A Note on Procrastination

Spanish kids are pros at procrastinating. Their favorite procrastination takes the form of pencil sharpening.  Standing over the garbage can, they stare off into space, occasionally giving their already sharp pencils a lazy twist.  When the teacher finally notices their inactivity, they quickly resume their sharpening with a look of intense determination on their faces.  This form of procrastination is the norm, practiced by all.  Sometimes the procrastination is enforced by the teachers, who insist that students cut out all handouts and glue them into their notebooks (never heard of a binder?).  This can take anywhere from 2 minutes to 15, depending on the level of rowdiness of the class and the motivation of the Seño. 

My favorite new method of procrastination took place this week, while Michelle was visiting.  My favorite little fourth grader Montiel, who I have written about many times, was energetically engaging in the class activity.  We were learning about the solar system, and he couldn't hold his tongue before shouting out the answers. "Asteroids! Jupiter! The moon! Seño, seño, seño!"  I noticed that however enthusiastic his participation was, he was not completing the assigned worksheet as he jumped up and down in his seat.  When I brought it to the attention of the class that they need to be writing as well as participating, he yelled out "Seño, Fran le robó mi lápiz!" (Fran stole my pencil).  Fran, a row behind, looked confused and held up his one pencil, indicating that he had no memory of the robbery.  Recognizing the theft most likely as a lie, I quickly wondered why Montiel thought he could get away with it, especially with a rather full estucha (pencil case) in front of his paper.  Then it all came to me: he was biding his time, hoping he could confuse me by throwing a robbery into the mix.  Nice try, hombrito.

We didn't wear green on St. Paddy's Day.

There aren't many things more badass than getting a huge, bright green stamp from Ireland on your passport on St. Patricks day. That stamp will forever be proof that I arrived in Ireland on March 17, 2011. After a long day of planes, trains and automobiles, we finally arrived at our destination, Galway, in the late afternoon of St Paddys day. After dropping our bags at the cute little hostel, we made our way into town in search of dinner. Little did we know, however, that the celebration had long since begun. We were bombarded with green everywhere: all green outfits, shamrock hats, glasses, wigs, and every other cheesy St Paddys gear you could imagine. Not wanting to stick out as tourists, we opted not to adorn our bodies in green shamrocks. So we became just dots of random color amongst the sea of green. At least they don't pinch for not wearing green in Ireland!

Instead of conducting a lengthy search for dinner, we decided to stop and ask the only group of people that didn't already look hammered. The lads we stopped were very nice, but informed us that at this time of night on Paddys day (7 pm) there is only beer to be found. They themselves were on their way to a pub and invited us along, as beer is a good substitute for food in their opinion, but we needed a good meal after a day of travelling, and ended up settling for a pizza by the slice stand. Eating our pizza outside, we were bombarded by drunkards excitedly asking where we got our pizza from. When we pointed up at the large PIZZA sign above our heads, they got ecstatic and ran in. We should have been paid for all the business we gave that pizza shop. Now, let me take a moment here to describe the scene of Paddys day in Ireland. I always thought the Irish could hold their liquor, but clearly that theory goes out the window on this day. The streets were literally packed with the most drunk people I have ever seen in my life. A large, green crowd of chaos ran the streets, amidst fire twirlers, drunken musicians, burly bouncers and debauchery. It certainly was a sight to be seen. Inside the pubs were even crazier. Fighting our way through the thick crowd, we bought our first Bulmers Irish cider and made our way to the stage, where a band was performing. The crowd proved too difficult, and it soon became a mosh pit of spilled beer. By the end of the night, we were all drenched in beer, reeking of God knows what, and just a little beat up from trying to fight our way through the crowds. All in the name of celebration!

