.” This dog was so fancy and clean in comparison to this lady. When she set him down on the ground, he pulled the leash in every direction with all of his might and she says, “He’s mad about where he’s going, but he’s going nowhere!” I leave her with the swan and her bag of sour cream and onion potato chips (her swan food) and head toward my bus stop.

            I took the bus to the airport and got on my flight wearing four layers clothing (you learn how to make your bag small when you fly Ryanair). My flight landed in Madrid at 6 pm, and I still had a six-hour bus ride ahead of me. The problem was that my bus from Madrid to Sevilla didn’t leave until 10 pm. I was back to the apartment at 4:45 and in bed by 5 am. School the next day was brutal.

Manoli-isms

“Lin. How do you say ‘Cómo estás?’ in English?” I respond, “How are you?” Manoli looks shocked and says, “That’s too difficult. Nope.” Then she looks back at the TV, with her arms crossed as if she was pouting, and about two minutes later she looks at me with her eyes wide and uncertain and says, “How do you do?” The way she said this was like there were “d’s” and “b’s” at the end of each word, “Howb dood youb dood?”

I have had a cough ever since I got back from Ireland, and I was at the table coughing really hard and Manoli grabs her chest and says, “Pobrecita.” I think, “Wow there’s nothing else she has to say? Usually she would tell me to finish eating the deep fried tapa she made for us because ‘It’s so good for you.’” I respond with, “No, I am okay.” Her response to this, “Oh Lin. You are as strong as an Oak. The really thick, sturdy trees, you know? It’s because you exercise so much.”

Every time I leave the house to go for a run- “Waow. You are so crazy. You love this sport. Your clothes are so athletic. Why don’t you just walk? Lock the door when you leave.”

My first lunch back at Manoli’s after Ireland- “Lin, they all told me that you guys want a salad once a day. Is that okay with you?” I say that it’s not a problem. Manoli happily claps her hands once and says, “Operación bikini!”


*New photos here http://www.flickr.com/photos/19751197@N06/

Week 8-Written 5 minutes before I left for Dublin

Week – Two months

Midterms. That sums up this last week. For everybody who asks whether we study in Spain, the answer is no, but we still take tests. This last week was taken up by finding ways to avoid looking at your notes about the climate in Spain, written in mainly Spanish with a few illegible scribbles that clearly say you could not decipher the chain of words the professor so Sevillano-ly put together.  I find that sometimes the only words I get out of a sentence about religious ceremonies are “brotherhood” and “crutches”. Comprehension is slipping a bit, and Manoli is letting me know it.

We always watch really awful TV shows while we eat lunch and dinner. One of our favorites is this show that is like a mix between Jerry Springer and Judge Joe Brown, where the audience is hired to give their opinion on the situation between the two arguing. The best part is that this is literally a courtroom, and matters are settled with the help of a bunch of Spanish looneys. A judge comes out at the very end of the show and makes the final decision. You hear everything from women thinking that their children are psychics and don’t need to be in the mental hospital they are in to someone suing their husband for losing her car keys. Yesterday we were watching the show, and Manoli exclaims, “Poor thing! He’s so ugly!” I turn to look at the TV and see a little mousey looking man sitting on stage trying to defend himself. His boss would not let him be a salesman because he was “too ugly” so he took him to “court” or “La Ultima Ley” (the name of the how). One person in the crowd says, “Look, there are jobs for ugly people and jobs for good looking people. Look at him! He can’t have a job meant for a good looking person.” Manoli so strongly agrees with that statement that she actually gets up from her chair, throwing her hands in the air, and pets the TV. Manoli doesn’t beat around the bush. Things are the way they are and there is no arguing that.

Another example of how blunt people are here is when we were talking to Manoli about Carnival days after it happened. We told her that we saw a lot of men dressed as woman at the carnival and it seemed to be the trendy thing to do this year. She listened to all of our words, looking at us, and then once we were finished she turned back to the TV and said, “Well, they are gay.” We tried to defend these guys by saying that it was an attempt at being funny. She said, “No. If a man has any desire to dress up as a women…he’s gay.” The way she says it is like she is reading it out of a book and it’s the truth and there’s nothing more to it. Her face is saying, “Why are you questioning this?” Her upside down smile forms tightly across the lower half of her face with her hands folding across her nightgown and apron. Her delivery of these “facts” was so impeccable we could not stop laughing. She didn’t like that. She is surprised by our response and says, “Listen to me. They. Are. Trannies.” Each word was its own sentence (a rarity in Sevilla).

