Mi Vida Española

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Madrid is an exhausting and fabulous city. There is a distinctive energy and flavor on every street and it’s so easy to jump right into the life of this place.

I have been struggling to find the time to sit down, to take a breath and to write since I arrived in Madrid.

So, in my apartment on Calle de Toledo, with a glass (well, a coffee mug) of red wine, I have made the time to marvel at all the details that have swept me away in the last three weeks.

Madrid is a beautiful city, both old and new, with cobblestone streets and ritzy stores, glam discotecas and easygoing tapas bars. The streets are lined with flowing curtains, small balconies full of plants and flowers, and a bright mixture of colors that come from laundry hung on the line to dry.

Walking blocks and blocks through the city every day, I’ve come to associate the smell of Madrid as a somewhat perfect mixture of sweet cologne and cigarette smoke.

I love the Spanish city lifestyle already and I wouldn’t mind spending every day soaking up the culture on a terrazzo in the sun.

I’ve noticed that no matter what age, people make it a point to get out of their houses and enjoy the city. I see elderly people walking their dogs, having a caña (beer from the tap) or walking to and from the grocery store every time I leave my house. It’s refreshing. The phrase “five o’clock somewhere” does not apply to Spaniards 😊 You can find people enjoying cañas a 10 am.

My friend Arantxa, who is from Bilbao, Spain and was my Spanish teacher in college, is the only reason I survived my first few weeks in Spain. In between helping me search for rooms in the city, she introduced me to everyone she could think of, forced me to speak Spanish as often as she could, and showed me how to take advantage of the amazing hole-in-the-wall bars and restaurants scattered around Madrid city center.

On a couple of occasions, we went to read or have coffee in Parque de Retiro, which is a giant park located quite close to the Museo del Prado. The Retiro reminds me of Spain’s version of Central Park.

Up until I found an apartment, I stayed in Arantxa’s friend’s studio apartment in a barrio called Lavapies. It’s a diverse immigrant neighborhood and despite the shenanigans going on in the plaza outside of Conchi’s balcony until all hours of the morning, I loved staying there. One Sunday, before we ate delicious homemade Mexican food, I was pleasantly surprised to go out on the balcony and see a group of African men dancing and drumming down the street on their way to church 😊

I have decided that tapas, which are some kind of small snack given to you whenever you order soda, beer, wine, etc. at a bar, restaurant or terrazzo, are by far the best “invention” I’ve ever come across. Sometimes it’s a plate of green olives, potato chips, bread with chorizo, sardines, or Spanish tortilla. Whatever it happens to be, I love it and I wish people everywhere in the world would catch on.

I love Spanish jamón, green olives, and salad with olive oil and vinegar, which is good, because it can be found anywhere.

Spaniards greet each other with a kiss to each cheek, and in order to get a plastic bag for your items at the grocery store, you must pay extra for the bag. Both of these details I love.

Sunday is the day to go out and about in the central area of Madrid and El Rastro on Sunday mornings in La Latina barrio is the largest flea market in Europe, and I absolutely adore it. Anything you can dream up, you can find in that market. It reminds me of some of the markets in Ghana, and it’s fantastic.

Very rarely since I arrived have I been asked if I was American. Most of the time, to strangers, I look to be French, German or Russian. On more than a few occasions, I have heard “Russa!” yelled or whispered in my direction as I walk down the street. It’s kind of baffling, but I guess I don’t really mind 😊

My name is also a source of amazement to a lot of people and not everyone believes me when I tell them my name is Cari. Cari, spelled the way it is, is short for cariño in Spanish, which is a term of endearment. So, as it stands, I have to introduce myself as honey, or darling when I meet someone new. Isn’t that cute.

In Madrid, searching for an apartment is like having 5 job interviews every day until you find a room that you like, and where the people who live there like you in return. You rent a room in a flat that already has people living in it, and if you like it, you have to pounce on it. Every room gets shown to loads of people and there were a couple occasions in which I liked a room, called an hour or two later, and it was already gone. Viewing apartments requires you to march to all corners of the city and the only way to describe it is purely exhausting. Kamikaze apartment hunting. It’s rough, I’m telling you.