Although we would have liked to sleep off the night by staying in the next day, we had booked a bus tour to the cliffs of moher that unfortunately left at 9:45 am. Feeling slightly nauseous, we listened as our bus driver excitedly told us about the landscape of the Burren and involved us in his bizarre, day long, desperate search for bunnies. It seemed as though he stopped short at every field, idling the bus in the middle of the street, desperately scouring the landscape attempting to distinguish the rabbits amongst the rabbit-shaped rocks. When we told our guide for the next day about our driver's odd obsession, he laughed ¨aye that must be Billy! I reckon he fancies himself like a rabbit¨. Despite its lack of bunnies, or shall I say abundance of sneaky rabbit-esque rocks, the landscape was beautiful, with rolling green hills separated by crumbling stone walls. My favorite spot of course had to be the cliffs, which broke off from the landscape into nothingness.  Our tour for the next day provided with an entirely different, but equally beautiful landscape.  More yellow than green, with small rounded mountains overpowering the landscape, the Connemara area is, as Oscar Wilde accurately describes it, ¨a savage beauty¨.  Our less bunny obsessed driver told us stories of Irish folklore as he winded through the mountainous landscape, stopping every now and then for a photo op, or just a pretty thatched roof.  Our main stop of the day was Kylemore Abbey, a former palace now converted into a home for nuns.  The beautiful Abbey rises from the mountains across a wide lake, providing for beautiful photos despite the dreariness of the sky.  We quickly explored the grounds and gardens before the rain settled in, and were thankful to get a warm lunch of soup before our bus ride back to the city.

Saturday night, we set out to the pubs again in search of a more tranquil night after St Paddys day.  We returned to a bar we had been to on Thursday, The Front Door, where we stayed most of the night.  Of course, no night out in Galway is complete without pizza, so we stopped at our favorite pizza stand around 2:30 for a late night bite.  The pizza was so good, in fact, that Rachel ate her plate as well to soak up even more of the flavor (okay maybe not actually, but she did take a few accidental bites).

Sunday we took the day to actually explore Galway, which of course translates into eating a lot.  We had an amazing lunch, went to a little tea shop for tea, and finally a bakery for cupcakes to tide us over on the train to Dublin.  Our last night in Ireland was spent in the capital city, eating Mexican food and checking out one of the most famous bars there, Temple Bar.  Finally tasting a real Guinness, poured the true, Irish way, we sat back and enjoyed the mellow cover band, reminiscing on a great trip.

This is the Witch. The What? The Witch! (Belgium)

Last weekend, for the Puente de Andalucía, I headed to Brussels and Bruges.  We arrived in Brussels Thursday evening, eager to set foot in yet another new country.  We arrived at our hostel and made our way towards the main center to look for dinner.  My first impression of Brussels: it is confusing. All streets have two names: one in French and one in German.  Sometimes only one name is posted, sometimes none, and our map would alternate between French and German names.  Especially confusing considering I speak neither German nor French.  We found a restaurant with a fixed price menu and decided to get eating.  Now, here’s a tip about restaurants with fixed prices: never order off the menu.  Worried that our appetizer of escargot and main course of mussels wouldn’t be enough food, Rachel and I decided to both order the small side salad, figuring it couldn’t possibly be too pricey.  Wrong decision.  Our meal of appetizer, main course, and dessert cost 12 Euros, and we each had lovely extra charges of 8 Euros for our salads.  That is 2/3 the price of our entire meal!

Feeling frustrated, and wallets considerably lighter, we headed to Delirium, a bar that came highly recommended.  I could quickly understand why: the bar hosts the largest collection of beer in the world with its impressive menu of 2,004 different beers.  Of these beers, over 40 are on tap, lining the long bar with shiny and glistening handles.  As if this isn’t overwhelming enough, each beer comes in its own glass.  The glass shapes ranged from standard long and tall to short and fat, to everything in between. Asking the bartender for recommendations, we began our night with an IPA boasting a whopping 11% alcohol.  The beers in Belgium are definitely more potent and consequently stronger tasting than beers in the United States.  For our second round, we decided to try the famed fruit beers that we had heard so much about.  I opted for the cherry beer: dark in color and in flavor, and tasting less like cough syrup than I anticipated, it was actually delicious.  Rachel tried the apple beer, which for me was a bit too sweet, tasting more like cider than beer.  At this point, we made friends with the British lads sitting near us, and they started teaching us fun British drinking games such as “20 plus 1,” a game involving fluffy bunny ears, and a weird game about witches (the what?).  We had a really fun night hanging out with them, and realized that this bar offered what bars in Spain lack: friendly people, a relaxed atmosphere where girls weren’t dressed to the nines, good music without the standard Spanish techno dance beat, and beer options other than Cruzcampo.  Can’t we take Delirium back to Spain with us?

