settling in

I’ve spent the last couple weeks just trying to get into the swing of life here. It’s a tough adjustment, trying to build a life from scratch in place where I can’t communicate with people on a native level. But I’m off to a good start—getting settled into work, getting to know the town, starting to meet people.

I’m really enjoying work. It’s true; teaching really is gratifying and satisfying and everything they say. But my two classes with the older kids are a real challenge; they really aren’t interested in learning English. It doesn’t help that the fourth-year teacher is just awful. She only speaks Spanish to them—she even teaches English grammar in Spanish. She talks over me and interrupts me to translate for them, so they know they don’t have to listen to me or even try to speak English. They ignore everything I say and just turn to her for translations. I don’t like to just give kids translations when they don’t understand a word; they remember it better if I explain it in English, spend a little more time on it. She refuses to let me do this—she just throws out the translation so they understand what’s going on in that exact moment but forget the meaning of the word two seconds later. This leads to them asking the meaning of the same vocab word five times in one lesson. They’re just not getting anything out of my lessons because of her interference. I talked to my advisor about it and apparently this is a perennial problem with this teacher, but since she’s one of the oldest people on the faculty no one wants to say anything to her. Apparently a girl a few years ago left the class in tears once. I’m working on creative ways to get around her negative influence and hopefully spare my own sanity as well.

But I love working with the younger kids, especially the ones in the bilingual section. Last week I did Halloween lessons for all my classes—I taught them some Halloween vocabulary and we read a story about a Halloween party. The bilingual first years did a better job with it than any of my other classes. They’re eager to learn and practice English, and that makes a huge difference. In their art class on Thursday we took a break from lessons and they worked on Halloween decorations to surprisingly accurate results, considering that they don’t really celebrate the holiday here.


Levi and I have been trying to explore every inch of Zafra. Last weekend we hiked up one of the little mountains on the edge of town, the Sierra del Castellar. At the top of it are the remains of the thirteenth-century Arab fortress that once guarded Zafra. It’s completely in ruins, barely recognizable as a building at all. The place is scattered with bleached animal bones and in one case the rotting wool of an unfortunate sheep whose corpse was discovered by some fortunate vultures. It would have been a truly eerie spot if it hadn’t been so beautiful. To the east lay Zafra, a tiny cluster of stucco, spires, and parapets diced up by an irregular web of zigzagging streets and paths. To the west lay rolling fields, a tree-lined lake, and in the distance, the ranges of imposing mountains blocking Portugal from view.

This weekend we met up with two of the five or so English speakers in this town, a young couple from Belfast. She was in my position three years ago and had stayed around to tutor, and he works odd jobs around Zafra. It was great to be able to speak English with people who understand everything we said, without the circuitous explanations and complex games of charades we find ourselves using to break that language barrier. We also met a friend of theirs who said she could connect us to some students for Levi.

We’ve also had two guests this weekend, a young couple from Lille, France who found us on Couchsurfing. They’re traveling through Spain and Africa on their sabbatical year and are sticking to the off-the-beaten-track spots, a form of travel rare for people my age and certainly admirable. I’ve gotten the feeling that there is more Spain here in Extremadura than we ever would have encountered in Barcelona or Madrid. We’ve had a great time hosting them; they’ve both been practicing English with us and Levi’s had the chance to pull out some long-neglected French skills. We also got a delicious French meal of poached salmon, mushrooms, potatoes, and crème fraiche out of the deal. I love Couchsurfing—it’s the only reason in the world two people from northern France and two from the middle of the United States would ever be eating dinner together in southern Spain.

Monday is All Saints’ Day, so it’s another four-day weekend. Spain is great.

More photos on my facebook

school days

Columbus Day is—and I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised by this—a really, really big deal in Spain. They go ahead and take Monday and Tuesday off, shut down all the shops, and just party in the Plaza for the weekend. Since I have no lessons on Friday, that weekend became a five-dayer for me. After our unsuccessful day trip to Almendralejo, Levi and I spent Saturday and Sunday enjoying the holiday buzz in Zafra and getting settled in our apartment. I’ve been eating better in the past week than I have since I moved out of my parents’ house; Levi’s a great cook and I’ve been trying to learn to help out. It’s not pretty, but no lost digits so far, so that’s a win.

On Monday we went back to Almendralejo to give the police station another shot. The skinny mid-thirties paperpusher who invites us into his office has me in tears by the time I’m finally escaping—he’s spent the last half hour mocking my pronunciation, berating me for my lack of understanding of Spanish bureaucracy, and shouting at me when I ask him to repeat himself. It isn’t until later, after Levi and some fresh air have calmed me down, that I realize that this charming fellow, in his eagerness to treat me like shit, has overlooked the portion of the meeting where he was supposed to charge me €20 and take my picture, so it looks like I’ll have to go deal with him again. This time I’ll be ready with a tougher skin and some good insults.

