the wrong roommate

I almost died when I opened my grade seven book last week. Felt my heart jump into my throat and my eyes pop.

I closed the book.
Sat down. Breathed.
Stood up.
Opened the book.

I had to sit down again.

I hadn’t imagined it. She was still there, full-page and glossy, with that stupid moral dilemma look on her face and a ghouly-looking thing standing behind her.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Buffy and I have had a tumultuous relationship. Some of the people who I love most dearly in this world have a mildly unhealthy obsession with everything Buffy. It might have been ok were it not for two details. The first: that I lived with two of them. The second: that I had the brilliant idea of organizing a group gift of the entire series on DVD to one of them…while we were still living in the same house.

To make a long story short, I grew jealous of Buffy as she took over my living room and my housemates every evening. Over the year, jealousy morphed into hatred. I thought we had reached an agreement last June when we decided to avoid further damage by simply keeping our distance.

Following me to Spain was not part of the agreement.

Pearson-Longman has tried very (too?) hard to make this textbook cool. Every unit ends with a pop song (everything from The Beatles to Vengaboys), there’s a soap-opera on DVD that accompanies the text, and everything is very colourful. Unit 4 is about daily life. Instead of boring exercises and word lists, students learn to tell the time by asking about flight departures from Sunnydale Airport and pick up vocabulary (go to bed, have breakfast, go to college, have dinner) by reading Buffy’s schedule.

The problem is that my grade sevens were probably not even born when Buffy premiered in North America, let alone when she made it to Spain. That means that when the struggling students that come to support classes with me on Tuesday afternoons ask about the show, I am supposed to have answers.

I suppose I am thankful for teaching notes. I now know that Sarah Michelle Gellar has a cat name Cayo and a dog named Thor. Apparently she likes pasta and her favourite colour is red. Angel is the only good vampire in the world and he likes Buffy. He works at night because the light kills vampires. Buffy doesn’t smoke.

Ugh.

I have to vent now, because in class this week I have to act like Buffy is my favourite and the neatest topic that we could ever study.

Couldn’t they have sent one of my other roommates instead?

madrid in your pocket

I bought a book off the street in Cáceres for 50 cents, which was probably less than what it cost when it was printed in 1965. The book is Spain in Your Pocket, written by a certain Peggy Donovan, who smiles at me from behind her typewriter, a smoking cigarette in her hand. Among Peggy’s most impressive accomplishments include her marriage to Major Stanley Donovan, Cheif of the United States Military Mission. The back cover blurb assures me Peggy is a trustworthy guide to Spain – she has “visted personally” each site she describes and has “taken courses” at the University of Madrid (oh my!). Oh, and did I mention that she was the wife of Major what’s-his-face?

My copy opens with a hand-written dedication, signed by Peggy herself and dated April 1967: “For Fleur (could be something else, the handwriting is a bit unclear) and Tom Meyer – In anticipation of May in New York together – from an admiring collegue with warm regards, Peggy Donovan.” I find it rather telling that even Peggy’s friends didn’t think it worthwhile to keep their signed copy. I worry that Peggy’s book didn’t do too well.

I shouldn’t give Peggy such a hard time. I have taken her “travella” on all of my journeys and it has provided endless amusement and noteworthy advice. She suggests, for example, that travellers to Spain always carry “special pills, a sewing kit, a pepper mill, nescafe, woolite and extra eyeglasses,” among other useful items. She exclaims things like “Spain is enormous fun” and writes long, capitalized titles: “THE MANY FACETS OF MADRID: WHERE THE HOURS ARE NOT FOR SLEEPING, THE AIR IS ELECTRIC DRY, AND THE PLAZA MAYOR CASTS A SPELL.”