We had been planning on going on a tour of the European Union headquarters in Brussels the following morning, but when our alarm sounded at 8 am we had no desire to leave our beds.  So missing breakfast and the one thing we really wanted to do in Brussels, we continued to sleep.  We finally rolled out of bed around 11:30, had a quick breakfast, and realized we had no idea what to do in Brussels.  Lacking ideas, we headed to the main square to look around.  The streets in Brussels remind me of a mix between Parisian architecture with a small German town.  It was certainly pretty, but unfortunately there is really not much to do.  We saw the famed statue entitled “Mannekin Pis,” which depicts a little boy peeing.  This statue, like many other things in Belgium, had been hyped up in my head so much that I was surprisingly excited to see this statue.  To say that it was a letdown is an understatement.  To me, this is probably the most overrated tourist attraction in all of Europe, just above the laughable astronomic clock in Prague.  The tiny statue was barely a foot tall and so far off the ground that you could barely see it.  We took an obligatory photo and left, feeling cheated out of a peeing statue.  We wandered around a bit before lunch, and then headed to a Thai/Vietnamese restaurant, where we stuffed our Asian food-deprived bodies with noodles and rice.   

After lunch, we met up with Rachel’s childhood friend Zach, who was nice enough to take us around the city and show us a few delicacies.  We stopped at a frites cart to get Belgium’s famous fries.  I opted for the garlic alioli sauce, which tasted great going down… but did not feel so good coming back up (more on that later).  We also checked out a few chocolate shops and bought some delicious samples of the praline chocolate.  Heading back to the hotel, my stomach started disagreeing with me.  I don’t know whether it was the frites, or the alioli sauce, or the sheer enormous quantity I ate, but I was definitely not feeling a hundred.  I vowed never to eat fries again (a vow that was then broken two days later in Bruges when the smell of frites overcame me).  That night, I opted for a simple meal of pasta to settle my stomach and headed back to Delirium to sample some more beer.  I managed to try a coconut beer, which despite the odd sound, was actually delicious.  Being a Friday night, it was considerably more crowded and impossible to even find standing room, and without our British friends to pass the time with we simply weren’t feeling the crowd quite so much.  That, and my stomach felt like it was going to burn a whole through my skin.  So after our one drink we decided to call it an early night and head back to the hostel.

Saturday we checked out of our hostel in Brussels and were on our way to Bruges.  As with the Mannekin Pis, Bruges had been hyped up in my head by people saying that it was the most beautiful city on Earth and their favorite stop in Europe.  That being said, it is certainly a lovely city, but by no means is it now at the top of my list of favorite destinations.  As with Brussels, there simply wasn’t much to do.  As a traveler who likes to seize the day and see as much as possible, this was certainly frustrating.  The weather did not help my feelings: the rain, and my umbrella inverting with every tiny gust of wind, made wandering the streets undesirable.  We started off our visit at the Chocolate Museum, which provided a rather lengthy history of the origins of chocolate.  My favorite part of the tour was the chocolate demonstration, where we learned in 5 languages how chocolate is made.  A free sample of course was provided at the end, but I easily could have done with 10 more samples to cover the cost of admission.  After the tour we ran into our British friends from Delirium – turns out they had the same itinerary as us!  It certainly is a small world… or at least a small country.

