A tasting of home in Valladolid

Spaniards love their holidays-- it seems that almost every day is a Saint's Day (or recently, All Saints Day.) Perhaps the only thing they love more, besides ham, is Columbus, who is something of a national hero. There are streets named after him in most cities, statues in town squares, museums, and even a national holiday. It takes place around the same time as the American Columbus Day, and to celebrate I decided to go check out Valladolid, the medium-sized (population 350,000) city to the southwest of Palencia. Valladolid also happens to be the place where Columbus lived his last years, and where he died, so it made the visit's timing especially apropos.

It's not a city with a good reputation: the people are said to be cold and closed, and someone once told me it was the "ugliest city in Spain." But at the same time, people say the same about Bostonians--who I adore--and about Parisians--who I had no problems with in the course of an eight-day visit. And no one could call Allston, my beloved former Bostonian neighborhood, anything but homely. So, I approached with both trepidation and skepticism, and after several months of hanging out virtually in the couchsurfing group there, watching a close-knit and welcoming community getting together for dinner or to go camping, I felt encouraged to meet them and their city.

In Valladolid, I stayed with Carlos, an enthusiastic host and beer connoisseur/collector with a very impressive collection from all over the world. The first day we walked all around the city, which I found to be quite lovely, although scrappy and unsightly on the edges (but no more than any other Spanish cities I've seen). It has a stunning main plaza, a pretty zone in the center full of old architecture, a university feel (it houses one of Spain's oldest universities), and a lovely big park full of (strangely enough) peacocks. The second day I stayed with Elizabeth, a fellow teacher in the Language Assistant program, and she showed me around further, leading me on a stroll through the city's shady riverside walk, its "beach" (of sorts), and a few old neighborhoods.

Valladolid Plaza Mayor, the model for the Plaza Mayor in Madrid

Twilight in the park by the river

I spent the first evening acquainting myself with the Valladolid couchsurfing crew, who were just as warm and friendly as I expected. We had a small party at Carlos' house, a beer tasting, sampling beers from Carlos' collection (Ireland, Germany, Netherlands, USA, etc). The tasting was fun and low key, and we spent several hours chatting and sipping.

I was impressed with the way my Spanish held up over the course of the evening. But I've also found that after a certain period, it's like a thick plate of glass goes up between me and whoever I'm talking with. I can see the other person speaking on the other side, but it's all hitting the glass and sliding off, and I can only look at him or her with blinking incomprehension and give that universal "I can't understand you but I am trying to pretend I can" smile.

Nevertheless, it was a very pleasant time. I met a lot of kind, interesting people; they asked me about American politics and culture, we talked about couchsurfing, they made sushi and ordered pizza. Along with the beer, I felt like I was tasting a bit of What Could Be. Uprooting your life is hard in any circumstances and is perhaps hardest in a new country with a new culture and language. I had been feeling lonely and frustrated with the pace of my friendship development. (It's one thing to understand that building relationships takes time, and it's another thing entirely to live it.) But this was one night to have a built-in group of friends, ready-made and waiting. It was heartening, and I took that strength home with me to Palencia to keep on with the work of life-making.

But when they finished their party at 2:30 AM and got ready to go out into the city, I couldn't say yes. Spaniards have amazing party endurance, the kind that an American girl has to train for the way she would a marathon, little by little. They got home at 7:30 in the morning; I slept soundly.

Carlos' collection, including beer from the Congo and a Pilsner from 1960 Czechoslovakia

Valladolid Plaza Mayor by night
(More thoughts on life-building, language frustrations, and a return to Valladolid for a ballet-flamenco performance of 'Carmen' coming soon....)

Please state your objective

Honestly, I've been trying to post this entry for almost a week now, but my schedule is just too damn frenetic. So the entry that was supposed to begin like this...

"Well, I'm here. After a canceled flight, 1.5 hours of frantic rescheduling, two super early mornings in a row, and 48 hours of lost luggage misfortune, I am here in Guadalajara"

... actually now encompasses an entire week in Mexico. A fantastic, crazy, busy, educational week that saw me doing a great deal. The first few days especially were really intense, but I'm getting into the rhythm now. We spend a lot of time in the classroom-- I've taught 4 practice classes already. Now I know how to make a lesson plan; now I understand the difference between present perfect and present perfect progressive; now I know how to correctly conjugate the verb "to drink," which always eluded me.

