Vignettes

While in Spain, few big grand momentous events have occurred on typical days. That isn’t to say, however, that Spain and Andalusian culture aren’t regularly bumping into me and saying hi. A plethora of little things happen all the time. Below I’ve shared a handful of little moments as best as I can remember.

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A little old lady on Spanish television got her four seconds of fame when she was interviewed for a piece of news. “Estoy harta hasta la naríz con estas porquerías!” (“I’ve had it up to the nose with this rubbish!”, but it’s cuter in Spanish. Think of an indignant Porky Pig, in female Spanish form.)

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One afternoon, I came back to the apartment building for lunch and almost tripped over a little white terrier hanging around the door to the building. I looked around a little bit - directly across the path is a little park space, and I was thinking the dog’s owner might be behind some bushes or something - but there was hardly anyone in the area. Bemused, I made to let myself in, but the dog eagerly slipped through the door and bounded away up the stairs. I had a brief worry about the absent owner outside panicking over his or her missing dog, but decided it was better in than out. I headed upstairs and told Carmen about what had happened. She laughed and explained, “There’s a woman who lives on the first floor who takes the dog down when it needs to. She leaves it outside and comes back up, and the dog just comes in with whoever opens the door next.” Well, it’s something I’d never think to do, anyway. 

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19 Virgen de Valvanera #5D

Move-in day was full of surprises, some delicious, some cute, some confusing, and all pointing towards an interesting semester to follow. 

I live in a home-stay here in Seville, in the house of one Carmen Rodríquez and with another student in my program, Rebecca. Our host mom Carmen is a lovely old lady. A little rotund, about 5’7”, with thick straw-gray colored hair, Carmen is probably pushing 65, a retired mom whose kids - and their kids - are constantly over at the apartment. She’s very hospitable, always wants to accommodate us, and continually offers us more food. She also, completely subconsciously, hums 24/7. Meanwhile, the ringtone for her phone (which rings off the hook) is I Just Called to Say I Love You by Stevie Wonder, and I know really, really well now the first three lines of the chorus - but we just never quite get to the fourth. 

Carmen spends a lot of the day inside I think, cleaning things, looking after various grandchildren who seem to be left in her hands often, and cooking. Going out sounds like it involves meeting up with friends or buying groceries. A typical spaniard, Carmen does things late - lunch is at 2:30 pm, dinner at 9:30, and she often leaves to “tomar una copita”  (“have a drink,” but somehow the expression is cuter in Spanish) with friends between 11pm and midnight. Rebecca and I have laughed that we’ve gone to bed before our grandmother of a host mom has come home from a night out. If Carmen chooses to stay in, she tends to watch several game shows and telenovelas on TV before falling asleep slumped down in her chair. It has happened that we’ve come home from our own night out to discover her conked out, upright on the sofa. 

My partner in crime Rebecca is from New Jersey, although she goes to the University of Pennsylvania (and, as it happens, was in a Spanish class with Jake last year). On the quieter side, Rebecca enjoys spending time at home and generally taking life at a slower pace, although she is quite the runner - she ran her first marathon last June. Rebecca’s every movement is delicate, and she typically is significantly more graceful than I am. Nonetheless, she has a great personality and sense of humor once you get to know her, and has made a great house companion here. We have had many a laugh puzzling out the ways of our Spanish household together. 

The house itself is a fifth floor apartment, not too big, with complete tile flooring and a modest view of a rustic park across the street. A living room is the center of the house, leading to our rooms and bathroom from one end and the kitchen and Carmen’s room from the other. My own room is a little thing, with an awkwardly positioned wall mirror and wooden shelves stacked with legal books and Disney movies on VHS, but it serves its purpose well. Every morning, between 1 and 2 am, a garbage truck stops directly beneath my window and makes a painfully loud racket emptying dumpsters for ten minutes. I swear, I’m in My Cousin Vinny. Especially because, starting at 8 am on weekdays, the day is heralded by a loud and insistent banging noise, emanating from the floor below us where they are doing some renovation work. In addition to those, if the wind is right and I’ve left my window open, the doors in the hallway are liable to bang shut with the force equivalent to a teenager’s angriest door slam. The bathroom door has a pane of frosted glass in it that rattles nicely. 