But, finally, I found a room in a flat with a 25-year-old Spanish guy who grew up in Madrid and a 21-year-old Spanish girl from the island on Mallorca. They are both really nice and living with them is already starting to improve my Spanish. They both work and study, and Javi’s father is the owner of the flat. The day I signed the papers and gave him my deposit, he took me out for dinner and some cañas. I think that’s a good sign.

The flat is furnished and we have a fantastic kitchen and balcony, and like every other apartment in Madrid, the washing machine resides in the kitchen. Dryers are a rarity in the city and it’s a lot more work than you might think to hang every piece of clothing on a line strung out the kitchen window.

I got two really pretty plants for my room and it’s really starting to feel like home 😊

On my second weekend in Spain, I took a trip to Arantxa’s hometown in the Basque country of Spain. It’s a beautiful, lush area and it’s by the ocean, which made me fall in love easily. We stayed in Bilbao with Arantxa’s fabulous grandma Pilar, and her loco little dog, Lagun. One day, we went and had lunch in a little outdoor restaurant in Sopelana, which is the suburb of Bilbao where Aran grew up. Her family, and the food, was amazing. I even tried morcilla, which translated, is blood sausage. Hmmm.

That evening, after walking along the beach, we headed to a beachside bar to watch the Atletico de Bilbao soccer team play a team from the south of Spain. After the game, which was a draw, we migrated to the outside section of the bar. Somehow, we ended up impromptu playing music with a group of Spaniards and an American-born Cuban, with a guitar, a ukulele, a flamenco cajon and un huevo (which is a maraca, shaped like an egg). We played a pretty good rendition of Bob Marley’s Redemption Song, if I do say so myself. 😊

I also visited the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and on the last day before I caught the 5-hour bus back to Madrid, Arantxa and I ate homemade cod and baby squid cooked in their own ink for lunch with her grandma. I absolutely loved the cod, and I’ll just leave it at that.

I am going to be working as a language assistant for the Spanish Ministry of Education’s bilingual program in a primary school called Colegio Santo Domingo in Vallecas, which is a south-central barrio of Madrid. I had a meeting with my school on Friday and I met with the two other “auxiliares de conversacion” working there as well. I am going to be teaching English to 1st and 2nd graders, and helping them prepare for their Trinity English exams. I have Fridays off every week, and I’ll have an hour per week to hold a conversation table with some of the teachers in my school who want to learn or practice their English as well. I’ll be working 16 hours per week, from 9 to 4:00 on Mondays and Wednesdays and from 9 to 12:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with lunch breaks every day. Vallecas is one of the rougher areas of town, and I have a feeling I am going to love this job. There are about 400 students in my school ranging from Infatil, which is the equivalent to our preschool, up to 6th grade, and the English language coordinator at my school told me that there are students of all ethnicities in Santo Domingo, ranging from Indian to North African to Gypsy. The staff seems really nice and I already have my own set of keys to the school! 😊

I guess never realized how different living is when I don’t quite know what’s going on around me about 75 percent of the time. My Spanish speaking skills have improved immensely since I arrived, but my first week in Madrid was a bit rough. Seeing and experiencing life through a different language changes everything, and I can tell you, I wasn’t used to feeling like a little kid who couldn’t talk to anyone properly. It’s humbling, and everyday I have to make a fool out of myself in some way or another, but small victories make everything worth it. Everything is trial and error for me here and sometimes putting your embarrassment on the back burner isn’t as easy as you’d think. But, the headache I have at the end of a particularly long day tells me that trying so hard to understand what’s being said around me is slowly but surely, working.

Tomorrow, I start work at 9 am. Wish me luck!

Meanwhile, I’m missing you all.

Much love,

Cari

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Photos

Apartment Complex
View from my balcony

Bed
Mi cama pequena

Conchi
In Lavapies

El Rastro
El Rastro in La Latina

Inner Courtyard
In my building, where I hang my laundry to dry

Kitchen 2
With the washing machine

Puerta del Sol
A protest march in Puerta del Sol, Madrid

Puerta del Toledo
Puerta del Toledo, right outside my front door

Comments

[Pilar Alguacil]

Soy la madre de Javi, hemos encontrado por casualidad tus sensaciones en España y parece que lo estás pasando bien. Me alegro mucho. Para lo que quieras ya sabes donde estamos. Un beso.