Wednesday I found myself back with the same group of ten twelve-year-olds, and I take back what I said about their hesitation to speak English. After warming up to me a bit, they happily participated in a 50-minute lesson about American culture, throwing out adjectives to describe famous cities and forming simple sentences to discuss the careers of Hollywood celebrities and the qualities of hamburgers and hot dogs. One of the girls, although reluctant to speak English aloud, provides shockingly perfect Spanish translations whenever I accidentally go over their heads. They’re a sweet group of kids, too, really friendly and eager to please. I have them three times a week, which should be fun.

I also gave a lesson on Wednesday to the non-bilingual first years, a much bigger group who have the same eagerness to participate but largely lack the skills to do so very effectively. It was fun though, despite the utter chaos of managing a shouting, giggling group of twenty-five preteens. They seemed to enjoy it, and I had the hilarious opportunity to instruct them in the correct pronunciation of “Jonas Brothers.” It was a successful day.

Today was a little rougher, but I think I’ll be able to improve on it for next Thursday. Or at least I hope. Jesus, I hope. I had my little bilingual first years, who are by far my faves, for two great classes. But wedged in between those lessons was an English class with the fourth year non-bilinguals, a surly group of pimply fifteen- to seventeen- year olds who spent the entire hour staring blankly at me as I begged for participation. The “English” instructor occasionally screamed a translation at them in Spanish (and occasionally interrupted me to berate them for one thing or another), but the most I got out of them were the incredibly mispronounced names of a few celebrities (Brad Pitt = Brahpee, etc) and the English names for the seasons. It was pretty bad. I really have no idea what I’m going to do with these kids—they clearly aren’t interested and I’m not sure I have the patience for it. I have another fourth-year group of the same level next week, and I can only hope it won’t be quite so brutal.

Levi came to the school for my lunch break today, and after meeting a few of the teachers, he had some potential students lined up. Through the school, we’ve also found him a small group of eleven-year-olds, kids who will be starting secondary school next year and are working to improve their English in preparation. There’s an obvious dearth of quality English instruction here, so I think he’ll have luck finding work so we can continue to fund this bar habit.

Ps-Canned Guinness in Spain is REAL GUINNESS!

Beery

After battling the transportation repercussions of clouds over Philadelphia, flying seven hours over the Atlantic, and busing nearly three hundred miles through the dusty, lonely terrain of the Spanish dehesa, Levi arrived Wednesday at the little bus station in Zafra. After getting his bags unpacked, we spent the evening exploring our little town and eating a great local meal—ham, cheese, more ham, some more ham, steak, and beers—at a restaurant near the Parador, the fifteenth-century-castle-turned-five-star-hotel. Afterward we wandered back to the castle for drinks at the Irish pub beneath it.

The place is, on the surface, exactly how it sounds. Paddy Virutas, it’s called. Guinness signs decorate the entryway, and beer logo flags are strung across the ceiling. The castle lends its striking medieval feel to the little pub; a vaulted ceiling arches dramatically over our heads, constructed of ancient wood beams, and an enormous stone fireplace presides over the scene, overlooked by a small balcony lined with worn barstools. Levi was ready for a good beer after a long day of travel, and I was dying for something tastier than the weak Spanish lagers I’d been living on for three weeks, so we were excited by the distinctly Irish scenery of this place and ordered a round of Guinness.

But heartbreak of heartbreaks, the Spanish have gone to such lengths in their love of weak, fizzy beer as to ruin Guinness! What arrived at our table was not the creamy brown elixir I’ve been craving, but an amber-colored, Guinness-flavored soda pop, as heavily carbonated as sad Cruzcampo, the Spanish Budweiser. It’s got a kick of that warm, chocolaty flavor in the finish, but all the smooth creaminess of true Guinness is lost. It seems the company knows the Spanish market better than I would have liked.

As Levi was gasping at the abomination in our glasses, I noticed an enormous Union Jack strung over the back bar, reigning over the Guinness and Murphy’s taps, the Celtic hurling posters, and the shamrocks carved into the woodwork.

But despite the near miss of this little place, it’s wonderful to be back where we belong—together in an “Irish” pub.

