Today I write on paper! The library closed for siesta at a different time today, so I have an hour and a half to kill before I have power to run my computer again. I got emails done at least before my battery ran out, so now I just use the ol’ pen to write my thoughts.
This weekend I went to the coast, technically on the Mediterranean Sea, but pretty close to the Straights (Straits?) of Gibraltar. There I learned to dive. I’m now certified to dive down to 18 meters. Yeah, I learned to dive metrically, which means I logged everything in terms of Celsius, meters, and bars. Who knows what a bar is? I sure didn’t. Turns out I still don’t know because neither did my teacher. PSI is easy because it is pounds/square inch. It’s a mathematical equation. But a bar? He said he thinks maybe it’s a measurement of atmospheres. Like a full tank before diving is 200 bars of air… so 200 atmospheres? What the heck is an atmosphere? How do you measure that? I wish I knew.
This came from Simon, my instructor from England who sounds like a joke. I’m not being mean, because I literally intend to say that he just sounds like he must be joking when he opens his mouth. If he were to talk like that in the US, people would think he was putting on an act all the time. Like when he answers his phone, he’s mostly yelling in this overly happy, stereotypically British banter and I wanted to burst out laughing ever time. Turns out he might’ve just been a rarity, because Ria (Rhea?) who works in the shop (she’s getting her divemaster for free by working some in the shop and getting awesome internship experience) sounds a little calmer. Almost cynical.
Then there was Jake too. He was Scottish and about to start his divemaster (you can’t technically do divemaster until you’re 18 and Jake is only 17 for another couple of weeks). And Duncan, the older short diver who took me out for my first two open water dives. He didn’t have as much patience as Simon, which doesn’t surprise me any since Simon is one of those interminably happy people (hance the super-dorky, super-eager telephone voice) off of whom mean jokes and criticisms bounce. I’m not sure where Duncan is from, but he seemed to be getting upset at me quite a bit when I had trouble with the compass. What can I say? I was never allowed in Boy Scouts!
My lungs are back to normal. I think I have a tendency towards hypochondria, but I’m really good at keeping it in check. Anyway, the top 20 % of my lung capacity (as in the bit just before being completely full of air) hurt to fill. I could breathe shallowly without a problem, but if I sighed or breathed deeply there was a pain in my chest that had me worried. Plus, if I expelled most of my air and used the last bit to cough, that hurt too. So I researched all of the symptoms of lung over-expansion just to be safe and then waited it out a little, I feel fine now, but it did make me nervous because I don’t really know how to go to the doctor here yet. Sounds silly, but it is a concern. Health care is different and I have some sort of insurance, but I’m not sure how to use it just yet.
I was diving with some sort of sinus trouble, which I worried would prevent me from finishing, but I did okay. My nose would get stuffy at night, but it would be mostly clear during the day, although my first couple dives I came out of the water, took off my mask and I’m pretty sure I had snot all over my face, which I’m sure was just lovely. Duncan didn’t tell me about it, which is fine because I didn’te say anything about the smears of white snot on his face either. But I kept discovering stuff on my face, which was a real pleasure.
While in Torremolinos (the gay capitol of Spain) I had internet in my hostel, which made me happy. I got to Skype with loved ones some, which is proving to be difficult here in Castuera because of time difference. Also, I was invited to go out on the town with 13 intoxicated English (and one or two Scottish) chaps for a “Stag do.” This is the equivalent of our bachelor parties. But they were going to Benalmadena by taxi (a town ½ hour away) and I didn’t feel like spending the money to get stranded with 13 drunk and horny dudes when I had to dive early the next morning (call me crazy!). They seemed nice enough though. But I didn’t go, despite the drunken pleading! :)
I went out for breakfast with the dive crew on the last day. They took me to an English place and I ordered a typical English breakfast, which consisted of toast, egg, bacon (not like our bacon, it was more just like fried ham), baked beans, fried mushrooms and black pudding (oats, fat and blood). I drank coffee, which was not very British of me, but I couldn’t resist. Tea doesn’t usually make me as happy in the morning as coffee does.
