Once Upon an Arrival in Spain Last Week (Mine)

So there I was, in an airport in Madrid, SPAIN, having just gotten off an airplane filled with people that all spoke different languages. I was excited, but also intimidated. My initial plans to immediately dive into the Spanish language failed when the extremely friendly grandmotherly monolingual lady from Aragon who was going to sit next to me on the plane and teach me all about Spanish and the culture and later introduce me to her large family that lives across Spain failed to exist.

(I blame the amiable french couple for not giving up their seats to go meet their previously forsaken American grandchildren who they ignore because they're still angry at the children's parents for abandoning them to go America. Either they were too stubborn to admit they were wrong for letting an old childish grudge get in the way of supporting their grandchildren in their time of need or they just couldn't read the dramatic and plot twist-filled letter they received from their grandson Peter in a Texan prison. [If it goes that way then I can blame them for being too proud to ask for help.] Typical.)

 (Maybe I'm projecting a little bit. [Or mayhaps I'm reading too much into their beverage orders.] Nevertheless, there was definitely some wistful regret mixed with bitter resentment in the way the man requested apple juice after his wife *explicitly* ordered tea for the both of them.) But either way, my matronly Spanish fairy godmother never appeared because of French people.

It wouldn't have been that bad but my contingency plan fell through too. I was going to master Spanish in my 7 hours on the plane by watching a few dubbed movies  (Alvin and the Chipmunks or something with Gerard Butler would have done quite nicely) but then American Airlines had to go and remove all the television screens from the back of the seats!  I was frustrated. (Now that I think about, what does "dubbed" really mean? Why is it such a silly word? Where does it come from? Does it like its current definition, or is the unusual use exhausting?)

Deprived of my preliminary Spanish mastery, I walked timidly through the airport, seeking out targets with which to bravely conquer and thus prove/create my linguistic mastery. My first target was customs.  The line was relatively short because it was a Tuesday, but I still had time before I stepped up to draft a short speech about how long I was planning to stay in Spain and what my purposes for visiting were; I'd even written up in my head a few brief explanations for my planned visits to other European countries and some strongly worded assurances about my scheduled departure from Europe in two and a half months' time.

Again I was tragically stripped of an opportunity to prove myself; I marched forward and handed my passport to the customs agent, brimming with expectant energy and prepared to stutter, when the seemingly hungover and visibly impatient Spaniard simply stamped my passport and handed it back, without so much as a second look at me. (Sometimes I think I'd get more attention in the airport if I were still on the no-fly list.)

I was then briefly sidetracked by an American from the same flight who was nervous about his baggage, but my focus returned to Spanish as I spied a money-changing booth. I muttered something unintelligible to the American and then turned to the booth while digging in my wallet for my money.  Here I wouldn't have quite the same opportunity to be verbose and loquacious and tediously talkative and long-winded and vocabulirific and obnoxious, but it would have to do. I sidled semi-casually up to the window, prepared to explain the cash I was changing and why and from where and for how much. I didn't know how long this kind of thing took either, so I considered small talk options and settled on a few paragraphs of questions about the money changing business and certain exchange rates. (best to stay professional at first; I could always improvise from there)

Trembling, with cash in hand, I carefully said to the lady on the other side of the counter: "Yo tengo...ciento...y cuarenta do..dolares..ay! dólares." (I have...a hundred...and forty.. do...dollurs..erm ohuh..dollars.)

She smiled and spit out a quick string of nonsense. I stood quietly as she changed the money. Then she handed me my euros and said "have a nice day" in perfect English.



My confidence was definitely shaken, but it was only a minor setback, and I determinedly continued on my way, set on making the day a successful Spanish adventure filled with efficient travel and enlightening conversations with natives who only later realize that I'm not from around these parts.


After spending an hour on the wrong bus and inadvertently learning my way around the entire Madrid airport, I stumbled and tripped my way on to the correct bus headed for the train station, nearly killed myself as I nobly decided to lift my 50-pound suitcase onto the second row up of luggage racks instead of the starkly empty bottom row, and then sat for 20 minutes vainly trying to eavesdrop and comprehend the conversation between two natives a few meters ahead of me before I realized they weren't speaking Spanish and that I was in the handicapped section. Confidence lightly battered, I retreated to the back of the bus and surrendered, turning on my ipod and listening to American house music.

Only a few stops later, however, my confidence was boosted when a Dutch couple assumed I was Spanish and slowly asked me how to pronounce a few words on a sign before I let them know I was American, and thus could speak a language that they could understand fairly well. (Of course I still talked to them in half Spanish, partly because I needed the practice, and partly because I didn't want to abandon the idea that I was one of those American-Spanish multi-cultural hybrid citizens you hear so much about. [the illusion that was in my head of course])

Then I got to the train station, Atocha, (Which I'd been tragically mispronouncing until this point) and was again shamed into submission.  I wandered for half and hour around the train station looking for a ticket booth and awkwardly walking into the wrong lines for surprisingly unoccupied areas mumbling half-formed questions about the station layout until a security guard or station staff member would spit out some directions that I would slow down and decipher as I turned around and walked on.

