miércoles, 29 de abril de 2009

Acostumbrarse

To get accustomed to... lo que sea.
So, based on past experience, I have a tendency to adapt well to new situations. Who knew? Well, I guess I did, but I didn't really get it until tonight. Hanging out and driving home with my surrogate padres in Bollullos, I got a heads up that not everyone in years past has adapted so well to the current situation, the job, the students, the co-workers, the life in a pueblo... Anyhow, I can't say it was all my doing. I've been fortunate to have good roommates who are more likely to want to have a kitchen conversation than to leave any part of the house in ruin; to work at a school that doesn't demand much, but where I can take advantage of openings to throw in a new lesson, or song (next week 1980 hit "Fame." No lie. "Fame! I'm gonna live forever, I'm gonna learn how to fly, FAME!..." Of course I'll have to explain that "gonna" is not bien dicho, but moving forward), and there are still profs that smile when they see me in any part of the school or the streets of Bollullos.

I guess I do smile a lot, which is not exactly a vice. I mean, it's not like everyone's inviting me over their homes, but I have what I need from who I need it, and it makes me happy to have found happy places here. Case in point the surrogate padres. (I don't wanna make my parents feel slighted, obviously they're irreplaceable. I call this other couple my surrogate padres because they're the same age as my parents, and they kind of do remind me of George and Gladys besides obvious differences of color, stature, native language, and overall genetic composition. Nonetheless, I feel the love, and appreciate their effort to help me find playmates among the jovenes of Bollullos.)

En fin. I often said at the beginning of this experience when there were things I wasn't used to, tengo que acostumbrarme a... whatever the new and raro thing was, and al final, I've gotten accustomed to a lot. Adapted. That's what I'll put on my resume. Adapted to cultural immersion in a pueblo of the Andaluz. Adapted indeed.

lunes, 27 de abril de 2009

Tengo ganas de...

lo que sea. I'm pretty much up for anything. Today, I was in the dehesa with my school playing Capture the flag with a buttload of team spirit, swinging on swings that threatened to injure my hips, and going for a ride on a zipline that looked like a medieval device. As I said, tengo ganas de... lo que sea. Thankfully, so do many of the people around me.

Everyone has their strong and weak points, but decidedly something I will miss about being here is the people I've met. Who are, more likely than not, up for just about anything. Whether it's the energy of being a foreigner in Spain or in any new place, the spirit of being an auxiliar with demasiado tiempo libre, or just the charismatic quality that accompanies the people who've applied for this program, I'm not sure.

All this is not to say that no one ever flakes on a plan, or that everything I've done here has been beyond my wildest dreams. (Although, I never really thought I'd be living in Spain, so in a way, it's all sort of a dream-like sequence.) A lot of what I do here, I would do in the States, but I might have a smaller group of people to choose from to accompany me on hitch-hiking journeys, hanging out with viejos, or going on midnight trips to towns with dirt roads. Maybe it's the proximity of the beach, the warm(er) weather, the accumulation of free time... Whatever it is, when I go home, I will miss the carefreeness of this experience.

That's what it is, carefree. (soory, you'll have to turn your head to look at Ricardo until I fgure out how to orient the picture properly...) For a while, I thought that my whole perspective on life was changing. In fact, I think I was just becoming more easy-going. If it happens, it happens, and if not me dara igual. When people ask if I've gone to San Sebastian, Carnaval, Semana Santa and if I'm going to the upcoming El Rocio, I tell them yes, porque "tengo que aprovechar de todo." To suffice, whatever it might be, I'm usually up for it. Saying yes opens you up to see and do things you might have otherwise closed yourself off to by saying no. Ok, that was really profound. But seriously, it's kind of like the movie Yes-Man. At some point, I may learn to say "no" again, but I'll be happy to have had nine months of saying yes. Vale, pues no para TODO; hay que tener limites aun para mi, pero me entiendes.

sábado, 25 de abril de 2009

Autostop in Mazagon

... i.e. hitch-hiking. That's what I was up to today with my Huelva BFFs. Intentamos ir a Mazagon, y estuvimos alli, pero despues de tres horas of getting straight winded by one enduring pero super strong viento(and I am NOT one to endure strong winds. I can't stand them, and to have sand blowing into my hair... thank goodness for laughs, chips, and candy, or I might not have made it...), we gave up and hiked up the hill. Back to the bus stop. Where we proceeded to wait. For over an hour. In hopes that the 4pm, 4:45pm, and then 6pm bus back to Huelva would arrive.
Unfortunately, we don't know Mazagon like other cities so close to our hearts, so it would have been a real effort to walk all the way to el centro and then actually locate the bus stop. At around 5pm, we realized we had a better chance of hitch-hiking back to Huelva.

After walking about five minutes, unsuccessfully trying to flag down a car (although we saw several who gave us double takes, but false hopes because nadie giro la vuelta) Ngoc, decided to draw a sign on miniature graph paper, que dijo:

HUELVA, porfa!