I got stranded in the way home in Córdoba. I got a train from Torremolinos to Málaga and another super-smooth, super-cool train from Málaga to Córdoba. Then I found that the bus from Córdoba to Castuera only runs once a day, which means I was stuck there until 7AM the next morning. That wasn’t so bad though. I got internet for the night again, as well as Disney Channel mostly in English, beautiful clean white sheets, a clean towel, and a pristinely clean bathroom. They seem like simple things, but they really were amazing. I was certainly tired of hiking my backpack around in the rain looking for a cheap place to stay and when he said 30 euros and that was the best all the recommended hostels Lonely Planet could give me, I went for it.
But I did have to miss classes, which I felt pretty bad about. The headmaster of the school had a bad weekend when his mother fell and broke her arm, meaning that when I got into town at 10:30AM, the classes I would have actually made it to were cancelled or moved to another day, so that was a bummer.
And a bummer too for what my boss is going through. He’s so good with his parents. His father is old and crotchety and his mother has pretty severe Alzheimer’s, plus some depression as a result. At night when they come home from their daycare type arrangement, Gregorio (headmaster/boss) gets down on his knees in front of his mother, who has a hard time focusing her eyes on him, and he asks her basic questions to exercise her mind (what is your name, what is my name, how much do I love you). She doesn’t get these right usually, but he’s patient and gives her hints, sounding out the first letters of his name and waiting for her to guess.
I can’t imagine that. He kisses her forehead and hugs her and babys her, but I can’t imagine it’s easy for him. She sits on the couch staring at the TV with unseeing eyes and cries. Tears streak her face as she mumbles something unintelligible about life. It makes me want to cry and I am just filled with so much respect for Gregorio because he deals with that every day.
My own grandma is beginning to be forgetful. At first she was just asking the same question multiple times in one visit, then she was mixing up my brothers and couldn’t remember which of her sons they belonged to. Then she started to forget them entirely, which makes visiting hard. She has just started forgetting me, which makes me pretty sad. And repeating something 12 times during a half-hour visit is not uncommon. And no, 12 is not an exaggeration.
Everything in Spain is just a little different. Windows and doors are different. Shopping carts are different. Even the English is different. At first I thought they sounded funny because they were being taught English by non-native speakers, but now I am realizing that they have just been learning British English. They say things like “Hello” when seeing someone (yeah, you think that’s not so weird, but try saying “hello” and not “hi” or “hey” when it’s not answering the telephone or meeting someone new in a professional situation… trust me, it feels weird, it sounds so long and hard to get out) and “I’ve got two brothers” (Dave-bo, perhaps You’ve Got Mail sounds so wrong because it is British English and not American English).
They use the metric system, which means that when someone tells me the weather or how far something is, I still have no freaking clue. It means nothing to me. I think we ought to teach that stuff a little better in school.
Everything is tiled. The sidewalks are tile. The house is tiled. The backyard is tiled. It makes everything feel cleaner. There are no places for dirt to just lurk, unless someone really doesn’t clean ever.
And now I must spend the next month or so not spending a dime. I have about 10 euros in my pocket and I don't want to spend anything more than that until I get paid and I can stop getting slaughtered by exchange fees. I woulda had 30 more euros if not for that hotel in Cordoba, but oh well, it was unavoidable. I think I'll be eating little for a while. Fun.
I don’t really know that I can write much more right now. Another time, perhaps. And so I guess now is a good time to publish my CURRENT mailing address. I don’t know how long I will be at this address, so check in if you intend to send someone in more than a week. Put it in the following format and it SHOULD work, but I don’t really know. I’m hoping.
Emily Kuhl
C/ Pedro de Valdivia N° 6
Castuera (Badajoz) 06420
España
Thanks for the good thoughts and love you’re sending me. It’s getting me through. Chao!
