The Second Week

Week Two- I’m in a Funk

This is my funk speaking- These have been the longest two weeks of my life, which is both good and bad. When everyone tells you that you are going to have the time of your life, by the end of week two you find that a little hard to believe. Things just don’t go your way, or at least for me they haven’t been. Luckily, these things that have happened are a little bit funny. First I will get my venting out of the way.

Classes started this week, and they are hard. I thought my comprehension was pretty good until I went to my History of Film during the Democracy class, which is taught in Spanish. The professor speaks faster than anyone I’ve ever heard and he has more of an Andalucian accent than anyone who has been patient enough to speak to me during my time here. About half of what he says goes right over my head, and I hate that feeling. No doubt these classes are going to be challenging, but hopefully as time goes my Spanish will get better and classes will be less overwhelming. I’ve already said my farewells to my GPA, so hopefully there are no hard feelings between us at the end of the semester (yes, my GPA does has a sex and he is male).  I was really hoping that this semester was going to be easy academically, but its gong to be the opposite. Oh well. I’m only taking four classes (three in Spanish and one in English), but I am also working on an honors project while I’m here. Ok enough of that…on to what is enjoyable to read.

I am a strong believer in laughing at other people’s mild misfortunes. It sounds mean, but I say this because I have no problem laughing at my own. This past week I have been a walking disaster, to say the least. The second I think I’ve got something down and understand how to blend is the second I get hit by a car. Yeah, I was hit by a car in the beginning of this week and then again yesterday. I’ve been here two weeks and been hit by two different cars on two different days, but I’ve lived in Fallbrook my whole life and still haven’t been hit by a tractor (or a car). Let me explain before anyone panics and thinks that I am seriously injured. First of all, anything in Sevilla can be considered a street or a parking space. People pull up onto the sidewalk and leave their cars there for days or they just park in the middle of the road, literally. Also the “streets” in Sevilla are so skinny and crowded with random things (bikes, dumpsters, miniature furniture) that you wouldn’t think they were streets, not to mention that a lot of them are cobblestone. So my first incident…I cross this little one-way “street” that looks more like an alleyway, everyday on my way into town. There was a car stopped just before the crosswalk as I stepped into the street. Right as I was in the middle of the crosswalk, his foot slips off the brake and his car lurches forward and hits me just above my right knee. My legs got all crossed up and my backpack flipped over my head. I looked into his car expecting to see shock on his face, but the guy was reaching for something in the back of his car where his little child sat in a car seat laughing and pointing at me. The result of all of that…a bruise and an aversion to children in car seats that think they are better than me.

The second time the side of my knee met the front of a car was in a more crowded intersection. Here, in Sevilla, people actually stop their cars and let you by when you cross the street, but its also very common for them to pull up very close to you when they stop, as to say “Fine. Go, but hurry up you little turd. I’m going the second you are past my car.” I was crossing the street and this guy just stopped too late and hit my left knee. It was more of a love tap, than a hit. I tried to avoid it at the last second by jumping, but all that did was make me look like I got a giant bee sting. At least this time the person was actually aware of what had happened and gave me a mixed look that was something between “Oh my God. I am so sorry” and “You stupid American.” I think it was God’s way of evening things out for me. Two bruises, different knees, no favoring either side.

This next mishap could have been avoided, maybe. In Sevilla there is a river that runs right through the middle, acting as a divide between the residential part and the city. All along the river are bike paths and running trails, which I use frequently. I was running along the river passing beneath a bridge, when I saw a group of Spanish girls laughing and being jolly while their dog wandered aimlessly about in the general area. People don’t keep their dogs on leashes here, and for the most part the dogs leave you alone. I saw the dog, didn’t think anything of it, and kept up my pace. The dog made a beeline for me the second he saw me. I should have tried harder to dodge him, but I thought maybe he really wanted to say hi to me. Nope. He actually bit my butt! Luckily, I was wearing leggings and shorts, because the dog got mostly fabric but also got a little piece of my rear. The worst part about this whole deal was that the girls did nothing. They didn’t care at all and just watched. I was so panicky. Finally I yelled at them and they walked over to me, looked me in the eye like I did something wrong, and grabbed their dog. I ran away like a little baby, but two minutes later realized that I had a hole in my short and started to laugh.

So life at Manoli’s has been different since the other girls have been here. I feel like my Spanish has actually gotten worse, because I hear English a lot more than I did my first week here. Manoli’s food is still so delicious and she will ask us everyday if we like a certain vegetable or meat or anything, so that she knows what to make us the next day. One day she asked us if we liked peas. I thought, sure I like peas, and didn’t think anything of it until lunch the next day. I walk into the apartment and sat at the table for lunch…. Manoli brings out about a pound of peas for each of us. A mountain of peas sat in front of my face and all I could say was “Waow” (that’s how Spaniards say “wow”). I would be lying if I didn’t say they were surprisingly delicious. That same meal she also made us fried eggplant with honey on it. It was laundry day on Thursday and Manoli said that I was allowed to change my sheets if I wanted to. My sheets are now bright yellow with cartoon rabbits dancing in the clouds with beach balls, and they are as thin as a bible paper. It’s so cold in our apartment, because there’s no heater, so we all wear seventeen layers to bed each night. Manoli explained to me, after I got out of the shower, that we all needed to be more careful with our use electricity, gas, and water. She won’t let you walk away with a simple “vale” (ok) or a “Si, Manoli”; you have to give a full apology. I gave my apology and walked my wet hair back into my bedroom. Two minutes later she comes into my room and says, “Are you leaving? Go blow-dry your hair then you crazy girl! You are not allowed to have wet hair.” Ok, Manoli…whatever you say.

