Homesickness

I was surprised to wake up yesterday morning teary-eyed and with a familiar ache somewhere in my chest.  I am homesick, again.  I'd experienced this feeling periodically over the past two years living in Spain. It was not, at least in my experience, a sharp, specific pain.  Of course, there were cravings for Mexican food and the like, which could be exquisite, but they were only cravings.  Homesickness was more insidious.  When I was homesick I missed everything familiar: feeling like I belonged to the people and place around me.  I missed the freedom of driving my car around and of having spontaneous conversations.  I missed the way that the seasons smelled at home.  I missed the daily routines and pace of life.  Overall, it was more of a general feeling--like when you think you're waking up in your childhood bed and reality takes away that feeling of comfort and security.  Even if you realize that you are in an amazing place, that you love where you are, you don't get back that initial feeling of peace that comes from not having to question your surroundings.

Now I have that feeling again, except this time I'm not missing the United States.  We will be there in a month. While the move is long-awaited and exciting, a month is soon enough for me.  Instead I'm homesick for a place I was sure would never feel like home, Spain.

Nobody tells you this about living abroad.  Everybody talks about the discomfort of living in another country: the language barrier, the bureaucratic nightmares, the prejudices.  All these things can be true, at times, and living them is just as difficult as people say.  What they don't tell you is that at the same time, even, or maybe especially, in the greatest discomfort, you are planting a small part of yourself in the inhospitable ground.  They don't tell you that when you leave a place, even a place you were plotting to leave for almost as long as you had been there, that part of yourself--that weedy, scrappy, wide-eyed part--stays behind.  It thrives.  Months or years later you wake up feeling out of place, uncomfortable, and you know why.  You know that the only place that would feel like home at this moment is that place where you struggled and where you lost that tiny part of yourself.  You realize you are now in love with the very things you found strangest and most irritating.  The separation from them aches.

The only solution to this feeling is to go about life as usual.  Survival and happiness depends on living in the moment.  Yet, as you daydreamed once about returning home, you now plan your trip back.  Maybe not for forever, but there are minimal requirements.  You must walk down a certain street, even though it will still smell like pee.  Then there's "taking" a tiny beer in the plaza with friends.  You need to eat an almond pastry from a certain bakery and you even hope for a firecracker to be set off alongside you.  Then, with the adrenaline, you'll curse at the scoundrel, who you can no longer hate, in that colorful way that took you so long to master.  You want to feel alive, which is impossible as long as you are homesick in this new way.  Nobody tells you that when you choose to live in a foreign place, you will be homesick, not only while you are away, but also afterwards, even months and years later.    (Photo by me, taken roughly ten meters from our old front door)

Market Saturday

I pouted a little writing this title and Jack laughed at me for writing it then leaving it up for a solid ten minutes.  The truth is, today I slept through the Saturday market and the trip to town.  In Valencia, shopping in the central market was a daily possibility.  Toting my trolley, five minutes of walking, dodging motos and the older women of the neighborhood with their trolleys, brought me to the soaring, Modernist expanse of the market. Inside, was an overwhelming array of fruit, vegetables, spices, herbs, dried fruits, nuts, seafood and meat.  When we first moved to Valencia, the unexpected discovery of a pig's head or an entire monkfish, not to mention the pressure of choosing a stall out of the dozens selling what I needed, pushed me back into the supermarket.  It was only after a few months, and narrowing my options down to a few stands (based on the crowds gathering around them--I went for the oldest and most feisty patrons), that I started to get comfortable.  I learned how to ask for what I was looking for--whether it was ripe tomatoes to eat that day or good soup vegetables.  The produce was local, seasonal and cheaper than the supermarket.  I got used to being called "bonica" and the undersized fruit that the owner of my favorite fruit stand would toss in the bag with my purchases.  As a special treat, we'd pick up lunch from the Greek stand, and feast on stuffed grape leaves, and stofado straight from the container.  I left Valencia for this small town in France with a private commitment to whatever the local market might be.  

