Miss Allie strikes again!

I got to teach my first class today!  TEFL (the program I'm here through) has a 'basic module' that they want us to follow exactly, which includes a six-line dialogue with some interchangeable vocabulary about a given subject. My topic?  School (shocker, I know). Over the past week, I've been drawing and coloring sheets of paper with vocabulary words for the students, all in preparation for this one teaching session. Thanks to this rigid module, pretty much one conversation has been in my head this past week:

A: What are you studying?

B: I am studying math. [or science, art, literature, history, economics, music]

A: What will you do in class?

B: I will take a test. [do an experiment, draw, write a report, study, take notes, play an instrument]

A: What do you need to bring?

B: I need to bring my calculator. [ruler, pencil, pen, textbook, notebook, violin]

I feel like a live-action Rosetta Stone exercise.

And yes, I made them learn "violin" before any other instrument. Because I'm the teacher and in charge of their language acquisition, that's why.

AND IT'S BETTER THAN YOUR INSTRUMENT. I mean, no offense. But it is. 

And I know how to draw that one.  That too.

The class went very well!  Even Nati, a woman who wouldn't do anything in the first class for fear of messing up, volunteered to read what she wrote later in the class out loud. It was a really well-written paragraph about how she likes English, but is absolutely terrible and fears she will never learn the language. Kind of awkward to clap for Debbie Downer after hearing an 'I fail' diatribe. But it's me, so of course I did!

Boring post? Yes. Just wanted to remind you that I actually am doing something while I'm over here besides eating with tiny spoons, watching flamenco, and getting attacked by giant pigeons.

Honesty and Confidence, por la comida

In Sevilla, there seems to be a tendency to own and enjoy what you have. Maybe it’s just Triana, the area I’m living in, but there’s an authenticity without pretension. They have the oldest and richest history of any place I’ve ever been to (although that’s not saying much), and yet there is much less pretension then the States--or at least Boston--has about its own history.   There’s a reality here that I’m really starting to fall in love with.  

This is most in the “less quality, higher quality” mindset around food that is relevant throughout most of Europe (or so I’ve heard). Dishes are smaller and shared among friends, coffees are gloriously strong but tiny, and they love the tiny spoons for ice cream as much as I do. Food is less processed, which means it won’t stay as fresh as long. Things aren’t as sweet here. Dried fruit is just as popular, if not moreso, than candy; in fact, candy stores are called frutas secas, or ‘dried fruits.’ You don’t find Splenda at the grocery store. Bread goes stale. All in all, it’s more real. If you want bread, you’ll get bread. They baked it that morning. Bigger isn’t always better. More can be overkill.

Now, I’m no foodie by any means, and I’ve loved all the meals I’ve eaten out. Also, I really don’t want to seem like an ‘ugly American,’ so I probably wouldn’t complain if I did have an issue with any food. But Sevillanos do it to each other all the time. If you’re going to take the time to enjoy their food, and give them your money, you’re going to enjoy it.

And enjoy it they do. While there’s not as much food on the plates, the food that’s there is eaten over even more time than we take for our “Super Value” meals in the States. You enjoy it. You enjoy the company of the people you’re with. And you’re honest if you don’t. The time spent eating should be enjoyed, and your time--and being--is worth more than it’s given when you stuff yourself with crappy food.

Furthermore, hardly anyone here is filled with fake sugary-sweetness. In the US, we’re used to having people sugarcoat the truth. We all earned a soccer trophy sometime in grade school, didn’t we? I mean, I got one and I didn’t touch the ball once the whole season (can you even call it a “participation trophy” at that point?). I mean, I haven’t been to any youth soccer games here, but I’m presuming everyone doesn’t go home with a shiny piece of plastic. Sevillanos can be brutally honest; if you aren’t prepared to hear it, then you might want to get out of la cocina. At first, it was off-putting. Whereas in the U.S., you get a lot of people who will beat around the bush rather than tell you what they're thinking, Spaniards are so far from telling you what you want to hear. I’m no child psychologist, and I’m not going to say one’s better than the other, but I think people develop a “thicker skin” here than at home. 

This honesty is their way of expressing affection, as they are more concerned with your being genuinely happy, rather than being filled with an artificial happiness based on what you want to hear. It’s really quite refreshing, to be honest. And simple. A lot of things here--the food, the people, the way of life--can be hacked up to simple.

We put so much stock into being accepted by our society that we don’t always have that inner security that is necessary in sustaining a full, rich life. There’s something realistic, and yet self-respecting, about the Sevillano way of life; they have the self-esteem to own their opinions, but not in the same way that Americans at times overwhelm their neighbors. It seems that various opinions can coexist, simply because people respect their neighbors. Or maybe I’m off--I’ve only been here five days. 

How high school led me to this very moment

It’s no secret that my interests changed vastly between high school and college. In high school, I was a Spanish-obsessed competitive dancer who enjoyed playing the violin in the orchestra and planned on becoming an English as a Second Language teacher. Tonight, I fulfilled my 18-year-old self’s every dream in one three-hour setting. How’s that for efficiency?

