la Minnesotana en Madrid

Readme: Mary's guide to belatedly updating blogs

2011-06-01T15:20:00.002+02:00

I have woefully neglected my blog. It’s been over a year since I last updated. And even that last update was sadly lacking. If I were at all conscientious, I would offer some plausible excuse or carefully and clearly retrace my steps for the last few months. Instead, you get this: a halfheartedly sneaky attempt to update chronologically and change the entry dates. For the next week or two I’ll be sporadically updating, but I’ll leave this at the top throughout the process.

So don’t stop when you get to the end of this entry; anything since April 2010 is new! (I think I may have just warped the time-space continuum, or something like that.)

EDIT: new entries as of 1 June

15 Feb 2011 (Mallorca)
1 Feb 2011 (more meanderings: Poland, windmills)
16 Jan 2011 (meanderings: Cuenca, Madrid, Lisbon)
1 Jan 2011 (flashback to fall/winter 2010)
11 May 2011 (current standings)

The current standings

2011-05-11T23:10:00.001+02:00

Quick Update 1: Mary's flat is Grand Central Station.
I lost both my roommates to Barcelona this fall, and almost immediately lost one of the new ones to Australia. But after several whirlwind searches, I now have two new roommates who seem to be permanent, so all is well with the world in my corner of Madrid.

Quick Update 2: Mary’s new school is excellent.
I miss everybody at my last school, of course (I visited early this winter, and the little kids went nuts! Quite heartwarming, actually, and really great to see all the people I taught with last year). But my new school is a lot closer to my apartment and I am getting along very well there. The other auxiliar who teaches with me is also named Mary. She is also American, and also blonde. The kids still mix us up on occasion, and a few even call us Mary One and Mary Two (though which is which depends entirely on the class). This year I have mainly 1st and 2nd graders, with a smattering of 4th, 5th, and 6th, and I take small groups to read books in English and to teach Science. Except on holidays, like Halloween, where I dress up as a witch and cackle the full hour to the entire class as we make endless strings of pumpkins… but that’s another story.

Quick Update 3: Mary’s days are busy.
Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays I’m at school pretty much from 9-5, and then have one class apiece each afternoon/evening. Thursdays I come home earlier, with another private class in the evening, and Fridays I’m off! Except for private classes in the afternoon and evening, of course. (There seems to be a trend, here.) I’ve been doing some freelance translation work, and whatever time is leftover I try to spend walking around town, playing with my new camera (fruits of my labor on the right), and generally enjoying life in Madrid. Does that work as an excuse for not updating? No? Too bad, that’s the best I’ve got.

By the way, it’s distressingly hard to try to remember and condense the past year into a decently sized update (and by "decently sized” I mean “not novel-length”). I suppose chronologically is the best way to order things, but to really get this right I have to go back to November. Of last year.

Oops.

So... here's a pretty picture of Madrid to make it all better :-)

Flashback Winter 2010: island getaway

2011-02-15T15:18:00.000+01:00

Mallorca

My luck was in for the long weekend in December: I escaped the fiasco caused by the air traffic controller strike and I arrived on time to sunny, warm Palma de Mallorca! Not to rub it in or anything, but while MN was getting a foot of snow, I was eating fresh dates and clementines just off the trees, with leaves still attached, shaded from the Mallorcan sunshine by a palm tree. Only an hour’s flight away from Madrid…!

I had three days of perfect weather, just me and my camera wandering around the island. The first day I spent in the city itself: the cathedral perched on the edge of the sea, the Maritime walkway past bobbing sailboats, fishnets strung down the length of the sidewalk, the Plaza Mayor with its endless stalls of Nativity scene figurines (which, in Spain, can go waaay beyond Jesus, Mary, and Joseph: you’ve got the houses and the palm trees and the animals and the woodcutters and the potters and the… well, you get the idea. You could set up the whole town of Bethlehem if you wanted! My school actually did.). And of course walking along the beach at sunset.

The next morning I got up ridiculously early (for vacation) to take a century-old train to the port town of Sóller. There were only about 10 people taking the train that early, so they only hooked up one coach, and it had lovely leather sofas! The ride out was beautiful, passing through lush valleys and past groves of orange and lemon trees. The town of Sóller was also quite pretty (and the tapas were delicious: dates wrapped in bacon, mmmm!), but the port itself was gorgeous. I spent probably an hour wandering up and down the docks, taking pictures of the blues and yellows and whites of the sailboats and skiffs reflecting in the water.

My last day in Palma I took a bus to Portocristo to see the spectacular Cuevas del Drach (Caves of the Dragon). They’re, well, cavernous. Sadly, pictures weren't allowed, though that's probably a good thing as otherwise I might still be there. Chamber after chamber of soaring ceiling studded with thousands of pale stalactite needles, or supported by giant columns ridged like spiral staircases that plunge into a cool crystalline lake. Ribbons of striated bacon, inverted stone icicles jutting from the ground—those I’ve seen before, and in more colorful versions (in SD, for example). But Drach has, I think, forever captured the #1 spot in my list of caves, thanks to the tour’s finale. We arrived in a natural amphitheater, now equipped with benches to seat around a hundred people. Blue lights partially illuminated the underground lake that spread before us, casting odd shadows on the rocks beneath the water's surface—sometimes meters deep, sometimes only inches. The water was so clear and still you could hardly tell reflection apart from underwater object. Then suddenly all the lights went out. Two old men behind me, who had the voices of 50-year smokers and the manners of 12-year-old boys, joked that a crocodile was coming to get us all. The woman next to me asked if they could please be quiet; one answered “Well, yes, we could…!” Honestly. I had a momentary vision of how certain students of mine might be in sixty years—two prophetic images were cackling right behind me. But then even they fell silent.

One, two, three boats—illuminated only by the lights that edged their gunnels from bow to stern—floated slowly into view at the far end of the lake, a good half-football field away. The oars barely made a sound. Then, in the lead boat, a violin, a cello, and (of all things) an organ started playing a concerto as they crossed the lake. Live music, underground, on a boat. It was incredible! The volume rose and then faded as they crossed the lake towards us and then turned around the corner and out of sight, while the other two boats performed a slow, drifting dance around each other and weaving among the columns anchored in the middle of the lake. Their oars kept almost grazing a protruding rock or the other boat but, in the end, never made more noise than a gentle splash. Then the orchestra-boat reappeared and brought the musicians back the way they came, until they and the music faded away completely. We were then treated to a brief light show called “Dawn”, where the cavern grew slowly lighter at the far end, then spread rosy and then palely golden fingers towards us until all was illuminated. I figured that was the end, but the rowboats had silently lined up at the base of some stairs, and we were invited to cross the lake by boat. Each boat held, in the end, around 12 spellbound people. Necks craned up, down, and around, and bodies held unnaturally still so as not to upset the balance of the overladen craft propelled surprisingly swiftly by just one man and two oars. Splashes echoed. A few drips echoed the splashes as stalactites continued their agonizingly slow formation overhead. Just before we reached the other side, we saw a low corridor—or, rather, canal—branching off to one side. Some stalactites were sawed off so the boats could pass underneath without decapitating anybody—the musicians’ hiding spot, I suppose. Then we debarked, walked up lots of stairs past more ghostly white curtains and spires of calcifications, and emerged into bright sunshine and a warm sea breeze.

Why are they called the Dragon Caves? No one ever explained it, but my theory: either the person responsible for the name was unimaginably cursi (corny or cheesy) and thought they were simply magical… or the spelunker felt like he was standing inside a giant mouth with lots of sharp teeth closing in on him. Just a theory.

Minnesota

In sharp contrast to sunny, breezy, and mild Mallorca, I went home to snowy and chilly MN for Christmas. I had a wonderful time visiting family, eating out with friends, snowshoeing in my backyard, and shoveling. Okay, so “wonderful” doesn’t exactly apply to that last one, but the ludicrous amounts of snow made for some “wonderful” pictures to wow my students with. People here look at the picture I took of the thermometer (at only ten degrees or so below freezing) and say “But… you can’t actually go outside in that, can you?!” (Certain other people claim it's all Photoshop trickery. I invite them to come visit me in January sometime.)

Flashback 2010: more meanderings

2011-02-01T21:25:00.002+01:00

Summer 2010: Homeward bound

After the fiesta del agua at school, I packed a few bags and left temporarily for home, family, and cabin. I was lucky enough to be able to spend a good chunk of the summer Up North with my dad, working, fishing, and watching the ospreys glide by. I know this is supposed to be my blog about my home in Spain, but there is truly nowhere on earth I feel more at ease and more at home than on Lake Vermilion.

The other highlight of the summer, aside from catching up with friends and family, was a college friend’s wedding—I was thrilled to be able to stay home long enough to celebrate with Katie and Blake!

Fall 2010

A glimpse of Poland

It took 24 hours and three separate planes to get me back to Madrid. On the way, I had a seven hour layover in (of all places) Warsaw, Poland. Being the good Polish descendent that I am, I took full advantage of the time and spent most of it in the historic city center. I was told that it is not the most beautiful city, but I was very pleasantly surprised. The old center, at least, is gorgeous! And colorful! I suppose in a country with a colder climate and grayer skies, it helps to gild and paint the buildings. Wonder why we’ve never thought of that in MN…

I had four hours to wander around Market Square, Castle Square, and lots of streets with (for me) utterly unpronounceable names. People kept coming up to me and asking me things in Polish. Most likely directions or the time, but they could have been asking me the derivative formula for calculating the exact landing spot of the Mayflower in an adjacent parallel universe, for all I know. All I could say was “Prosze” (please) and “uhhh”, accompanied by a helpless look. It was actually an odd feeling: it’s the first time I’ve been mistaken for a native and not actually known the language. Until then, all of my traveling has been in Spain, English-speaking countries, or Portugal (where Spanish works well enough, and absolutely no one mistakes me for Portuguese. Spanish, yes, oddly enough.).

Windmills

Continuing the theme of random trips, I hopped on a nearly-empty bus for a two-hour journey to a small town in the middle of La Macha (de cuyo nombre sí que me acuerdo!): Consuegra. The only other people on the bus were a pair of Japanese girls and several little old ladies. Once in the town, I immediately started up an endless series of stairs until I came to the main (and, really, only) attraction: windmills. A dozen honest-to-goodness, quixotic (in the original meaning of the word: Quixote-esque!) windmills are strung across the crest of a hill. They march around an old castle and reign over the patchwork vista of russet, sage green, and goldenrod that is La Mancha. I spent a marvelous few hours trying to photographically capture the shadow of windmill arms curving across the rough white surface of windmill towers, wandering around each and every one, and even climbing up inside one of them (it doubled as a tourist shop, and the owner told me to say hi to my grandma for him, so here it is: Hi, Grandma!). Each windmill had its own name. My favorite: Chispas, with its sky blue door. A little girl seated atop her daddy’s shoulders grabbed one of the arms and started to shake it until the father told her to stop “or we’ll see on the news tonight: Little Girl Breaks Famous ‘Chispas’ Windmill!". The old giant somehow withstood the onslaught.

Mary plays dress-up, and Other Adventures

Other Fall highlights: a flamenco show at Casa Patas which was possibly even better than the one I had previously seen in Sevilla (you know it’s a good place to be when someone in the audience is also a flamenco dancer and gets up at the end, in jeans and boots, to join in). A Halloween party at Tasha’s, complete with pumpkin carving, witch wigs, and a “guess-the-body-part” game. Thanksgiving dinner, also at Tasha’s, complete with pumpkin pie! Related to the pumpkin carving? We may never know… ;-)

And, also in November, the U.S. Marine Corps Birthday Ball, hosted by the U.S. Embassy at the Hilton. Long story, but basically an Embassy official invited a whole bunch of auxiliares to the Ball, and all of two of us went. I bought myself a fancy dress, was seated at a table full of Marines, and felt more than a little like Cinderella. I schmoozed and danced and met the ambassador (very briefly) and, well, had a ball!

Flashback Spring 2010: Meanderings

2011-01-16T15:30:00.000+01:00

Meanderings: Cuenca
Along came a puente weekend, but I failed to plan some exotic, three-day getaway in time. Instead, I got up (relatively) early on Saturday and took a two-hour bus ride into Cuenca, in La Mancha. The main attraction there: the hanging houses, which sprawl down the side of a gorge and cling there for dear life. Rock and building meld together with a few old wood beams for support. To get there, you must climb a “little hill” (!) and cross a very high bridge. It was a blustery day, and my old fear of heights reared its head and kept me right in the middle of the bridge as people with their dogs and little kids shoved their way around me.

Cuenca is a vertical city. Houses are often very tall and quite skinny, and to navigate your way around the old part of town is to be endlessly climbing and descending “a few stairs” (!!). Trekking my way around town, I was stunned at all the color. I never expected to see such bright buildings in the middle of La Mancha. Old, mottled stone, yes. Robin’s egg blue? Goldfinch yellow? Gunmetal gray flanked by pink and orange? Much more unexpected!

Sadly, not having a car, I was unable to visit the other main attraction of Cuenca, located about 15 miles outside of town: the Enchanted City, a maze of odd rock formations not unlike the Garden of the Gods in Colorado, though probably not as colorful. But just across the bridge from the old city you can see a few hints as to what la Ciudad Encantada must be like…

Meanderings: Madrid
One morning I wandered down to a rather ordinary looking garden next to Plaza España to have a look at the Egyptian temple there. Yep, you read right. El Templo de Debod was donated by Egypt to Spain around 40 years ago in gratitude for Spain’s archeological aid. You can still see some hieroglyphics carved on the inside of the temple—not your everyday museum in Spain.