Emily
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Sunday, October 3, 2010
I Even Impress Myself
Getting here has been… long. I am in Castuera, Spain, writing from my bed. I can hear the bats outside my window and I swear every twenty minutes Maria comes in to ask if I will eat anything. Apparently I eat like a bird. I consciously think about not being a “typical” American and try to keep the pounds off. Not that it’s difficult with a metabolism that’s always in high gear. Of course, this will change.
Here is where I give my warning about writing. First, I think I will be writing a lot at first, because I will have little else to do until I can get into a routine. But once that routine picks up, I promise to write at least once a month, but not any more than that. Just like Ecuador, which at times was less than once a month, but sometimes more.
Almost a week ago (Monday morning at 8:10am) my plane left Idaho. Saying goodbye was hard, but I have very supportive people in my life. I flew to Salt Lake City and then Atlanta, where I had a couple of hours of layover, which was good, because I could make my last phone calls. My friends back at home have been kind enough to take care of my rat while I am away, which is such an amazing thing, but it was certainly a process working out the details. I made many phone calls ending in the following transactions- my mother took down phone numbers to tape to the cage to keep people in contact with one another, then she took Rae to my dad’s co-worker Evan’s office, Evan took the cage to his little town where I assume he dropped it at Kat’s house, Kat left the next day for Moscow with Rae and the phone numbers, hopefully called John and left Rae with him, or perhaps called Conner when John wouldn’t answer and left Rae with Conner who would call John and deliver her to him later. It was a large scheme with a lot of ifs. I have heard no word of anything going wrong, so my fingers are crossed.
Then I got on the plane after some final phone goodbyes and flew to Madrid. I arrived in Madrid at 10am Madrid time. I found a taxi and went to my hostel (28€ is a little more than the $5 taxi rides across Quito) where they wouldn’t let me check in yet. I went to find my friend Jen in her 14-bunk room shared by strangers. Needless to say, she did not answer the door and the girl who did answer definitely did not know Jen. When I went downstairs to sit and wait, Jen came to the railing saying, “I thought I heard your voice,” with sleep still collecting in the corners of her eyes.
We spent two days walking around, napping, and paying way more for food than we should have. On the second evening we went out after a nap (the ciesta, by the way, is practiced much more by the Spanish than by the Mexicans) once we heard the chanting and singing and drums rolling past our blackout curtains. I didn’t leave on the 29th as originally planned because of the “Huelga General,” or General Strike. I was told at first that it was just going to be transportation that was shut down first, but it turns out almost everything was shut down. Many of the English teachers I would meet at orientation were delayed flying from the United States in to Spain because of the strike and they had to fly in to Lisbon (Lisboa) instead. It also turns out that many European countries were following Spain’s lead and having strikes that day too.
So we went out into the streets of Madrid and joined the strike, which we thought was huge once we got to the first big square a few blocks down. It was peaceful, even though we saw people actively spray-painting surfaces with differing ideas. But then we went into Plaza Mayor and it got so much bigger. People were coming in and leaving in waves. There were opposing views marbled into the plaza and yet the only disruption was when an ambulance had to come in for a heart-attack/stroke victim. It was pretty cool.
At the same time, I didn’t really understand it. Propaganda Spanish is hard to decipher because it’s word play, like English propaganda usually is. I read later that it was against austerity and the big bank bailouts. Some of it was outright against capitalism and seemed to have communist symbols on it.
So that’s what Jes and I did. We even stole flags as mementos.
The next morning I got up rull early to skype with a special lovely man-friend and then I left for the bus station for an 8am bus. I was still carrying around what felt like an obscene amount of baggage, which I hate. It makes me very obviously a tourist. But I lugged it around because I had no choice. I needed to get it all to Cáceres for orientation, which was still not the last stop. Oh, I forgot to mention the Atlanta airport really doesn’t mind if checked baggage gets wet, apparently, because my suitcase arrived wet, which meant that all of my clothing was wet along with my books, one of which bled onto my favorite tank top and my favorite skirt and stained them permanently. But I had to leave all that stuff in my suitcase until I could get somewhere more permanently. It was starting to smell.