I’ve been blessed here to be assigned a roommate, Lyndsey, who is a Music and Spanish major at Bethel College, a small Christian school in Indiana. It’s almost disturbing how many interests we have in common, really.  Anyway, when our teacher told us she was going to see Carmen the next night in the bullring, and that there were still tickets available, the two of us FREAKED OUT. I mean, there was squealing, beaming, and slightly-irrational money-spending happening. But, hey, we were going to see Carmen performed in Sevilla!  Lyndsey was additionally excited because it would be her first opera.

Well, she’ll still have to go to her first opera, because this was a reworked Flamenco piece that told the story through dance and guitars, except for the few times someone sang, Arabic chant-style, in Spanish. BUT IT WAS AWESOME. So Sevillano. My high-school self totally missed a calling in life. All of my high-school passions came together in this rendition of Carmen: dance, Andalucía, and, well, Carmen. 

Therefore, the #1 thank-you of the night goes to my orchestra teacher, Mr. Beck, for being obsessed with the story of Carmen and re-telling it to us the entire time we were rehearsing to play the music. I was even able to re-tell the story before the thing started to the Irish family sitting behind us, which was awesome. I got her son’s (who lives in Boston, not the one in Sevilla with her) number, and I’m supposed to look him up when I get back. Ah, life.

Thank-you #2 goes to Sra. Meacham and her introduction of Andalucía to my Spanish class my junior year. I remember learning about Sevilla and Córdoba, reading poems by Federico García Lorca, and falling in love with the gitano culture. I felt like I was channeling her the whole night. Also, thanks for showing me pictures of the Spanish priest outfit, so that when they showed up at the end of the show I knew it wasn’t the KKK out to lynch Carmen about 2 minutes too late.

Last, but by no means in any universe least, thank-you #3 goes to Ms. Janell, my dance teacher, who, well, taught me dance (duh). But for real--I was watching the dancers’ feet yesterday, and I felt like I was studying a new style of tap dance. I actually was figuring it out as we went along!  I definitely know a few steps of flamenco now--and OH MY GOODNESS do I want to learn more.  I missed a calling in life: I want to be a flamenco dancer in Carmen in Seville. Surrounded by cultura sevillana, guitars, and dancing? Yes, please.

I won’t lie--we were surprised, to say the least, that it wasn’t an opera. We laughed about it the whole time. We hadn’t read the poster--we just saw Carmen and RAN to the ticket office.  About five minutes in to the policeman’s first dance, Lyndsey leaned over and said “shouldn’t they have sung by now?” Yeah, we were those Americans. But it didn’t change our impression of how FREAKING AWESOME it all was.

Oh, but it doesn’t end there!  You’d think the night couldn’t get any weirder?  You didn’t stay through intermission. Animals entertained us. Well, people and animals. First, a guy on a horse came out and the horse danced around for awhile. When BHoff took us to the Saratoga Race Track when I was in middle School, I thought that the dressage stuff was the weirdest thing ever and a complete waste of time. It’s so much cooler when you have a torreador brass band playing in the background. Weird to see a horse dance sideways in a circle?  Yes. Cooler when you’re in Spain, and thousands of people around you love it?  Absolutely.

But ye of little faith, that was only the preamble to the intermission!  What can beat a dancing horse?  TRY A BULL. No, the bull wasn’t prancing, but the bull came out and about 5 different torreadors teased him for awhile. They’d run out right in front of him, he’d charge, they’d sprint away and jump over the edge of the ring, the bull’d collide into the ring. These guys are ridiculous, and I totally get it the hype. It gives the audience a rush of adrenaline to watch the torreadors flirt with their lives.

fun fact: bullfighting is related to flamenco in Spain. First, both originated in Sevilla. But more interestingly, bullfighting is a reworked version of flamenco. In the bullfight, the torreador plays the “female,” while the bull is the “male.” In both (as in life, according to Sevillanos), the female flirts with, seduces, and evades the male, until she eventually kills him.

 Andalucía in a nutshell, ladies and gentlemen.

Is it too early to call my greatest night here?  Awesome--I look forward to more crazy, unexpected times. 

"...and then a pigeon landed on my head."

There are many perks to living in an apartment where your bedroom has a wall--literally, a whole wall--of windows that open up to the street. In a city like Seville, where the summers can apparently get pretty hot, I'm appreciating the beautiful breeze that flows into my room because my windows are wide open, the sun's streaming in when the curtains are drawn, and at night it seems like I'm sleeping outside without all the mess of, well, sleeping outside.

Until, that is, you wake up because a BIRD FLEW IN YOUR ROOM AND LANDED ON YOUR HEAD.

I think it was a pigeon. Honestly, I couldn't tell you much else except that it was gray, avian, and ON MY HEAD.

Nope, I'm not sleeping the rest of the night. I feel like this was the Sevillian version of a baptism or something. It should have been a tortilla española or something, but they don't fly. Pigeons do.

There was much screaming (or rather, just loud, unintelligible noises--it's 2 am here, after all), arm-flailing, and, thank goodness, flying out the window on the part of the bird. Because if there's one thing that this huge, gloriously open wall of windows is good for, it's making sure the bird it let in flies out. At least Alfred Hitchcock isn't directing my life, or this little incident could have had a much more disastrous ending.

