136/365

Recently I’ve been trying to practice night photography, as part of my attempt to stop (shamefully) shooting on auto so much with my big girl camera.

120/365

A year ago I bought this $8 ring to mount a lens backwards for macro photography. When I first bought it, I couldn’t get it to work, stuck the ring into my camera bag, and pretty much forgot about it. Today I fiddled around with it a little more, figured out I needed to adjust the aperture manually, and got it to work. (This my small watch pendant from a few inches away, using my 50mm lens mounted backwards.)

Now I just need to find an equally cheap solution to my lack of a wide-angle lens…

Semana Santa

Elaborately braided palms on Domingo de Ramos

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when life in a new place just becomes life. For me the epiphany has occurred when I come back to Spain from trips other countries, and breathe a sigh of relief to be back home – because it feels suspiciously like home. Obviously I am still a guiri, and a thousand little contrasts show it (I haven’t found the unspoken but unanimously adhered to schedule for what date it’s okay to wear short sleeves or a skirt without tights, or just how sunny it can be out before you leave the house without a scarf.) In the streets waiters and strangers speak English at my American face. But the overwhelming feeling of otherness has faded. Routines have normalized. Several months ago I still was a little baffled when Spanish camareros brought a knife and fork with a croissant. Now if I order a croissant with my coffee and it doesn’t come with silverware, I feel a little affronted – what am I, a savage?

All the same, at the back of my mind I am aware of the contrasts, as I begin to pull together details for what my life will look like in the coming year. I already am aching at the thought of going home (although home has begun to waver and shift) and leaving behind little things here: the glint of the sea on my morning commute, the ability to sit down and drink a coffee slowly with coworkers in the middle of the school day.

And just as life in Spain feels normal, Semana Santa happens.

Mid-Year

I feel like most things in my life recently are a little retrasado (and I mean that more in the running late sense, and less in the mentally delayed way – but who knows?)

So more than a week after the fact, I am taking time to comment upon the many impressions and inspirations that I was left with after spending several days in Valladolid for Fulbright´s mid-year meeting. This included all the English Teaching Assistants from all over Iberian Peninsula – from Valencia, Cantabria, Madrid, and Andorra – and all the research grantees here in Spain, researching everything from cancer to Antarctica to flamenco.

Hint: this is not a cheap student hostel.

Glimpses & Glimmers

So for the past month I’ve been posting pictures instead of words.

(Spain got your tongue?)

I have been living here for five months. I have put down some roots, tied down my edges, and other roots have curled their way out of the ground to link me here before I realize it.

I recognize people on the street.
The greek waiter knows how I like my coffee, accompanying it with increasingly larger bits of pastry.
I often wake up speaking Spanish in my head.
The number of people who think I am Spanish increases, which I take as a compliment.
When people ask me for directions, I can answer.
My native tongue is disintegrating. In English I speak almost exclusively in Spanish cognates, even to native speakers.

I am accustomed to the dry earth and the waxy leaves the size of my hands, littering slick stone outside my door.
I am accustomed to the clatter of shutters opening in the morning, and to the real bells,
and to the light scattered from bedsheets billowing in sunshine.
I am addicted to tangerines – skin picked off in ragged spirals, citrus glow lighting up between my teeth.

The dramatic shifts and contrasts sometimes fray my connections with time or place or relevance.
Yesterday while walking down a street I had never seen before, I cried about something that happened years and years ago.
(Suddens storms coming in unexpectedly across the sea.)

I’m getting accustomed to beauty – and not just the little pieces of it I have collected for years.
(Sunrise over concrete expanses of highway, clean lines of scissors,
or the bottomless wells of beauty in my students’ eyes.)
Here I am drowning in new textures and scents and colors.

I’m worried I’ll lose track of the beauty in 6am highways or streets shuttered up in plywood, and of other abilities as well:

the ability to work endless days on a few hours of sleep,
the ability to write or even speak legibly in any language,
the ability to live inland,
the ability to shake hands,
the ability to drive a car,
the ability to wear a warm coat,
the ability to tip, to kiss, to dress business casual,
the ability to connect with people who have known me for more than five months.

This year isn’t easy, but I know better.
I know that I will look back at this year through golden light,
candles flickering, the scent of oranges,
far from some midwestern winter.

So for now words fail me and my voice creaks itself silent.
Lick lips, stuck shut.
Lacking stories (or rather, the tongue to tell them) I only have glimpses.

6/365

Roscón de Reyes: King’s Cake.

