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[14 Oct 2004|04:04pm] |
in the interest of being literary-ish, i present my (finally) finished piece for our magazine on my trip to spain. this was a beast that took several weeks of wrestling, pouting and crying before i got it to where we can coexist peacefully. comments/criticism welcome. i'm also looking for headline suggestions.
I’m writing from my room in Seville. It’s 5 p.m. and sweltering. I can hear the traffic outside mingling with bird chirps. My room is modest, but comfortable: purple walls, bunk beds, wispy curtains, a framed picture of Jesus over my pillow.
At night when I’m lying on my bunk bed trying not to move very much in order to minimize the sweating, I forget that I’m here, in this different life I’ve wandered into for the month of July.
I forget that my husband is living out our normal life in Mount Pleasant without me. Taking our dog for a walk. Eating pizza. Speaking English.
And then the little accordion band leans into a tune for the happy people clinking glasses in the outdoor bar underneath my window. Children are running in the alleyway. Their parents are laughing at jokes I don’t understand. This means I’m an entire ocean away from home, and my heart beats strangely.
***
Seville is full of places to explore. There are little shops all over the place. You can get the best ice cream ever for a Euro. There are meat shops and coffee shops and seafood shops and more shoe shops than I’ve ever seen. Shops to buy Spanish fans and tapas and thongs that say, “Sevilla.” If you walk anywhere, you can see buildings older than America in amazing condition, just sparkling in the sunshine.
The mercado is amazing to me. I’m enchanted by the smells of fish and meat as I walk by. Inside there are fish of every kind waiting to be chopped up for a customer. Octopus legs dangle over the countertop. Sides of beef and huge shanks hang everywhere. There is blood and carnage in the grocery store. There are no cleanly wrapped cutlets in cellophane. No one is polite.
These are my daily linguistic challenges, which force me to talk to people in order to get what I need.
I have a host mother, a señora, who has three daughters, two of whom live with us, and a granddaughter named Mónica. I live in an apartment of women always coming and going, where two daughters smoke cigarettes after every meal, and my señora cross-stitches a design for a newborn niece while watching talk shows and providing running commentary.
Some nights one of the daughters, Sandra, comes in late with her aunts, giddy from a night on the town. Sandra lights a cigarette and excitedly relays the events of the night to her mother and I, while we laugh at her stories. “Hombre!” Sandra says, “Que calor!” (“How hot!”) Like everywhere, weather is a popular subject in Spain.
When our language fails us, my señora’s motherly instincts inform her that I’m tired of eating fish (even though this seems absurd to her) or that I’m lonely, or that I’m not going to love watching my first bullfight. When someone asks me something and I can’t understand the question, María Dolores fills in my answer as best she can.
It is frustrating, at times, to learn a language in a foreign country. The only way to do it properly is to get over your insecurities and start talking.
In the beginning I’m so nervous I forget people’s names, I use the wrong verb forms, and sometimes my brain checks out and I feel like don’t understand or speak the simplest of phrases. But something keeps telling me to do it — humble myself, say, “No lo comprendo,” over and over, and smile sheepishly. And I’m ashamed to say that sometimes I can’t even bring myself to say, “I don’t understand,” so I just say, “Yes” to everything. This has led to some unfortunate misunderstandings.
But today my host mother called me “hija,” the Spanish word for daughter. I think this one word was worth the entire trip.
One of the best conversations I’ve had with her was one in which the words we said didn’t matter. We had just finished watching the movie “Mona Lisa Smile” — in Spanish, of course — and we started cautiously approaching the subject of women’s roles in society. We were bullfighters gingerly stepping circles around the bull.
Suddenly we couldn’t say enough to each other. We plunged through topics like pay differentials, housework, childrearing, marriage, and divorce rates, driven only by our mutual curiosity about each other and about our motherlands.
It didn’t matter how we said what we said. Our words came fast and furious. I think I spoke faster in Spanish that day than I ever have. We found a common ground, this 60-year-old Spanish woman and her quiet, 24-year-old American houseguest. In moments like this Spain is not so foreign. It could even be home, with the added bonus of napping every day.
***
A dream. That’s all this has been. As quick and lonely, frightening and splendid, as a dream. Four weeks later I’m looking out the same pale lavender curtains onto the same alley below with exactly the same light and heat to complement the scene.
It’s weird packing my suitcase and kissing my señora, a woman who was a stranger to me not so long ago, on both cheeks. It’s weird trying to hold back tears on the hike to the bus stop. I’m thinking: I did it. I survived. Then: I can’t wait to see my husband again. And finally: I miss Spain already.
On the plane trip back to the U.S. I’m sitting next to two Spanish women about my age who are traveling to New York to learn English. The realization that there are these cultural exchanges going on all the time, Spanish to English, English to Spanish, makes me smile.
After a minute, our conversation turns predictably to the Spanish weather. “Que calor!” I tell the girl sitting next to me. She nods in agreement and compares the temperature in Barcelona to my news from Seville (I win — Seville’s hotter). I feel a kinship with her, like we are not really from any country. We are just part of a race of people conquering the world and its languages.
When it comes to study abroad, I was a late bloomer. I was one of those people who fell in love with the idea, but never put it into motion. I watched many brave friends pack their bags in college to explore the world, while I stayed home to receive their postcards. This is why this trip will exist in my memory as a promise I kept to myself.
If Spain gave me a gift, it was being reminded of what I’m capable of doing on my own, learning that I can find my way around places that seem smaller once you take the time to understand more about them. My gift was traveling 4,000 miles and sharing a laugh with a woman who reminds me of my mother.
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gloomy
pissed off
blank
undecided
amused