I live with a host family (grandfather, grandmother, parents, college-age son, and enormous rambunctious puppy named Bruno) in a peaceful neighborhood 20 minutes by bus from the center of the city. The house always smells like frijoles. My abuela cooks dinner and while we eat we often watch TV together-- last night it was the Mexican version of "Are you smarter than a fifth grader?" It turns out that my Spanish is much better than I ever would have dreamed. Not amazing, of course, especially as I still lack the ability to speak in future or past tense with any regularity. But I can communicate and my vocabulary is building by the day. I'm learning to use words like "entonces" and "conmigo."

I know to get off the bus 4 blocks past the big park, then walk past the old-style cafe where gray-haired men play dominos at pretty much every hour of the day, crossing Juarez and turning right past the mollete stand to school. On Friday night I drank tequila for 4 hours with an Australian, a Canadian, and a teacher from South Carolina. On Saturday I climbed ancient Mexican pyramids and ate some of the best fajitas of my life while watching pelicans swoop over a tranquil lake. Last night I enjoyed an evening of charming old people dancing salsa in the open air. In short: I'm settling into Guadalajara.

Settling in means I have more time for thoughts, and think I have. Spending so much time lesson planning has started to affect other parts of my life as its structured format bleeds into my world view and daily actions. The question of what materials I will need for a given activity becomes considerations about packing for a day trip or even to go into the city. How many minutes this activity will take calls on my time management skills, or lack thereof. And then there is the ultimate in existential questions. What is your objective?

In the context of a lesson plan, stating the objective is practical and easy. What is the goal of this segment of the lesson, or of the lesson in general? Do I want my students to grasp the difference in conditionals between "If I pop a bike tire I will have to buy a new one" and "If I pop a bike tire I might fall off"? Am I aiming to have them master the ability to write a solid summary? It's all entirely concrete and non-threatening.

That is, until the question ricochets off the boundaries of its neat form and starts bouncing around other important concerns. What is my objective here in Mexico? To earn a certification to teach English as a second/foreign language, for sure. But what about in addition? Am I hear to make friends? Am I hear to learn what it's like to live independently in a foreign city? To experience Mexico? To improve my Spanish? The answer to these questions affects my priorities and thus the life I will be living in this city. When to stay home and get enough sleep, when to take advantage of couchsurfing parties and fun drinks with classmates? Which is better, a homestay far from the city with the opportunity to practice Spanish but little independence, or a hostel where I can feel like an adult and take advantage of the city but lack the chance for language work? For now, the homestay wins out, but conflicting motivations remain.

And of course, then there's the larger picture. The question of an objective is scary to an aimless, uncertain 20-something like myself. It encompasses every uncertainty about my life path, my goals, my plans. What is my objective and can I fulfill it? Is my objective the quintessential journalist dreams of a recent college graduate, stoked or extinguished by economic troubles? Is it the back-up ideals of a year or two in Europe teaching? Is my objective to have adventure? To find love? To establish myself in a career I enjoy? Is it just to enjoy the sublime margaritas and Sunday morning tamale breakfasts?

Of course, life isn't a lesson plan. The bell is not going to ring; no problems can be solved with corny print-outs of 90s-style clip art or a dialog about going to the library. But thinking about My Objective seems to have come with the territory of my time in Guadalajara, just as much as mariachi bands, sunny days, and cafe con leche.

Slice of Life: Adventures in Brisbane 1

In my array of travels, some trips end up being about places--enjoying architecture, exploring neighborhoods, seeing what there is to see -- and some trips end up being about people. For me, Brisbane was very much about people. I got to see a chunk of the city, but my time in Brisbane was enjoyable and, even more, important to me, because of the people I met and the parts of their lives I got to experience.

I stayed for five days in a beautiful, rambling house in Sherwood (which is funny because the place I stayed in near Sydney was called Burwood) with Karl, his younger brother Sven, and their friend Ed, three guys roughly my age. The house belonged to Karl and Sven's parents, who moved to Singapore a few years ago and left the house for their sons to inhabit. Evidence of the family that once lived here was everywhere, in the high shine of the floors, the decorating choices (very much an Asian theme), the photos of younger days. Sometimes it was evidence in absence--the lovely pool was pretty much unswimmable, as no one "could be arsed" (as they say in Australia) to keep it clean. I don't mean to say that it was a messy house. In fact, it was much cleaner than I would expect from three guys ages 19-21.