As fair warning, I'm going to end all of my stories with "...and then a pigeon landed on my head" from now on. It's so much more interesting than "...and then I moved" and infinitely more personal than finding five dollars.

Good night, sleep tight--and don't let the pigeons attack you!

Day 1, Hour 34

In college, we had three qualifiers that, when accomplished, signified that a new day had begun, regardless of how many hours one had (or more practically had not) slept the night before. The acts were simple, practical, and overall good life choices:

1. Had you showered?

2. Had you changed your clothes?

3. Had you eaten breakfast?

If you could answer "yes" to two out of those three questions (really, we weren't asking a whole lot), than a new day had indeed started, and you should go grab some coffee and be bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, or at least at your class hoping information was absorbed through osmosis.

I ate breakfast.  That's the only one I can say actually happened "today," whatever that might be (thank you, Delta, for ensuring that I'm one-third legitimate!).  Now, it's pretty well-documented that I don't do schedules well. Or rather, I do spontaneity better. I also much rather arrive early than late. So when I say I got to Seville 4 hours earlier than I planned, that's just par for the course. Let me explain.

After a successful and timely flight to Madrid (minus the lovely kids who tag-teamed the crying game throughout the fight), I got to the train station at 8:30 a.m.--and discovered there was a 9:00 to Sevilla! Since I didn't feel like waiting around for hours, I went to the Information girl to ask if I may advance my ticket. She must have had a really good time last night, because she did not seem like she was having a good morning. Let's just say that, between my rusty Spanish and her hangover, it took some time to figure it all out. But by 11:30 this morning, I was in Sevilla! Travel improvisation for the win.

I get to Seville, stash my crazy-heavy suitcase in a locker at the train station, and set out exploring. Not an over-the-moon, shoot for the stars, World Series kind of excursion, but by no means a failure. I held up my tradition of getting ridiculously lost amid the web of Sevillian roads that makes Boston look good,  and made up for any excess sitting I might have done earlier that "day." If only I had thought to change before stashing my suitcase, I'd actually think this traveling pulled off without a hitch. It would have been a two-day affair, and I wouldn't think twice about it. Nothing quite beats my self-consciousness when I realized that I was meeting my classmates in the same dress I'd had on for over 30 hours, and that I hadn't brushed my teeth in that time, either, since I hadn't yet gone to sleep or woken up. Overshare?  Sorry.

Classes start tomorrow! I'm choosing to go to sleep early, wake up when I'm supposed to, and therefore disbelieve in that whole "jet-lag" thing. All without coffee. Ready, go.

Wait--WHAT?!?

February 20, 2010, 10:30 p.m.:

Hey Mom, it's Allie. So you know how I sometimes make huge and potentially life-altering decisions at the drop of a hat? Well, guess what.

If you are reading this, you know who I am and how spontaneous I can be. I've switched majors more times than one should proudly admit, started a bell choir with extraordinarily little ringing experience (sorry, Meyer, but it's true), and have decided to learn new languages and musical instruments simply because there was nothing good on TV. And as with most of my ridiculous decisions, my decision to go to Spain began with a late-night phone call to BHoff. But why, in the midst of my second semester of graduate school, did I decide to transport myself halfway around the world to become certified for a job that is not not my intended career?

Because I felt trapped. As ridiculous as it sounds, I'd been in Boston for 4 1/2 years, in school the entire time, and I felt as if life was just happening around me while I had been floating through it. This spring semester, however, the vehicle gods had apparently replaced my boring, yet floating, life-raft for a bumper car driven by an 8-year-old hellbent on hitting everything in sight. This past year was the hardest year of my life thus far; it repeatedly pushed me to my academic, professional, and emotional limits. I didn't know what, if anything, I could do about it.

By February, I was done. I contemplated applying to the Peace Corps and various other volunteer programs, but realized I didn't want to put my degree on hold--just take control of my life again for the summer. That night, I saw some photos of a friend from BC who was in a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) program in Florence, Italy, and I decided right away that this was exactly what I should be doing with my summer. Even better, there was a program in Seville (which happened to be the very first city I'd heard of in Spain, thanks to my 6th-grade Spanish teacher's obsession with ¡Sevilla!). Even my obsession with Latin America couldn't turn me away from this opportunity to live in Andalucía for a month--and so I signed up for the program, coughed up the deposit, and booked my flight that night.

Yes, Dad, it's ironic and slightly ridiculous that I'm traipsing halfway around the world to get a certificate in the same field that I originally went to BC to study for an actual degree. Things like this are why you love me. And don't worry, roommates, I already bought my return ticket; you know as well as I do that if I hadn't, there's too good a chance that I'd up and move and become española with the other cool kids. But for the next month, especially considering the state of transcontinental phone calls, the six-hour time difference, and my own flightiness, this is going to be my way of ensuring the people I love that I'm still alive. And haven't run off with a gitano or decided to become the Spanish Maria Von Trapp.

I jest. Kind of.