Some family friends were over visiting their daughter here in Spain, and I had the pleasure of giving them a slightly whirlwind tour of my favorite corners of Madrid. It’s kind of fun to play tourist every once in a while, to pop into one of those incense-selling stores and fantasize about buying the giant bronze tiger sculpture—where you might put it, how you might get it there, how much of a hassle that might be, and whether it mightn’t just be easier to pick up and move to Madrid rather than transport the heavy beast across the ocean…. Or, you could just buy a little wooden bird and call it a day. If you must.

Then, just before Easter last year, my parents arrived in Madrid after a long flight from MSP, and I got to play tour guide. We toured the Royal Palace (a first for me; my favorite part was the endless rows of porcelain jars in the old pharmacy), wandered the Retiro gardens, craned our necks staring up at the architecture along Gran Vía, had lunches and suppers in some of my favorite haunts around town, and even got to see the inside of Parliament!

For me, though, the best part of their visit was introducing my folks to my Spanish friends and families. Before my parents had even arrived, I had already filled their week-long schedule with lunch and dinner dates with my favorite people in the city! Looking back, I’m pretty sure that week's worth of meeting the various people who have adopted me here in Spain is the reason my parents so readily supported yet another year’s return to Madrid. Así que gracias de nuevo a todos! And of course I got to bring them around some of the most beautiful corners of my adopted city: I tried to share my obsession with the Cibeles fountain, we wandered through the quote-lined streets of Barrio de las Letras, we sat for a long while just smelling the daffodils and watching the passersby in Plaza de Oriente, we ate jamón in Plaza Mayor and saw the Palm Sunday procession on its way to the cathedral… in short (or long), a wonderful week for all three of us.

My culinary masterpiece of the visit, if not the entire year, was dinner at my apartment with my parents and roommates: I tried my hand at homemade paella! It turned out marvelously, if I may say so myself. With, of course, a little advice from one of the teachers at school… and one of my students… and the fishmonger down the street. Naturally.

Lisbon, Round 2
After my parents left, all too soon for all three of us, I went once more to Lisbon to spend the rest of my spring break. There I met up with Alberto el Virrey and two of his friends, who were kind enough to let me join their wanderings throughout the city. Though I had enjoyed traveling alone through Lisbon the first time, and the second time around spent some lovely mornings by myself getting lost in the winding, blinding white streets of the Alfama, it was even better to have company. Lots of laughter and silly pictures, not to mention a crazy night out in the Bairro Alto where we ended up as part of an impromptu concert in the street at 4 in the morning! I ended up retracing a lot of my steps from the previous visit, but took more time to just relax and soak in the sights—and the Portuguese sun, which finally made an appearance! Unlike my previous December trip, this time the weather couldn’t have been nicer. Blue skies, a warm sun and a cool breeze, with cloud shadows dancing across the walls—it couldn’t have been more perfect.

Flashback Fall 2009/Winter 2010: My five-year-old students sang “Let It Snow”… and it did.

2011-01-01T23:21:00.000+01:00

School

Towards the end of November, they had a castañera at school: a chestnut-roasting party. Delicious, though just a few castañas go a long way, but it was delightful holding a couple piping-hot chestnuts in my hands in a cool breeze. And since this was held on the preschool playground and tiny little fingers had a hard time prying open stubborn nutshells, I was quickly forced to become an expert in chestnut shelling. I had slivers under my thumbnails for days.
Soon after that was Thanksgiving (the next best thing to being home: Pilgrim hats and Indian headdresses, pumpkin pie, turkey, and a whipped cream fight, with many thanks to hostess Kacie and her flatmates!), and I had long discussions with most of my classes about what they were thankful for. The five-year-olds, naturally, had the most interesting answers, ranging from their families to Virgin Mary to their dolls to soldiers to flowers to… pigeons. Yep. Thanksgiving in Spain—never a dull moment.

We also had the Christmas concert to deal with. After months of teaching the same Christmas tunes until our ears rang with jingle bells, all the little kiddies turned up dressed in the most adorable costumes. Santas, reindeer (complete with bright red foam noses!), angels, stars, and a slightly bizarre conglomeration of Hindu, Hawaiian, cowboy, Indian, and Argentine dancers. Oh, and kung-fu fighters. Because it was also Multicultural/Biodiversity Month, and… yeah, that’s all the explanation I’ve got!

At any rate, as I mentioned in the title, I spent all of December teaching “Let It Snow” to the five-year-olds. Apparently it worked a little too well…

Traffic and Weather Report

I think every flight I took over Christmas vacation was delayed by weather. At separate points in time, I was nearly stranded in Zurich and Chicago, and was frantically texting roommates and asking them to notify my folks (and vice-versa, on the return trip). The details don’t bear repeating, but it was a giant, headache-inducing fiasco on both sides of the ocean. But, both times, I eventually arrived. To a LOT of snow. Isn’t it funny how quickly you get used to a warmer climate? Despite not feeling the cold of Madrid nearly as much as the madrileños, I got home and promptly froze.

I do believe we had a high one day of -1ºF, and I was definitely up at 7 a.m. Christmas day to snowblow so we could actually leave our driveway. I’m sure we got at least 18 inches while I was home. Made for some great photographs to impress my students back here, though! Even if certain people still claim not to believe me. :-) (Still working on that snowball shipment, Jose. It might be stuck in customs.)

Because when I got back to Madrid, just after Pichu (bless her heart) picked me up from the airport, it started to snow. Fairly heavily. So my first night back in Spain after the holidays had me feeling like I’d never left Minnesota: Pichu and I were eating supper in a Burger King and watching the thick white stuff coat everything outside. The next morning I ended up not going to work at all, because the buses to Majadahonda weren’t running due to the snow! Total accumulation: about 1 ½ inches. Snow day. Go figure.

Irony (n.): surviving a month of winter in Minnesota only to slip and fall on the ice in Madrid. But, once again, the photos were worth it: an icicle-covered Cibeles fountain is not exactly an everyday sight.

Carnival

Due to an unfortunately timed migraine, I did not get out and find some fabulous costume to scare the little kiddies like I did on Halloween. (Most of them were quite delighted, actually, but the first graders still called me “witch” and ran away when they saw me in the hallway a month later.) So I did the next best thing: I grabbed an apron and a spoon and made the world’s tallest and most awkward chef’s hat out of a giant piece of construction paper. All day long kids asked me if we were going to cook in class, and all day long I had to crouch to get through doorways. (Beginning to see how my dad feels walking through old European buildings…) Aside from the English teachers/flies buzzing around in their mini-strainer/compound eye glasses and saran wrap wings, most of the preschool and grade school kids were dressed up as various peoples from around the world. My second graders were cowboys and Indians and shot me dead a number of times. I guess I should be thankful I wasn’t scalped! I also had the interesting experience of helping kindergarteners get all costumed up in felt skirts or suspenders. And I saw the world’s cutest costume conglomeration: a little two-year old, wandering around dressed as a fuzzy little giraffe… with a Shrek mask. After everyone had paraded around the playground, they had their own Burial of the Sardine—only they burned the poor, giant paper fish instead of burying a little smelly dead one, like happens on Ash Wednesday somewhere in Madrid. (If that makes no sense at all to you, look up my blog entry from February of 2008 called “What to do with a dead fish”. If it still makes no sense at all, well, I can’t blame you on that one. It’s a sardine, for crying out loud!)

Interlude 2: "Yes, we want!" ...to learn English poorly?

2010-04-17T12:42:00.006+02:00

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/madrid/Yes/we/want/anunciar/coles/bilingues/mal/ingles/elpepusoc/20100416elpmad_1/Tes

The reason people like me have jobs in Spain, the reason those jobs can sometimes be challenging... and the reason more people should hire us.

Seriously, people. This is just embarrassing.

(For those of you who speak only English, I'll see if I can work up a translation one of these days. Basically, the new slogan to advertise bilingual schools is simply "Yes, we want!" No direct object in sight.)

LOLcats have taken over the Consejería de Educación. It's the only logical conclusion.

Interlude: obsesión fotográfica

2010-04-05T17:28:00.004+02:00

Reviewing, editing, and hunting among a myriad of my old photographs is at once an exercise in patience (there’s so many!) and in vanity (some of them came out quite well!), and a swift jog to the memory—which, I imagine, is a large part of the reason why I take so many pictures in the first place. I don’t want to forget a single corner of the places I have loved.

A friend once half-jokingly accused me of paying more attention to the pictures I take than to my actual surroundings. On one hand, that’s not true at all. I do enjoy the actual traveling more than I enjoy taking pictures. I don’t see the world solely through a camera lens. And yet… it’s hard to stop seeing in angles and light and repeating or contrasting elements. Photography is an art, and I take as much pleasure in it as I do in my writing. And, of course, there’s the other half of the equation, the half that keeps me clicking the shutter even if the light is poor or the colors drab.

One look at those photos, and I am once again walking down a cobblestone street lined with jewel-toned tiles, once again breathing the tangy ocean air, once again smelling ripe oranges or hearing the trill of a goldfinch. The truth is, I hoard these photographs (I almost never delete even the muddled ones). I keep them as a backup, a trigger for my memory. I have spent significant time in nursing homes; I have seen firsthand memory ravaged by time. And I know a few photos could never stave off that kind of disaster, but I don’t want to fall prey even to a casual forgetting. I do not want to surrender my memories to the mist of time that devours so much of our lives. I have been wondrously happy here. Twenty years from now, I want to have something vivid to hold onto—not just the names of a few cities ticked off a list or a vague recollection of contentment. It’s the same with everywhere I go, every place I’ve called home. I want to be able to conjure the walls of my house, the needles of the pine trees surrounding the cabin, the color of the sky caught in the spray of a fountain… the people and places I may never see again, and that are therefore all the more precious.

I try not to see the world through my camera lens (though judging by the sheer quantity of photos I take, many of you may not believe me). But I am desperate to have it capture my world, because I am stubborn and greedy and refuse to let go completely and consign any one moment solely to the dim past. So when my camera comes out at a dinner or on a walk down Gran Vía or even for the snow-covered branches of a birch tree back home, please bear with me. It may be a futile pursuit to try and capture each fleeting moment, but it soothes my heart nonetheless. And who knows—some of those pictures might just turn out to be beautiful, too.

I now return you to your regular programming.

through the looking glass, and what she found there

2010-03-06T15:38:00.007+01:00

Wonderland (a.k.a. the town of Sintra)

I spent a day in Sintra with María and Luis, a Spanish couple I met at the B&B who invited me along as our plans coincided. It made for a lovely day with pleasant company, and though they took very few pictures themselves, they didn't seem to mind my halts and wanderings. And if we went along at a slightly faster pace than I normally would, well, at least we got to see more. Even the weather cooperated, giving my first glimpse of sun all weekend.

Sintra is a little storybook town about 20 miles outside Lisbon. The streets are walled by azure blues and cotton candy pinks, saffron yellow and sunset orange…. Even the ruined, tumbledown houses were enchanting. We saw one we dubbed the Casa Fantasmas, or the Haunted House. It was all moss and broken windows, vine-covered gates held shut by rusting locks and the sheer weight of ivy. It was right out of a gothic novel—lushness and decay intertwined, melancholy writ in leaf and stone. As a town, Sintra reminded me vaguely of Segovia—old, quaint, comfortable—only more vertical, and with the color setting on 150% saturate.

It has an odd palace with giant conical kitchen chimneys (various theories on these include a prescient vision of a particular Madonna costume…) right in the center of town. The city itself is also studded with miniature palaces and giant mansions, including the Quinta da Regaleira with its mysterious gardens and tile-decorated tunnels. And if you start on a steep hike up the mountainside, you’ll find even more impressive palaces.

We stopped at the Castelo dos Mouros, the ruins of an 8th or 9th century Moorish castle that sprawls across the mountain, overlooking the city.

A slightly strenuous walk further up, and we arrived at the spectacular Palacio da Pena, which seems to have been inspired by an Easter egg. Let me rephrase: el Palacio da Pena seems to be a giant Easter egg, only with turrets and battlements. You sort of have to see it to believe it. I found the giant red, yellow, and blue walls enchanting rather than gaudy, and I even liked the ghoulish sea monster guarding the main gate. And inside… let’s just say it’s good to be the king. Or queen. Or lady-in-waiting. Or head secretary to the ladies-in-waiting… You get the picture.

These monarchs must have had a phobia of blank space. Even every corner of the ceiling was ornately decorated. Jaw-droppingly decorated. Chandeliers shaped like vines, complete with flowers and translucent leaves; bronze statues of Turks bearing candelabras; intricately carved and gilded desks; walls painted to look like carvings; a teak-filled India-themed room; even a room with papier-mâché furniture, of all things! (The little informational plaque neglected to mention if this last was fully functional or not.)

I could have easily spent another day in Sintra, exploring the subterranean passages under the Quinta da Regaleira, combing the back alleys of town, visiting the other castles buried in the surrounding mountains—perhaps next time.

...and now, the rest of the story.

So, overall, everything went swimmingly—except for the return flight, which was delayed by 3 hours or so, and I got home ridiculously late and tired. Even that had a high point, though: when we were finally on board, the pilot apologized for the delay of “aproximadamente dos horas”—and all the passengers erupted in a chorus of indignant voices “TRES HORAS!” When the pilot repeated in English “approximately two hours”, one lone voice cried out from the back of the plane “THREE HOURS!” No, it wasn’t mine. I just muttered unpleasant things sleepily to myself and went back to my book.

the ups and downs (literally!) of Lisbon

2010-02-14T19:00:00.020+01:00

“Are you going to make a bridge?”