Besides the highly-polished floors, the E boys' house featured a great open balcony/porch, a large, very fat cat called Attie, two turtles, and a small white mouse called Octavius. I later learned that this mouse once belonged to a fourth roommate, who tragically died of a brain hemorrhage about a month before I arrived, while Karl and Sven were in Singapore visiting their parents. As it turned out, the room I stayed in was once the roommate's. This was a little weird/creepy, but not as much as I was expecting, maybe because Sven didn't mention it until a few days into my visit.

Top: The living room and my host; you can also see out to the porch.
Below: A "family" dinner. From right Karl, Sven, one of their friends (reaching), and Ed (face partly blocked)

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I took the commuter train from the Gold Coast to the city, an unremarkable ride except for one stop, Olmeau, which sounded like "Almost" when paired with the announced "Olmeau Station." Maybe you have to be an English nerd to appreciate that.

When I arrived in Brisbane it was mid-afternoon, and Karl was busy at a first-aid seminar he was required to complete before he began medical school in half a week. So my first impression of the city was a very brief meet up with girl from Canberra (pronounced CAN-bra) and a local named Adrian. Adrian had seen a post I'd made on the local couch surfing group saying I'd be coming into town, and cruised up randomly on his bike, giving us a spin around the center of the city nearest to the train station, including a cool but touristy walking area called Queen Street Mall.

The Casino, a fancy building near Queen Street


Adrian left fairly soon after, and I had a coffee and enjoyed a copy of the local newspaper. Again, Bill Bryson puts the joy of Australian newspapers wonderfully:

"It always amazes me how seldom visitors bother with local papers," he says. "Personally, I can think of nothing more exciting-- certainly nothing you could do in a public place with a cup of coffee-- than to read newspapers from a part of the world you know almost nothing about. What a comfort it is to find a nation preoccupied by matters of no possible consequence to oneself. I love reading about scandals involving ministers of whom I have never heard, murder hunts in communities whose names sound dusty and remote, features on revered artists and thinkers whose achievements have never reach my ears, whose talents I must take on faith.
I love above all to venture into the colour supplements and see what’s fashionable for the beach in this part of the world, what’s new for the kitchen, what I might get for my money if I had A$400,000 to spare and a reason to live in Dubbo or Woolloomooloo... Where else can you get this much pleasure for a trifling handful of coins?"

In any case, it was a great way to pass the time before I met Karl at the train station and wandered off into suburban Brisbane and a fantastic stretch of days.

I arrived at the house and immediately felt that I had met some of my tribe, as they say. Sven, tall and striking, was into death metal and rock climbing. Ed loved similar music but preferred to hang about the house drinking beer and making droll comments. That first evening was spent eating spaghetti, drinking wine, listening to music, and playing Jenga and Guess Who?, two board games I hadn't thought about in years. A few of Karl's friends came around to visit after awhile--he had just gotten back from a six month jaunt in eastern Europe and so his presence back at home was a matter of some excitement.

In the course of the evening Ed, Karl, and I walked down to the "bottle-O" (that's what they call liquor shop) and I learned that Australia has, wait for it, drive-through liquor stores. Also I saw some possums (we know them as flying foxes.) Double plus bonus. The rest of the night was equally silly, fun, and low-key: it felt like a day at home with my friends. Except that every few minutes, as another song I loved came on Karl's iPod, I would pull out my mental map and remember exactly where I was. That made it all the more miraculous.

Quite a bit later, after an interesting conversation about gay rights in Australia vs. the US with a friend of Karl's called Woody, I ventured into the realm of Vegemite. Making me Vegemite on toast was a huge deal, apparently, and Karl and Woody made much of the right amount of butter and spread that was applied to the bread. I didn't hate it as much as I thought I would, but the salt was intense and built with each bite.

I snuck it into the waste basket after a few tries as we chatted about this and that, and Woody grinned, "I saw that." I shrugged, admitting it.
"That's okay," he said, "We'll ease you into it."

I spent the next several days alternately exploring the city and environs with Karl and hanging out with him and his friends. Karl told me that his favorite hosts on his trip in eastern Europe had been those who took time to explore with him and really introduced him to their world. His approach was the same, and the effect was great. We pushed through the considerable humidity and heat of mid-January Brisbane to walk the Botanical Gardens, take the City Cat (the commuter ferry that runs on the river) to South Bank to wander, and look through used bookstores and great coffee shops in West End, including one called The Three Monkeys with fabulous ambiance and great chai.