Just down the hall is our little bathroom. It has plenty of its own little quirks, including a bidet (all it really is is a sink at about knee-level with an adjustable spout head. No fun adjustable temperatures or air-dry features like those included in Japanese SuperToilets.). I probably battle with the shower most of all. The darn thing just won’t keep a constant temperature, but fluctuates between cold and hot without me coming within two feet of the lever. The bathroom does have an enormous mirror though, and a little window to keep the room from getting steamed up. 

Every day, for lunch and for dinner, Carmen cooks up a delicious meal typical of a Spanish household. Ranging from gazpacho to tortilla española (essentially a thick round of scrambled eggs full of potatoes) to slices of pork in a garlic sauce, everything is always delicious, and always accompanied by a fresh bread roll. Some things took getting accustomed to - the canned tuna, salt, and oil in all of the salads, for one - but Rebecca and I are full-on aficionados now of Spanish home cuisine. There’s a surprising amount of deep-fried foods, lots of salt, and fresh vegetables are not a daily thing, but there is lots and lots of fruit - mandarin oranges, pears, a variation on honeydew melon, apples, kiwis, and bananas. 

Although Carmen is the only family member living in the house, there are daughters aplenty in and out all day. Marta is the youngest and appears to be little older than us. Jeans, straightened hair, and a lip piercing (significantly more common here than in the US) are the first three features that come to mind. Marta is really friendly and always makes a little small talk with us. There’s Cuqui, a really sweet dark-haired woman who apparently travels a lot, and Mercedes, a third daughter whom Rebecca and I only knew as “the pregnant one” for about the first month before we finally caught her name. I’m pretty sure Marcos is her son - a funny little blonde boy, roughly three, who runs around making a ruckus and is pursued by a tut-tutting Carmen rearranging the house in his wake. There’s Jose, Carmen’s only son, who I swear is a dead ringer for Alec Baldwin (with a Spanish twist). However, more than all of them, Carmen’s daughter Isabela is at the house most. An air of mild distress encircles Isabela, and understandably so, as she had a baby about two weeks before our arrival. The happy little thing is left in Carmen’s care for a few hours almost every day. There are enormous tins of baby formula on top of the fridge. Antonio, Isabela’s husband, is at the house often as well; Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Handsome has tried his hand at a little English with us, which always surprises Rebecca and me. There was one day I was crossing a crosswalk and, from his motorbike held up by the red light, Antonio laughed and said hi. I made it a somewhat awkward moment because, not recognizing him right away beneath the helmet, I kept walking, thinking I had absolutely no relation to him whatsoever. Halfway across the crosswalk I realized, turned around, and waved back. We had a laugh about it when we saw each other later that day at Carmen’s.

I realized that I’ve said Carmen is the only family member living in the house. Strictly speaking, that’s not true: Rhumba, a jolly old yellow labrador, lives here too. Rhumba, or as she’s more commonly called, Rhumbita, loves to be where the people are, Carmen most of all. I don’t get the impression that Rumba is very smart, but she’s loyal, I’ll give her that. If you call her name, you can immediately figure out where she is, because amidst the excitement and tail-wagging of being hailed, Rhumbita’s tail will insistently thwack against the wall. 

As I finish up, I just thought I’d mention, I’m currently listening to the garbage truck. 

Although Carmen doesn’t eat with us, we do try to ask her as she flits in and out of the kitchen about her life and her family. We hear about bits and pieces of their lives, and of course some disgruntled complaints (“Really, niñas, I just don’t understand why Isabel and Marta and everyone store their things here. They have their own houses, don’t they? ‘I don’t have space,’ they say. Isn’t that why they moved out?”). It’s a constant experience, and we’re learning a lot all the time. There will be more to come I’m sure about familial happenings and developments! 

Something about MI7...DUCK!

Our first Spanish movie theater experience got a little salty. 

Rebecca and I decided it would be fun to go see Johnny English Returns, essentially a 007 spoof starring Rowan Atkinson in all his bizarreness, dubbed in Spanish. It had been a quiet Sunday afternoon, relatively uneventful, until we bought our popcorn and slipped into the theater as the opening credits started to roll. 

It was dark when we found our seats, so we didn’t realize we were sitting behind six middle to high school spanish boys until a few stray pieces of popcorn fell into our laps. We peered around in the dark for a minute, trying to figure out where they had come from, when a few more arced up from the row of seats in front of us and landed in our seats. Some muted sniggers confirmed our suspicions: the boys in front of us were chucking popcorn. 