The market in Triana is really popular and some people visit it everyday. You can always find one of those little packs of old men smoking pipes and rolling cigarettes at the same time at this market. I walked over there to roam and get a cup of one of my loves, café con leche. I walk out observing what people had purchased. I saw this one young guy buy a bunch of jamón (typical) and walk out with me. He walked up to his bike and just looked at it, then looked at all the ham, then back at the bike again as if he couldn’t comprehend how either of them are real. He had no idea what to do with the ham. He mounted his bike, looked at the packaged ham again, then stuck it down the front of his pants and road off.

People here should need a license to walk on the sidewalks with umbrellas. I got poked in the eye twice this week.

A homeless man asked me for money this week, and I almost gave him some until I realized he was listening to an mp3 player.

Manoli-ism

“I love gay men. They are as sweet as the sweetest woman, but they have male parts. What could be better?”

“Lin! Lin! Lin! Come here.” I hurry into the living room, because she was shouting as if her robe is on fire. This is what all the hubbub was about, “I love Paul Newman.” I would have to agree Manoli. Add Paul Newman to that list of Americans she loves.

“If you don’t have butterflies in your stomach then you are not in love.”

“I love you Antonio but sometimes you make me want to leave. Lucky for you, I love our house, OK guapo?”

I was helping Manoli clear the table, which is loaded with fruit, nutella, marmalade, extra crunchy breakfast toast, graham cracker/animal cookies tasting breakfast cookies, coffee, cola cao, tea, and place settings. Usually she tells me not to worry about it, but this time she watched me with her arms folded. I was being tested. I put everything back in their respective places and then was left with the nutella…where to put the nutella. She looks at me and says, “Do you know where that goes?” Then takes a long drag on her cigarette. I just stood there and she says, “Oh Lin you don’t know anything!” I failed. She laughs hard squeezing my shoulder.

The Seventh Week

Week 7- I skipped a week

           

Last weekend I went to Barcelona, because we didn’t have school Thursday or Monday. I was there from Thursday morning to Sunday afternoon, and that’s about all I could last…I was quickly becoming more poor than I already am as the weekend went on. Barcelona cleans your pockets out faster than Christmas shopping the day after Thanksgiving. A lot happened in Barcelona, and I learned more than what I would consider necessary during my time there. Here’s the story.

            My flight was at 8:25 in the morning on Thursday, meaning I had to catch the 6:15 airport shuttle bus that was a half hour walk from the apartment. My alarm was set for 5:05 am, but there was no reason to even set one. Food poisoning came at me like an owl hitting your windshield at night…you don’t even see it coming until its already there and there’s nothing you can do about it, then you just end up feeling awful all night. The bathroom became my temporary best friend and the tile floor, my bed. I didn’t sleep one wink; instead, I cursed those damn left over green beans turned into a Spanish tortilla until it was finally five am. I couldn’t believe that I was still going to Barcelona considering how my head felt detached from my body and my stomach felt like a giant rubber band ball. With my backpack on and breakfast cookies in my pocket, I left the apartment in hopes that I could find the bus stop on time. Getting lost when you are in a hurry is just something that happens. I got lost three times, but I blame the still dark night sky and the lack of street lighting. I asked a group of 15-year-old girls to show me the way and this was their drunken response, “Hahahaha! We live here, girl, and we’ve lived here our whole lives, but I don’t know what bus stop you are talking about. Good luck…Hahahaha!” Their laughter was like stabbing my eardrums with hot pins. I made a risky decision to ask a homeless man, who had a dog that looked like it could double as a feather duster (an obvious homeless must-have). His eager, crooked, toothless smile was not really something I was thinking too much about, but he and his dog duster led me in the right direction. In return, they got my breakfast cookies and a juice box that was labeled “orange juice” but had a picture of strawberries on it. I made it to the airport, after our bus had sideswiped a car on the way, and found that Spanish airport security is a joke. I got through with two water bottles, a pair of scissors I forgot I had in my bag (I would later regret borrowing Manoli’s scissors and not returning them immediately), and a second mystery flavored juice box.

            I was in the middle seat between a snoring behemoth of a man and a child with a plastic toy car (I was the road/mountain that the car had to drive over repeatedly). Sleeping on the plane didn’t happen. I finally get into the city of Barcelona and get my stuff into the hostel, which seemed like a good location and quality place to stay. Immediately, I join up with some kids from my program and we head toward La Sagrada Familia. It’s a tease walking to this place because you can see its towers and think you are just seven minutes away, but that seven minutes turns into 20, then 30, then 45 minutes pass and you are finally there. When you first look at it, you don’t believe that it is really there. These were my first thoughts, “How does it not fall over? Structurally this is unreal and beyond creative.” and then I think, “Oh no…it looks really big. Will I be able to sit down?” Once inside my perspective changed and my questions were answered. Although the outside is made up of odd shapes and angles, the inside is sharp, clean, and has clear structure (and you really shouldn’t sit down- unless you are pretending to take a photo from the floor). The openness of La Sagrada Familia surprises you. The outside is cluttered with monochromatic stone detail, but the inside is open, flooded with vibrant color from the stained glass windows.