And literally about two minutes later, a hot rod ride pulled over - ok, not that hot, but if you could've felt the winds we were up against... - and I got flashbacks to Vivica Fox flagging down assistance like a damsel in distress in Two Can Play That Game after punching holes into her tires. Alvaro, our knight, was on his way to a wedding, but pulled over without too much persuasion. (So, I really can't say there's no nice people in the world because we would've still been in Mazagon... In fact thank goodness he did pull over. What started as a joke to get home turned into an adventure. And now I'm just wondering if the couple waiting for their bus ever made it to their destination? Or maybe they slept in the under-construction building behind the bus stop where I told my BFFs we might have to camp out for the night if Damas didn't show up.)

I was only in Huelva for about 24 hours this fin de semana, but me and the chicas managed to have more adventures than just the autostop. On Friday, we played with new friends in a park for ages 4 and up, and realized Ngoc is straight-up wifey material; from being a kid-lover to making dinner, dessert, and threatening to put us all to shame with a gold sequened dress that has thus far stayed in the closet. Meanwhile, the competitive streak of La Rubia came out as Ally tried to teach me how to play card games by cheating. I'm still confused about the stairs game, and the other one we played, although I've won several times. In all honesty, I think Ngoc's 4 yeard old novio will catch on faster. I like strategy card games, and I haven't figured out how to do that yet with Golf and Mentiras. Seriously, my degrees do not attest to my card playing skills. I'm strictly academic... lol;) All right, well, that was a joke. But anyhow... back to Bollullos, where there's currently a street fair celebrating Dia del Libro, the birthday or the day that Cervantes passed away. Not sure which one, but the point is Bollullos celebrates it all, and I partake. Hasta ahora!

viernes, 24 de abril de 2009

La Obra

There's something spectacular going on outside of my house, and this is what I see whenever I come home. Obra.
I remember learning that word in a Spanish lit class and spending a lot of time trying to figure out what it meant. The first time I saw it, it was written as "mano de obra" somewhat poetically, and it confused the hell out of me. In fact a direct translation still kind of eludes me at the moment, but it's something like: work or manual labor. In many cases, it just means work. Here, when they do construction jobs, they call them obras. In an effort to use more vocab than just common sense cognates that require little more than proper pronunciation (i.e. construccion), and to describe the situation I'm dealing with for teh next 15+ days, I'm attempting to put this word into daily use.

Unfortunately, it's not very beautiful or poetic, just kind of noisy, and it's managed to obstruct not only the normal path to my door, but also my normal morning shower routine. It's possibly tmi, but the water was cut off this morning...alas. When I went outside a few minutes ago to document the situation with my camera, the leader of the project walked over to make sure I wasn't taking pictures because there was a problem. No. No problem sir... I just want to remember the details. The water's back on now, so what more could I really ask for?

Turns out just about everything is a work in progress, including my job. I'm still deciding whether to be friend, teacher, disciplinarian... idk. Most days I make a few faces and laugh at or with them in between writing on the board and telling them to sit down or colorear.


This week, I went in every day, which is sooo not normal, because I'm only assigned to work 3 days a week. It's a good life, indeed. Anyhow, yesterday, the gym teacher came late, and I felt obliged to stay and hang out with Encarni's tercero class as they waited to have educacion fisica on the back patio. They get into a lot when they're left alone, so I stayed for a bit before heading upstairs to my usual class. I don't know if that helped or not...

Anyhow, I should send them these photos after I leave. In a year or two, when they've progressed a bit more, they'll laugh about what they must've been doing jumping around and shouting on the patio that day.

domingo, 19 de abril de 2009

Que Rapido

People here have a tendency to put "que" in front of key words to place greater emphasis. During winter, it was often "que frio" and undoubtedly, once summer hits, it's bound to be "que calor". Often I hear, and have taken to saying it too, "que fuerte" especially when something is surprising, and not necessarily in reference to a hot beverage or a strong person. For example, the baby crying on the other side of my bedroom wall right now... that would be a case of "que fuerte", because it's pretty loud, the baby sounds highly agitated, and because it's been a long day, or maybe because i have no control over getting the infant to stop, it's also kind of annoying. Anyhow, the crying has stopped now... que bien.

So delving into the world of "que"... The last ten days have been a whirlwind of sisterly bonding and traveling, and at the end of (really) a nine-day journey, the one thing I have to say above everything else I'm feeling is "que rapido". In the last nine days, Nini, Tiffy, and Jay-jay have managed to cover three countries and use practically ever mode of thinkable transportation to get to them. I took the AVE and met their flight in Madrid on the 10th, then we took a train to Lisboa/Lisbon, Portugal; a bus to Sevilla; a rental car to Cordoba and Jerez de la Frontera, Cadiz; and a bus-ferry-train combination to arrive in Marrakech, Morocco. The mere fact of them being here was enough, but keeping the comedy flowing in the midst of the highlights and lowlights was also a plus. Whether we were looking for meals on empty stomachs, catching multiple connections on the metro, hailing taxis, bartering down from 450 to 80, roadtripping on Spanish autopistas, falling in public places, flirting for the student discount and extra regalos, capturing all the madness on three at-the-ready digital cameras, or just understanding hooow I've been living for the past seven months, I wouldn't have done it with anyone else.