In Spain, long weekends are usually puentes—literally, bridges: a festival falls on a Thursday, for example, and people “bridge” the festival and the weekend by taking Friday off too. Or, as in the case of this particular weekend, a Monday-Tuesday combination. I think it’s a fabulous concept, one we should adopt in the U.S. as soon as possible, along with siesta. Sure, less work gets done. But we’d all be a lot happier! Anyway, as for the title… well, that’s one of the teachers at my school trying his best to ask about vacation plans in English. Some things just don’t translate.

I did, in the end, “make a bridge” and finally made it to Lisbon! I arrived at my bed & breakfast (!) early Saturday morning. The owner, Antonio, promptly sat me down and gave me maps and advice in a combination of English, Spanish, and Portuguese that quickly became the standard for my trip. Then, instead of just pointing me to a supermarket to buy some shampoo (sigh, airline restrictions), he took me there in his car… by way of a long detour through the old part of town and a stop at an overlook for an enchanting glimpse of the city. Quite the welcome, eh?

Cuesta la cuesta!

Lisbon is a rather vertical city made up of seven hills, and therefore seven distinct neighborhoods. I mainly covered one area of the city per day, so I’ll organize by neighborhood. Regardless of the location, though, I did enough walking and trekking and navigating steep hills and rough cobblestones to be guilt-free when it came to indulging in some of Lisbon’s many delightful pastries! How often is it, after all, that despite all your best efforts you lose weight on vacation?

Baixa & Rossio

The elegant part of town, the heart of downtown Lisbon, with grand plazas and statues and fountains and a triumphant arch (which was, oddly enough, flanked by giant sculptures of the Beatles). I spent a fair amount of time hovering in and around the bakeries and pastelarias there, and taking pictures of the Christmas lights strung over the perfectly straight, criss-cross streets of la Baixa. I ran across an artisan jewelry fair in the grandest plaza of them all, Praça do Comercio, right next to the river. Lots of leather and glasswork, which almost made up for the fact that much of the plaza was under construction and cut off from view.

I think every time I wandered through Rossio I ended up getting a delectable pastéis de nata (cream-filled pastry) or a strawberry-shaped marzipan treat or a lovely suspiro, a swirl of hardened meringue that melts immediately on your tongue. I ate well in Lisbon, and cheaply. Bacalao dorado, a lovely cod dish I had tried once before, is still my favorite, though. And the coffee was every bit as strong as I expected it to be! Almost like coffee-flavored syrup… with effects akin to a small caffeine bomb.

Bairro Alto & Chiado

The hip part of town. Though I didn’t bother going out on the town, I did stumble across an elegant little wine tasting erected under a pair of tents. Live musicians, expensive wines, good cheese—and extremely cheap (Lisbon is far less expensive than Madrid, across the board). And, oddly enough, I ran into a few Americans currently studying in Madrid and also vacationing in Lisbon. Actually, I think I may have met more Spaniards than Portuguese on my little trip. It seems everyone in Spain flocks to Portugal for puente!

I saw relatively little of Bairro Alto compared with the other neighborhoods I spent my time in, but I did spend several hours in the burned out ruins of a church up there. Instead of a ceiling, the stone arches overhead look like the blackened skeleton of an inverted ship’s hull, and everything is open to sky. I found it rather enchanting at sunset—the photos do far more justice to it than my description does.

Alfama

La Alfama is the tangled, sprawling Moorish neighborhood that climbs its way up the hill to the castle and then slips down on the other side, stretching tendrils of narrow streets out to the river. It is low-slung decrepit houses and tumbledown gardens flanked by gull-white churches. Entire façades covered in colorful, hand-painted tiles. Rippling terracotta rooftops. Rain glistening on uneven cobblestones. Stray cats slinking in the shadows. A lonely, shaggy sunflower climbing up an iron trellis. And faint strains of fado from somewhere further up, further in… It is the home of fado, that mournful Portuguese song that traces its roots to the sea, and goes hand in hand with one of my favorite words, which coincidentally has no good translation. Saudade, a sort of nostalgia for something that never was.

After wandering through Sé Cathedral, pausing at every overlook to capture dazzling glimpses of the city and the sparkling river Tejo, and stumbling across a gem of an old church, garden, and tile-covered patio, I heard someone singing and followed it to a little restaurant I probably couldn’t find again if I tried. I listened to a few songs of fado: one woman sang, two men played the guitar. Beautiful, haunting, sweet. And when I went to sit down and eat, I discovered that the fadistas were actually the owners and waiters as well. Go figure. I ordered an octopus salad, and one of them came up to me and proffered his guitar. “You’re next!” he said. (People speak a fair bit more English in Lisbon than they do in Madrid…) He gave me two more chances before the meal and concert were over! They do say blondes have more fun…

Castelo Sao Jorge perches atop the Alfama, overlooking the whole city of Lisbon. It was spritzing rain when I made the trek up, but I think it was the buffeting wind that drove away most everyone else. Luckily, I´d had the foresight (or sheer dumb luck) to bring a miniature tripod, because between the wind trying to snatch my camera away and the weak, dim light that managed to filter through the looming clouds, my poor camera wouldn’t have been up to a single steady shot on its own. But the view was amazing, past the droplets of rain coating my glasses!

One last delight of the Alfama is the network of trams that run throughout. Wires overhead curve with the streets, and cars and trams roll in line with each other up and down the hills. Yellow number 28, the most famous, takes a circuitous route through the heart of the Alfama, but there are others—red, wood-paneled, white paint peeling, that wind through the neighborhood.

I wish I could have spent more time wandering the Alfama, and I wish I’d had better light. It was the one thing I missed: the fabled Lisbon light. It was raining off and on for much of my vacation, though never too heavily. Naturally, the day I left it cleared up!

Belém

Belém is further out from the center of Lisbon, and at first glance almost looks like a smaller town rather than part of the same city. Smaller houses in chalky hues of red, blue, green, and gold; orange trees lining the sidewalks; a famous pastelería with a line winding out the door, everyone waiting patiently for a little cream-filled, cinnamon-dusted pastry; and, of course, the more monumental highlights.

The Monument to the Discoveries is a monolith rising over the river with much larger-than-life, angular statues marching up its sides. Down the road… er, river, pier, whatever… is the Torre de Belém. Sadly, I didn’t have time to go inside, but it seemed to have much the same style of architecture as the Monasterio dos Jerónimos, which is certainly the jewel of Belém. (Hm… a Belém gem… heehee! Sorry. I think I was weaned on Dr. Seuss.)

The monastery is impressive enough on the outside, grand and eloquent, with a beautiful church inside, naturally. But the two-story cloister is far and away the best part. I spent two hours winding through grapevine columns and past filigreed windows, peering at miniscule carvings of leaves in that most intricate of styles—Manuelino, named after a Portuguese king who must have had some phobia of empty space because everything is carved, engraved, sculpted, or otherwise decorated. Up on the second level of the cloister, I even saw my first ever grasshopper gargoyle. Now how can you beat that?

Up next: Sintra.

Lovely Lisbon: flashback entries

2010-02-14T18:23:00.006+01:00

Lisbon (to backtrack significantly to the beginning of December... oops) was, I think, the first solo vacation I have ever taken. Naturally, I love traveling with friends or family—but this was a whole new kind of relaxation! No worries about making someone impatient with my incessant photo-snapping, no one else’s preferences to consider on food or beverage, no one wanting to go back to the hotel too early or stay out too late, no one to drag me into a chic clothing store or a cheesy tourist shop or to try to keep track of in a crowd. For the most part, I still prefer traveling with company. But Lisbon, in just a few short days, has become my getaway city, my writerly retreat, my whimsical, selfish indulgence.

Needless to say, I loved it.

Normally I organize things chronologically. Or, rarely, in a Top 10 list. But Lisbon, though relatively small, is a varied city. Each new neighborhood (bairro) has its own personality. Lisbon is roughly made up of seven hills (each basically its own bairro), most of which I was able to visit. So I’ve organized this little travelogue (should it be travelblogue?) according to the bairros, to collect my observations and recollections of each into one place rather than scattering them—well, to the seven hills.

I started part of this some time ago (as is only natural, given the whole trip was two months ago!), but it’s taken me a while to finish… and to sort through all those pictures. The next few updates will be me trying, woefully late, to catch up to myself. So to speak.

Resolute

2010-01-11T16:57:00.005+01:00

I was going to write some nice, boring New Year’s resolutions, and the first one that came to mind was “I will not procrastinate”. Well, we all know THAT will never happen, so I came up with something a little different instead…

I hereby resolve, in this New Year of 2010, to procrastinate by the following methods (in no particular order):

1.) Finish organizing and editing my photos… and perhaps work on deleting a few for a change.

2.) Update my blog more often with random and/or trivial bits of information and observations.

3.) Write meandering notes to friends and family back home.

4.) Have coffee or go out for tapas with friends around Madrid.

5.) Type up all those quotes I have scribbled on scraps of paper.

6.) Translate my thesis into English.

7.) Learn to cook something out of the ordinary… like fresh crab.

8.) Try to publish a short story or two.

9.) Take a couple day or weekend trips around parts of Spain I haven’t been to yet.

10.) Keep wandering around Madrid until I know it by heart!

An actual update with my trips to Lisbon and Minnesota, as well as some more crazy weather in Spain and a few travel fiascos, will be forthcoming, along with accompanying photos--just as soon as I start procrastinating!

Happy New Year,
Mary

just a little crazy weather...

2009-11-17T20:15:00.008+01:00

BREAKING NEWS: This weekend, I met someone who has read my thesis.

I’ll just let that sentence stand on its own while that sinks in. Someone besides my advisor (and, hopefully, Justin)… actually… read… my… thesis. She was a NYU master’s student last year, and also doing her thesis on self-translation, so there is a logical explanation. But still. I feel absurdly proud.

In other news, I finally made it up to Segovia, where I had a lovely relaxing lunch with Ana María, my old host mother, and her oldest son, Alfredo. Hopefully I’ll get to see the rest of my Segovian siblings one of these days…

By the way, welcome to the new and improved redesigned blog. I had a little too much fun in Photoshop one day and couldn’t resist showing it off. That, and I was tired of pink.

Little kids: still equal parts adorable munchkins and unbearable monsters. One little first grader still shouts “Bruja! Witch!” every time she sees me in the hallway, and one of my second graders still wants to know why I didn’t make myself useful and sweep the floor when I had a broom. Little 5-year-old Paula still tackle-hugs me—usually from behind, when I’m least expecting it.

I went up to Plaza Castilla on a particularly blustery Sunday several weeks ago. It’s the 90th anniversary of Madrid’s metro system, and to celebrate they had an exposition of old Madrid Transit buses. They brought out the old Ford Model T “bus” used in 1914, along with other old, shiny (and not so shiny) models. I know next to nothing about cars, but old ones are pretty. Even clunky buses.

I also have some rather spectacular sunset photos from a 3.5 mile walk I took around town one afternoon. I left the apartment thinking I’d head down just a tiny ways past Puerta de Toledo to an overlook where I could take some quick pictures of the evening sky. Well, I ended up at the Palacio Real instead, and from there ambled down to Plaza España, and then to Sol, and finally back home again. All of which means nothing to those of you who don’t know Madrid, but let’s just say it was a vigorous walk with a result of 200+ photos. The picture here is actually not from that particular hike (haven't sorted through the photos yet), but I wanted to prove to my Dad that Spain does indeed have beautiful sunsets. Of course, he'll just say I faked it in Photoshop! (It's actually from the Retiro in October.)

And because no blog entry would be complete without a little humiliation, I’ll tell you about last week at school: I actually participated in gym class. I think hell froze over. There was a reason (it would have had to be a good one…): the shyest, quietest girl in the 5th grade class came late and had been crying, and none of the groups playing volleyball made room for her. So instead of watching her sit in the corner and toss the ball up into the air by herself (so disconcertingly familiar…), I grabbed a ball and dragged her over to the net. When a couple other girls came over, I thought “Finally! Now she can play with them and I can escape.” No such luck. They were ready to wander off on their own again if I didn’t stay and play, so I did. And promptly got hit in the back of the head by a volleyball launched from the opposite end of the gym. Some things never change. Okay, you can stop laughing now. Really.

And now for Only in Spain (Culinary Edition):

ham-flavored potato chips.
calamari (either fried or in a sauce made from its own ink) for lunch… in the school cafeteria. Did I mention school lunches have two courses?
a late October/early November pastry: huesos de santo. Yep. Saint’s bones. (Picture to the right)
of course, now that there’s a slight chill in the air, the chestnut roasters have come out to take over busy street corners with their delectable smells wafting through the air. Some deluxe stands also have roasted yams and corn on the cob.
Even Burker King closes on Sundays.
Not quite an “only in Spain” moment, but I am ridiculously happy that I got several a pound of Clementines and five pounds of potatoes, plus several peppers, kiwis, and bananas, for under $5. Hooray for fruterías! The picture is one of the 4 fruit stores within a 4-block radius of my apartment. And they already know me there...

And let’s not forget its brand new (and less auspicious) companion program, Lessons from the Culinarily Challenged. This week’s episode may be short, but I have no doubt that there will be further installments.