•••

The following morning marked the beginning of my unexpected career as an English teacher. El Instituto de Educación Secundaria Cristo del Rosario is a public secondary school north of the heart of Zafra, and is home to 12-16 year olds, with an optional additional two years for college-bound kids. It’s a sunny, colorful place where impressive student artwork adorns the hallways and glass doors open onto tiled patios and the low Extremeña mountains beyond. The fairgrounds are nearby, so the school was shut down for the duration of the feria due to the parents’ discomfort at the thought of their children walking through that utter shitshow on the way to class. So I was off the hook till Thursday, and even then only one of my lessons actually took place.
I remember what it was life was like inside a seventh-grade Spanish classroom. We didn’t have the experience to successfully converse in the language, and it was far cooler to refuse than to mess up in front of your friends. So I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised to discover that trying to get a bunch of Spanish seventh graders to speak English was largely impossible on the first try. A couple of obvious overachievers were happy to fight their way through their limited verb tenses to tell me about themselves, but the rest kept insisting (in Spanish) that they just didn’t understand me, and a few entirely ignored me.

This group of ten first-year students is a class I will have three times a week, in their English, Arts, and Social Studies classes. They’re a group who have tested into (likely at their parents’ insistence) bilingual coursework, so in addition to their English class, their Arts and Social Studies classes are supposedly taught in English. I learned Thursday that this is not, strictly speaking, what is actually happening. The Arts teacher speaks solid English and was eager to use me as a reference to improve his own grammar and vocabulary, but he seemed to surrender when confronted with confused little faces and switched to Spanish without much provocation. I foresee this being a problem in my other classes as well. I have one class with each of the three different non-bilingual first-year groups, three with the second-year bilingual section, and one each with two fourth-year non-bilingual sections. Hopefully I’ll be able to have some of these kids comfortable in at least trying to speak by the end of the term.

•••

My $100 visa is only good for 30 days (thanks, EU) so I have to get a foreigner ID number and card to make my stay legal and receive payment from my school. The nearest police station that handles these affairs is in Almendralejo, a 45-minute bus ride from Zafra. So Levi and I took a little day trip on Friday, only to discover that the police station is open for two hours every day (thanks, siesta), that we had missed it by fifteen minutes, and that there is absolutely nothing to do in Almendralejo while you wait five hours for the next bus. Bars it is.

We ducked into a dodgy little place near the train station, a hole-in-the-wall with dirty windows and dusty tables. I love places like this because they’re the same in every country—all they offer is cheap beer and good people-watching, and I require nothing more. We order two tubos (tubes, literally—tall, skinny cylinders of Cruzcampo) and take a seat in a corner. A thin, long-haired hipster type, maybe Thai or something in the neighborhood, stood at the noisy slot machine that decorates every Spanish pub, unsmiling. About halfway through our beers the thing lets out an ecstatic squeal and starts spitting out hundreds of coins. He’s won around €50. He lights a victory cigarette and smokes it coolly as the change comes pouring out. He bags it up and leaves. After finishing our beers and moving down the road, we see him ducking into another pub—he skips the bar entirely and moves straight to the machine.

We find another pub and discover that Murphy’s Irish Red is pretty good here and that Paulaner is freaking delicious—smooth and honeyed. So there’s a success.

We’re exhausted by the time we get Zafra, deciding on the walk home to go immediately to bed. It’s around 11 and we’ve had a day full of nothing but boredom and beer, and are suffering the resulting lethargy. But as we approach our door, we’re drawn in by the lively buzz of the Plaza Grande. The bars, closed for the last two weeks to avoid competition with the feria, have flung their doors open at last, and on this Friday night they are overflowing. We can’t help it; we find a dark dive and have a drink. We spend a half hour or so watching a rerun of a soccer match (Spain vs. Lithuania) with the bartender, then get some delicious artichoke concoction from the pizzeria, which is apparently the site of teenage date night.

Life here is better with a partner. A small town can be a lonely place, especially in this family-centric culture. The world stops for siesta, so I had been spending three or four hours of every day wandering empty streets or sitting in an empty apartment. I was always the only solo drinker in cafes and pubs, the only lone shopper or walker; activities often carried out by one person on her own in the US are things to be done in groups in Spain—personal space and personal time don’t seem to be concerns, and the attention I already attract by my foreigner looks was probably compounded by the fact that I was, strangely, alone. Zafra is a better place now.

Culture shock

Having been through it once before (and in a Spanish-speaking country, no less), I fancied myself immune to, or at least well prepared for, the ugly confusion and loneliness of culture shock. As you can probably glean from the structure of that sentence, I was mistaken.

