I am a shamefully poor excuse for a blogger.

For various reasons I’ve been feeling reluctant to scribble you tales of my Spanish life. Firstly, I’ve settled into a rather predictable routine: wake up at 7:10, consume bran, plain yogurt and an orange; leave house by 8:05 to be on metro by 8:10ish; get to the suburb where I work after one metro change; some days, on days that I feel barely alive, get coffee at the café on the corner; stew in the slow, simmering hell referred to as fourth grade, affecting to teach recalcitrant 10 year olds past tense verbs and incite any hint of a desire to learn; take metro at 4:15; walk to gym from metro stop; run and lift, force myself to do pushups; walk home 15 minutes; eat something; rinse and repeat. Like I said: predictable routine. Not so interesting to read about, is it? It’s become so routine, even for me, that I’ve stopped noticing the little details that once proved enchanting to me. I mourn their loss and I’ll be looking harder for them this week.

Another reason I haven’t been writing, past the blinding routine schtick, is that I am not taking as much joy in my days. As a result, I’m sadly lacking in the whimsical anecdotes department. Certainly there are still shimmeringly fine moments in each day, coming in bright and hopeful in roughly ten second bursts, but their number is puny in comparison to the grey, hulking mass my days have become. My instinct has always been to share only positivity (or at least relative entertainment) here, so my lack of said positivity… well… it accounts for my lack of blog entries.

HOWEVER: with that said, here is a list of amusing/interesting things/fun school anecdotes which did break up the big concrete lumps of the past two weeks.

Art class anecdote #1:

As I am now the fourth grade language assistant (however unhappily), part of my job is to help out in art class. Their teacher, a really nice guy who gives the rabblerousing fourth graders astonishingly shitty projects. These projects usually involve cutting pictures out of magazines and gluing them industriously to posterboard, which is just a scoche more thrilling than monitoring an effete preteen’s chin for beard growth. Additionally, said nice teacher has little to no control over the class. So. If you came here looking for a recipe for chaos, you just got it.

Scene: a few weeks ago the poor fourth graders are at work on one of aforementioned craptastic “art” projects. They have been asked to work in groups of six to create posters depicting “routines” (how exciting. is. that. I. ask. you. ?.), using only the posterboard and photos snipped from free weekly magazines, and then writing ‘routines” in pencil on the top of the poster by way of a title. This was my first art class. This situation was, to my eye, the mother of all mediocrity. Thankfully it got funnier.

Claudia, an overachieving, beautiful little Spanish fourth grader who comes to school in tights matched perfectly to the piping on her pressed little frock, head scarf,  and shoe-stitching, calls me over. So unstimulated I’m barely awake, I drag myself to her group’s cluster of desks. As I near her, Claudia brandishes a photo she’s just clipped from a newspaper.
“Es una rutina, no?” she asks. My eyes scan the picture quickly. I gulp, blink rapidly, take the photo from Claudia’s hand and slip it in my pocket to her loud protests.
“Find another one, Claudia,” I tell her, “this is a routine, but not one for your poster. And not for everyone.”
Claudia had cut out a picture of two art dolls (see below) lying on an art-doll sized bed, having vigorous woman-on-top sex. I mean…not such a bad routine, just not one I have any reason to hope fourth graders regularly enjoy.

(above, see one of the stars of the last anecdote engaged in post-coital stretches)

Art class anecdote #2:

Scene: two weeks later, art class. Unsurprisingly, the kids have been asked to work in groups of six to create yet another poster, this time celebrating Valentine’s Day. Hearts, doves, and flowers abound. So do faux street drugs.

Let me explain.

I look up from my post at the back of the classroom where I’ve been thoroughly chiding Resplendent-Golden-Mullet-Christian’s singularly goofy older bucktoothed brother. What I see at first seems to be impossible, but as I drop Sergio’s rat tail and draw closer to the group of children, I realize it is not. Pretty little overachiever Claudia and not so pretty little smart girl, Miriam, are industriously chopping up white erasers, employing the sharp edges of their rulers. They are then grinding the white erasers into powdery dust they herd around upon their desktops, organizing the powder into lines and small, uninhabitable ant-hills.
“Claudia, Miriam, what are you doing with that?” certain I’m having an out of body experience.
Claudia looks up from her veryveryserious work for a split second.
“We’re making decorations for the poster!” she tells me, as if it is very obvious, and as if it doesn’t appear at all like she is cutting lines of coke right there on the desk in front of God and everybody.
“How are you going to use THAT to decorate a poster!?” I ask her, understandably incredulous.
“Vas a ver,” says Miriam, looking up at me in her sweaty, sausage-stuffed-cheek, round faced way.