My roommate Lidia gave me a great idea for what to do with leftover, mushy bananas: fry them up with some sugar and a tiny bit of cognac. Sounds delicious, right? Well, let’s just say that plum-flavored brandy makes a veeery odd substitute for the cognac (which, it turns out, we actually did have, and I was just too dumb to recognize it in the cupboard). Ah well. Plum-flavored bananas. Mmmm.

"Está lloviendo!" "No, está organizando."

2009-11-05T16:59:00.001+01:00

A few amusing anecdotes from the kiddies:

Today a cloud passed overhead, and immediately all the 2nd graders craned their necks and started speculating on the weather. The consensus was that it was raining (it wasn't), and a few said it was snowing (it was about 55 degrees out). One then tried to say it was hailing (granizando), but somehow came up with "It's organizing" (organizando) instead!
I believe I already mentioned the little girl who confuses rubber (British eraser) with rabbit. Well, now I have a whole kindergarten class confusing kitchens and chickens.
I'll forgive the little ones anything when they give me hugs. I can't help it. One of them told me yesterday that she doesn't want me to ever leave! It almost makes up for having class with the 5th graders...
According to one 5th grader, England and Ireland are in Australia, Canada is in Europe, and New Zealand has changed its name to New Scotland. Somehow, finding out that American kids aren't the only ones bad at geography does not lessen my despair any.
I dressed up as a witch for Halloween (big curly black and silver wig, broom, cape, hat--the works) and got to scare a few kids and even a teacher or two. I had an absolute blast with the preschoolers and the primary kids (the older ones mainly just asked me if it was my real hair). The best moment was chasing the 1st graders away from my classroom... only to have them turn around and chase me an hour later. ("Es una bruja! A por ella!" / "She's a witch! Get her!") Those 6-year-olds are ruthless.

And a couple "only in Spain" moments:

The 70+ -year-old men who hit on me in the street. One asked if I was married. My favorite comment so far, though, was "What a work of art!" I really should be keeping a tally.
Spanish common wisdom: don't put leftovers in the fridge right away. Putting hot food into a cold place breeds bacteria. Better to let it sit out... overnight... possibly uncovered.
Cowboys, superheroes, and princesses are simply not appropriate Halloween costumes. That's what carnival is for. Halloween is supposed to be scary!
Mannequins here have nipples.
You go to the tobacco store to get your metro pass.
Calamari sandwiches. (Delicious! No, seriously. It really was!)
Cars that park in the middle of the street. As in, on the yellow line (well, it's white here, but you know what I mean). Jose and Pichu keep making fun of me, but I just can't get over that.
Bimbo: it's not a blonde, it's a brand of sliced bread.

Again, none of those are new, but they never cease to amuse me! (Well, except for the 70-year-old men. That gets old rather fast. ...No pun intended.)

Well, I'm back again!

2009-10-17T01:09:00.002+02:00

Hello again, friends near and far!

(link to photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/mary.dellenbach, also listed at the top of the right-hand column)

As you can see from my rather ancient (as the internet goes) previous entry, I did not anticipate having the chance to update this blog with any more aventuras madrileñas. But a large stroke of luck and some very dear friends had me heading back again to Spain for 12 marvelous days in mid-January. Yes, I said January, and yes, I know that was 10 months ago. But my current job is an indirect result of that trip: I now find myself back again in Madrid for one more year and a whole new set of adventures teaching English!

I will make some pathetic attempt at chronological order for this long-overdue update. Back in January….

El sushi manchego

Two of my old Madrid roommates, José and Yuko, were married in January, and I flew over for their wedding. For the first time, upon landing in Spain I was able to go directly to someplace I already considered home. Despite all the craziness of wedding planning and friends visiting from near and far, they welcomed me back into their apartment, and it was like I had never left. My first meal back in Spain was, naturally, a Japanese dish (cooked by Yuko). The first couple days passed in a jetlagged blur as I met with old friends from NYU, my host families, and former professors. Of course, the camera came out as I wandered around town, taking all the photographs I had never gotten around to the previous year. I also discovered a traveling parade of cows (Minnesotans: they’re like the Snoopys and Charlie Browns around town)—see the Madrid 2009 photo album. I happened to be visiting Rosa, my former host mother in Madrid, the day of President Obama’s inauguration, so we watched it together. If not for her, I would have forgotten about it completely!

The weekend of the wedding itself was without a doubt the highlight of the trip. It took place in Ruidera, a small town near a string of lakes in the middle of La Mancha (it’s sort of a National Park kind of place). I drove down (about a 2.5 hour trip) with a couple of cousins, and on the way we saw all these strange bonfires on the side of the road. The towns were celebrating… something (the end of the growing season?)… by burning the old grapevines from the vineyards. The fires were just starting to die down when we pulled into Ruidera at around 10 p.m.—just in time for supper.

The dinner was a delicious and rather hilarious blend of Spanish and Japanese food, as was only right and proper for such an occasion. Tortilla de patatas, jamón serrano, local wine, and sushi. Yep. The first time I ever ate sushi was in the middle of La Mancha. Now, I admit that, even after living with a japonesa for six months, I still can’t use chopsticks properly, so I’m hardly one to talk. But it was a riot watching dozens of Spaniards fumbling with chopsticks (at least I didn’t feel so alone!) before finally deciding to simply spear chunks of tortilla and rolls of sushi through the heart. It had Yuko and the Japanese guests in stitches. Dinner was followed by what I believe was the first Naives Out concert in Spain. (Naives Out: Jose, Yuko, and Pasquin. JP and his violin joined in for the occasion.) Dancing and a trip to a bar down the street rounded off the evening; I think the locals were rather bemused by the sudden influx of city people, not to mention the foreigners! (I was the only American there, but was joined by people from Japan, England, France, Czechoslovakia, and surely at least one more country I’m forgetting.) The night ended around 4 the next morning.

The new day began with a trip to the Lagunas de Ruidera, the system of narrow lakes just outside town. We all piled into a few cars, most everyone complaining about the cold. I was thrilled with the weather: the lakes were open, not iced over, and no one around me even understood what -20 could possibly feel like. Heaven! It was a foggy day, which made for fabulous pictures, if not fabulous views of the lakes. But just knowing there were respectable bodies of water in the middle of Spain made me beyond happy. Good Minnesotan that I am, I had always missed my lakes while in Spain. But no more! Before heading back into town, we stopped at a cave that appears in one of Don Quixote’s adventures (la Cueva de Montesinos). After clambering around and probably scaring a poor little bat, it was back to the hotel for lunch and a siesta before the main event.

The wedding took place in an auditorium. Picture the novios onstage, with immediate family to one side, Japanese and Spanish flags behind, and Jose’s father giving his speech—when Yuko cracked up. Quick digression: I should mention that Jose had forgotten his suit at home, and his poor sister Pichu had to turn around and fetch it the night before. Well, now it was Yuko’s turn. She had forgotten the rings! Luckily, they were in the hotel rather than all the way back in Madrid. As several people offered to loan their rings to the couple, someone dashed back to the hotel, returning victorious just in time for the ceremony itself. I’ve never witnessed so much laughter at a wedding before… have a look at the photos (album: el sushi manchego). They speak for themselves. The reception was a blast. Friends singing one of the Naives Out songs with reinvented lyrics, an uncle telling me to marry one of the cousins so I could stay in Spain, lots of dancing, wine, and laughter…. It was probably the most fun I’ve ever had at a wedding.

We attempted to go back to the bar around three or four in the morning, but oddly enough it was closed. So about a dozen of us who really didn’t want the night to end crammed ourselves in one hotel room, and were regaled with silly stories by Alberto (a friend of Jose’s who really could be a stand-up comedian if he wanted) until close to 7 a.m. I laughed so hard I think I was crying.

The rest of my all-too-brief stay in Spain passed by in a flurry of visits and dinners, including a delightful last meal at the Japanese restaurant Yuko was working at (so my entire stay in Spain ended up being framed by Japanese food!), and one interview, which I’ll get to in a minute. And then it was time to leave, and I told myself I had been lucky to return, and now it was time to let go of my second country and make the goodbyes last for who knows how many years…. Happily, I was quite mistaken.

call me “Teacher”

The interview I had during my brief stay in January was with UCETAM, an organization of several dozen colegios concertados (the closest equivalent I can think of is charter schools) that are trying to move in the direction of a bilingual education. It’s a pretty new system (I’m reluctant to use “organization” any more than I have to, because that word is a bit of an oxymoron!), only a couple years old. Each year they hire auxiliares de conversación, which is what I now am. We’re supposed to be in the grade school classrooms to speak with the students, help them learn English, and help with the “bicultural project” that UCETAM promotes in its schools. I work 17 hours a week, get paid more than enough to cover rent and expenses, and I have medical insurance (which has already come in handy!). But the position isn’t quite what I expected…

I teach 2 classes of kindergarteners, 2 classes of 2nd graders, and one class of 5th graders, and I also sit in on a couple art, science, and gym classes. Yes, I said gym class. Those of you who knew me in grade school have permission to fall off your chairs laughing. Rest assured I have politely but oh-so-firmly turned the gym teacher down on his oh-so-generous offers to let me run laps with the students. The school I teach at is in Majadahonda, a suburb of Madrid, so I have a bit of a commute each day. Majadahonda is a bit like a Spanish Woodbury, only with more apartment buildings and chalets and expensive-looking townhomes, rather than big houses. The school gives me free lunch, and it’s good food. I get along very well with the other auxiliares and the teachers. Granted, they kind of threw us into the classrooms and said “Go ahead, teach!” without warning or preparation. I never expected to have to plan my own lessons from the very first day! But they seem to have capitulated to our contracts and have stopped trying to leave us alone in the classrooms with the niños... at least for now.

As for the students... well, there’s all kinds. Some of the kindergarteners give me hugs and say they love me; others sleep, show me their mucus, and throw crayons. One class of second graders won't shut up; the other has a challenging boy named Juan who's both epileptic and hyperactive. Yikes. And I don't know the 5th graders very well yet, since we only have class once a week, and the first couple weeks almost all of them were out sick. I currently have them with me for recess, both as punishment and to practice a Halloween dance to “Ghostbusters”. The result so far has been me deciding to buy a whistle to see if that will make them shut up. Lovely, no? Oh, and one last detail: I can't let on that I speak Spanish. Makes it a bit challenging, especially when the professors don’t speak English!

A few amusing anecdotes from the kiddies:
-- Spanish schoolchildren are apparently obsessed with snails. At least three different classes asked me if there are snails in Minnesota. (Or wolves. Or lions. Or ants or rabbits or scorpions or birds or... One class really knew its animal vocabulary!)
-- One little girl keeps confusing rubber (British term for eraser... boy does that take a little getting used to!) with rabbit... very enthusiastically, might I add.
-- One 5th grader apparently heard "Venezuela" instead of "Minnesota" (and ignored that whole “United States” thing) when I was explaining where I'm from. So all you Minnesotans who haven't learned Spanish yet, time to shape up! You now live in Venezuela.

… and now, the rest of the story.

Aside from work, which I’m sure I’ll get used to eventually, and getting sick twice (stupid kids and their stupid colds…), things have been going fabulously. I arrived in Spain just in time to spend a little time with Jose and Yuko before they moved to Japan at the end of September. They held a giant farewell party with astounding quantities of homemade tortilla and falafel, and I spent a bunch of time making a send-off video, which you can find on Youtube if you’re at all interested (just search for Jose and Yuko… I’m sure it’s the only one that will come up).

I’m still in the process of reconnecting with old friends, but I have a great new apartment—thanks mainly to Jose. His friend Lidia, who I knew from my previous stay in Madrid, needed new roommates, and I’m lucky enough to have great timing. So I have a new apartment, just south of the city center, and Lidia and I found a third roommate, Micaela, an engineer from Barcelona who happens to speak perfect English (with an American accent, no less)… She startled the heck out of me a few days after she moved in, when she asked me something in English. I’d had no idea! So I love my new place, and my new roommates, and even my new neighborhood. I haven’t gotten myself lost yet, the owner of the fruit store down the street already knows me, and I can find everything I could possibly need within walking distance. Even a tapestry store. And yes, I do appreciate how lucky I am. My parents keep saying they should bring me to the casino; I’m beginning to agree.

I’m teaching a couple individual English classes, with hope for one or two more on the horizon (again, thanks to Jose). I also worked orientation for NYU when I first arrived, which pretty much took up my first week back in the country. But extra cash is nice.

And now I’m all settled in, starting to get in the swing of things at school, and waiting to get well enough to get back out and enjoy my city again while the nice weather still holds. (Speaking of which, all you Minnesota people have my deepest sympathies… in between bouts of hysterical laughter, that is!)

Hope all is well in your corner of the world!

un beso,
Mary

the adventure comes to an end...

2008-09-09T22:06:00.000+02:00

http://picasaweb.google.com/mary.dellenbach -- pictures (updating... slowly...)

Hello, dear friends!

Well, the adventure has ended--I'm back home in Minnesota, and have been for about two months. Most of that time I spent completely engrossed in my thesis, which I finally finished and turned in! I don't know quite how so much time has passed, but I still catch myself thinking of wandering down through Madrid's city center to see what deals I can find at the book fair, do another photographic study of the Cibeles fountain, or sniff out some exquisite chocolates in my old neighborhood. And then someone asks me a question and I barely realize in time that I can't answer in Spanish. It's been a bit of an odd homecoming: wonderful to see family, and sprinkled with a couple joyous weddings, but a lot of locking myself inside and typing, and a fair amount of visiting my uncle in the hospital, where he's been all summer. I know we would all appreciate any thoughts or prayers you could send his way.

