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!