And I did.

It turns out they covered the dove I drew for them with gluestick and sprinkled on a matte coating of the eraser/coke dust to render the bird captivatingly textured.  And you know what? It did look cool. Cooler than it had in lines on Claudia’s desk, anyway.

More things:
The locust trees in Plz. 12 de Mayo started to sprout tender, early leaves about 3 weeks ago. That was refreshing.

During conversation class with a kid from 4B I asked a standard question about preferences.
“What is your favorite food?”
He confidently and grinnily replied,  “Parrot!”
“What?” I asked, “Adrian, do you mean chicken? or carrot?”
“NO!” he said, furiously shaking his head in a shamed, mortified was. “I mean…SPAGHETTI!”

Right. And does anyone else but me NOT see the connection between “parrot” and “spaghetti?”

There is a kid in fourth grade named Jorge. I both love and loathe Jorge, which I think is appropriate considering he is a smart but tiresome pain in the ass whose last name is “Carrion.” Anyhow, Jorge happens to be pretty good at English, so when I posed the question of the class, “Can you tell me the past tense of the verb “eat” and give me a sample sentence?” Jorge dramatically raised his hand, stood up, said “I ATE the book,” and tore out a healthy chunk of science text with his teeth, then sat down. I probably shouldn’t have laughed, but I did.

Finally, last Thursday after third period (which means a walk to lunch for the kids and an hour to kill for me), I was seated on the stairs on my school’s lower level, waiting for a fellow TA to emerge from class and accompany me to the market. Lines of disorderly elementary schoolers followed their keepers down from the school buildings and out the door near where I was seated and, as I squinted into the sun to watch, 1st grade descended the ramp. “Hola, Profe!” they shouted, waving their hands at me and grinning.  Having been missing them pretty badly–especially considering I’ve had to sustain to the grumbly pre-adolescent , hormone-spiced soup of fourth grade–I enthusiastically waved back.

At the end of the first grade line a tiny form in a red down jacket scramble-ran into view. At first I didn’t recognize him because of the dramatic haircut that had obliterated all signs of formerly Resplendent Golden Mullet. But when he yelled “PROFE!” in his semi-hoarse old man’s voice and came juggernauting down the ramp straight toward me, there was no question: it was indeed Christian. Within seconds he had launched himself into my arms, making this the second super-dramatic-hug Christian and I have shared. At first I was all smiles, asking him how he was while he silently grasped me around the neck and shoulders. However, as the hug drew on it dawned on me that something was not quite right. Something was not quite… dry.
“Christian,” I said, pulling away to the feeling of a rapidly sinking stomach, “why is your coat soaking wet?”
“Porque estaba en el baño,” he said, giggled impishly. usted out of my shocked arms and ran after his class to go choke down whatever horrible, greasy swill the comedor had up for Thursday’s meal.

After he ran away I retreated to the bathroom, washed my hands and tried to banish the thought of the lingering dampness all over my own coat and replace it with only the hug. Clearly it didn’t work because I’m blogging about it nearly a week later. I don’t want to know what Christian’s down coat was soaking up in the bathroom, but if I manifest some sort of mysterious skin disease in the next few days, I’ll know exactly where to check for the offending bacteria.

And now: TO BED!

My mother will be here in only 17 days.
I will be back in the USA in just over 4 months.
Hot damn, how time flies–especially during leap years.

Anxiety.

Dear Blogosphere:

Tonight I began looking at graduate schools and I am afraid. I doubt that I have what it takes to attain a doctorate. Have I been laboring under a silly little delusion of my own intellectual capability for this long, and have others just entertained my accidental pretension?
The words ORAL EXAMS, PROSPECTUS, DUAL LANGUAGE READING PROFICIENCY, 650 ON MATH GRE make me want to throw up.