I've delayed writing up until now in part because reminiscing of Spain makes me rather homesick, and in part because I didn't want the lure of luncheons and leisurely phone calls to distract me from my all-consuming thesis. But now it's finally DONE! The approximately 90-page book contains the short story I wrote in Spanish, the translation I did into English, and an analysis on the problems and advantages of self-translation. The theory part took me forever, and comparing my own method of "normal" translation with the liberties I took translating my own work was also a bit time consuming, but it's finally, finally finished. A very good feeling. A bit longer than the average, too, but the story and its translation take up a good 40 pages on their own, which leaves me with a normal-length master's thesis.

After my last update, Spain has dominated in sports. I wish I could have been there to see them win the EuroCup soccer championship (their first major championship in 40 years), but I was able to share the quarterfinal victory frenzy with my roommates the night before I left. It also would have been fun to watch Nadal win Wimbledon while I was still over there, but tennis doesn't quite hold the same status as soccer, so it wouldn't have been quite as crazy. (I almost typed football... guess I've been in Europe too long!) That's not to say my adventures didn't continue in my last several months in Spain, though.

I went on one more trip for work with large groups of NYU undergrads: to Ciudad Rodrigo (Spanish border town), Almeida (Portuguese border town), and Salamanca. Once again, I enjoyed free delicious food, including the Portuguese delicacy of bacalao dorado, basically shredded cod with cheese and potatos--absolutely delicious, though some of the undergrads complained it didn't look fancy enough. All I can say is the relative maturity of many of those students didn't measure up to what I expected based on my experience at St. Ben's. Several danced to their iPods while we were on a tour of the cathedral in Ciudad Rodrigo, and they didn't care who told them to stop. But it was a lovely city with a beautiful overlook of a river and the surrounding countryside, and Almeida was even more wonderful. If you google it, you'll see that it's enclosed by city walls in the shape of a twelve-pointed star. Unfortunately, you can't quite see that from the ground, but the town itself was more than enough to see, even though it was very small. An old cemetary with weatherworn white crosses surrounded by bright red poppies was my favorite corner. Our visit to Salamanca included all the basics: the old Gothic cathedral, complete with intricate carvings around the main doorway (which include an astronaut and ice cream-eating dragon, both added in repair work five or ten years ago); the old university (a couple students: "Is this Oxford?" "Yeah, sure, we walked to London." .......); and the stately Plaza Mayor, which was filled with electronics equipment for a concert that night. I caught the tail end of it--just in time to hear what I think was a group of Austrians singing American rock ballads. A bit odd. As with previous trips for work, the highlights were (a) getting to know more corners of Spain for free, and (b) going out to delicious meals for wonderful conversation with the professors. Again, for free. I certainly had about the best possible deal imaginable.

My last months in Madrid were highlighted by more linguistic craziness with my dear roommates, a lovely Jorge Drexler concert, the 200th anniversary of the Spanish uprising against Napoleonic France on May 2, and the festival of Madrid's patron saint, San Isidro. The whole week of May 2 was filled with spectacles and events inspired by Goya's paintings, including half a dozen horses (trained to rear on command!) racing through the Plaza Mayor, a giant puzzle in front of the Royal Palace, and an impressive aerial display of acrobatics and fireworks at Cibeles. On the feast of San Isidro I went to the Retiro park for a fountain, lights, and firework show. Some of the fountains were giant arcs of water, and others little more than mist--into which they projected movies of dancers and horses running. Very impressive.

As spring waned into summer, my classmates and I forced ourselves to put away the books at least once a week on average in exchange for picnics in the Retiro, evenings out for tapas to celebrate birthdays, and, as the year drew to a close, farewell dinners. It was even more difficult than I had imagined to say goodbye to my friends one by one. I stayed a little later than some because of my class at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, but the end came all too soon for me, too. I left many dear friends back in Spain, and others are now scattered all across the world, from New York to Thailand. I keep reminding my parents that they're lucky I came back home at all--I could have easily had at least a part-time job in Madrid and, according to my old host mother in Segovia, a husband. When I went up to say goodbye to her, she had a student who didn't speak much Spanish. I translated, and she introduced me as the former student who came to her daughter's wedding and who she wanted to see marry one of her sons. "I think she'd get along best with Alfredo [the oldest] because they both love books so much," she said. She's such a dear woman, but poor Alfredo wasn't even there to defend himself! Needless to say, I didn't tell my parents that particular anecdote until after I was home. :-)

So before you ask what I'm doing now, I'm job hunting and daydreaming of the home I left abroad. I don't know what the future will bring, but I know that Spain will figure in it someday and somehow. I'm at a loss as to how to wrap up such an amazing year, so I'll close this email with a hug and a hope that the fall brings you all fresh adventures and delights.

un beso,
Mary

Mary's novel--uh, update

2008-04-02T21:09:00.001+02:00

photo link: http://picasaweb.google.com/mary.dellenbach

Hello again, dear friends and family!

It’s been a busy few weeks on this side of the pond, with lots of running around like a chicken with my head cut off: errands around Madrid; midterms; traveling for work, class, and fun; and starting to realize how (relatively) little time I have left over here. And to give you yet more ideas of why I love this place… I give you the world’s longest update. Oops.

Tengo nickel

In case I haven’t said so already, I have once again been extremely lucky in my housing. My roommates (brother and sister, José and Pichu, both teachers) are both fantastic, fun people—and they don’t mind cramming seven of us into the apartment! Over the past several weeks, I’ve two visitors and José has had three, bringing the total of languages in the apartment up to a high of seven: English, Spanish, French, Japanese, German, with a smattering of Gaelic and Italian just for fun. I think we redefine the concept of an international living situation.

Quick anecdote to explain the title: one day José was just plunked down in the hallway playing odd songs on his guitar (example: “Oh Susanna,” “This Land Is Your Land,” the graduation song…) to annoy Pichu (ahh, siblings… but seriously, they get along really well). So I asked him “Who put the nickel into you?” Hence, in pseudo-Spanish, “Tengo nickel” = “I have (a) nickel.” Antics frequently take musical form around here: José and his girlfriend Yuko, who’s staying with us for a while, are in a band together. We’re even attempting to see if my poetry will lend itself to lyrics.

A couple weeks ago I had the wonderful chance to go to a Real Madrid soccer game, thanks to an extra seat in the block my roommates’ family has in the stadium: about the 12th row up, right in the corner. Amazing seats, and quite the fun night, even if RM lost.

Other news: I’m still teaching English one hour a week to a very sweet 17-year-old, Rocío, and that’s going fabulously. My class at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM) is going really well. I’m mainly glad the red tape is over. Odd observation there: the UAM makes everything seem impossibly complicated, and then after stressing over how to get it all done, you find out it’s a five-minute simple process. This, as supposed to NYU’s method of making things seem easy-breezy and later screwing it up into one giant knot of confusion. Now, I don’t like making generalizations without caveats, but it rather seems to me that Spain’s reputation for impossible red tape might hide a reality slightly more convenient—at least at times—than the USA’s reputation for efficiency above all else. And as long as I’m comparing the two countries… Spain just had elections here, and things got a bit tense, as usual. I won’t comment on the actual politics, but I will say that for all the polarity and complicated history and posters lining the streets over here, there was still slightly less noise over the actual election here than there has been about the primaries back home. Perhaps it’s just easier to avoid having politics shoved in my face as an outsider, or perhaps the worldwide attention to our primaries is distorting my perspective a bit, but still. Of course, politics in Spain eventually leads to talk about regional autonomies, which brings me to my first trip in March….

Ciao, bacalao

Two weeks after my trip with the undergrads to Andalucía, the travel-craziness continued with my program’s trip to the País Vasco (the Basque Country), a region in northern Spain with a very strong nationalist streak (depending on whom you talk to), its own non-Indoeuropean language euskera, and amazing food. Title explanation: bacalao (cod) is a regional specialty, so we changed our “see ya later, alligator” equivalent of “ciao, pescao” (invented by my friend Mia; pescado is fish, but the /d/ oven gets elided in conversational speech) in honor of the weekend trip.

We started out in Bilbao, the region’s capital, where we promptly spent four hours in a classroom. To be fair, the lectures/conversations were very interesting, but I would have preferred more time to explore the city. I had to get up early to do that on my own! Yay city, yuck early. The first lecture was on that complicated language, euskera, and the even more complicated linguistic politics in the País Vasco. It was fascinating, though the purely linguistic component was a bit over my head—ergative verbs, anyone? I won’t go into the whole thing here; this will end up long enough without a half-political, half-linguistic treatise with a subject matter that goes back centuries! The second lecture was a bit more… controversial. A Basque nationalist (oh, and anarchist too… just don’t ask me how those two can actually go together) came to talk about the culture—that part was really interesting—and the politics—that part got rather heated. He never defended ETA, the Basque nationalist terrorist group, but he did say he “understood” their motives. I don’t put up with much of that happily.

But afterwards we went out for pintxos (tapas) in the heart of old Bilbao, and I had the most amazing food! I tried kokotxas de bacalao (cod cheeks), stuffed txipirones (baby squids stuffed with their own tentacles), and the marvelous calabacín relleno de bacalao (zucchini stuffed with cod in a lovely red sauce with peppers), along with a few croquetas and conversations when we could find each other in the crowd of locals flooding the most popular pintxos bars. I’m forever spoiled when it comes to food, especially tapas, after that night.

Before leaving, Bilbao, we did indeed make a stop at the Guggenheim: cooler outside than inside, but the surrealism exhibit (pretty much all I had time to see) was fascinating. The giant spider sculpture outside the museum was not my idea of fun, but Mia still got me under it for a photo op. She owes me. Inside all the gleaming silver curves we saw Dalí’s lobster phone and lip couch, some giant walk-through spirals, big glass roses, portraits made out of painted and broken plates, and other even more abstract things. Modern art doesn’t often do much for me, but it was an interesting museum.

Combing the Wind

I liked Bilbao, but I fell in love with San Sebastián. It’s a gorgeous seaside town, and they gave us several hours to wander around the old city center. A few of us ran across a bar where the pintxos went on forever, but we had been warned not to spoil our overly-large dinner, so unfortunately we didn’t get the chance to try any of the delectable little dishes. The promised dinner was indeed fantastic and very filling, though. We went to a sidrería, a cider house, on NYU’s dime. Imagine half a dozen enormous barrels of cider with spouts about head-level, a crabby old man in control of the spigot, and lines of people stooping to catch the arching stream of cider in their glasses at just the right angle, and just the right amount (very little: never more than quarter-fill your glass! It’s just not done). The meal was fabulous, and the highlight was the steak. I wouldn’t normally eat meat that rare, but it was so tasty! Somewhere there’s a picture floating around of me holding a very large knife and grinning like a maniac. If you see it, don’t worry. I was just looking at the steak.

I got up early again the next morning (who IS this girl?) to take a short walk down from our hotel to the sea, which is where I fell in love. I like beaches, and there was one, but I love a rocky shore—and I took several hundred pictures of it alone. At one end, several gigantic iron sculptures are welded onto the rocks. It’s a work called Peine del viento (Wind Comb) by the sculpture Eduardo Chillida, and somehow the huge metal curves manage to fit completely into the landscape. When my friends came and finally dragged me away from the spray and the waves, it was actually to go on a tour of a museum/sculpture garden of his. It was an excellent tour, and for the first time I can say I’ve had a tour guide who made abstract art make sense. We also just so happened to have the fantastic timing of being at the museum on the first Sunday of March, which is the day the new season’s cider is brought out for tasting. So we ate cheese and tasted cider, listened to musicians and the mayor’s welcome (given in euskera, naturally), and wandered around the green slopes and iron sculptures until it was time to go home to Madrid—and after all that sun, fresh air, and GREEN, it was a little difficult for all of us.

Castles galore

The following weekend I ended up making a second trip for work, which I was rather happy with since it allowed me to see parts of Spain I never would have reached on my own. We went to several cities in Extremadura, a region bordering Portugal, and even crossed the border for a day to see several castles in Portugal itself. (No passport stamp; why would there be anyone in the derelict border guard house?) The first stop was Mérida, with its extremely impressive collection of Roman ruins, including an amphitheater in remarkable shape with even more remarkable acoustics, and an aqueduct nothing at all like Segovia’s. Second stop, and our home base for the weekend, was Cáceres, a beautiful city with an inordinate amount of storks. Yes, my old cigüeña photographic obsession resurfaced. Again.

Our two stops in Portugal were too picturesque for words. Castelo de Vide was perhaps the more exciting, because we got to walk through the town, have lunch, and sit on a castle rooftop (although the undergrads sitting IN the crenellations just made me want to yank them down or cower on a flat, low spot and cover my eyes… I don’t do heights well), and because one of the students sliced his knee open playing soccer with a few Portuguese kids and needed stitches. Marvão’s castle was even higher up, with the most amazing views—and a rather strong wind. “Breathtaking” was the word of the day, and you’ll just have to look at the pictures when I get them up to see what I mean.

One of the perks to traveling for work is that I didn’t have to pay for anything but my own postcards. One night we had supper in one of those fancy restaurants where the food arrives looking so artfully prepared that it’s almost a shame to eat it—almost. It was delicious! At various points throughout the weekend, I had partridge, venison, and a delectable selection of local cheeses and hams. Spain is the king of ham—or, rather, ham is king in Spain.