Without much else to do, we headed to dinner at a lovely candlelit restaurant recommended by Lets Go.  Rachel and Julia both ordered the ribs, which they said were delicious.  I opted for a traditional Flemish stew.  It was okay, but did not have as much flavor as I would have hoped.  After dinner we hopped around a few bars, looking for a good atmosphere to match Delirium and hoping to run into our British friends again.  Our first stop was a little café bar with cute tables and a long beer list.  I tried the Triple d’Anvers, which quickly became my favorite beer of the trip.  After our one drink, we headed to a bar called The Cellar which claimed live music and a fun atmosphere.  Upon arrival, my first impression was that they took the theme a bit too seriously.  The place was incredibly creepy – the only thing the dim lighting didn’t hide was the creepy clientele; people who looked as though they would hang out in cellars.  Our third and fourth stops were more nightclubs than bars, so we decided to give up our search for the perfect atmosphere and just dance.

The next day we were awoken by our first day of sun!  Wanting to take advantage of the good weather, we headed to the main square, which was certainly more beautiful in the sunshine.  We climbed all 340 stairs of the belfry, got a view of the red rooftops of Bruges, and had a simple lunch of soups and sandwiches.  In the afternoon we went to what I was most looking forward to: the brewery tour.   Situated in a pretty area by the canals, the De Haalve Brewery was tucked away in a little corner of the city.  Our cheeky tour guide cracked crass jokes and took us on a wild maze through the brewery and up to the roof, for our second panoramic view of the day.  Heading back down, the steps were so steep that you had to climb down backwards, as if on a ladder.  I certainly hope that nobody is sampling the products during production – there is no way you could make your way down the stairs after a few beers.  They wisely held the tasting until the end, where we were all given a tall glass of pale ale.

Monday was perhaps the craziest day of our entire trip.  We took the train from Bruges back to Brussels, and had to take a bus to the airport.  The way in, we flew a reputable airline and flew into the airport that is actually in Brussels.  The way out, we were flying Ryanair, and therefore had to take an hour long bus ride to this remote location.  To say getting on this bus was a nightmare would be an understatement.  We arrived with our tickets for the 1:00 bus to find a huge crowd of angry Spaniards huddled around the bus.  Turns out the driver wasn’t letting anybody on, even though they all had tickets.  He had stupidly been selling tickets to any joe shmoe that walked up to the bus, leaving no room for the people who had pre-bought tickets.  The crowd was screaming in Spanish, we were screaming in English, turned to Spanish, and the driver was yelling back in French.  Not a good situation.  One Spaniard spoke a little French and tried communicating to the driver that we all had tickets, but the driver didn’t want to hear it, and sped off with us all standing on the curb angry.  When the 1:30 bus arrived, we ran to the front and stampeded through the doors, showing our clear frustration to the confused second driver.  Thank you once again, Ryanair, for ruining my day.

Narrative on the Perfect Crime

It started innocently enough.  With a look of guilty mischief, he slowly pulled his cellophane-wrapped chocolate donut from his bag and slid it onto his desk.  Nobody but me noticed a thing.  With the first turn of the teacher’s back, the donut was slowly and lovingly unwrapped, taking care not to make a sound.  The teacher turned to the blackboard and the smallest chunk was taken between his thumb and forefinger – testing the waters to see the reach of her sight.  Looking suspiciously at me, another tiny chunk was taken and slyly pushed into his mouth.  He was testing whether I would tattle.  The teacher turned her attention to another student.  Two more greedy bites.  Ten more minutes and half the donut had been covertly consumed.  Announcing that she needed to make a photocopy, the teacher abruptly left, closing the door with a snap.  With one swift motion, he messily shoved the remained of the tasty treat into his greedy mouth.  The cellophane was crushed and sent sailing through the air, landing perfectly in the garbage.  Leaning back in his chair with his arms folded over his full belly, his satisfied smile signified only one thing: the perfect crime.  And he would’ve gotten away with it too… if it weren’t for the ring of melted chocolate coating his mouth, staring the teacher in the face as she walked back through the door.