One morning I had the chance to experience Australian bureaucracy, which gives the American version a run for its mony, at a central office similar to the DMV, where Karl had to drop some papers. Another afternoon we gave ourselves up to the heat and sat on the false beach by South Bank, eating ice cream from Cold Rock (I guess they can't call it "Coldstone" down under) and watching small children flounder in chest-high water. In the background an enormous TV screen played "I Come From the Land Down Under" by Men At Work (I mentioned my surprise that Australians love the song) over the tumult of shrieks and splashes.

Brisbane skyline from the City Cat


Path through the Botanic Gardens

Bridge from the Botanic Gardens to South Bank


Chai and record shop in the West End

Nights were busy as well, fat with humidity and friends to see. Once we ventured into an area known as "The Valley" (proper name Fortitude Valley) near Brisbane, a warren of clubs and bars, to see The Travelling So and So's, a band made of up several of Karl's friends. We had drinks before on the street, revelers streaming past us on the way to another alcohol soaked night (have I imentioned that Australians drink a LOT?) The Traveling So and So's played in a dive called The Globe, which spotted an odd but cool characteristic: a dance floor tilted at 50 degrees. The So and So's music was heavy on the saxophone, and their singer sounded like Gwen Stefani: I felt pretty good about them as they tossed party noisemakers and plastic mini tambourines into the crowd (I still have mine), although not totally excited.

The lack of excitement was partially because I was having a realization. As I listened to the show, I watched the people I'd gotten to know over the past week enjoy themselves, dance, lean against each other laughing. I remembered, although the days before and after made me forget, that I was only a brief blip on their screens. Couch surfing affords incredible experiences and allows you to meet wonderful people. But put appropriate emphasis on "meet," because to dig deeper to the connection I generally prefer, well, that's not so simple, especially when your window of opportunity is only five days.

Even if you're staying with a person all the time, there are still walls that stay up, and I wanted them down. This made Brisbane both a wonderful experience and quite painful. The painful part came first as I watched the concert, then again later as I realized I was leaving and the walls I wanted down weren't there yet. Give me more time, I thought. We can make this work. The potential is huge. I just need more time. But there was a whole world waiting.

Making Tracks in Sydney: Part 3

I am nothing if not a market person. Put me in a shopping mall and I have no problem strolling through, stopping occasionally to window shop. Probably I will be begging you to let me leave after a bit. But present me with an outdoor market selling whatever-- vegetables and fruit, used clothing and books, crafts-- and I am in deep trouble.

I had heard that Sydney has a great market scene, and as the weekend had finally come I resolved to check it out. I originally planned to explore two markets, in Paddington and Glebe, but the planning stage of the excursion went so long that I decided to cut my losses and just look at Glebe. Good choice. The market was situated among shady trees in a local park, and it featured plentiful arts and crafts, used clothing and books, homemade cosmetics and candy, many kinds of food, and Chinese massages. I wandered blissfully for a few hours, munching on dim sum from a take-away cart and listening to the Spanish men manning a jewelry tent sing and play the guitar. It took awhile, but I finally settled on my one allowed purchase--a Scrabble tile made into a charm for a necklace.

The Spanish singers at the Glebe Markets


When I was finished I settled in the grass and read, listening to the Celtic band playing nearby and waiting for Damian, the couch surfer from the night before. He showed me around Glebe a bit, including treating me to some positively sinful Spanish-style hot chocolate at a funky chocolate shop (for those keeping track: the standard marshmallow colors of Australia are pink and white, much like Ireland and, as I later found out, New Zealand.)

Street art in Glebe


After a stop at Damian's apartment, we took the bus into the city for the event for which I had stayed an extra day in the city: Sydney Festival First Night.

The annual Sydney Festival takes place every year at the height of summer and includes performances musicians and dance companies from all over the world. After several years, however, people started to complain about how expensive all the shows were, so the city arranged for an All Free first night, which amounts to a massive set of free concerts scattered over the center of the city. I had heard about this night in my first few days in Sydney and resolved to stay on for it.