How Gaudí

My friend Laura arrived just after midterms (following the Extremadura-Portugal trip), and as soon as my classes let out we were off bright and early for Barcelona, one of my favorite cities in the world. We had a hotel just off Las Ramblas, the colorful main avenue that threads through the Gothic quarter on its way to the old port, and so were perfectly located. Naturally, we spent some time at the beach, collected sea glass, ate paella, and admired the collection of people along the Ramblas: street performers, artists, florists, pet shop owners, and a bunch of vacationers celebrating St. Paddy’s Day with giant Guinness hats. We divided the rest of the time among Gaudí’s famous architecture scattered around the city…

Casa Batlló seems to be designed to look like a dragon with St. George’s sword through its back (St. George is the patron saint of the city). Inside everything looks like it’s part of the ocean: even the doors somehow seem to flow, and the light was amazing. We walked around the roof, too, and got to see the dragon’s-back scale-tiles up close—again, words just don’t do it justice. The inside of the Pedrera (another building designed by Gaudí along the same street) wasn’t nearly as impressive, but the roof is this giant, multi-level surface with dozens of chimneys designed like swirled crosses or knight’s helmets. Utterly surreal. And then, of course, we went to the Sagrada Familia, which might just be finished by 2025. Walking inside is like walking into the shell of a very bright cathedral, and the view from the towers is incredible. I made the mistake of walking down the stairs, though, rather than taking the elevator back down: at one point, the normal stairs kind of disappeared and turned into a very tight spiral staircase with a railing only on the wall side. I basically backed the whole way down, holding very tight to that railing. The pictures I have of that staircase are amazing, and it really does look like a snail’s shell, but it wasn’t the world’s calmest descent. Our last day in Barcelona, I took Laura to Parc Güell for a lovely walk through the trees and through more nature-inspired Gaudí architecture before hopping a flight back to Madrid…

Semana Santa

My friend Weez arrived the next day, and after a fun evening of cooking and catching up, all three of us went to Segovia for Holy Thursday. We spent the day wandering around my city, admiring the aqueduct, cathedral, alcazar (castle), an artisan market, and the lovely streets, punctuated with trips to my favorite café, La Colonial, for hot chocolate, and to the stylish bar Oso Blanco for some amazing tapas. We did get to see some of the Holy Week processions go to the cathedral before we had to catch the bus back to Madrid (pictures coming), but to be honest the Good Friday processions we saw in Madrid’s Plaza Mayor had far better music accompanying them.

We divided our time in Madrid among walking around to see the sights, spending money at the Rastro market, the Semana Santa processions, art museums (the Prado, of course, and the modern art Reina Sofia), pure silliness, getting into multiple-language conversations, and—bless Laura and Weez—cooking.

Sueños de la Alhambra

Early Monday morning we took a bus down to Granada, where I promptly went overboard and bought way too much tea. (The mix I fell in love with earlier this semester is called Sueños de la Alhambra, or Dreams of the Alhambra, and I bought four or five bags of it.) We wandered around the fringes of the Albayzín, the old Moorish quarter, to look at pretty things I’d love to decorate my house with someday; it became our afternoon ritual. We met up with Weezy’s old program director several times, we walked around town, had sweet, fruity tea in a tetería, ate gelato, and had paella… And on Wednesday we went up to the Alhambra.

That palatial complex never ceases to amaze me. Everything is a work of art, and every piece of artwork is so intricate, from the tiles low on the walls to the stalactite-like carvings on the ceilings. And then, of course, there are the Generalife gardens: everything smelled like flowers and oranges, and the only sounds (other than tourists talking) were birdsong and trickling water. It was so peaceful and beautiful, with such impressive views and details—I could spend weeks there, I’m sure. Unfortunately, they now sell 7,000 tickets daily and sell out easily, so that’s not quite possible.

We ended our trip by visiting Weezy’s old host family, where we were treated to a delicious home-cooked meal of lentil soup and tortilla de patatas, two of our favorite Spanish staples. We then had to hop the bus back to Madrid, where Weez and Laura got to spend a day wandering around the Prado while I ran errands and went to class. Then it was all packing and goodbyes and a little music-making with the roommates.

A Spanish Wedding

It was wonderful to have two close friends around for Easter, and wonderful to travel around Spain with them. But one of the highlights of the entire year has to be this past Saturday, when I went to Segovia for my old host sister’s wedding. I got to their house just as Ana was getting ready (so many buttons on that gorgeous dress!); it was insane with brothers and photographers running all over, but they just welcomed me in like one of the family—again—and it still warms my heart like you wouldn’t believe. The ceremony took place in a church beneath the Alcázar (Sleeping Beauty castle), in the Iglesia de San Juan de la Cruz, which I had actually done a small project on two years ago. It’s a very pretty church with a beautiful abstract mural behind the altar, based on a poem by St. John of the Cross. Alberto (youngest brother) walked Ana down the aisle, and it was a beautiful wedding (if shorter than the American norm!). As Ana and her new husband, José, left the church, the choir—including Alfredo (oldest brother)—serenaded them before everyone started chucking rice at the happy couple. Then there was nothing else to be done but pose for pictures, first in the church and then beneath the castle. I was honored to be included in one of the sets of family photos, so here’s hoping that photographer’s fancy camera was digital so I can someday get a copy!

The reception was at a fancy restaurant/hotel just outside the city, and the meal was both large and delicious: a plate of hams and cheeses followed by fish, a palate-cleansing sorbet, salad, and the famous Segovian cochinillo (suckling pig), heralded by a pair of musicians. Cochinillo is supposed to be so tender you can cut it with a plate, and so apparently there’s a Segovian tradition of the bride and groom doing the “carving” and then breaking the plates. To be honest, I hadn’t been expecting a lot of differences between Spanish and American weddings—but when the pigs came out and the plates crashed on the floor, I threw that assumption out the window. The newlyweds fed each other bits of cake perched on the tip of a small sword (naturally), the friends of the groom passed out souvenir cigars, the friends of the bride cut her garter into tiny bits and passed them out to guests for donations (Spanish version of the dollar dance, I guess), and then all the tables were pushed aside and the dancing began. The playlist of music, needless to say, was not the same as what we’re used to, and it ranged from current hits to more traditional Spanish songs (and dances) which I didn’t know at all. After a few hours, the party shifted from the restaurant to a bar back in town, I went to my hostal and changed, and the dancing and chatting continued… I escaped the smoke for a brief while with Alberto, his girlfriend Ruth, and a few of his friends: there was a gastronomy market visiting nearby, and we went down for a bit of fresh air, wine, ribs, and brief English lessons (a.k.a. it’s “to pull someone’s leg” not “to take someone’s leg off”). After dancing with all my Segovian siblings and various friends of theirs, I was dead tired and went to bed just after Ana and José left at about 3:30, but I’m sure the merriment continued well after that! It usually does, here.

And that’s finally all for now, folks. I’m getting pictures organized and online slowly but surely, so keep checking back… but my thesis is looming, and suddenly classes take precedence once more (except the gorgeous weather will be a slight challenge to productivity…). I hope you all had a wonderful spring break of some kind and were able to relax a little. Stay warm over there J

I know I haven't yet responded to all of your notes to me, but please know that I do read and appreciate all of them very much! It makes me feel more connected to home, which in turn makes it seem like I am home over here, since family and friends aren't that far away after all.

Hugs and prayers,
Mary

what to do with a dead fish

2008-02-16T13:46:00.000+01:00

photo link: http://picasaweb.google.com/mary.dellenbach
(Still have a bit more updating to do, with Segovia from December and Córdoba/Granada from last weekend, but carnavales are up!)

16 February 2008

A belated Happy Valentine’s Day to you! (Unless you’re one of those people who’s not a big fan, in which case: Happy Random Gifts of Chocolate Day!)

I’m told it’s -40 with windchill in Minnesota right now, and I’m dreadfully sorry for all of you who are busy freezing in the depths of winter. I’m reminded of a postcard I once saw of a group of people in parkas and up to their waists in snow (in MT, but I’ll use a little poetic license and change the state): “Minnesotans for Global Warming.” And that joke is as close as I’ll come to touching politics without a ten-foot pole during this electoral season, except to say how incredibly glad I am to be missing the primary circus!

I wrote the first half of this email sitting in the sun on a bench at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM). People were sprawled all over the lawns (actual expanses of grass! amazing!) with their lunches and probably a few drinks (only in Spain moment: you go to the on-campus bar to get a cup of tea), and it was just so wonderful to be back in a university atmosphere. I heard French, English, Italian, and German, saw signs advertising Arabic classes, but it’s really just great being on a Spanish campus. The campus itself, actually, reminds me just enough of CSB/SJU to make me feel at home: grass, trees, brick sidewalks, concrete and brick buildings…. The random old train engine sitting in the middle of the lawn undermines the impression a little bit, and no one seems to know why it’s there. So, naturally, one day I’ll bring my camera and do a little photographic study when the light’s good. I wish I’d had it with me the other day; someone was trying to teach her friend to ride a unicycle. It wasn’t working very well, but they kept at it—with hilarious results.

I checked out three classes at the UAM: Teaching Spanish as a Second Language, Translation from Spanish to English, and Translation from English to Spanish. I had originally signed up for the teaching course, but ended up deciding on the Translation to Spanish (the other translation course is taught entirely in English, and I really don’t see much point in taking it). While I’m really enjoying my tiny tutoring job, I really don’t know if I ever want to teach, and I do know I love translating—so it makes more sense to learn as much about it as I can. Speaking of translation, classes and the thesis are so far going well: the story’s finished, and corrected, and Step Next is to simultaneously keep researching the phenomenon of self-translation and to start translating the thing into English. My friend Mia joked that our theses are our boyfriends for the semester. She’s with Don Quixote, another friend of ours is dating Harry Potter in Spanish, and I’m dating… Loneliness? (Story title: “Me llamo Soledad / My Name Means ‘Loneliness’”)

Right. Moving on. Carnavales! Carnival isn’t nearly so crazy in Madrid as in other parts of Spain, but it managed to pull together a respectable parade and a couple other events that will require a bit more explanation. I’ve got pictures up now, which explain the parade far better than I could in words. The giant bee at the end was a bit odd, though. On the other hand, rollerskating bugs are always good for a laugh. The second high point on my carnival agenda was the battle between Don Carnal (Lord Lust) and Doña Cuaresma (Lady Lent) in the Plaza Mayor. Basically Carnal and his cronies were out carousing, and she arrives in all her righteous fury, complete with sword and lobster-headed followers, to put an end to it in a giant flurry of feathers and fish bones. In the last procession, though, Lent’s victory is turned a bit on its head in el Entierro de la Sardina (the Burial of the Sardine). Yes, you read it right. A little smelly dead fish. Apparently the Alegre Cofradía del Santo Entierro de la Sardina (the Happy Brotherhood of the Holy Burial of the Sardine) was formed back in the 19th century to hold this mock funeral mourning the passing of a sardine, which symbolized the fasting and abstinence which comes with Lent. Instead of burying fat, they bury a fish. (They basically wanted carnival to continue on Ash Wednesday.) People showed up in their most maudlin finery—black veils, sardine-tin-hats, little fish pins—crying and singing the whole way. Some threw candy into the crowd, some dumped confetti onto every passing pretty girl, some women wailed over the fish’s body, some little old men danced and capered—you know, your average night in Madrid. Actually, according to some tiny old woman I ran into just as I was leaving, this was “la Madrid de verdad.” The real Madrid (not to be confused with Real Madrid, the soccer team). Take that however you will.

Once carnavales ended, I had the happy job of going along as chaperone on an undergraduate trip to Córdoba and Granada. It was a busy weekend, and I spent most of the time making sure we had everybody, but I did get to take some pictures of my own, and I got a lot of really good food for free. In Córdoba we did the usual: Mezquita, old Jewish neighborhood and synagogue, and Calle de las Flores, that amazing flower-filled street. Just a few hours and we were off to Granada, where I got to see the cathedral for the first time, the Alhambra for the second (though there wasn’t enough time for the Generalife gardens, but I have the luxury of returning in just over a month!), and the old summer house of García Lorca and his family. I led a small group of students there while the rest went on a tour of the Albaicín barrio, and I didn’t even get us lost, which I felt was quite the accomplishment. It was mainly run-run-run the whole weekend, but during the down times I went with the profs to a café someplace and we just sat and talked for a little bit. The highlight was probably a little tea shop cave where I discovered a tea called “Dreams of the Alhambra” which tasted absolutely divine, and I’ll have to find someplace I can buy the mix when I go back after Easter.

And now I’m sick but recovering, and therefore pretty much out of news. Stay warm over there!

Hugs,Mary

New Year, new adventures

2008-01-13T19:36:00.000+01:00

Link to photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/mary.dellenbach

13 January 2008

Dearest family and friends,

My one and only New Year’s Resolution: keep in touch. (The addition of wifi will be a great help, I’m sure.) I don’t know what happened to all my grand plans of writing updates and emails and postcards galore, but it’s a new year, so here goes Round 2.

And yet… before really, truly starting the new year (classes tomorrow…), it’s time to revisit the old. And so I give you my own, not-nearly-as-funny-as-Letterman-even-without-his-writers Top Ten List. Except it might just be in no particular order, which rather undermines the whole concept, but oh well.

