Hola a todos, ¡les extraño mucho!
Alright, that’s about enough
Spanish for me, haha.
I’m situated at the desk in my
new room in Madrid, in the apartment of my new host family—Mónica, and her son,
Matthew. I’ve been here for a day and a
half, and yet not much has happened.
Allow me to explain why.
Traveling went off without too
many hitches, so to speak. I didn’t have
any problems with flying—except that apparently my right ear doesn’t like to
pop between the altitudes of 25,000 and 10,000 feet, resulting in ten minutes
of rather excruciating discomfort. At
least it doesn’t have to happen again for five months, right?
The airports were fun. At least, DFW was. I bought a pretzel, some ibuprofen (^ ears),
and a massage that cost way too much, haha.
Heathrow had very poor signage, all I’m gonna say.
Once I touched down in Spain, I
went through the intricate maze of queuing necessary to get through the gate,
customs, and baggage claim, before finally taking my first steps onto Spanish soil
(see the images below)! There, I stood
about for a few minutes, quite frankly afraid to talk to anybody. No one was making ugly faces or carrying
weapons or anything, but I’m still pretty much terrified of having to
communicate in Spanish. Anywho, amid my
standing around, I realized that I had no idea what the address was to my host
family’s apartment. After about five more
minutes, I finally gathered the courage to ask somebody if there were any
public computers with Internet access.
They didn’t know, but I was certain there had to be—so I wandered around
inside the airport until I found one and got the address. I proceeded outside to get a taxi.
Now, the taxi driver insisted on
speaking English, despite his very small vocabulary. He offered various tour-related remarks as we
passed popular places in Spain. Overall,
it was a pretty decent, if not expensive, taxi ride—except, as I found out
later, he took me to the wrong place.
He got pretty close, I’ll give
him that. But, “pretty close” for a
foreigner in a new city, carrying three large pieces of luggage, on an
apparently high-traffic (vehicle and pedestrian) street, was quite
distressing. After knocking on four
doors in the wrong building, I walked back downstairs to the ground level to
gather my thoughts. I had no cell phone,
no computer, no internet for that matter, and no idea where building 76
was. I knocked on three more doors
asking to borrow their computers, but to no avail.
I wandered back outside, albeit
clumsily (luggage is not made for navigating through doorways). I tried one more building and four more
doors, but again failed to find the apartment I was looking for. I sat down on a bench, deciding which person
in the crowd to ask for help. I felt it
would be awkward to ask someone at the front of a crowd (everyone else would be
watching and listening), or to ask someone at the end of a crowd (everyone else
would turn around when I flagged them down).
So, I waited for a decent-looking loner, and asked if there was a cyber café
nearby. She directed me to an office
supply store with a workcenter, where I paid a few euros to use their internet.
I drew myself a map of the
surrounding area, and wrote down the phone number of the accommodation agency I
booked with. The clerk at the counter
instructed that there was a payphone outside, but that I wasn’t allowed to use
her phone. The payphone luckily accepted
Visa cards, but unfortunately not mine, for some reason. So, I stumbled around the streets for a bit
until I found another viable building.
After going to the appropriate floor, knocking on the wrong door, and
getting another unfriendly response, I returned downstairs and asked the clerk
to use his phone.
My call to the accommodation
agency was entirely unhelpful. They told
me that they were sorry, but that they had apparently given me the wrong
address. The correct address, they said,
was 73, not 76 (I had just seen 76 written in an email sent to me by them and
by the lady who lives there). They
refused to help me any further until I checked building 73. So, with all of my luggage, I walked another
city block and crossed the street, trying to find 73. Once I did, I again got to the right floor,
knocked on the wrong door, and got nobody nice.
At this point I should mention
how exhausted I was, having been awake for 30 hours straight, not having eaten
in about six hours, and having to carry around said luggage.
Anyways, unable to find anyone
else who would let me use their phone, I crossed the street and walked the
block again to use the clerk’s telephone.
I dialed the agency once again.
They apologized, and said that
they had never told me 73. I told them
the name of the woman who did, to which their response was simply an
apology. They kept telling me that, “Mónica
is waiting for you right now, in building 76.
Where are you? Go to building 76.” Finally, I had had it, and yelled into the
phone, “I have been telling you—I can NOT find building 76. I understand what you are saying, but I can … not … find it.”
Mónica, they said, was apparently
on the other line. After connecting me
to her, she informed me that I was actually less than a hundred feet from her
building. She offered to come down to
the street level to meet me—a bargain I was more than willing to accept.
Upon seeing me, she ran up and
gave me a large hug. Upon seeing her, I
gave her an even larger hug. I tried to
briefly explain the mishaps of the last two hours, but it was quite difficult
in Spanish. We went upstairs to her
apartment—which, as I’m sure you’re dying to know how I couldn’t find it, it
was above several stores, and was not marked as being building 76—where she and
I got to know each other a little.
She is a very nice woman, who
appears to have a lot of experience with taking in American foreigners. She and her eleven year old son affirmed that
I spoke much better Spanish than some of their previous co-inhabitants, which,
although flattering, makes me fear for the others’ first experience. I quite enjoy their company, although I can
only understand about 70% of what they say.
Her son, Matthew, is bilingual, and pretty much only likes to speak to
me in English. After a quick reprimand
from his mother, he’ll return to Spanish, and I’ll wish he would go back to
English, haha.
Instead of going straight to bed,
which I really really wanted to do, I stayed up with them for several hours
until 9pm. Then, running on 36 hours of consciousness,
I hit the hay, and hit it hard. I woke
up 20 hours later, at 5pm. Talk about a
wasted day. I haven’t slept that long in
my life, but God it felt good. I
showered, unpacked my things, and hit the street below the apartment for some
shopping—thankfully, without the luggage.
My trip along the streets was
successful, although you don’t really need to say or hear a word when all you
are doing is buying things. I came back
home, watched some TV with the family, ate a delicious grilled ham and cheese
sandwich and my leftovers from last night (chicken carbonara!).
I still can’t understand 90% of what
is being said on TV, but Mónica and Matthew are quite sure that by the time I
leave, I will be speaking and listening as quickly as they do. At this point in time, that seems a bit of a
stretch. But, then again, I suppose that’s
what is supposed to happen: my mind, my
vocabulary, and my confidence are all supposed to stretch.
And, with this deliciously
coffee-flavored Coca Cola (try it if you haven’t!), I bid a toast to the art of
stretching.
To stretching!
Seth Ancil Allen
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