Fútbol Allegiances

This week the kids have been celebrating the Día de Andalucía. This ambiguous holiday does what Spaniards do best, celebrate themselves and their region. All week, they colored Andalucían tiles, made books about the history, had a celebratory breakfast, and played a soccer game against the teachers.  My favorite event, however, was the string concert given on Thursday.  To appeal to the kids, the string quartet played songs the kids could sing along to.  They started with the Spongebob Squarepants theme song (here known as Bob Esponga).  They really got the crowd riled up, however, when they introduced a big soccer rivalry into the mix.

Sevilla has two fútbol teams: Sevilla Fútbol Club and Real Betis.  As my school is located closer to the Sevilla stadium, the majority of the kids are Sevilla fans.  This doesn't just mean that they support Sevilla, but it also means that they hate Betis with every fiber of their being. So, when the quartet started playing the Betis hymn, all hell broke loose.  Kids were jumping up and down booing and generally causing mayhem.  The quartet had to stop, and explain that they were going to be playing BOTH hymns - and that the kids needed to respect the others.  This worked well in theory, but when they started up playing the Sevilla hymn, the Betis fans did not take it well.  While the Sevilla fans were singing along, clapping to the flamenco beat and swaying, the Betis fans clapped hands over their ears, stuck fingers in their eardrums, and did all they could to block out the travesty that was happening around them.  One boy even pulled off his fleece sweatshirt and wrapped it around his head - blocking all senses from the clear horror.  The little girl sitting next to me asked if I was a Sevilla fan, to which I halfheartedly replied yes.  Wrong choice.  She gave me a look that could kill and refused to look at me for the rest of the song.  When the Betis theme started, she sang along proudly, and loudly, as a kind of screw you to me and the rest of the Sevilla fans in the mix.  I didn't have the heart to tell her that I don't really care much for fútbol.

All was forgotten, however, and bygones were bygones when the music brought them together the only way how: reminding them of Spain winning the world cup.  Images of Spain’s team dashed across the overhead and the band played the World Cup theme song - Waving flag.  The kids proudly sang along, and I was proud as they nailed the English lyrics in the chorus (when I get older/I will be stronger/They'll call me freedom just like a waving flag).  By the end of the song, Sevilla and Betis fans had their arms around each other, swaying in time to the music.  When the song ended, one boy got up from his chair and ran around the room, fists pumping into the air, as if he just singlehandedly won the world cup for his country.  Now that’s some pride.  Even the little Betis fan next to me forgot my supposed Sevilla allegiances and held my hand as the last song, Andalucía's anthem, played in the background.

Baking in Spain: easier said than done

There are many reasons why baking cookies in Spain is difficult.  First, and most importantly, I don’t have an oven.  Second, many of the ingredients just do not exist.  Third, measuring apparatuses are not easy to come by.  Not surprising, as there is not even a word in Spanish for “baking”.

Despite all these setbacks, Rachel and I were determined to make some good old American chocolate chip cookies.  A few weeks ago, we spotted the holy grail of rare American goods that are unattainable in Spain: chocolate chips.  Knowing we had to use them for something, we bought them immediately, despite the expensive price tag.  We then decided we had to make cookies.  Hitting up two of our local grocery stores, we found almost every ingredient we needed.  The brown sugar was more like sugar in the raw for your coffee instead of packed baking sugar, and we accidentally bought powdered sugar instead of plain white.  We had to substitute baking powder for baking soda, and the questionable vanilla extract only came in one size: enormous.  Our tub of margarine had to substitute for sticks of butter and we got off-brand Spanish M&Ms to make up for our small amount of chocolate chips.  Who said baking has to be an exact science?

Getting our ingredients home, we faced challenge number two: no measuring cups.  Our recipe called for cups and teaspoons, whereas our products were measured in grams.  Realizing there was no conversion from a measurement of volume to a measurement of weight, and without a scale to measure the grams, we were up the creek without a paddle.  This is where some great guesstimation took place.  We converted cups to liters, and measured out approximately how much a cup would be by filling a one liter water bottle and pouring it into water glasses.  Turns out, if my rough calculations were correct, one water glass equaled about one cup.  So we began to mix our ingredients in small Tupperware containers, unable to produce mixing bowls and wooden spoons.  The batter looked and tasted a little different than normal, but cookie dough is cookie dough, and we proceeded to eat many bites.

