Burgos

I kept waiting to be inspired by the universe to create an epic, achingly beautiful blog entry that would succinctly capture everything I've experienced since arriving back in Spain and simultaneously secure me a position on the staff of the Times, thereby solving all of my problems with what to do with my future. It never happened. I have a friend who likes to tell me that I've experienced too much beauty in my life, to the extent that it's no longer fair for me to wake up in the Plaza Mayor in a gorgeous medieval European city to the sound of pealing cathedral bells. That's true, I guess. Sometimes I get frustrated with life here, but then I take a walk on a Sunday morning and I stand at the foot of a picturesque castle with sweeping views over the city, the mountains in the distance, the smell of fresh bread mixing with the biting aroma of recently pulled espresso and... I melt. I love it here. I love Europe. I belong here in so, so many ways. And at the same time, it can all be just so... wrong. I read recently in an article written by a professor at Bates that "so often, travelogues are not at all about where the writer travels, but about the traveler himself." Umm... yes. "Duh," even. She was being critical, but, isn't that the point of traveling? It's a vacuum of comfort, a new mirror in which to examine yourself and determine how you, as an acculturated, developed person can exist in a place and a society that was probably doing fine without you, thanks very much. It's totally self-serving. It's completely narcissistic. But it's also exciting, and possibly, if you're lucky, beautiful. But it's also damn hard. Leaving your own culture, your home, everything comfortable and familiar about your life is not an easy decision to make. Worse yet is to do it for an extended period of time, a period not limited by the length of an all-inclusive cruise around the Mediterranean. Imagine trying to open a bank account in a foreign country: even if you speak the language, "Banking Vocabulary 101" is not something taught in high school French. The problems with visas. Finding an apartment. Cultural differences between you and your new, insane roommates. "Speaking a language" does not take away all of the linguistic barriers, let alone the cultural and social ones that always complicate the process of making new friends and carving out a routine for yourself. It's one thing to travel to a place, and quite another to live there.

And that's what's been holding me back from writing this blog. The last time I came to Europe, I was completely enamored with the beauty. It was all new, it was all exotic, and it was all controlled in the way that only a study-abroad program for Americans can distort the perception of a culture into easily-digestible bullet points, attractions to check off a bucket list. It was safe, it was fun, and it was an excellent introduction. And it was really great for blog posts. But it wasn't at all authentic. My host mom in Granada, a woman who has had more than her fair share of traveling and living in different cultures, once said to me, "to truly understand a city, you've got to spend at least two months there." Now, I think I understand what she meant. It's not enough to see all the sites, try all the food, even learn the language, and leave. You can't understand a culture by living with one foot planted firmly in another. You can't understand a culture by "living in a city" while flying to a different country every weekend as I did the first time I lived in Spain. This time around, I have a job that I can't skip-out on for "culturally relevant" side trips. (I mean, OK, in all honesty I could, but I don't.) I have an apartment. I worry about left-overs going bad. And the thing is, in the beginning, this was all crazy. CRAZY! Who was I to be worrying about left-overs in Spain? SPAIN! I'm not Spanish. I didn't have money here, a bank account, friends, a home, a map of the city that showed me where my school was... nothing. And this time, there was no program to solve these problems for me. But, little by little, it all started coming together. I've got my "green card" now, my apartment, my bank, my favorite supermarket, bakery, bread shop, walking routes for Sunday mornings, to work if I have time to kill, to work if I was watching Glee while eating breakfast and I'm already ten minutes late... in short, I'm starting to have a life. I volunteer at the animal shelter here walking dogs a few times a week, because A) it's NOT a happy place, and B) I desperately, desperately want a dog (I'm really into unconditional love). I sing in a chorus. I tutor four times a week. I don't travel constantly because I don't have the money, but when I do, I rent a car and stay in cute Spanish bed and breakfasts along the coast two hours away where I have surreal experiences of Spanish grandmothers preparing the largest breakfast I've ever eaten in my life for me. And, a recent development, I have friends. It's all in the beginning stages, of course, but I go out with people on the weekends and after chorus, Spanish people, many of whom like me because I'm quirky and foreign, and not just because they can practice English with me. There are a few Americans and Britons in the city here working for the same program as I am, but I've really made no attempt to contact them. Frankly, I don't want to. The few Americans I've seen here are usually loud and drunk in the center of plazas screaming poorly-pronounced Shakira lyrics. This shouldn't be another study-abroad experience. But that's the scary part. I'm talking to my friends at home less than I did when I first got here. I'm enjoying the time I spend with my Spanish friends, not just forcing myself to sit through an excruciatingly awkward evening because that's just what you do when you move to a new city. That's not to say that I think I'll ever be as close with my Spanish friends as my American ones; I have a whole theory about the inability to connect with other people on truly profound levels in a non-native language, but that's another post. What's scary is that it might not matter. My life in Spain will never be my life in the US, and it would be foolish to try to force it to be. It's different here. It's not necessarily better. But it's what my life is at the moment, and I'm beginning to be OK with that.

Random pictures that deserve to be seen but that I had no energy to comment on:

After the massive American breakfast bonanza.

View from my apartment.



Monastery from the 11th century. No big deal.





Possibly the best breakfast ever, from that grandmother in the bed and breakfast. Or possibly it's a close second to the pancakes, french toast, bacon and breakfast potatoes that Tess and I made in my apartment the second week here. With maple syrup. From Carrefour. For 6 euro. So worth it.