Top 10 Highlights of 2006 (after I fell off the face of the earth)

10. Spending the night in Philadelphia. As an airport, it probably gets four stars. As a hotel, none. Ninguno. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Ni un pizco. Have I made my point yet? Yes, I got stuck in Philly—they cancelled my plane out from under me, and nearly kept me there the next morning, too, but I finally made it to Chicago in time to dash to the plane that, 36 hours after leaving Madrid, finally brought me home to my loving family. But I really have no further urge to visit that particular part of the country. No, I did not buy any souvenirs. Not even postcards. I didn’t even take a single picture. Yeah, now you’ve got the idea.

9. Getting sick in Córdoba. The group excursion for the semester was to Andalucía, southern Spain, which has a much warmer air—both literally and figuratively—than the more northern parts of the country. I loved the chance to see a bit more of Córdoba than I had been able to last time, including revisiting the forest of red-and-white arches in the famous Mezquita/Mosque (which is actually a cathedral now) and wandering down narrow side streets between whitewashed and flower-draped buildings. However, I came down with an awful stomach bug and had to take the AVE (high speed train) home early while the rest of the group went onto Sevilla. Needless to say, one of my goals for this spring is to get back to Andalucía—and stay healthy. And along that same vein…

8. Playing “Hopalong Cassidy” in Madrid. I knew the marble staircase in the Institute (where we have our history class and an actual library) spelled trouble the moment I first slipped—I mean stepped—on it. So, naturally, I sprained my ankle mid-November. Luckily my host mother had a crutch I could use, and an ice pack, and an ace bandage… so all was well, if a little slow-moving. Of course, I did this right before Item #_, and it also complicated #7, but at least I never got my crutch stuck between cobblestones. Actually, people here are quite considerate when it comes to injuries. Normally a crowded metro means getting stepped on and shoved around—but if you’ve got a crutch, everyone gets up to give you their seat. Hey, you’ve got to take the perks where you can.

7. Apartment hunting. Around the end of October, Rosa told me that her sister was coming to stay with her for the spring, and so I wouldn’t be able to keep living there for the whole year—which was sad, but fine, except NYU had known pretty much all along and neglected to tell me about it. That rather set the tone for the entire hunt, which I started in November (minus time spent with my foot up or on #_), with very little help from the university. On the plus side, I saw a lot—and I mean a LOT—of different parts of Madrid, including both some rather sketchy ones (one place I got off the metro, walked to the general area, took one good look around, and called the woman to tell her I wasn’t coming after all) and the fabulously picturesque (and pricy) barrio de las Letras, across from the Prado, where every other house/palace is the birthplace of some famous Spanish poet. On the minus side, researching, calling, and visiting a couple dozen apartments took up a lot of time and energy. Time wasn’t really pressing, which was good because no one wanted someone to come in January—everyone wanted someone to share the rent immediately, and I wasn’t about to move out early. That is, I didn’t want to, but at the end of November Rosa’s sister got very sick and needed to come to Madrid for kidney dialysis. So two weeks before the end of the semester, she moved in and I moved out. It was hard leaving someplace that felt like home, and both Rosa and her daughter (also Rosa) were so wonderful to me—but life happens. NYU stepped in at that point and found me a homestay with a nice but rather nervous woman named Pilar for the last bit of the semester, luckily in the same neighborhood so I knew where everything was, could bump into Rosa every so often, and could keep going to my same church—the only Spanish church I’ve ever been to that has Mass lasting for a full hour and has a full complement of young musicians. The building itself is rather ugly and made of concrete, though the second part—plus the music—reminds me of SJU, which made me feel more at home despite not knowing any of the songs. Anyway, I won’t bore you with any more of the search except to relate one sentence from an ad I saw: “buscando gente normal” (“looking for normal people”). Draw conclusions as you will. But I did finally find a place and, though it’s further away from everything than I was, I’m quite content. More on that later.

6. Taking to the streets. Anything at all happens in Madrid and it seems the whole city takes to the streets. There was a citywide art festival, of which I unfortunately saw very little due to bad timing and lack of good planning, called Noche en Blanco. The streets were packed, there were odd little theater or dance performances or open air exhibitions all over the city, which made it a wonderful excuse for all of Madrid to stay out even later than normal. To give you an idea, I think the last exhibition started at 1 and ended sometime the next morning—in other words, normal clubbing hours. The only spectacular thing I saw was… slower… than I expected. They lit up Torre España (big building) in different colors. Spaniards kept cheering each time more windows turned blue or green or pink; we kept looking at each other and thinking, “This is it?” Good photos, though. A bit more spectacular was the Columbus Day military parade. Again, packed streets. Lots of soldiers, horses, and tanks marched by; loud planes streaked overhead, trailing red and yellow for the Spanish flag; little boys clamored for bigger guns and little girls wanted more horses; a Coast Guard boat went by on a trailer; people chanted for Zapatero (prime minister) and a few obstinate old men shouted obscenities whenever that name came up; the king’s car and Zapatero’s car went by just down the corner, but I was a little too slow on the camera and I couldn’t get anywhere near close enough to the plaza to see them in person. But it was a fun afternoon, even with the occasional bitter political undertones.

5. A literary festival. Back towards the middle of October, an organization called Casa de América (housed in a palace, Palacio de Linajes, in the beautiful Plaza de Cibeles) had a whole host of visiting artists, authors, actors, etc. They gave lectures and held roundtables and I was able to go to a number of different sessions, both on inspiration (La arquitectura del proceso creativo/Architecture of the Creative Process) and memory (El derecho a olvidar, el deber de recordar /The Right to Forget, the Duty to Remember), and both were very helpful in starting out my thesis (more on that later). The culmination of this week was a moving concert called La Marcha. Five Latin-American bands (it was “The Americas” week) on big Mack trucks moved very slowly through enormous crowds from Atocha to Cibeles. I thought the Rastro market was crowded? Hah! Have a look at my pictures; seas of flag-waving and occasionally costumed people danced and sang along with the trucks. It took several hours just to traverse a couple miles, but it was fun.

4. Random gems of Madrid. This could be its own top ten list, but I don’t want to exhaust your patience all in one email! I no longer live in walking distance of the Retiro Park, but I sure took advantage of it while I was there. Perhaps unfortunately for this loose exercise regimen of mine (called “Mary Needs Trees and Peace and Quiet!”), there is a neon-lit ice cream store on the way home from the park. They have Bailey’s-flavored ice cream. ‘Nuff said. Moving on. What says “autumn” like the smell of falling leaves? I now have an answer: the smell of chestnuts. Roasting on an open… grill. On the street corner. Sold alongside yams and corn on the cob—what else? Despite a lingering limp, I made a few circuits around the best-known parts of Madrid when the Christmas lights came out. The Christmas tree in Puerta del Sol looked like it had been electrified; glowing bubble-wands hung over the wide avenue of la Castellana; the Prado’s trees turned purple; magic carpets floated over a street someplace near Gran Via; and giant leaves drifted over the Plaza Mayor. I’ll have the pictures up soon, I hope—the descriptions really don’t make sense without them. While I was apartment hunting, I had one particularly disappointing night when I went to sign a contract and found out someone had already rented the apartment out from under me due to a lack of communication between the husband and wife who owned the building. So I was searching for another, it was just before finals, I was ready for Christmas and home, and I heard a band strike up “Jingle Bells.” Immediately that warm fuzzy feeling dispelled all my little grumbly thoughts… and then one of the players stopped playing and started singing. Problem #1: He didn’t know the words. Problem #2: He was flatter than a pancake. “NAVIDAD, NAVIDAD, NAAAAVIDAD,” he… well, I hesitate to call it singing. Warm fuzzies—all gone. It might have been the next night that a couple of us got together to watch clips of Christmas movies on YouTube (it’s good for something, after all!) and drink homemade eggnog. By that point, we all needed it.

3. Freezing in Segovia. So much for chronological order. The day before I flew home, my friend Mia and I took a spur-of-the-moment jaunt to my lovely little city. It was rather brutally cold, at least for Spain—below freezing and windy. (Yes, I learned my lesson when I got home.) Unfortunately I wasn’t able to see any of my old host family; they were all working at the time. But we had a wonderfully relaxing day wandering through quaint little shops, through all my favorite haunts, up the aqueduct, and under the castle—and caught some fantastic light for photos, too. (Yes, I’m addicted. You all knew this already.) It was so good to get back there… there’s nothing so peaceful as walking through trees over a river or just sitting and sipping a warm cup of REALLY THICK hot chocolate and staring out the window at adorable children running past centuries-old buildings. We finished up with a glass of wine and a few tapas at the Oso Blanco, a classy bar halfway down a staircase, which my group frequented for sangria two years ago. The bartenders are the same sweet old men in suits who made sure to give us all the best food and keep us from foolishly trying the tapas they knew we wouldn’t like! I love Segovia.

2. A Scottish Thanksgiving. While I’m sad I missed our groups big Thanksgiving dinner (at least, I’m sad until I look at the photo of Sean with a carving knife, and then I’m just scared), and it was sad not to be with family, I had a fantastic thanksgiving in Edinburgh with one of my best friends, Laura, who’s there for vet school. I still had my crutch when I flew over to visit her, but I still got to see a good portion of the city, or at least my favorite parts and then some. The first day I went with her to school, got some research done while she was in class, and then we walked through the hills back towards town—it was just lovely to get some real outdoorsy time in. Thanksgiving day I don’t think we even left the house. Laura (a vegetarian) perfectly cooked the turkey, I made some tortilla española because it’s what I do (just not very neatly), and a bunch of her friends came over for lots of food and fun. All the vet people oohed and aahed over the colors my foot was turning. Other highlights: mulled wine in the Christmas market, church in English!, meeting the William Wallace impersonator who stands outside the castle in full battle regalia for photo-ops, eating Turkish delight, and generally being silly with Laura throughout Edinburgh. Cheers!

1. A winter wedding in Winona. It was wonderful to spend so much time with family over break! I’m still sad I didn’t get to spend much time visiting with friends, but those couple weeks sure flew by. My cousin Lindsy’s wedding in Winona was definitely the highlight. It was such a joyous occasion, and there were of course all the little things to make it even better—the flower girl and her special “picture pose,” the ring bearer stomping up the aisle in his boots during rehearsal, dancing with my little cousin and my dad and my Grandpa, and watching all the guys gradually drift towards the big game by the end of the reception. It’s always good to know that, no matter how much some things change, others never will!

And that’s the end of the Top Ten list. Of course, there’s always more that could go in there… the final group dinner in a fancy restaurant where all the undergrads dressed up like they were going to prom (how did they get those dresses over here?) and the grad students were just happy to be leaving while knowing we were coming back… celebrating a birthday in a Turkish restaurant, complete with bellydancer… getting our official Spanish student ID cards in an astonishing 2 minutes after waiting in line for an hour and a half to get into the police station… starting to tutor a delightful seventeen-year-old girl named Rocío in English one hour a week… spending an entire Linguistics class talking about a postcard with purposely horrendous translations of common Spanish phrases (“It’s not turkey mucus!” springs to mind)… going out for Halloween dressed as nudists on strike (a.k.a. we wimped out and wore signs rather than spending money on vampire outfits)…

It seems odd to go back to talking about my old classes just before the new ones start. Linguistics (lexicon) with my thesis director was definitely my favorite, followed fairly closely by Journalism & Translation, both as classes and for the professors. We lost the woman who taught our workshop at the beginning of the year and gained a fabulous teacher and friend in Lidia; I think the translation workshop laughs a lot more than the literature workshop, but that could just be me. And the other 9 of us. I’m progressing on my thesis, which is an odd three-part combination of writing and translation and analysis. It took a while to argue the program director into the feasibility of it, but we finally reached an agreement I’m quite happy with. My threefold project: 1) write a short story in Spanish, 2) translate it into English, and 3) do an analysis of the process (problems, advantages, etc.) of self-translation. It’s been an interesting investigation so far, and I’m finally done with the first draft of the Spanish story. The writing has actually gone fairly easily, though I haven’t exactly made it easy on myself to translate… but I’m sure I’ll write more about that later as the process continues.

I’ll close with a little bit about my new home: the apartment itself is quite nice, with a spacious living room and terrace (which is more of a cold sun room), small kitchen, dining table, 1 bathroom, and 3 bedrooms. I’ve finally got mine set up, complete with a warm fuzzy blanket I’m going to miss when I can’t bring it home with me. I live with two Spaniards, a brother and sister. José is a language teacher and translator; he also takes linguistic classes and plays the guitar. Lucky for me, he even has a keyboard, so I brought a bit of sheet music back with me for when my thesis tries to become Tessy the Thesis Monster (credit for the name goes to Mia) and eat me alive. Pichu, his sister, is a grade school teacher and absolute sweetheart. I’ve seen some of the daily questions her students pose her: everything from practical, pre-test questions to “Do fish pee? How?” and “How do you put up with us?” It’s a very tranquil place, but it’s had its share of company this week, enough to make me feel a part of the household even as I’m still learning how to use the stove (matches and gas and fire, aaah) and still don’t have more than one day’s worth of food in the fridge. The day I got in, José had a couple friends over. He cooked dinner for all of us and then we played Trivial Pursuit until about 1 in the morning. It was a little unfair; he and Pichu must have the answers all memorized, and they were on the same team. My team lost 0-6. It was sad. In my defense, though, it’s the Spanish Genius Edition, and I really didn’t have a prayer. I did know two questions: one about Gabriel García Márquez, and another about Flipper. Go figure. Then last night Pichu had some friends over to practice singing for someone’s wedding, and so I got serenaded as I finished my thesis-story. I also got fed chocolate J All in all, I’ve met more madrileños in the past couple days than I did all last semester, and I’m hoping some of these friends keep coming back so I can get to know them better. At any rate, I’ll have a class in a Spanish university this semester, and—as much as I love my classmates—it’ll be good to make friends outside the group.