So, naturally, we returned fire. A couple pieces of popcorn here and there, scattered among the six of them. We had the advantage of higher ground and of course visibility, so they didn’t stand a chance. They were turning around and looking at us, laughing and tossing back more ammo, and admittedly Rebecca and I were having a real hard time suppressing giggles too. When someone hushed us a few rows up I made “shhh” gestures at the boys and returned to watching the movie. 

But oh no, they weren’t done. After a brief hiatus, more popcorn started raining down. Well, I just couldn’t take that sitting down, so I tossed some more back at them, keeping up my “shhh” gestures to try to keep the fray a silent one. Rebecca took a small handful and sprinkled it right in one guy’s hair. They were in absolute hysterics. 

Then, though, the battle got dirty. When a small stream of (what we think was) coke squirted over the seat backs, we called it quits. “Para, para,” (“stop, stop”), we whispered, and we laid down our edible weapons in an effort to encourage the cease fire. It wasn’t a very successful plan: when we stopped responding, the boys just pushed harder, dumping out the rest of their popcorn boxes on our feet. “Para, para!” 

So, we adopted plan B, which consisted of completely ignoring them. After a couple more popcorn showers and what I think were some cat calls in jest, the boys gave up. They left halfway through the movie, in fact; Rebecca and I at first feared they were going to buy more ammunition, but they never did return to the theater. Alas, as a result of our popcorn skirmish, we hadn’t been paying much attention to the movie, and we had missed all of the sections where the plot was set up. Fortunately this was Johnny English Returns, not Inception, so it wasn’t too difficult to pick back up what was generally going on, although we were a bit baffled by a couple details of the story line. Hint: the good guys win.

We also plan on going to see Tangled in Spanish when it comes out in theaters here, partly because we doubt a crowd of five-year-old girls will be quite so rambunctious. 

Why Yes, I HAVE Been to Rivendell

I know I’ve already made a Lord of the Rings reference, but this time it’s actually deserved. 
  

This weekend we went to Ronda. It’s a little town in Málaga, Andalucía, a good two hours from Seville by bus. Some Celtic guy, possibly missing a few marbles, back in the 6th century BC decided to start a settlement on top of this enormous plateau, and voilà, Ronda (or as it was first named, Arunda) was born. The town changed hands several times over the course of its history, including back and forth between christian and islamic rulers, which has led to some pretty brutal history. The city’s position does make sense for strategic reasons: perched up there, any Rondan can stand on the edge of the enormous  cliffs and gaze out for miles at the surrounding land, at least before the ragged hills dissolve into mountains. 

There is, though, a deep canyon, smack dab in the middle of this plateau, that splits Ronda completely in half. Roughly 120m tall and probably only 30-40m wide, this thing is dramatically vast - and even cooler is the bridge they’ve built spanning it. Well, technically, there are three bridges crossing the Guadalevín river that carves through the bottom, but the Puente Nuevo (“New Bridge”, although it’s technically older than the good ol’ US of A) is by far the most impressive. It spans the canyon at the divide’s tallest point, arches reaching across one to the next to link the two halves of Ronda. The town’s white-walled houses cluster close to both ends and peer out over the edge of the cliffs. Spilling out below the bridge and tumbling down the hillside is a waterfall formed by the Guadalevín, and up above it, flocks of black birds tipped with beaks a vibrant orange color wheel between the arches. Yup, welcome to Rivendell: 

Fun fact about this bridge: directly above the central main arch, there’s a room inside that yellow brick, and it turns out that used to be where they’d stash criminals waiting to be hanged. Nowadays, there are only folks who choose to dangle from ropes - I watched no less than two big groups of people rappel down the waterfall, and boy, was I jealous.

For more pictures of Ronda, be sure to check out my MobileMe Gallery. 

UNIVERSITY PROCEDURES BAFFLE WERLIN

Seville, SPAIN -- Jessica “Cosmo” Werlin has successfully completed the first week of classes at the University of Seville and will soon complete the extended process of enrollment. Werlin will be taking classes at the Faculties of Geography and History, Philology, and possibly The Sciences of Economics and Business. 