Oh good holy God. No.

I am looking at my immediate future and I am also afraid. Too many choices. There are TOO MANY CHOICES. GIVE ME THE CHOCOLATE OR THE VANILLA AND TAKE AWAY YOUR TUTTI FRUTTI BUTTER RUM BULLSHIT WITH RED CURRANT SAUCE AND TOASTED MARZIPAN TOPPING! *protracted panting*
Do I bust my ass to teach private school for a year (providing I secure a job)? Do I go work at Fathom for a year, which would be comforting and great and probably help me pay off my loans? Do I try to stay in Spain for another year (not like I’d get to see Greg if I were in the States, anyway, and the people I care about are all scattered far and wide)? Do I say “screw it all” and go to something else totally off the wall for a year, like move to Seattle and work as a professional cat groomer? CAN I HANDLE THAT MANY CLAWS!?

Fuck this. I’m going to bed where I can wrap myself up in my green comforter, much like this:

Man, I miss my Gemma and Flora. As soon as I get home, priority #1 will be sticking each of them in my sweatshirt just like that and kissing their little noses.

Live from Caitlin’s Cama & London Via Notes From The Moleskine, pt. II

Friday morning (this is the 1st of February we’re talking about here, people–I’m still retro-updating), I was awake by 9:30, still on my continental european schedule. While Ali slept I crept to the freezing but bright London kitchen. I ate a bowl of cornflakes with dried strawberries while gazing out the window to The Coffeecup Café and musingly watched overcoated people traveling North Pole Road, crunching.

Ali and I got out the door later in the afternoon, taking a pleasant-but-brisk walk to the bus stop to enjoy another double-decker race through the streets. Here’s some of what I saw:

(Somewhere lovely but unidentifiable to me. A little help, anyone?)

We made it to the Notting Hill/Portobello Road area (locale of my favorite memory of London) by 12:30. At Kitchen & Pantry, a cute little café in Notting Hill, we were trapped into a rather undazzling conversation with an ignorant American DJ from L.A. He impressed me less and less with every passing moment spent over my egg salad and watercress sandwich, coffee, and yogurt.
Him: “So. You guys are American? What do you think of the election? I just think no one should vote.”
Ali: “So…. you’re proposing anarchy, then?”
Him: (slow blink, stretch, shrug) “I mean, yeah. I guess I am, if that’s what we need. I mean…”
Ali: “So you think that another civil war would be best?”
Him: “Sure. Sure maybe that’s just what we need.”
(Ali and I trade raised-brow looks)
Him: “I mean, come on, American government is messed up. I mean, look at the two democratic candidates. There’s no difference between them at all. Okay, but there is, ut it isn’t much: just one’s black, and one’s a woman.”

Mmm. Reductive much?

Aside from our strange conversation at Kitchen & Pantry, the day was fantastic. As I mentioned earlier, I loved the area and enjoyed poking around up and down Portobello Road. I dragged Ali into many a shop, purchased a bangin’ly delicious chocolate muffin from a vendor on the street, and took some pretty (but dark) pictures like this.

And this

In the evening, Ali and I stumbled upon a vendor of old print-blocks (the metal ones that went in actually printing presses). I couldn’t resist the opportunity to come home with something that really said “London” to me, so after much deliberation and comfortable banter with the sweet older man who had made type blocks his life’s work, I came away with a beautiful little Victorian one–a print of a trio of swallows in flight–and one from the 1920s, a “C” with a botanical swish through the middle–excellent keepsakes. I also scored an antique-toile-teapot-looking necklace made of red and white ceramic beads. Unfortunately, buying this piece involved interacting with a very, very creepy antique dealer with a lecherous leer and an accent that neither Ali nor I could place.

After (reluctantly) leaving Portobello Road (but not before stopping at Hummingbird where Ali purchased a delectable hunk of carrot cake and we ogled an even more delectable french cake-slinging-employee), we boarded another bus with the aim of seeing Harrod’s. And did we ever.

Harrod’s is wonderfully terrifying in its incredible expansiveness. The meat and fish hall is crazily stylized and ornate. I was so overwhelmed by decoration, in fact, that I forgot to take pictures. The tea-room is enormous and there you can purhcase every kind of biscuit and infusion a girl (or a Queen) could ask for (except for vanilla tea, that is. Which is all I wanted), and the jellies come in flavors entirely exotic to Spaniards, like red & black currant.