Slowly but surely we are learning our way around the city and where to be certain nights of the week. We got to watch the Packers v. Bears game in a bar that had a TV the size of a computer screen. We watched about three quarters of that game and then had to sit through thirty minutes of a Jane Fonda workout video, because there was a time delay.

A couple days ago I got denied access to a club, because it was “Gay night”. I respectfully walked away, avoiding an eight Euro cover charge and walked into a bar called Azucar. Great decision. Eight 20 and 21-year-old Americans walk into a Salsa bar with live music, and the place still goes quiet. All eyes were on us, but all we could do was stare at the people on the dance floor dancing like professionals. Everyone here knows how to dance. Everyone. We watched in envy and then decided to give it our best shot, which was awful. The boys in the group are such troopers, and always ask us to dance. We cleared the dance floor and got the stink eye. We looked like we didn’t know where our limbs were in space when we flailed them in the air as if that were dancing. After one song we started to Two Step…a more rigid form of Salsa we decided. It worked. We looked more coordinated and the Spaniards finally accepted us and joined us on the tinsy dance floor.

Manoli-ism

I asked Manoli if she had a car and this was her response- “Me, no. Antonio, yes. I don’t drive. Antonio won’t let me, but that’s ok. I’ve been in three accidents. The first day my mom bought me a car, I got in an accident. I hit the accelerator instead of the brake…that was a long time ago. I get too distracted. I don’t know where to look! Well I do, but why would I look there when there are so many handsome men walking down the streets. I am a woman, right? I love to look at all of those handsome men.”

I resisted the urge to scoot in my chair one day and Manoli says, “Come on. I’m fat today. I can’t make it past you! Move in.”

Manoli asked one of my roommates if she smoked and what she meant to say was, “Only sometimes when I drink.” The verb to drink is “beber” and the word for baby is bebe. What my roommate actually said was, “Only when I have a baby.” Manoli panicked and said, with a horrified look on her face, “Mother of God…with a baby? God help you! You have a child?!” 

“I am old.” Manoli’s favorite excuse.

The First Week

Guadalquivir River

The Plaza

My Street- Calle Felix Rodriguez

Week One- Class at the Giralda Center

I walk past a Cathedral on the way and dodge gypsies coming back.

I wish I could pick you all up, from wherever you are wasting your time reading my blog, and plop you into my current lifestyle. Given that this is the first blog, I will need to introduce you to a lot of people along the way. This entry is more lengthy than I planned, but more happens in a week here than in a month at home.

Sleep does not exist here. Between jetlag and leaving my homestay at 2:00 am to “go out” and waking up at 7:30 for classes, I don’t sleep. Siestas do exist and they are both amazing and strange, but without them I seriously think that every Spaniard would drop dead in the middle of the day due to lack of sleep. I got to Sevilla at 9:45 on the 16^th after leaving LAX at 9:45 on the 15^th, flying first to Chicago, then Madrid, and finally Sevilla. I had less than an hour in between my flight from Madrid to Sevilla and my plane left out of a terminal that was a 15 minute subway ride away. I ran, but when I got to customs and security I hit my first snag. A lady in front of me was going to be flying with her cat. And not only was she holding a cat in an airport, but it was in a duffle bag with a hole cut out of the front covered by a mesh material that she put on herself. She almost puts the cat through the x-ray machine, because she didn’t understand what they were telling her to do. She was on the brink of tears as she pulled her cat out, which had to be 10 yrs old, out of this sagging duffle bag and was about to place it on the belt. Everyone started to yell at her and I finally told her not to put her cat there and to hand it to one of them. I don’t know why I waited so long to say something to her, maybe because my insides were laughing too hard. Nonetheless, the cat made a passing grade and to his dismay was put back in the carry-on and allowed to sit next to her on the plane. At this point I only had 18 minutes until my plane left. It was a chaotic scene, but I made it, looking like a mix between a tourist and a homeless bag lady. I also discovered that I had made that sprint with my fly down the whole time- Thanks old man with giant black mustache and x-ray eyes for telling me.