I spent months working on my Argentine accent, perfecting their unique verb forms and the strange way their teeth sink into their double “L”s. I spent years learning the harsh consonants of Mexican Spanish and the peculiarities of the vocabularies of Chicano and Central American novelists and of the poets of the Southern Cone. But nothing in my years of practice prepared me for the mysterious and complete disappearance of the letter “s.” Instead of biting this crucial letter, the people of this region push it through parted teeth on a lazy tongue, or forsake it altogether. I can’t understand a damn word. I can’t distinguish the plural from the singular, the second person from the third, the past from the future. This has been unexpectedly crippling. Every conversation I have withers into confusion and futility, eliciting a sympathetic shrug of surrender from my interlocutor and leaving me feel stupid and helpless.

Then there are the simpler things. I don’t know how to get a waiter’s attention; the casual wave of the US is ignored and the wagging index finger of Latin America elicits such irritation that I can only assume it’s a Spanish faux pas. I’ve observed other patrons and cannot for the life of me understand it. I can’t figure out which side of the sidewalk to walk on; both have earned me that awkward left-right dance and irritated sighs and stares. I get cut in lines and have no idea why—is cutting common and you have to fight for you space? Should I have been standing closer to the person in front of me? Am I supposed to let older people get in front of me?

Then there’s the one issue I was expecting: foreigner fascination. Even on the crowded streets of Buenos Aires, where varied European and South American blood creates a reasonably diverse scene, my orange hair and pale skin called attention. So in a small, monochromatic town like Zafra, I am unsurprised to find people staring. But God, they really stare. Maybe I’m missing something here—maybe eye contact lingers longer before it’s considered rude, maybe people-watching is less subtle and more acceptable here. And maybe I’m oversensitive. But I have yet to venture outside of my apartment without attracting blatant, undisguised stares. It’s exhausting to always feel this exposed.

In the face of a language barrier, confusion on daily customs, and my obvious status as an outsider, I’ve lately felt that creeping loneliness I first felt in Argentina. I spend more time in my apartment than I should, hoping to avoid these awkward moments, and I find myself feeling very alone.

But I’ve been here before and I know that there is only one cure for culture shock: fearlessness. You have to have those awkward conversations and be unafraid to ask for endless repetitions of the same phrases. You have to lose your concern for blending before you can blend. Fuck-ups are constant and unavoidable when you’re in an unfamiliar culture, and the best thing you can do is shed your fears and just keep on fucking up until you learn.

This is the burst of logic I experience today, and it prompts me to drag myself off my couch and walk to the Feria Internacional Ganadera de Zafra, a nationally-famous agriculture fair currently taking place a few minutes’ walk from the town center. Ironically, the scene I encounter entirely cures me of my homesickness and reminds me why I left the States in the first place. This deep-fried, beer-soaked, inflatable plastic nightmare may as well have been cut out of the fairgrounds of Springfield, Illinois and pasted into the Spanish countryside. A livestock tent occupies the center of the grounds, releasing a familiar stench that blends with those of the deep fryers, sugars, and meats of the food vendors to create that uniquely nauseating aroma of a state fair. Preteen girls in truly impressive amounts of makeup wander through the masses popping their gum as their pimply male sidekicks clumsily grope their bare midriffs. The ground in littered with half-eaten chunks of meat, churro wrappers, plastic cups and discarded raffle tickets so thick I have a hard time getting my flip-flops through it. Beer tents pour out drunken teenagers and twenty-somethings accompanied by the choking blend of tobacco and pot smoke. Small children fling themselves around in enormous moonbounce structures shaped like SpongeBob, Shrek, and Homer Simpson, while mullet-rocking carnies operate rickety little rollercoasters and bumpercar pavilions. I feel right at home.

After getting the hell out of there, I stop by the pizzeria across the road from my apartment. I’ve come to love this little place, not only because the pizza is delicious and ludicrously cheap (€2.50 dinner), but also because it’s run by an Italian family who blend in in Zafra about as well as I do. They spend their days shouting at each other in their own language, watching an Italian news station at incredible volume, and laughing more boisterously and honestly than I’ve ever heard in Spain. The three kids, all in their late twenties, seem to speak solid Spanish, but the father tends to stick to Italian, turning up the volume and slowing down the pace in hopes that the close relationship between these languages will carry him through. The first time I talked to him he seemed surprised when I said Spanish was my second language, a compliment I took, given his lack of familiarity with the language, with a grain of salt—but I took it nonetheless. I can’t cook to save my life (please get here, Levi!) so I’ve already become a regular at this place, and they are endlessly welcome and friendly to me. It’s been a real help on my rougher days, just a little thing I for some reason find comforting.

I have three more days to kill, and on Wednesday the lethargy and loneliness will finally break. I start work that morning. My first task is to tell a group of Spanish teenagers all about America (where do you start?). Afterward I’ll race home and wait for Levi, who arrives in the late afternoon! And life in Zafra begins!