Tradition is that today families eat the king’s cake, which has a lucky figure inside which crowns you king if you get it in your piece. Today with my French & American friends we tried both the French version, which is more like a flat almond pastry, and the Spanish version, which you see above. (Last year I brought the Mexican version for my students, who also put out their shoes for the kings to fill with gifts.)

Proyecto 365: Bienvenidos

I am starting a 365 Project – I’ll be posting one photo a day during 2012. It’s been hard to keep up with the constant stream of thoughts and images during my time here, and I think this is a way I’ll be able to follow a daily thread from the beginning of this year all the way through to the end – because who knows where I’ll be when the year ends?

I got lucky my first few days of the year, because I was traveling and already looking at the world through a lens, but going forward I’m going to do my best to post a photo for each day. (We’ll see how punctually those photos will be posted… I probably shouldn’t cripple myself with unreasonable optimism, right?)

3/365

Nuestra Señora del Pilar – Our Lady of the Pillar, the huge basilica in Zaragoza to honor the patroness of Spain. (I wrote a bit about her legacy on her feast day earlier this year.

1/365

Bocadillos de Chorizo – a hostel picnic in Zaragoza, after a long and somewhat hungover ride from Madrid after the festivities there.

Christmas, Catharsis, and the Anti-Whine

I am here in Madrid by myself for the night, and tomorrow morning I will go back to the airport to meet a dear friend who is coming to visit me (and Spain, for the first time!) I arrived earlier today, and now I am in the cocoon of light and warmth and wifi that is the the bar of my hostel. It is Nochebuena - Christmas Eve in Spain. This is when Spaniards get together with their families to eat a gigantic meal of American Thanksgiving proportions, and later go to la misa del gallo - the rooster´s mass, at Christmas eve (because the rooster was traditionally the first to announce the birth of Christ.) The streets are not as busy as they usually would be at this hour, with most stores and restaurants shuttered up. People on the street are dressed up (with the occasional Santa hat or reindeer antlers) and hurrying to various festive destinations – carrying covered dishes or gifts or children. A few foreigners wander aimlessly, perhaps baffled by the way the bustling Spanish streets can empty themselves up so quickly and completely: shutters pulled down over storefronts, the slamming shut of old doors. My basic Spain Survival Skills have given me enough foresight to find a panadaría and frutería for some rations for later when everyone has retreated to their family meals, and I found a small empty cafe to satiate my ever growing addiction to café con leche. 

It is an easy time to feel orphaned and melancholy (alone! expat! homesick! Christmas!) but I am determined to make it more than that.

Living in a new country always teaches you even more about yourself than about the new culture. And a few months in, the things that have surfaced have not all been very pretty. I have found that especially in new and stressful situations, it is far too easy to let myself feel victimized. After the initial glow fades, you are beaten down by a country whose customs you don’t understand, full of people who don’t understand you. Daily tasks are baffling. Simple objectives become nearly impossible. Small talk during lunch break is terrifyingly trilingual.

Overwhelmed people shut down, or hide, or avoid… or whine. Slog through doggedly and sullenly. This is what I have been doing a bit too much lately. On a conscious level, I want to live outside my comfort zone. I want to be challenged because I want to grow. But not if I can’t whine about it. Not if I don’t get to maintain a steady stream of angst.

Is Catholicism is to blame? (Blaming Catholicism For Things has been another fun hobby, but isn’t always fair.) A steady diet of martyrs in halos and sacrificial lambs raises selfless folk whose sacrifices are repaid by gold halos and eyes cast heavenwards. Longsuffering. I think a lot of people* get lost in the sacrifice part and lose the thread of what really matters – what is worth the sacrifice, worth stepping out of the lines.

(*Obviously, I am just referring to myself)

I have always been one to push forward to new horizons – but then I get bogged down in anxiety, making me whiny and sullen and reclusive. I think this year will be a crash course in Being Joyful and Living In The Moment and Being Happy Alone - because often my alone times traveling are my favorite times. (I relate to Anna here and to the article she mentioned here.) Then the moment comes and it’s Christmas and I feel lonely, but I’m shaking it off. I don’t want to squander the joyfulness of adventure; I don’t want to lose the lightness of walking alone down an unfamiliar street in a beautiful city. I will see loved ones tomorrow (in person and via Skype) but for now I am listening to Villancicos (you can too, here!) and eating a mandarina and soon I am going to wander off to find out what Christmas in Madrid looks and smells and tastes like.

Felíz Navidad a todos. / Molt Bon Nadal a tots. 

(In case you wanted to know what a Mediterranean Christmas Eve looks like.)

(Sneak preview for family back home; due to mailing delays – mostly my fault – these presents will hopefully be brought by Los Reyes in early January… in true Spanish style.)