It turns out the local market here is quite different from the array of Valencia's Mercado Central.  It's a weekly market, reflecting the area's rural set-up, with the fruit and vegetables set out in stalls on the cobbled streets, while meat, pastries and fish are inside.  There seems to be only a couple of each category: goats' cheese, flowers, apples, vegetables, pies and Vietnamese take-out. There's an air of excitement to this market that I think comes from it being a special day in the week.  Saturday is market day.  I feel more comfortable here than I did in Valencia initially, but I have a long way to go before I feel the welcome of 'my' stands in the Mercado Central.  I'm back to communicating with gestures and facial expressions.  I'm hopeful, however.  I have had my eye on the basket stall for a few weeks now.  Instead of trolleys, the patrons of this market carry around small, woven baskets for their purchases.  Of course there are also the classic, French totes.  The basket seems key.  With such a basket I could, perhaps, blend in... at least before attempting to engage a vendor.  I must, however, wake up in time to get there in the first place.  As it so happens, my in-laws did make it to the market without me.  They bought a delicious, free-range chicken which was roasted for dinner.  I can't wait for next Market Saturday. (Hopefully there will be chestnuts at the market soon, image from Plain English )

A Daytrip and Feast

This weekend started with my first Saturday off-work since January and now that it's over Jack and I (and probably Lyle, in his mysterious, doggy way) agree that it was one our best weekends (excluding visitors).

We have a couple of friends, or maybe a 'friend couple'?  Regardless, they are a couple and they are our friends.  Our friends are generous.  They are also fun. Last, but not least, they have a car and a healthy spirit of adventure.  They were having a 'visitor weekend' and invited us along for a hike and some paella in the mountains near Valencia (close to Serra, I think?).

There is nothing like being in a car, climbing switchbacks into the mountains, inhaling Mediterranean-pine breezes and listening to Jamiroquai.  The destination was somewhere that we had never been before.  We scrambled our way up to a magnificent vista where you could see over Sagunt to the ocean.  While we both fear (a lot) for his safety, Lyle appears to be quite the little rock scrambler.  We held him up for an obligatory Lion King picture.  He was not anywhere near the precipice, but I'm not sure he's forgiven me.

It was a wonderful walk around, but our exercise to eating ratio was... let's just say, we ate a lot.  We had traditional, Valencian paella, but decided to opt out of the liver and snails.  So the breakdown was: chicken, rabbit, green beans, garrafo beans.  It was all cooked in a tomato/broth concoction with saffron.   It was easily the best paella we've had so far.   This time, I think I could really taste a spicy flavor that I thought was ginger, but after Amanda said rosemary, I had to smack my forehead a little.  Of course! I really like rosemary, despite the fact that I'm never tempted by the 'lucky' sprigs gypsies sell in the plaza on my way to work.  I cook with it sometimes, but it seems to dominate the flavor of everything it touches.  This was the first time I've had a 'rosemary' dish where the herb was relatively elusive, but it definitely added a little oomph to the paprika.  

Paella is a dangerous dish.  You eat a heaping portion and then, when you can take any more... it's socarrat time.  The best part of the paella (and not just in my opinion) is the tasty part that's left stuck to the bottom of the pan after, it's not exactly burnt... but a little crispier and smokier than the rest.  The traditional way to eat paella is to have the entire family eat from the dish, maybe serving to their plates, maybe not.  This gets intense at socarrat time.  Imagine an entire family of spoons digging at the bottom of the pan.  I apparently have no shame... I got more than my fair share.  

Of all the Valencian cultural traditions, I think the Sunday paella is my favorite.  As my students enthusiastically tell me, the whole family gathers in the garden to tend paella over an open wood flame and then eat it together.  It's about family togetherness.  It's also a little about calculated gluttony.  This combination appeals to me.  Hopefully, in the future, even if I'm far from Valencia, we will have Sunday paellas.  Not every Sunday, but often enough to keep alive this memory of overlooking the Mediterranean next to Jack and Lyle, without any agenda besides savoring the moment.

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.