I was initially “in” the trip to Harrod’s just to look, but I came away with a lovely vintage Harrod’s mug, said jellies which, thanks to my expert swaddling of them in socks, my mother will be receiving for her birthday, and something amusing and edible that will remain mysterious for Greg. See, London? I contributed to your economy. But do not mistake this as an apology for the Boston tea party.

By the time we’d finished in Harrod’s, it was very much night, and with night in London comes uncomfortable, enveloping, thrustily blowing cold. We decided to call it an early night in anticipation of getting an early start the next day so headed home, picking up chicken tikka masala on the way. Two chicken dinners, one broken take-out bag and a bottle of red later, we were happily winding down for bed and listening to the Conard High School choir sing Tuungane Kanu via Ali’s laptop. Oh, memories.

Though we’d planned on getting an early start on Saturday morning we didn’t get up and out for a traditional English breakfast at Ali’s favorite café until pretty late in the morning. Breakfast consisted of a dizzying combination of eggs, bacon, beans, tomatoes, and toast and a latte that dazzled me with its sheer size and splendor in comparison with traditional Spanish coffee cups which look more like shotglasses than not.

After breakfast Ali and I split up so she could do her packing for home errands whilst I could desperately shop for shoes. I took myself to Oxford Circus via the Tube, and spent an hour and a half in Topshop, searching for footwear. You see, buffalo girls like me can’t buy shoes in Spain–nothing comes in anything larger than a 9. After 6 months of tramping Madrid streets, my shoes are getting worn through. It was time for a new pair and I knew I had to seize my moment. My moment came and brought with it a precious pair of champagne/gold flats that make me feel like a fairy princess. I am happy, and shod to boot!

After my successful kill I wandered around Oxford Circus a little while longer, being a class A tourist and gawping my own fair share. It was realy kind of nice to do it in solitude, surprisingly enough.

I met Ali later at the Tower Hill stop to go get lunch at Wagamama. While awaiting the late arrival of Ali, I took pictures of the Tower, ate a bag of caramel peanuts, and jumped around to keep warm. Looking out at splendor of this

I considered how many of Henry VIII’s wives died there, and gazing at this my thought was “Dickens, I understand.”

A delightufl added bonus of that morning/afternoon was one Courtney Bergh, a friend from Trinity who graduated Trinity a year before me and attended LSE for her Master’s degree. She’s been in London ever since, now with a sweet new political consulting job. We caught up over my bowl of chicken/cocnut milk curried ramen, and her diet coke and said goodbye after mango and lychee sorbet. She looks well and happy, which is a gratifying thing to see in an old and long-absent friend’s face.

The waning daylight afforded us a wham-bam-thank you-ma’am tour of London’s sights. Within an hour I saw Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey and Saint Margaret’s Church, and the magical-looking Big Ben. Here are some (very dark) photos: The deserted looking Buckingham Palace. Oh, how I ached for the sight of a carriage and some petticoats and top hats!

“It makes me think of Peter Pan,” Ali said. Makes me think of Peter Pan, too, and all the times I watched that movie as a child. Do you believe in fairies? Clap your hands if you do!

Our day ended with baked potatoes, chocolate, and another bottle of wine and final catching up. It was wonderful to see Ali, and I’m glad I saw London. Though I nearly missed my flight the next morning because of the fatal crapitude of London’s public transportation system (never, ever, ever had I imagined I’d have occasion to ache for Spanish “efficiency,” but my God, does metro Madrid comparatively rock my socks), all went well. Surprisingly enough I found myself happy–very happy, in fact–to be back amongst Spaniards. When I boarded my flight to Madrid it was amidst a hubbub of Spanish voices, “vale”s and “tío”s. “Ah. My people,” I thought, as I settled into my seat. “What in the world did you just say?” I asked myself, but it was true: I had just preferentially identified with Spaniards instead of anglos. The little Spanish girl in the seat across the aisle from me smiled. “Hola!” she burbled.
“Hola,”I said to her, and smiled back.