I gave my cabbie a tip when it came to paying him- mistake number one. He was offended. Lesson learned…no tips. He still took my money though. Five hours after I got to the hotel I met my first love in Spain. His name is café con leche. Within three days of meeting him, I was already cheating on him at a bar with Tinto Verano. Both dependable and inexpensive. I started classes the Monday after I arrived, and immediately new I made the right decision to come out early. My class was small and the professor had high expectations, but there was little pressure (exactly what school should be like in my opinion). I learned more in one week there, than I have in all the years of Spanish I have taken in the States. Not a word of English is spoken and the students are from all over the country- Holland, Sweden, Switzerland, Japan, Korea, and Scotland. The girl from Korea, Sumi, is more animated than anyone I’ve ever met and she’s my favorite. She loves Spanish boys, but loves Portuguese men more, and tells our female Spanish teacher that she doesn’t want her to be offended by that. Sumi’s accent and is the funniest thing and it takes her 5 minutes to say anything, because she is laughing so hard and being corrected 20 times for each word. For example, when she says “todos” is sounds like “doughdoughs” and “pero” is “peahdough” and every word is drawn out and made way longer than it really is. By the time she finishes her sentence she’s catching her breath nodding her head up and down like she just won something. When the professor and all 7 of the students are laughing, Sumi waits anxiously for her accent to be corrected. I finished the class on Friday and was given a certificate (that means absolutely nothing) and she said “Oooooo ahhhhh, poughd keh aydyas rayceebeh-” (In Spanish: “¿Por que ellas recibe-“) Before it took her twenty minutes to finish, my professor told her she would get one when she finished too, which only temporarily satisfied her.

People who are not from the U.S. are so much better at learning a language. Hands down. They learn with style and ease, and it’s both frustrating and fascinating. They best thing about being part of this program was that everyone wanted to learn and the only commonality between all of us was Spanish. Learning a language with other people is funny. Everyone is so nice because no one knows how to be mean in another language.

After my first class on Monday I finally got to meet my “Señora”, Manoli and her husband Antonio. First off, she is everything and more I hoped she would be. I was told she had a rotten tooth, but she has two! I was told she could cook, but no one told me she made homemade chicken nuggets! She is hilarious and knows no English. I think she is in her seventies, but she won’t tell me and I think if I asked, she would lie to me. Her favorite phrase is, “¡Mi Madre Dios!” At the end of every new blog post I am going to put Manoli-isms because I’ve never heard anyone use words to explain the ways of life like she does. She is so generous with her distribution of the word “guapo” or “guapas”, but not towards me. It takes a lot to get a compliment from her. Yesterday she finally said “Hola guapa”, when I was within earshot, but she was also watching her TV shows. I showed her a family photo from Chris and Erin’s wedding and she went through everyone one and said how beautiful they were, but when she got to me she said “hmm”. I showed her Suzi’s senior picture and said, “Guapisima”, which is like saying that she is very gorgeous and the most beautiful. Suzi’s blue eyes, Spanish dark hair, and “American white” skin would get her plenty of cat calls. The best is that I think Manoli has a crush on Dad. She looked at his photo, grabbed her heart and said “¡Un bigote! Como Antonio. Tan guapo.” (A mustache! Like Antonio! So handsome.) Manoli doesn’t eat with us, but sits in her TV chair next to the table and watches Spanish shows that are a mix between Judge Joe Brown and Jerry Springer that air just before the news. She is a very active TV watcher and is constantly giving her input on who’s right or wrong while sprinkling in some “Que guapos” that are little mumbles that fill the silence.

Everyone else from TCU got here yesterday, and now the real studying is about to start. We had our first group intercambio today and one person responded with, “Oh yeah, I do like, but I am from Texas and it’s obvious that it’s the most true to you every day” when asked, “How long will you be in Sevilla.” Lots of work to do.

Manoli-isms

            I have a habit of scooting my chair in when Manoli walks behind me, only because I do that whenever anyone walks behind me at a table. After about the third time doing it she said to me, with her hand on my shoulder, “I may be fat, but I’m not that fat.” I still haven’t broken the habit and sometimes catch myself mid lean waiting for the same comment and slightly firm motherly hand on my shoulder.

She told us that she can’t eat with us because she has an ulcer and can only eat a little bit of food at a time. Manoli is fat, and I only use that term because when I said she wasn’t she called me crazy and said “If a car is blue, you don’t say its red.” Anyway, she was explaining why she is so fat and she said it was because she loved chocolate so much. Here is what she said, “Chocolate is so good that it replaces sex. And look at me. I’m fat.”

She is also a very confident person. She explained to us one day, “I am the best cook. You eat my tortilla con patatas then go eat them at a tapas bar and tell me which is better. All of my past students love my food. I have never had someone who doesn’t like my food. I make the best food, and I make it especially for you.” Then there is maybe a five second pause and she says, “You like my food?”

I got really lucky in that Manoli has a sense of humor, because a lot of women here would say things like this without cracking a smile. Not Manoli. She laughs hard grabbing her ulcer-lined stomach and showing off her beautiful rotten teeth while wearing a bright pink robe and matching slippers, and curlers bouncing around in her hair. I can’t wait for more Manoli-isms.