And on that note, pictures are soon to come. My bad for the month long absence, I don't know how I've managed not to write for a month, but I'll have to do a big update, or fill in the blanks along the way with recaps and pictures of my smaller trips prior to the most recent one, like: Albufeira, Portugal and Matalascanas, Huelva - beach towns that my current shade of dahkness can attest to. I'll be back on the beach as soon as I can too, now that I know that rentals are feasible... :)

Well, on a final note, I did start on the note of the crying baby - which makes one behind my head, and another living across the inner courtyard. Super fuerte, I don't know if I can take it. I'm sure some of my oils from Morocco could calm them down, but I don't expect the 'rentals would be down for that. Anyhow, the babies are off and on in the crying. I'm hoping they'll calm down by the time I really decide to go to sleep, but as I emphasized before, the que fuerteness of the situation is the fact that it's out of my hands. Alas. I'll try to focus less on the intermittent screaming and more on how to upload all my pictures. Hasta ahora.

sábado, 11 de abril de 2009

Semana Santa

I don't know what it is... but something about Semana Santa in Spain, no me cae muy bien. It just didn't sit that well with me. Despite my conodicos' way of telling me the festivities were really something to see (perhaps they meant a feast for the senses (including fear)...), the attire that accompanies the Semana Santa festivities was a flashback to The Birth of a Nation. I'm sorry Espana. To my fellow gente, I promise this is not a picture of the Ku Klux Klan. I wouldn't do that. But I feel I would be holding out if I didn't blog about an important Spanish tradition, which in spite of the clothing (which the KKK modeled after religious brotherhoods and not vice versa), did give me a chance to appreciate some more cultural differences, even if in the midst of the celebration, I had one too many conversations where people asked me to define American culture - as if contrasting it with Spain's, a country around the size of Texas, made any logical sense.

So, back to the religious fiesta. Semana Santa literally means Holy Week. And it's the week between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. It's religiously charged, so it's not so much that it's a new holiday to me, as much as it is a new celebration that I found out about only in Andalucia. It happens throughout Spain, but perhaps only here will you see a procession with Jesus and myriad virgins going by while onlookers watch with cubata in hand. In the north, apparently, the celebration is much quieter as well, maybe something like the contrast between Baptist and Episcopal church, although there's no gospel singing involved, as far as I know. The procession begins with the cofradias, religious brotherhoods walking ahead of the pasos. Each of the churches within a town has its own cofradia, and sometimes has more than one. Sometimes as they go, they're accompanied by singing. Depends on the hermandad. They usually have a cross, or more than one, and once they've passed the pasos of Jesus and the virgins appear behind them. In between these, are orchestras, children and or adults singing, and more hermandades. Each one has its own organization, but this is a general idea de como van andando por la calle.

I watched the processions, or pasos, in Huelva and in Bollullos, the main contrast being the number of pasos that went by in one evening - 5-7 in Huelva, versus 1 cada noche in Bollullos. They started in Huelva around 7pm, and in Bollullos a partir de las 9. The streets were pretty much dark by then so onlookers are assisted by streetlights and whatever light the pasos gave off, often by candlight, to see the paso itself. The pasos vary from lifesize depictions of Jesus' judgment with Judas and Pontias Pilate, to the cross, to Mary, and idk how many virgins. Every once in a while, when I saw the virgins, I was reminded yet again that I am not Catholic. But Espana is.

The biggest pasos hold the virgins (I would expect it to be JC...). These are almost always depicted with tears. These pasos are large, gold, filled with candles, and carried on the shoulders of I don't know how many men, who support the weight from underneath the paso. Looking closely, I could see their feet hidden by the long velvet curtain that drapes the bottom of the paso like a bed skirt. In retrospect, the whole event kind of is a feast for the senses, there's the incense burning that reminds you of being inside a Catholic church, people lining the streets and crowding to see the processions go by, and restaurants and bars staying open late to accomodate the crowds before, during, and after the pasos.

A lot of people asked, and keep asking me how I liked the whole celebration, and without getting into the KKK stories and the fact that I'm black, I just kind of shrug and say, "Si... nunca lo he visto antes, y es una costumbre muy distinta de Espana." What else can I say without offending people? I kind of did like the feast for the senses part, I'm just not sure I'm in agreement with the way they're celebrating. But it's not my culture to carry on. So... carry on.