My sudden new habit of 15 minutes worth of lateness to all occasions is beginning to make sense.

Live from Caitlin’s Cama & London via notes from the Moleskine, pt. I

It’s Thursday afternoon and 5:40 p.m. here in Madrid, the time when I’d normally be half an hour into my afternoonly workout. Yet here I am in bed, really not up to much of any motion save tap-tap-tapping at my keyboard. I think it’s high time, too, considering my last update came a whopping 10 days ago and a lot of things–good and bad–have passed in that time, including a trip to London, a world-class airport flip out committed by yours truly, and the landing of a tutoring job that’ll pay me 40 euros an hour. So. Lots of things, no?

So. Just to reiterate and to serve as a partial disclaimer for this entry and all writing contained therein: I am tired; a deep, down to the bone, foggy-brained, language-muddled kind of tired. My spiral downward to this state began last week when I stayed up late, preparing for my vacation to the U.K. On Thursday I left school early, rushed home to thrust the last few odds and ends into a suitcase, and hauled to the airport, playing hurry up and wait for my 8:50 p.m. flight to see Ali in London. Here’s what I wrote whilst waiting at the gate:

One enormous chocolate bar, a cheese bocadillo the size of my forearm, and a liter of lemonade with hierba buena later, I am seated in Barajas, waiting to bard my plane to London. As always, I’m a little nervous about spending a shitton of money as I know London’s expensive, but I’m too full of tortilla and too sleepy after a full day at school to be too acutely nervous right now.

It’s strange to me to be sitting here amongst two babbling Americans to my right, an Irish family of four to my left, and a couple of chattering Spaniards across from me. I’m trying out in my mind the notion of being able to communicate freely in English for the first time in five months and it completely boggles my mind. In a few hours I’ll be able to ask for a round trip Gatwick Express ticket without second guessing myself, or will be able to inquire of anyone I see “Hey, can you direct me to the nearest grocery store?” and they will effortlessly tell me. And I? I will, equally effortlessly, understand! I will receive this information and get my ticket or find the grocery store. I can imagine it, sure, but after 5 months of Spanish-as-a-second-language-style navigation of Madrid, I can’t really believe that soon it’ll be real.

Despite my EasyJet (“It’s like traveling in a flying bus” said Ali–and it was, duct tape, graffiti and all) rolling up to Barajas a good half hour late, and that the Spanish concept of “waiting in line*” was in full effect, the trip went off well, though I found the flight crew–all of them– grating.

I don’t like my pilots smiling for the same reason I don’t like my nutritionists fat: your physical presence and countenance ought to reflect your profession. All I’m saying is, hey, flying is a serious business, so come on and put on your serious face. And helping people get skinny is a demanding, aesthetics and health-motivated career, so if you’d like to retain any vestige of credibility while you’re helping motivate me to quit the gummy bears and chocolate bars, lay off the buttery goodness yourself. And you: if you’re flying my plane, for fuck’s sake, I’d better not catch you jackal-grinning up there in the cockpit while I’m boarding my plane. Whatever it is, I can almost guarantee that it isn’t that funny. Eyes on the skies, Bonzo, or I’m coming to tan your ass in the afterlife.

Fortunately, all of the irritation melted and a type of bewildered reverse culture shock set in the moment the flight got off the ground and the pilot and flight attendants began speaking to the passengers. The flight crew was speaking to me in English. They offered me an overpriced mini-coke, in English. The fussy, highly makeupped flight attendant named Josie primly requested I stow my bag fully beneath the seat before me in achingly proper English. When I got off the plane and trundled wearily through the halls in Gatwick, people who hit into me, first of all, said sorry (what a concept! apologizing for bodychecking someone! this does not happen in Spain), and second of all–said sorry in ENGLISH. The first “Oh, s’cuse me, sorry!” threw me for such a loop that I only stopped and stared, totally uncertain as to how to respond. The strange concept had come to life: I was immersed in ENGLISH for the first time in months.

