Ten things I learned while living in Spain, in no particular order (Part II):

    

    1)   How to live locally (or give myself permission to be ridiculous).  This one is basically, “When in Rome…”  Some parts of life in Spain seemed over the top in the beginning.  For example, I thought having a café solo (shot of expresso) for breakfast, a slice of toast at eleven, and a three-course meal at two o’clock (and so on) seemed like sheer madness.  The same went for staying out past four o’clock in the morning.  At first I kept to my old routines.  It was no fun, however, being the girl with the growling stomach or the only youngster up and about on Sunday morning.   The things I got to do everyday in Spain that were most different to my life at home are the experiences I cherish now.

     2)   To have an opinion, especially about what is going on at home.  I was asked so many times what my opinion was about [blank] in the United States.  Some of the questions were misinformed or based on stereotypes.  Others were about current events I should have been up on.  In any case, being uninformed or apathetic was not impressive.  Thinking through where I stood on important issues concerning the United States allowed me to connect to the people around me and to Spanish perspectives.  

     3)   Clothes are important.  Before I left for Spain, my mother told me that Spanish people generally dressed better and took more care with their appearance.  I upgraded my packing accordingly.  This is often said, but it took a few painful lessons and poignant examples for it to sink in.  I once caught one of  my students, a burly young man with satanic tattoos and a mullet, picking infinitesimal specks of dust off his motorcycle boots.  He nodded and went back to work.    

     4)    A long, slow walk (paseo) is good for the soul.  The evening, when the shops are closed and the shadows are long, is a perfect time to be out and about.  The point of this is not exercise.  In fact, the slower you walk the better.  It’s a time to share your day, gossip, window shop and marvel at where you are.  Maybe you will even see somebody you know.

     5)   How to see the world as a giant classroom.  Interest in your surroundings is contagious.  Learning about the history, ecology and culture of where you are is the courtship phase of loving a place.  It may take going very far away to begin the process, but it’s a way of seeing the world you take with you wherever you go. (Photo by Jack, please use only with his permission)

Six weeks and counting...

I had every intention of beginning this blog on my first days in Spain, if not before.  We decided to drive down from Jack's parents' house in England, camping along the way.  I saw myself coyly curling up with my computer in our tent writing something about how being in Europe was already changing me as a person and I was actually a natural with the French language, of which I knew all of two words.  In the end, it rained the entire week we were supposed to make our road trip.  We ended up staying in cheap motels instead of lingering by fresh rivers in little hamlets.  There was a lot of wild gesturing.  I looked like Cookie Monster on steroids trying to order a croissant, let alone eating it.  The French people were not charmed.

So what has happened between that anticlimactic trip and now?  Well, some of my wilder dreams actually have come true.  They are:

1) The apartment.  Oh where to begin.  Fourteen foot ceilings.  Mosaic tiles on the floor.  Two balconies.

2) The bicycle.  It's perfect.  It's gently used, cosmopolitan (read black).  It has a basket.  It has a light.  It's named the Katemobile.  Overnight I have been transformed into a bicycle rider.  Encantada.

3) Living next to a park.  Not just any park.  This park, formerly the River Turia, is miles long and spanned by a range of bridges.  When you're down there it feels like you're in a completely different place.  A place inhabited by fitness freaks and the occasional homeless person.  But still.  I often take my dog down into the park to do his business... which is mostly peeing on exotic looking shrubs.  It's magical.  Every morning (or at least once a week) I try to jog which brings me by jumping fountains, into small pine forests and by the impressive domed buildings that were built centuries ago on the banks of the Turia.

4) The weather.

This is the rosy version, of course.  Each of these miracles of my new life has a downside, too.  Our otherwise perfect apartment is a mere floor or two above a "rock bar/club" that release a flood of men with waist-length hair, satanic tattoos and the voice projection talents of Pavarotti into the streets at 4 AM.  I know because I'm the cranky, foreign youngster in my nightgown and glasses hanging out the balcony giving dirty looks that are often misinterpreted.  The bicycle-riding I have yet to really master.  I walked the entire way home from the bicycle shop on tiptoes while sitting on my bicycle.  The last time I rode a bike was when I was ten.  So far, so good... but I need to gain a little more finesse before I wire a fake gerbera daisy into my basket (VW Bug-style).  And about the park and my jogging, or lack thereof, within.  I hope to make progress, but I have a long way to go before Spanish-svelte.  It probably will be just enough to balance out delicious tapas fried in olive oil and smothered with aioli.  Rants will come another day, for now I love this life in Spain.