Luckily, our friend Julia has an oven, so we were all set to bring over the dough to make our cookies.  We had no cookie sheets, so we fashioned one out of tin foil.  This seemed like a good idea at the time, but pulling out a flimsy sheet of foil from the oven is easier said than done.  Some cookies fell, some smeared, and all got mashed up into some sort of half-cooked, half-gooey nightmare.  We dug in with our fingers, and the hot dough with the melted chocolate tasted amazing, despite the less than attractive appearance.  Given the circumstances, they turned out as well as we could have hoped.  But from now on, I think I’m a believer that cooking is an art… baking is a science.

True Life: I’m Becoming a Spaniard

It’s official.  I am becoming Spanish.

During my four months here for study abroad, I was baffled by the Sevillanos’ unofficial rules to not break out the summer wardrobe until after Easter.  Easter typically runs in mid April, whereas temperatures start hitting the 70s in mid February.  So that means two months of sweating it out in winter coats, scarves, and mittens… for what?  After living here for a more extended period of time, I have discovered that it isn’t so much about a fashion statement, or about distinguishing yourself from the t-shirt wearing tourists and study abroad students, but it’s just a state of mind that cannot be changed.

Little by little, I have become accustomed to Sevilla’s warm, Mediterranean climate.  Summer temperatures lasted until November, when the climate began to descend into Sevilla’s answer to winter.  Maybe it’s the humidity that causes the not-so-cold temperatures to feel bone chilling, or the fact that no buildings here, from my apartment to my school, have heat, but suddenly 50 degrees felt like dead winter. 

I first noticed my becoming a Spaniard on my trip to Egypt.  Although the temperatures were mid 70s with a hot sun beating down, I constantly wore a sweater, jacket, and scarf… comfortably.  I told myself that I was just dressing conservatively because I was in a conservative country… but the fact is I actually would have been cold wearing less.  People looking through my Egypt photos proclaimed that they thought it would’ve been warmer there, an assumption based on my constant layers.  I responded, well, actually it was quite warm.  So what is the reason for all the layers?

A similar experience occurred on my recent trip to Marrakech, Morocco.  Upon looking up the weather online, I noticed that it would be a high of low 70s.   Only a high of low 70s?  In my Spanish mind, that meant winter coat weather.  So while my friends and I walked around bundled up in scarves, sweaters, and winter pea coats, tourists from northern Europe and the UK bared their arms in t-shirts, tanktops, sundresses, and skirts.  Now, Sevillanos don’t just wear winter clothes because they want to.  They also look down upon others wearing non winter clothes.  Throughout study abroad, I thought that this was a snobby way to distinguish the extranjeros from the Sevillanos, but now I’m not so sure.  I think it’s just that they truly cannot understand why some crazy person would wear summer clothes in what is clearly not summer weather.  To my dismay, I have also adopted this mentality.  Upon seeing the tourists in their summer apparel, I had two distinct reactions.  The American in me was astounded that women would wear clearly inappropriate outfits in a country that believes in covering up.  Do they have no sense of others’ culture?  This small outrage, however, was masked by the even larger outrage of how are they not freezing??!  Staring like a Spaniard, I would give these women my look of disapproval, not because I deemed their outfits culturally inappropriate, but because they were clearly dressed for the wrong temperature, and must be out of their minds to think that it is summer weather.

Back in Sevilla, my winter coat and scarves have become staples in my everyday wardrobe, even as the temperature begins to crawl up to the mid 60s.  I join in with my fellow teachers as we run through the hallways of school proclaiming “que frio! que frio!”  I wear my winter coat inside the classrooms.  This year, Easter runs late, with semana santa beginning at the end of April.  By then, temperatures in Sevilla will most likely be in the high 80s.  While I’m not sure if I will hold out for that long, or if my USA born body will finally register the hot temperatures, I have a feeling that my winter coat will be a staple in my wardrobe for months to come.