            We head back toward the hostel, but our ADD and immaturity kicks in and we are wandering in every little dirty touristy joke shop on the way. At this point, my exhaustion and I find everything hilarious, funnier than a baby kitten wearing a top hat. I watch the street performers in awe with a giant American tourist smile on my face and a trying-to-escape laughter in my belly. I point (don’t do that) and take photos (don’t do that either) and finally stop in front of a “magician”. The build up to the trick is just awful. The guy repeatedly raises his eyebrows like, “Here I go…any second now…ready…you see this magic ball stuck to my hand…here I go…look at my hat…here’s my belt…one more eyebrow raise for good measure…and…” then the guy starts to pop lock and drop it like a gangster magician with Spanish sass and no dancing skills would. I couldn’t help myself anymore. I burst out into rumbling throaty laughter that I could feel coming from my still sore gut. The combination of how awful this “street performer” was and the anticipation among the probably-had-been-pick pocketed audience was too much. They just stood there waiting and wondering if they had missed something. I had to physically remove myself from the scene, doubled over in laughter.

            We eat dinner in the hostel, because it was free, and then everyone convinces me to go out with them. My eyes are hurting and my feet feel like I have giant twenty-pound rocks in their place, not to mention that I could have probably convinced someone I was European with how I smelled. The hostel got you into discotecas for free nightly and this night was Catwalk night. Yes, just what I need…to head to a super trendy club at 1:45 am looking as if I had just barely won a fight. I manage to get inside and dance the night away, impressing everyone with my natural ability to move across a dance floor in graceful, nerd “stir the beans” and “sprinkler” moves. Once we left the discoteca, I realized that my eyesight was beginning to fail me. I would blink and when I would open my eyes there would be black and yellow splotches in my vision. Quickly my exhaustion changed into the “anything will make me angry or cry” mood. I wanted to sleep and no one was going to talk me out of it. We got back to the hostel and I could not wait to get into my bed in the ten-bunk mixed room. Now brace yourselves for this…

            I open the door to my room, where all the lights are off and everyone else is already asleep. I didn’t want to turn on the lights and wake everyone up, but I could see that something was wrong. My top bunk was in the very corner of the room next to the window, which was letting in the slightest bit of light. My bed wasn’t empty. The girl in the bunk below me says, “Yeah, Kathleen. I saw that but didn’t know what to do about it.” Someone was in my bed, but I couldn’t make out a face. Not only was this person sleeping in my bed, but they were also buried in my covers, literally their head was completely under the blankets. I poked the sleeping giant and waited for the natural response…movement. Nothing. Not even a stir. No evidence of life. Everyone else in the room is awake and the lights are on now. I poke again. People are shouting profanities at this mysterious being beneath my blanket, and I am just standing at my bed patiently waiting (mildly excited that this is happening to me). Finally after a third poke or knuckle punch, there is movement. The blankets are removed and identity is revealed. There is one word to describe this man…homeless. I found a homeless man sleeping in my bed. He was clearly over the age of 45, balding (with little hairs sprouting out of his head resembling a new born Chia Pet), and surprisingly fully clothed…more or less. I say to him in English, “Hi you’re in my bed. What room are you supposed to be in?” I was giving him the benefit of the doubt. This was his chance to come up with a brilliant excuse, or any excuse, and I would have taken it. Instead, the guy just looks at me, so I try in Spanish. Just big round drunk eyes look up at me, still no verbal response. Everyone else was losing it shouting their well-rehearsed Spanish commands, “Levántate!” I tell him that it’s time he get out of my bed, and this time I meant it. This is how he responds- He rolls over to face me, still under the blankets, looks at his watch (yes, he had a watch. Surprising? Definitely. Functioning? Probably not) and says, “OkOkOkOK Ok Ok Ok”, then rolls back over and snuggles back into my sheets and blankets. The other nine people were ready to fight, but still keeping their distance, and were not hesitating to express how they felt in sentences that included all three languages: Spanish, English, and Drunk. He finally tells me that he was supposed to be on the first floor. I take that answer and actually help him out of my bed to the door. Its not until he is out the door that I realize I really shouldn’t sleep in my bed. This is hour 45 without sleep. I gather my belongings, trying to put everything back into my backpack, and the “I’m crying because I’m tired” wave crashes into me. I start crying because my zipper on my pack won’t work, then I realize I have to find a new bed and I cry more, then I remember I didn’t pack pajama pants and I cry more.