Werlin will not be taking classes this semester towards the completion of her major, Biology, while she is in Seville. She instead selected subjects that captured her interest. These include such classes as Languages of the World, Political Ideologies and Social Movements in Contemporary Spain, and The History of Latin America’s Independence. She will also complete one course in Advanced Spanish Writing at the Michigan-Cornell-Penn Consortium (MCP) program center. 

Werlin has found classes to be difficult in Spanish, although she has not had any extreme issues following the progression of class. “It’s hard enough to understand, for example, the anthropology of contemporary societies in Spanish, without the professor going off on tangents and jumping between ideas. But there we are,” Werlin wrote in a recent correspondence with El País. “Sometimes it’s a challenge in that sense. But, for the most part, I get the idea.” 

Werlin described the matriculation process as “overly complicated” in a televised interview this afternoon. “Not only is it a challenge to attend classes in Spanish, but because we have to matriculate via MCP, we have to present a list of several viable classes in our order of preference - and then, depending on availability, we get enrolled.”

Werlin as of yet does not know which classes of her list of six she will be taking. “I’ve handed in my list, and Eva [MCP academic program coordinator] will, I presume, do her best to get me into the top three,” Werlin explained. She will be notified early next week definitively in which classes she has been enrolled.

MCP officials have defended the complexity of the process as “the only way to navigate the Faculty system.” Spanish students choose to enroll in one degree specifically, and therefore take classes in one Faculty only for their entire university career. MCP participants, however, may select to take classes from any of the University of Seville’s 25 Faculties - so long as there are no temporal conflicts. 

The Faculties of Philology and History & Geography are both located in La Fabrica Real de Tabacos, Seville’s historical cigarette factory near the city center. Today the building has been restored and modified to house the university. The Faculty of the Sciences of Economics and Business, however, is located in Nervión, adjacent to the Faculties of the Work Sciences, Psychology, and Law. 

A Family Fiesta

You know you’re starting to become included in the family when you’re invited to a baptism. 

For the record, I know absolutely nothing about baptisms, so I had no idea whatsoever to expect from a Spanish one. When talking to Carmen about the whole ordeal, Rebecca and I mostly gathered “vamos al campo” (“we’re going out into the country”) and “no os preocupeis, podeis llevar vaqueros” (“no worries, you can wear jeans!”), so we were fairly confused about what kind of baptism this was to be. 

As it turns out, the baptism was a short ceremony that took place here in Seville, at the beautiful Iglesia Magdalena, and was followed by a big family reunion at someone’s house in the country. Carmen has a habit of introducing members of the family by their relation as opposed to their name (“Niñas, this is the husband of the second cousin of my sister in law!”), so to be honest, when Carmen told us it was “Jose’s” house, we had no clue exactly whose house it was. 

We piled into a taxi with Carmen and her youngest daughter, Marta, and headed to the church to watch the baptism. Bunches of kids running around in formal dress, three beaming families with three puzzled babies in long white attire, and two bemused Americans shuffled into the front pews as the priest took up the microphone and began. Some sprinkles of water, crucifix gestures, and “amen”s later, the deed was done. I spent half the time craning to see over everyone in front of me craning to see, and the other half giving up and gazing around at the extensive decorations within the church. Like most others I’ve visited in Spain, the church walls were smothered in biblical paintings, statues, and ornamentation. This church was in need of a little restoration, but the elaborate original art painted directly upon the plaster was still for the most part intact. Most of the biblical Spanish went over my head as well, but Rebecca and I were excited to lean the baby’s name (Fernando) via the ceremony - Carmen had neglected to tell us (“Niñas, Juan’s son, my grandson, is being baptized this weekend!”). Well, either that, or we’d forgotten. Or misheard. Admittedly those options are probably equally likely. 

Following the ceremony and a quick change out of dresses and into jeans, we jumped into Marta’s car and headed for the country. The landscape of the rural areas in Andalucía is a little bit dreary, at least this time of year. Low golden-brown hills roll for miles, dappled with tough green shrubs baking below the September sun. Horses and donkeys, nosing lazily through the dry grass, are boxed in by crooked wire strung between worn wooden posts. Marta liked to take the corners a little fast in our little fixer-upper of a two-door, so we made good time cutting through the hot countryside.