A four-hour bus ride brought me to Cáceres and I took a taxi to the hostel for orientation, laid in my empty room for a while and slept. Then there were drinks, seeing Mattcito, meeting lots and lots of people I might never see again, and a couple hours talking about changing the schedule for the next morning. The meeting that night was pointless, but efficiency seems to be an American thing.
The next morning we had breakfast (I was finishing every part of my meal and no one else was, kinda weird) and packed up to go to Universidad Laboral, which is a school that is basically the second part of their high school. It’s optional where all levels before are required, but it is still high school of some sort. There we had more semi-pointless meetings, but I also got to meet Geraldo, my headmaster, which was good. I am teaching ages 6-12.
After an overwhelming session of Spanish and more Spanish explaining the process of getting papers for being in Spain and how to set up a bank account, I got in Geraldo's car with all my luggage and we headed first to Don Benito (40 minutes from my town- and I might live there) for lunch and then to Castuera.
All the highways seem fake. You know those roadways we used to have as kids with the little play cars and the colorful signs and pristinely painted lines? That seems to be Spain. It all just seems too nice to be real. The US has way too many roads to keep them all in such pristine conditions and the only other roads I’ve really experienced are those in South America, which are either dirt or perilous. Or both. This is a change.
Castuera is beautiful. Geraldo has taken me out for drinks, shown me the top view of the city, and given me a road-map to follow, should I need it. All the houses have little courtyards, everything is so nicely tiled or paved, but not in the cheap cement sidewalk way that America does it. The streets are SO clean. The people know that I’m a foreigner, but thank god I don’t feel automatically hated like I started to feel in Ecuador before leaving. I may have to work myself out of the habit of looking at my feet to avoid heinous looks though.
Already I am lonely. But I want to revel in it. I have this kind of host mother for now and I’m trying to be as polite and friendly as possible, but mostly I want her to leave me alone. I like being solitary because then when I feel lonely, I can submit to it and get it over with. Somehow that isn’t as painful as trying to mask loneliness with social interest. But Maria insists on making an appearance in my alone time at least every twenty minutes to ask if I want warm milk or coffee or to take a shower, or just assure me that I can relax. Yes, I can, but certainly not when there is a high-nerves woman checking in on me every so often!
But she is nice. I appreciate it. Just maybe I am realizing what I like and what I don’t like. Like? Time to think. Don’t like? Nagging mothers. Maybe I have no patience for it because my mother was way cooler. And it doesn’t help that I get exhausted speaking and listening to Spanish all the time. There are literally no other Americans in this town right now. And Maria speaks dirty Spanish… the kind were vas becomes vah and quedado becomes something like que’a’o. It’s tiresome, plus Maria has hearing aids, meaning that when she comes every twenty minutes to ask me if I want something, she can’t hear me respond, meaning that I have to get up and go have a conversation with her before getting back to whatever I’m doing.
Most of my life I haven’t understood my own motivation. I still don’t. I know that when I feel unmotivated, it is useless to push against that, so I sit quietly. When I feel like I can take on the world, I do shit like apply to teach English in Spain so that when I hit a trough again, the application is already submitted. That also can get me into trouble sometimes, evidenced by the hives I gave myself from sheer terror of what I’m doing now. Yeah, have I mentioned that? I gave myself hives because I was so anxious. Who does that? Who gives themselves hives because they’re that freaked out? Apparently I do. I just hope that this time the motivation I took advantage of to get here served me well. Otherwise this trough might be very deep and very difficult to get out of.