Last year was a whirlwind, and I expect this one will be much the same. I’ll try to keep up with it a bit better; wish me luck! For now, most of my goals are lamentably short-sighted: survive the first week of classes, go grocery shopping daily until I build up some kind of pantry, go see a silly animated version of Don Quixote (Donkey Xote… oh dear), and put enough photos online to finish with last year so I can erase my camera’s card and start anew.

And on that note, a belated Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, feliz Reyes, and hasta pronto! Hugs and besitos,

Mary

One month later...

2007-10-04T15:00:00.000+02:00

9-30-07

Hello again, dear friends! Sorry I haven’t been writing as frequently as I thought I would. I’m not sure where the time goes, but I’m certainly managing to keep busy. :-)

Return to Segovia:
¡Paraíso! I am definitely enjoying Madrid, but going back to Segovia felt like going home. I couldn’t escape our guided tour, but not all of the information was repeat, and I even got to see something new. Aside from touring the alcazar (and going up all 106 steep spiral stairs for that spectacular view from the top) and the cathedral at top speed, and staring up at the aqueduct of course, we went up on top of the muralla (wall around the city) at the Puerta de San Andrés for a very nice view of the streets. Oh, how I love those streets! Tranquil, fresh air, big sky, mountains, familiar places….
As soon as the tour let out for lunch, I ran home: mi familia segoviana invited me for lunch (mmm, lentil soup). I got to see my old host mother and all three of my host brothers. Augusto’s arm is finally all better, and he’s the same as ever—arguing with his mother, asking me if I’ve found a Spaniard yet…. Alfredo was, as always, fun to talk with. And, though I didn’t get to see her, Ana (host sister) is getting married! I’m hoping to go to the wedding in March; it sounds like I’ll be able to. They also invited me to their pueblo some weekend when their current student is on a trip, and I really hope that works out. Alberto didn’t get home until about 5 minutes before I had to leave, but we did at least get to chat a bit—and I know I’ll be back there before too much time goes by. I love that city! It may not have nearly as much to do as Madrid (then again, what does?), but I feel so at peace there.

Toledo:
As long as I’m on the subject of trips, we just had a day trip to Toledo on Friday. Luckily the weather was much better this time: it was chilly in the morning, but sunny all day long. We certainly ran around the city enough to keep warm! It’s an enchanting place, though the hills get a little tiring. It’s also an absolute labyrinth. The streets are so narrow that whenever a car comes along (or, even worse, a truck), all the pedestrians have to jump into doorways to let it by.
We toured a tiny old mosque, two synagogues, and the giant, glorious cathedral. I love the opening in the ceiling—not the cupola, but a different opening cut out (and decorated with paintings and sculptures) to let light fall right onto the place where the Holy Communion is (or at least was) kept. And on a more bizarre note, the chairs in the choir section are a big tourist draw. Artists of the Inquisition era didn’t exactly have a lot of freedom with their work… but no one ever looked under the chairs. So all the seat bottoms are decorated with mythological monsters and caricatures of the clergy and other powers-that-were. Random fact of the day.

Classes:
I have a strange schedule: I only have class on Mondays and Wednesdays. (It’s wonderful!)
Monday: Journalism and Translation (9:30-10:50)
Translation of Literary and Non-Literary Texts (11-12:20)
home for lunch…
History and Culture (3:00-5:00)
Linguistics/Spanish Lexicon (5:30-6:50)
Wednesday: Translation of Literary and Non-Literary Texts (11-12:20)
Research Methods/MA Project (12:30-1:50)
run down to the corner to buy a sandwich
Workshop: Language & Translation (3:00-5:00)
Linguistics/Spanish Lexicon (5:30-6:50)
In Journalism we translate newspaper articles (about everything—international news, economics, sports, art… you name it) from English to Spanish, and in Literary Translation we translate from Spanish (at the moment, a short story) to English. Though in Lit Trans we spend most of the time on what the prof calls “typical situations,” translating various English expressions and sentences into Spanish. The funny part is when we go the other way and debate about how to say something in English. Half the class, for example, has never heard the expression “work like a dog.” Maybe it’s a Midwest thing?
All the translation classes are small. History/Culture and the MA Research class are the only ones when everyone is together. I have to admit that History isn’t my favorite class, nor the most stimulating, but we have visiting profs every week and they’re experts on their subjects, so that’s interesting. A lot of (occasionally dry) reading.
Léxico is probably my favorite class. The prof is fantastic, and we tend to run overtime every class—and no one minds, because it’s so interesting. Linguistics, etymology, new words, colloquial phrases…. Definitely my cup of tea. And I’m not the only one who gets excited about all of it! Hooray for not being the only nerd :-)
All in all, I’m loving the classes—they’re basically everything I hoped for. And we as a group continue to mainly speak Spanish among ourselves, which thrills me to no end.

More of Madrid:
I still take nearly daily walks “por ahí,” as the Spanish say—out and about. The Retiro is just fabulous, and we certainly haven’t explored it all yet. I still haven’t seen its Crystal Palace, but I’m definitely in love with the rose garden. It also boasts (?) one of the world’s few statues of the devil. It’s called the Fallen Angel, and it is a little bizarre… but strangely beautiful. It shows Lucifer cowering with a snake wrapped around his legs. Grotesque gargoyles spout water at the base of the statue, which of course is surrounded by happy yellow flowers. Go figure. On a completely different note, there are some odd trees in that park! They look like something out of Dr. Seuss.
I’ve gone to the Rastro market three out of the four Sundays I’ve been here (has it really been that long?), and it keeps changing. It’s fun to walk around, but not if you want to get someplace fast: it’s well and truly clogged with people.
I keep seeing little plazas and avenues from the bus that I want to return to—just to wander around or take pictures. The other day I saw a giant bulbous sculpture of a hand. Odd. But then, we have a cherry on a spoon.
The next couple weeks will have me running around to a bunch of literary festival activities, including author readings and talks about the creative process and the role of memory: I’m rather excited. I haven’t found a short-term affordable creative writing workshop yet, but I’m keeping an eye out. There’s also an opportunity to teach English that I’m considering…. I love my free time to explore, but that would be awfully good experience, especially considering that my assistantship in the spring isn’t teaching after all.
Last Saturday was the Noche en Blanco, an art festival that sprawls across Madrid. I’m afraid I didn’t see very much of it, aside from a light display in the Torre de España and a strange bit of theatre in a random garden; we left too late and didn’t plan our itinerary very well, so we ended up chasing after exhibits without much success. It was still a fun night, though. The streets were packed! (Yes, that is a theme here. Something happens, and the city empties itself into the streets.)

More randomness:
I love the metro station Goya. Each platform is lined with his art: the eerie Capricho etchings, the soft pastels of his early works…. Other stations have their own delights, like the irreverent cartoonish mural of the Retiro Park, a 3D mural/relief of books, and a giant mosaic, among others. One day I’ll play the cheesy tourist and take pictures of them all.
A lovely slogan that made me laugh out loud: Mi suegra es encantadora, pero de serpientes. The word play doesn’t work quite as well in translation: “My mother-in-law is enchanting… snakes,” is about as close as I can come.

Bad translations:
French fires and soop. A movie subtitle translated “se fusionaron,” which should mean “they fused,” to “they got fusioned.” OW. And I picked up a postcard titled “Lessons in English/Lecciones en ingles” which doesn’t have a single good translation on it. It takes a bunch of colloquial Spanish phrases and tries to put them in English, but each translation is disastrously literal. (I really, really hope it's a joke.) Even “Hola” gets mixed up by translating the homonym “ola.” Thus, “hello” becomes “wave” (like on a beach). “It is not turkey mucus,” “My happiness in a hole,” and “Great sissy the last” are other little gems. Uy, madre.

Pictures:
I think I’m nearing the 1,000 mark already, and I still haven’t gone on a grand photo-taking extravaganza of Madrid. Of course, a lot are of Segovia and Toledo. New link: http://picasaweb.google.com/mary.dellenbach

I finally bought my ticket home. I’ll be back in Minnesota from December 17 through January 8… and I’m sure the weather will be just lovely. Right? Anyway, let me know how things are going back home! I may take a while in responding, but I do love getting mail and hearing what you all are up to :-)

Un abrazo fuerte,
Mary

c/ Segre 8
28002 Madrid
+34.675.572.153
mary.dellenbach@gmail.com

2007-09-18T16:01:00.000+02:00

Photos:
http://csbsju.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2043392&l=c8247&id=93401331: First Impressions of Madrid
http://csbsju.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2043785&l=7eba0&id=93401331: Parque Retiro
http://csbsju.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2043890&l=dc89a&id=93401331: Segovia

I'll try to put them up in a more easily accesible format later...

Week 1

2007-09-04T13:03:00.000+02:00

Hello from Madrid!

These first few days have been a whirlwind. I don’t even know exactly how many days I’ve been here, since I lost a few hours and brain cells somewhere on the flight over. But here I am, safe and sound and reveling in speaking nothing but Spanish.

My host family: a mother and daughter, both named Rosa, both very educated and kind. Rosa 1 (for lack of a better way to differentiate here) works at the Ministry of Culture and writes books on art. As a delightful consequence, the apartment is filled with paintings and bookshelves! (I don’t know how I got so lucky, but I’m not going to question it.) Her daughter, Rosa 2, is about 26 and works in montaje, which roughly translates to editing, though in more of a layout kind of way… I think. She’s going to show me some of her projects, since I told her I’m interested in that field.

The apartment: small, of course, but exquisite. I’m in a building in a very nice neighborhood, the barrio of Salamanca, just around the corner and across the street from a metro stop. The apartment itself opens into a little entry way and a living room (filled with books and art), with a little terrace overlooking the street below. That and the kitchen (extremely roomy and modern by Spanish standards… there’s even a dishwasher) are where we talk most. The kitchen table really only fits one person, and we don’t exactly eat at the same times, but it does seem like I’ll have enough opportunities to chat, which is exactly why I wanted a host family in the first place – and, once again, I seem to have been extremely lucky. My room is adorable, and I even have my own bathroom. The only thing is that dinner (the smaller meal of the day) isn’t included in the contract, but one way or another that will work itself out. Lunch is so big that I’ve had leftovers for supper the past couple days. I certainly won’t go hungry!

The campus: small, but nice. It’s only two buildings connected by a patio, and it will probably fill up more when the undergrads arrive, but it’s got wireless – and I now have a laptop. I’m finally joining the electronic age! Okay, so I’ve had a computer and a camera. Now I have a cell phone. I just don’t know how it works; Rosa (2) has been showing me a bunch of tricks. Anyway, the profs seem nice. It will take some time for me to get used to the British program director, though: his Spanish has a very British accent!

The city: I haven’t yet done the full tourist thing, and – astounding though it may seem – I’ve barely taken any photos. Madrid is a different city than Segovia. I know that sounds obvious, but I’m waiting to get my bearings a little, get comfortable in crowds, and get to know my classmates so perhaps I can find a walking/photography partner. And yes, I’m being careful of pickpockets. The best advice I’ve heard on that so far was from a Spanish police officer in Barcelona, who said just start shouting at the pickpocket – draw attention, and he’ll leave. And I still remember a few choice words from one of my host brothers in Segovia, so I should be fine. :-)

I’ve walked around the center of Madrid a couple times now, including el Parque de Buen Retiro. I’ll probably end up taking periodic walks through there; as pretty as the central neighborhoods (including mine) are, I know sooner or later I’ll start yearning for some peace, quiet, trees, and a lake (even if it is man-made). And it really is a gorgeous park. Last night the whole group had a guided tour of sorts through the oldest part of Madrid, and I finally started to fall for this city. Oh, it’s definitely fascinating and fun, and the architecture is great, and there’s so much life everywhere – but the old part, with the little plazas, the old palaces, the cobblestone streets, and the tranquil atmosphere, definitely made me feel more at home. It was an excellent survey of places to take photos, too. I think this weekend might be a good time to take out the camera and go a little crazy. I’ll upload some photos online and show them off when I do :-)

The group: seems excellent. I don’t know everyone yet, of course, but several bunches of us have gone out for tapas (appetizers). One wonderful sign of things to come is that (for the most part) we’ve all been speaking to each other exclusively in Spanish. We have orientation (not just to the school, but to Madrid) for the next week or so, so we’ll all get to know each other a little before starting class. (Just now I’m at NYU and all the undergraduates are passing by, half-shouting in English… amazing how annoying that suddenly is! Ooh, story time. I heard a couple younger American girls talking on the metro about a friend who went to a pharmacy and asked for pills… but she asked for pilas, not pastillas – that is, batteries, not pills.)

Randomness: I’ve already seen a 3-legged dog, a 1-legged pigeon, and one of the actors from Aquí No Hay Quien Viva! Klutz that I am, I tripped in the park today and ripped up my jeans and knee a little bit. A random Spanish woman stopped and gave me a nice big band-aid. Three cheers for helpful strangers!

I’m still looking forward to returning to Segovia, of course (Friday). But little by little I’m growing accustomed to Madrid, and very much enjoying myself.

Until the next installment, here’s hoping your weather is as deliciously sunny as it is here!
Mary

Welcome

2007-06-07T00:30:00.000+02:00

Hello from -- well, still in Minnesota. Just setting up a place for brand new adventures...