            I had a bed for the night, and I had never slept better. I wake up in the morning and my first thought is, “There aren’t rooms on the first floor!” Minus points for a bad excuse. I eat my first bowl of cereal in almost two months and all bad feelings toward the homeless man disappear into the corn flakey goodness. My trip to Barcelona was a success, and I visited all of the touristy things I wanted to like Park Guell, the Picasso Museum, Gaudi’s house and apartments, Plaza Espanya fountain show, the cathedral, and La Sagrada Familia. I met up with some old friends from high school, reacquainted myself with the beach, and spent every cent I brought with me. I start my Barcelona story like this…”Well, one night I found a homeless man in my bed…but don’t worry. I’m not that easy. (I feel it necessary to clarify)”

            Yesterday I saw another gypsy with a grocery cart and inside was…a hot water heater! I have finally figured it out. They are building a house. So far, from what I can tell, they have got the sink and the hot water heater (but no running water), a decent collection of coat hangers (but no closet), umbrellas, rolly backpacks, and apparently a plethora of grocery carts.

            We all went to a Carnival in Cadiz where everyone dresses up in costumes and stays out in the streets until the wee hours of the night. I went as a dancing monkey outfitted with the hat, vest, baggy pants, a tail, and even cymbals (I won a costume contest). We got on the bus in Sevilla at eight pm and left Cadiz at four am. I will never ever do that again. People try to steal everything from you. Spaniards are ultra affectionate and in this setting you have no defense. Your arms are literally pinned to your sides and you are being pushed in every direction unable to make a single step toward anything. Once in a more open area I got sneak attacked by someone dressed up like an Indian, and they planted a kiss right on my mouth. Before I could register what was happening, my arm was already in motion for his stomach. I think I punched him maybe a little too hard, or just right. He looked at me with shock, confusion, and an insulted eyebrow grimace. Never in a million years would I have thought that I would be a desirable subject with my face painted like a monkey, but you learn something new everyday. I would like to thank my older brothers for teaching me to live in constant ready to fight fear. It’s refreshing and terrifying to know that I react that way to affection. So if any of you feel the need to smooch me, just give me some warning. 

Manoli-isms

When Manoli cooks she always wants to show me how fresh her vegetables are so she calls me into the kitchen and this is what she says, “Lin! Come here! Come here! You coming? (As if the vegetables are going to take off out the window with her Pall Malls) Look at how bright these are? So fresh. They are so delicious. And the recipe I use with these is magnificent.” I start to formulate my response and I only get a word and a half in before she says, “Ok, go. Leave now.”

Manoli: “These are so expensive. You should know that I pay so much money for these. They are very hard to find and expensive.”

Me: “Oh, well you don’t have to buy them for us. We are ok without them.”

Manoli: “Yes I do! Fine, you are ok without them? Then why do I bother? Child, its my obligation.”

Me: “Waow Manoli! Jamón tonight? Why?” You can buy the cured leg of a pig and cut the meat yourself, but it’s really expensive to do this in your own home.

Manoli: “Because I want to. Do you not want it?”

Me: “Of course I want it! But is there a special occasion?”

Manoli: “Does there have to be a special occasion for jamón? No! Jamón is Spain. We are Spain. You are a little bit Spain. Jamón for dinner.” (She was saying ‘Spain’ instead of ‘Spanish’)

I asked Manoli to iron my vest for Carnival, if she had time. “I have time now. Give it here.” Two minutes later- “Lin! Lin! Lin? Lin? Lin!” I responded every time, “Yes?” Manoli, “Come with me. Look! Look! Your costume is so cheap. It’s the cheapest material. It’s so inexpensive. It probably didn’t cost you a thing!” She had tried to iron it, but burned through the inside layer. So there was a giant hot iron print on the vest. She said all this to me like she had just destroyed my most prized possession. The bottom half of her face was sagging with sadness, but from the eyeballs up her face was tight with disbelief. “Why would you buy this? I like it a lot though. What a great costume.” I apologized for ruining her iron and then I was excused and allowed to go back to my room.

Manoli gave Antonio a grocery list and wrote “Tabasco” but Antonio came back with three new packs of Pall Malls. He thought she wrote Tobacco. Manoli says to me, “Antonio, que cariñoso, pero qué huevos!” (You can translate that yourselves). She says this making a cupping gesture with her hands. She has no filter.

We were discussing hairy chests. Manoli thinks a man is feminine if he doesn’t have hair on his chest, and even more feminine if he shaves it. We discuss this at the lunch table while we watch a dating show on TV. I have the bowl of fruit in my hand and I am grabbing an orange, but my unusually weak wrists fail me and I drop the bowl, spilling the appropriate fruit for the conversation…bananas. Manoli looks at me and says, “Oh you poor thing. You are nervous because we are talking about men.” Then she sounds her loud smoker’s cackle laugh that rings through the apartment.

 More Photos*  http://www.flickr.com/photos/19751197@N06/