I’ve found that blind encouragement doesn’t help. I think I would know best that I am a strong woman, since I’ve been with myself during all the bad times when others have not. But right now I’m lonely and tired and afraid. I want someone to be here with me to talk to me in English at the end of the day and to actually fully understand the context in which I speak. I want internet so that in moments of panic I can get a hold of someone to help, but for now I wait. Eight months is a long time. How did I get here? I think sometimes I even impress myself.
Here is where I give my warning about writing. First, I think I will be writing a lot at first, because I will have little else to do until I can get into a routine. But once that routine picks up, I promise to write at least once a month, but not any more than that. Just like Ecuador, which at times was less than once a month, but sometimes more.
Almost a week ago (Monday morning at 8:10am) my plane left Idaho. Saying goodbye was hard, but I have very supportive people in my life. I flew to Salt Lake City and then Atlanta, where I had a couple of hours of layover, which was good, because I could make my last phone calls. My friends back at home have been kind enough to take care of my rat while I am away, which is such an amazing thing, but it was certainly a process working out the details. I made many phone calls ending in the following transactions- my mother took down phone numbers to tape to the cage to keep people in contact with one another, then she took Rae to my dad’s co-worker Evan’s office, Evan took the cage to his little town where I assume he dropped it at Kat’s house, Kat left the next day for Moscow with Rae and the phone numbers, hopefully called John and left Rae with him, or perhaps called Conner when John wouldn’t answer and left Rae with Conner who would call John and deliver her to him later. It was a large scheme with a lot of ifs. I have heard no word of anything going wrong, so my fingers are crossed.
Then I got on the plane after some final phone goodbyes and flew to Madrid. I arrived in Madrid at 10am Madrid time. I found a taxi and went to my hostel (28€ is a little more than the $5 taxi rides across Quito) where they wouldn’t let me check in yet. I went to find my friend Jen in her 14-bunk room shared by strangers. Needless to say, she did not answer the door and the girl who did answer definitely did not know Jen. When I went downstairs to sit and wait, Jen came to the railing saying, “I thought I heard your voice,” with sleep still collecting in the corners of her eyes.
We spent two days walking around, napping, and paying way more for food than we should have. On the second evening we went out after a nap (the ciesta, by the way, is practiced much more by the Spanish than by the Mexicans) once we heard the chanting and singing and drums rolling past our blackout curtains. I didn’t leave on the 29th as originally planned because of the “Huelga General,” or General Strike. I was told at first that it was just going to be transportation that was shut down first, but it turns out almost everything was shut down. Many of the English teachers I would meet at orientation were delayed flying from the United States in to Spain because of the strike and they had to fly in to Lisbon (Lisboa) instead. It also turns out that many European countries were following Spain’s lead and having strikes that day too.
So we went out into the streets of Madrid and joined the strike, which we thought was huge once we got to the first big square a few blocks down. It was peaceful, even though we saw people actively spray-painting surfaces with differing ideas. But then we went into Plaza Mayor and it got so much bigger. People were coming in and leaving in waves. There were opposing views marbled into the plaza and yet the only disruption was when an ambulance had to come in for a heart-attack/stroke victim. It was pretty cool.
At the same time, I didn’t really understand it. Propaganda Spanish is hard to decipher because it’s word play, like English propaganda usually is. I read later that it was against austerity and the big bank bailouts. Some of it was outright against capitalism and seemed to have communist symbols on it.
So that’s what Jes and I did. We even stole flags as mementos.
The next morning I got up rull early to skype with a special lovely man-friend and then I left for the bus station for an 8am bus. I was still carrying around what felt like an obscene amount of baggage, which I hate. It makes me very obviously a tourist. But I lugged it around because I had no choice. I needed to get it all to Cáceres for orientation, which was still not the last stop. Oh, I forgot to mention the Atlanta airport really doesn’t mind if checked baggage gets wet, apparently, because my suitcase arrived wet, which meant that all of my clothing was wet along with my books, one of which bled onto my favorite tank top and my favorite skirt and stained them permanently. But I had to leave all that stuff in my suitcase until I could get somewhere more permanently. It was starting to smell.