By the time I’d made my way through the airport and purchased a ludicrously expensive (28 pounds–that’s 56 USD, y’all) Gatwick Express ticket, I’d begun to grow accustomed to hearing English. I was not ready, however, for the shock of coming face to face with an airport café that offered nothing but fresh juices, flavored sparking waters, pre-packed salads with REAL (read deep green) lettuce, sandwiches constructed of slices of thick wheat bread and chunky egg salad, 8 oz. cups of pro-biotic yogurt, and fresh fruit cups.
“What?” my incredulous eyes screamed to my incredulous brain, “readily available comestibles that aren’t fried or tortilla bocadillos?”
I think my brain was too tired to reply, so “FRUIT CUPPPPP! MWAAAAA!” my incredulous (but greedy) stomach screamed instead. So, despite germs and social decorum, I wolfed a fruit cup of mango, grapes, pomegranate and strawberries and desperately slugged a liter of lemon sparkling water as I waited to board my train to Gatwick. And God Said It Was Good.

Within five minutes on the Gatwick Express I’d made friends with a brit named Jason. He boarded the train, passing me by and saying, “Oy, does this train go to Victoria?” (Victoria being London’s main train station)
“It had better,” I replied, “or we’re both severely screwed.”
He grinned, passed me by, then changed his mind and came to sit in the row of empty seats in front of me. Jason, I quickly learned, owns a recording studio called The Funky Bunker on Portabello Road near to Ali’s house. While he works with mostly reggae and soul musicians, his studio’s biggest claim to fame is that they produced the intro to “Jenny On The Block.” Yes. THAT Jenny On THAT Block.
Our first 2 minutes of conversation went like this:
“So I’ve just got back to London from five days in Cannes,” Jason told me.
“Yeah?” I asked, “What were you doing there?”
“Was at a music convention. Lots of producers rubbing elbows and all, doing business, but mostly just partying. Haven’t done anything like that in years, but it was good. Didn’t get out of hand ’til last night.”
“What happened last night?” I asked, curious and sensing the potential for a good story.
“Well,” he began, wrinkling his brow and scratching his head, “I don’t rightly now, but I woke up in the hospital.”
“Oh my!” I exclaimed.
“Yeah!” he said, smiling and looking bemused and dazed. “And now just I’m all sore and stuff. ‘Specially my knees. I don’t really know what to do.”
It was out of my mouth before I could help it. “Well, if I were you, I’d start with an STD test and a check for anal fissures.”
He stared at me for a full fifteen seconds, then burst out in laughter until there were tears rolling down his face. “You’ve got a dirty mind, girl, ” he said.
“This is very true,” I agreed.
We talked for the rest of the 35 minute ride about music, the possibility of a recession in the United States, about the (then impending) Super Tuesday and Barack Obama, and about the importance of having dreams and the drive to see them through. By the time we alighted at Victoria, I had London restaurant recommendations, two new CDs, and a new friend.
“That’s me,” he said. “Jason Price,” pointing out his name on the back of the CD he’d handed me. He was an exceedingly nice man. I hope his knees feel better.

I met Ali who’d been waiting for me for an hour in the chilly train station, by the Burger King in Victoria. “Not the most romantic of meeting-places,” she’d texted me, “But I’m here!” I shook hands goodbye with Jason, excitedly hugged Ali, and we then headed above ground to board a double-decker bus to Ladbroke Grove–all of this glossed by a very thoughtful Ali who’d procured me an Oyster Card (London’s equivalent of the Abono) ahead of time. For a half an hourish I saw London by night (12:10 p.m., to be precise), and began my catch-up with my friend. The catch-up got so intense, in fact, that we missed our stop, necessitating a 20 minute, blusterly and utterly frigid wee-hours jaunt to Ali’s flat, the wind blowing against us all the way. When we finally reached “home” I was delighted to find that my friend lives above a fish and chips shop. “Welcome,” I thought, “to London.”

We talked, middle-school-sleep-over-style, early into the morning until I fell into a weary sleep.

PART TWO of London via notes from the Moleskine (with photos!) to follow!

*”to wait in line,” Spanish style, the individual must crowd as close to the perceived “front” of the line as possible, spread out in a fan-shape, grumble, push, groan, and inquire loudly “¿quien es el último?” or “¿quien da la vez?” no fewer than 14 times. It is also preferable that you avoid or saucily return the stare of any irate foreigners whose concept of “to wait in line” carries with it some ridiculous notion of a straight, linear formation of human beings.