My cell phone ran out of batteries quite early in the night, and this turned out to be a fortuitous occurance that encouraged rather than hindered an amazing time spent. Right before my phone heaved its last sighs, I was able to meet up with James (my couch surfing host, if you remember) at a band where a great big band was playing. I watched Aussies dancing happily and enjoyed the music in the quickly falling dusk. In between sets, we were treated to entertainment by Aphrodite, who was hosting Love TV on a closed circuit television all over the park, from a little all-pink trailer next to the stage. She interviewed a series of Sydney quasi-celebrities about their love lives and their respective love-affairs with Sydney. Most of these interviews were amusing blather, but one point in particular shone brightly as a point of cultural difference (which you have to really look for in Australia). At the end of each interview, Aphrodite asked her interviewee to arrange his/her facial features as they would look at a...er...point of climax. Note that this image was then broadcast to the hundreds of revelers watching on the lawn around the big band stage-- including children! I told James that that sort of thing would never fly in the US. It looked for a few minutes like I might have gone on Australian Love TV, which I would have put down to a cultural adventure, but Aphrodite ran late and didn't have the time.

Scenes from Sydney Festival First Night: An enormous orange wombat; Three bikers playing unconventional clarinet in the park



Following the big band performances I tried to go see my fellow Wesleyan alum Santogold performing, but the place was packed to sardine levels with Australian hipsters and I couldn't even get close. Instead, having lost James at this point, I struck out on my own and decided to make my way to the stage where the Gypsy Kings and Queens, a Spanish/Balkan band, was to perform. The show, which lasted an hour and a half, felt a bit like getting drunk on music, along with a crowd of thousands. At first I was a little lukewarm on the whole thing, as the songs were very heavy on brass with very fast trumpet finger work and not much else--music to fight bulls to. But the crowd warmed up and the music did, too. There was ornate, interesting vocal work threading in and out of the brass, a couple of beautiful gypsy dancers spicing up the stage, several incredible guitarists, and then, all of a sudden, a mass of us all of us dancing and singing wildly to the music of northern Spain and the Balkans. I don't know if any of us could have told you when the transformation happened, from skeptical audience to excited masses--only that it had and we were happy.

As it turned out, I was standing next to a Serbian immigrant about my age, and as the concert went on we chatted and she told me about the songs she recognized, this one fit for weddings, another sung by an enormous woman with a huge voice who is apparently very famous in Gypsy circles. It was wonderful to be able to catch my breath in between songs and have some cultural context as to the alien, lovely music I was enjoying.

The famous Gypsy singer

The show ended with a burst of fireworks. My feet throbbing, I joined the crowd as it flowed as one being out into the city. I found a pub with the Serbian girl and her two Armenian friends, one with terrible pounding techno but fitting nonetheless. We had a pleasant drink wand walked back to the metro, where I stumbled home ecstatic and exhausted.

I spent my last day in Sydney largely in a previously unexplored part of the Australian world, that of the upper crust. In the morning I went to the famous Bondi Beach, first to the markets (where I very smartly bought the book "Down Under"by Bill Bryson--also known as "In A Sunburned Country"-- which would keep me well entertained and informed for the rest of my trip) and then to see How The Other Half Lives.

Bondi Beach markets


The famous beach itself
Ceal and Tony were friends of family friends, and they had been generous enough to offer to spend the afternoon with me. They picked me up at Bondi and whisked me off to a posh sailing club for lunch. While we waited I was introduced to Pokies, mysteriously complicated poker machines that I couldn't figure out. Apparently they are wildly popular-- if you start looking you seem them everywhere: in super markets, pubs, coffee shops, hotel lobbies. Bryson says in his book that Australia has 1% of world's population and 20% of its poker machines. I believe it. It would seem that Australians love to gamble.

We had a drink before lunch and then I dined on minted lamb with more than one fork in my dingy gray singlet (that's what they call "tank top" here.) I tried not to feel too out of place-- the food was great and I knew it would be the best meal I'd have for a long time, living as I am on a backpacker budget. Ceal and Tony were great lunch companions-- Ceal very intelligent and filled with opinions, Tony quieter and more reserved with the classic dry Australian humor. I loaded up on vegetables and tried to be as thankful as I could.

After a drive around the area to see a few of Sydney Harbor's smaller bays, they took me to an area of the city botanical gardens called Mrs. Macquarie's Chair, named after an old governor's wife, with gorgeous views of the opera house and bridge. This particular sojourn was appropriate for a couple of reasons: first, it brought my time in Sydney full circle as I admired the opera house from afar. Second, I was to leave the next morning for the second stop on my trip, a town named for that same governor: Port Macquarie.