A four-hour bus ride brought me to Cáceres and I took a taxi to the hostel for orientation, laid in my empty room for a while and slept. Then there were drinks, seeing Mattcito, meeting lots and lots of people I might never see again, and a couple hours talking about changing the schedule for the next morning. The meeting that night was pointless, but efficiency seems to be an American thing.
The next morning we had breakfast (I was finishing every part of my meal and no one else was, kinda weird) and packed up to go to Universidad Laboral, which is a school that is basically the second part of their high school. It’s optional where all levels before are required, but it is still high school of some sort. There we had more semi-pointless meetings, but I also got to meet Geraldo, my headmaster, which was good. I am teaching ages 6-12.
After an overwhelming session of Spanish and more Spanish explaining the process of getting papers for being in Spain and how to set up a bank account, I got in Geraldo's car with all my luggage and we headed first to Don Benito (40 minutes from my town- and I might live there) for lunch and then to Castuera.
All the highways seem fake. You know those roadways we used to have as kids with the little play cars and the colorful signs and pristinely painted lines? That seems to be Spain. It all just seems too nice to be real. The US has way too many roads to keep them all in such pristine conditions and the only other roads I’ve really experienced are those in South America, which are either dirt or perilous. Or both. This is a change.
Castuera is beautiful. Geraldo has taken me out for drinks, shown me the top view of the city, and given me a road-map to follow, should I need it. All the houses have little courtyards, everything is so nicely tiled or paved, but not in the cheap cement sidewalk way that America does it. The streets are SO clean. The people know that I’m a foreigner, but thank god I don’t feel automatically hated like I started to feel in Ecuador before leaving. I may have to work myself out of the habit of looking at my feet to avoid heinous looks though.
Already I am lonely. But I want to revel in it. I have this kind of host mother for now and I’m trying to be as polite and friendly as possible, but mostly I want her to leave me alone. I like being solitary because then when I feel lonely, I can submit to it and get it over with. Somehow that isn’t as painful as trying to mask loneliness with social interest. But Maria insists on making an appearance in my alone time at least every twenty minutes to ask if I want warm milk or coffee or to take a shower, or just assure me that I can relax. Yes, I can, but certainly not when there is a high-nerves woman checking in on me every so often!
But she is nice. I appreciate it. Just maybe I am realizing what I like and what I don’t like. Like? Time to think. Don’t like? Nagging mothers. Maybe I have no patience for it because my mother was way cooler. And it doesn’t help that I get exhausted speaking and listening to Spanish all the time. There are literally no other Americans in this town right now. And Maria speaks dirty Spanish… the kind were vas becomes vah and quedado becomes something like que’a’o. It’s tiresome, plus Maria has hearing aids, meaning that when she comes every twenty minutes to ask me if I want something, she can’t hear me respond, meaning that I have to get up and go have a conversation with her before getting back to whatever I’m doing.
Most of my life I haven’t understood my own motivation. I still don’t. I know that when I feel unmotivated, it is useless to push against that, so I sit quietly. When I feel like I can take on the world, I do shit like apply to teach English in Spain so that when I hit a trough again, the application is already submitted. That also can get me into trouble sometimes, evidenced by the hives I gave myself from sheer terror of what I’m doing now. Yeah, have I mentioned that? I gave myself hives because I was so anxious. Who does that? Who gives themselves hives because they’re that freaked out? Apparently I do. I just hope that this time the motivation I took advantage of to get here served me well. Otherwise this trough might be very deep and very difficult to get out of.
I’ve found that blind encouragement doesn’t help. I think I would know best that I am a strong woman, since I’ve been with myself during all the bad times when others have not. But right now I’m lonely and tired and afraid. I want someone to be here with me to talk to me in English at the end of the day and to actually fully understand the context in which I speak. I want internet so that in moments of panic I can get a hold of someone to help, but for now I wait. Eight months is a long time. How did I get here? I think sometimes I even impress myself.
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