The real fun in the book are the sweeping generalizations that still hold some truth and the specifics that are clearly dated. During my first visit to Madrid in September, I wrote in my journal about the trendy children who seemed to have free reign over Plaza Santa Ana, where I sat sipping my beer. In 1965, Peggy wrote, “No capital city is more given to children than Madrid and their later sense of high style and the solemn stare begins in the prams of the Castellana....” She devotes a good deal of her chapter on Madrid to describing how modernity has arrived in the Spanish capital. The “signs of affluence” that she singles out – the replacement of the donkey by the Seat 600 and the fifty-five driving schools that turn out anarchic drivers, both ladies and men – if no longer applicable, are certainly entertaining.

I was eager to compare notes with Peggy when A and I returned from our excursion to the big city last weekend. In Madrid – wandering in the crowd at Sol, finding the Egyptian novel I wanted at the bookstore, eating yummy vegetarian food, watching the Lebanese film Caramel with subtitles rather than dubbing, discussing Buenos Aires with the hostel receptionist (after winning big points by correctly identifying him as Boca Juniors fan), sipping coffee in the absurdly warm sunshine, being awed by Las Meninas at the Prado, reading the theatre reviews – I felt connected to the world. The city girl in me, suppressed as she is these days, breathed freely.

I was happy to find that Peggy likes Madrid as much as I do. I think I’ll let her have the last word to make up for teasing her so badly. She says it better anyways.

“Madrid demands little, gives much. ... Madrid concentrates on the vital, the laughing, the noisy side of life. There is no loneliness in Madrid. It is the least lonely city in the world....”

A in the foreground, Prado in the background.


Note the shirtless boy on the far left. Yes, it is January. Yes, it was that warm.

We had lunch outside. That was pleasing.

leaving and returning (or the half-way point)

Fluffy double bed with pressed sheets

balanced meals

social interactions that don’t involve retelling your life story

voices that match lip movement

soup when you are sick

friends of the same age

stapler, sewing kit, colouring supplies

clean air

company at lunch

expresso machine.

Usually it doesn’t bother me overmuch that my room here is intended for a child (with matching kiddy furniture and pastel blue walls) or that my treasured art supplies are split between a cupboard in Lisbon and a basement in Ottawa. Every once in a while, though, I am overcome with frustration and can think only of sleeping in a big-girl bed and making my own thank-you cards. The frustration hit big time in December – but dissipated as our plane landed in Abu Dhabi. For the next two weeks or so I positively reveled in the conveniences of permanent living, going to familiar places with familiar faces and making café au lait to excess.

I spent the long plane and automobile journey back to Spain in a bizarre state of disembodiment, in which my mind dragged its feet far behind those of my body. During the few days it took my mind to catch up with the rest of me, my empty head was full of mutinous thoughts. Wasn’t it nice to hang out with people your own age, they teased, and have a fully-stocked house, and have someone to look after you when you were sick?

Going home was a big fat reminder of the things I don’t have because I am here. But getting away also made it possible to stop obsessing about details and contemplate my Spain experience more generally. I decided, after taking a few big steps back, that the canvas is quite colourful (sunny days, good people, weekend escapades, an endless stimuli) and that those few dark brushstrokes (exhausting myself trying to be a good teacher, small town blues, missing people and things) provide necessary definition.

An appropriate epiphany to mark the half-way mark in this leg of the Iberian adventure, I thought.

back in don benito

All things considered, it could have been worse.

It wasn't easy to leave home -- it never is -- but at least I wasn't vomiting (like on the way there) or going back to a snowstorm (like my Canadian-bound friends).

The weather is actually, strangely, sort of...nice. I felt all cozy sauntering down the street in my new wool coat this afternoon -- a sensation replaced by sheepishness when the thermometer in the main square blinked 15 degrees at me. 15 degrees -- and I'm wearing gloves!

This weekend I am working diligently on what I expect will be my last graduate school application (of the 2008-09 round) and trying to get my act together for school. I have the perhaps misplaced hope that I will become more efficient at planning lessons...but so far the prep is sucking up as much time as ever.

Don't worry, I'll be back to my blogging ways soon enough.