The “house in the country” has a little more to it than bedrooms. The stables for six or seven horses line the main patio, and an enormous palm tree shades stacked bales of hay. A large garden, complete with an overhead trellis, sprouts next to the old house, and a raised section houses a type of deep pool. It’s a nice place. And that afternoon, it was absolutely overrun by people. There were kids darting left and right underfoot while the adults clustered around the outdoor bar. I lost count of how many people I European-double-kissed as I was introduced to family. In case anyone wanted to know (and wanted to avoid an awkward face-to-face run-in), you kiss the left cheek first. 

From pretty much the moment we climbed out of the car people were pressing drinks on us: “what would you like, beer or wine? We can get you beer or wine. We even have white wine!” When Rebecca and I put on stricken faces and politely declined alcohol at two in the afternoon, they’d deflate a little and offer soda. Water wasn’t on the menu. Food was mostly finger, and included various forms of deep fried goodies and pork products. Let me just say here that Argentina is to beef as Spain is to ham: jamón iberico, jamón serrado, jamón de york... All kinds, all delicious. Add in the varieties of sausage - salchichón, chorizo, you name it - and you clearly have the pork experts of the world. The most common kind of ham (jamón iberico) is a bright red color, sliced paper-thin, very greasy, and has nice strips of pale fat. At the party, there were big platters of ham like this, where the idea was you just pick it up and eat it. This does, however, leave a very thick grease residue on your fingers, so you can’t afterwards touch any other thing, especially not your hair, which gets in your face from the wind. Add onto that little deep-fried pieces of chicken, another little munchie that essentially amounts to deep-fried mashed potatoes, and slices of well-done pork loin blanketed in a thin savory sauce, and you have some pretty slick fingertips. All this in a place that doesn’t do napkins. 

In the middle of the party, Carmen suggested we take a walk and check out the tiny little country town five minutes from the house. A short walk down the highway brought Rebecca and I to hot and dry streets, absolutely devoid of people. It was rather eerie, in fact; I was thinking The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Flyers drifted across the pavement in the wind, and pressed up against a short wire fence penning a dusty donkey. The tiny little town, roughly 4000 people I was told (where they all were, I have no idea), cloaked a little hill. Perched on the crest was a sandy old castle, closed now. The narrow cobblestone streets were walled in by white stucco houses and tile roofs, all empty. I’m going to guess that it wasn’t a ghost town, but that we’d chosen to take our walking tour during the siesta.

Although the clowns for the kids making balloons and doing some silly acrobatics were fun to watch, and I liked that an eight year old kid was riding an enormous white horse as confidently as Gandalf on Shadowfax, my favorite part of the day was when one family member broke out a guitar and started the flamenco. Whereas we might put on some rock and roll and swing dance at a family gathering, maybe, the Spanish play some Flamenco on the guitar, clap in time to a syncopated rhythm, and sing. It’s a passionate type of music, and the dance that accompanies it looks something like a more dynamic and flirtatious version of Thai traditional dance. I’ve uploaded a video I took at the party at the end of this post - check it out to see what I mean exactly. I’m finding it difficult to explain. It was absolutely fantastic, and everyone loved watching and/or participating. A couple weeks previously, we watched a professional flamenco show, which was of course very different; the dancers were highly trained and very good, excelling in the tap-dance aspect of Flamenco - extremely rapid rhythms drummed out on the floor with their heels, accompanied by flourishes with the hands and an intense Flamenco facial expression. At the party, it was more relaxed, more flirtatious, and more fun. For the record, I want to take Flamenco classes while I’m here. 

As night fell, the party kept right on swinging, but we needed to make our way back to Seville. It was difficult for Carmen and Marta to detach themselves from the event, as it always is with events of this kind. Rebecca and I also decided Carmen is the matriarch of the family, making it that much harder to get to the car. After extended goodbyes and more kissing, we stuffed ourselves back in Marta’s little car, but with a new addition - Carmen’s sister-in-law. A chatty woman who appeared to be roughly mid-eighties, she was actually great fun on the long drive back, excited to tell us about how her husband ran the New York marathon and that it gets really cold on the east coast. 

All in all, quite the cultural experience. To be honest, I think the party and family reunion was the real event; Fernando’s baptism was just the excuse. 

Here's the video I took of the impromptu flamenco. Enjoy!