Once I realized that I'd fundamentally misunderstood both the station layout and the organizational structure of the entire train system in Spain, I figured out what seemed most correct and then sat down to wait in line for an hour and a half in what appeared to be a Spanish DMV for buying train tickets, which is both a fascinating notion and a horrifying reality.

Despite the best bureaucratic efforts of the train station employees, however, I eventually got a ticket and boarded the last train that would still get me to Sevilla in time for my rendezvous with the other students. As soon as the train started moving I commandeered the bathroom so I could change and put in contacts and wash myself in the tiny sink with an unintuitive motion sensor. (I'd been operating as an unwashed, half-blind, coffee-stained mess until that point in the day; this probably should've been mentioned at an earlier point in the story.)



Once I arrived in Sevilla, I managed to successfully, albeit painfully, explain to a taxi driver where I needed to go and how much money I needed it to cost for me to still afford it.  I ended up a euro or two short, but the driver took pity on me (I think he could tell I'd had a rough day) and decided not to drop me off a mile before reaching my destination.

Pulling my huge suitcase, unwieldy backpack, and slightly fragile mandolin out of the taxi, I sluggishly dragged myself and my belongings into the hotel that I didn't have a room reserved in yet. It was three in the afternoon.

spainspainspainspainspainspainspain is where I be at.

I'm sleepy, but Spain is wonderful, thanks for asking. My body is currently stuck in some weird mental quasi-psychological backwards time warp, but not. Let me explain: it's currently midnight but my body thinks it's six but at the same time my body is exhausted and it doesn't know why and it gets angry and lashes out at loved ones (figurative loved ones) when it's hurt and confused so it's in this inevitably cantankerous downward spiral where it keeps getting pissed off at itself for how tired it is and refuses to listen to reason or read a clock. However, the rest of me is doing fairly well and has learned to ignore the body when it goes off one of its vaguely passive aggressive, semi-hallucinatory pathetic sleep rampages.

I'm in the wi-fi lounge (pronounced zona de wee-fee) of a hotel in Sevilla, and I should probably be sleeping, but that's a precondition for efficient and high-quality blogging, or so I have concluded from extensive laboratory test-blogging. (The entire last year and 9 months of blogging(or not-blogging, as the case may be) have been an experiment.[chew on that.] If that makes you feel emotionally manipulated or used or metaphorically filthy and in need of a shower, then just imagine how it makes *me* feel.{And then let me know because I don't quite know where I stand on the issue yet.}) (But don't even get me started on feeling in need of a shower; I have very strong convictions) (and odors)

The journey to get to this point (the wee-fee lounge), however, is more interesting and/or eventful. Any inherent connection between those two adjectives, however, is insubstantial. (I've done the tests; I've spent long hours blogging in the laboratory to create the evidence. [Take this however you want to. Think deeply about it, or don't.]) But this story *should* be at least one of those two disconnected things: interesting and eventful. (Keep in mind that we've already discussed how logically confusing and inadvertently instrumental but undemanding the *should* imperative can be.) (I don't know what I'm talking about.)

These last 48(?), 72(¿) hours?¿ have been quite ridiculous, marking this summer as a time for great adventure and new experience. s.

The new experiences and adventures haven't been confined to just Spain either; one of the first few began on my flight to New York. Seated beside my genially hasidic acquaintance (kind of like being acidic, but friendlier and more snappily dressed and generally not harmful in any way), I bit the bullet, said goodbye to my childhood, prepared to forge a new pathway of experience in my life, and requested tomato juice when the stewardess offered us beverages, eager to try something new.



*spit out bile and clear  out phlegm*



Despite this grievous misstep, I was able to recover and get back on the right path. (It took me years to remember how to spell flem, I mean phlgim, I mean snot. [I know years sounds like an exaggeration but I'm in a different time zone; so keep that in mind])


Then the rest of my travels went fairly well, at least until I arrived in Madrid after an overnight flight in which I sat next to an adorable old french couple who didn't know a single word of any language that I am familiar with. (except french; I was able to share a moment with them whenever they said fromage. Thanks to a childhood filled with Dexter's Laboratory, I managed to find a common ground in a shared experience with the phenomenon that is cheese. [also in laughing about airline food, which they ate zero of; they just picked up our packaged breakfast foods individually and then dropped them again, like they were gorillas slowly learning how to use sticks, or like aliens discovering plastic backscratchers: trying to decipher their intended function, and then laughing at what must appear to be a pitiful attempt at something greater, or a thoroughly valid, thoughtfully worked-out solution to an insignificant and impossibly inconsequential idle non-problem.

Now, because it is late and my body is beginning to furiously beg and plead with itself in hopes that it will cease the relentless and miserably pointless passive self-injury, I will go to sleep.  I will continue this blog later. I will post this portion now, so that I don't leave the beginning hopelessly anachronistic and temporally ambiguous. (Porque editing is a certain activity, up with which I shall not put.) (Also present tense is funner and I prefer not to choose between watering down my blogtastic drama or telling obvious (and therefore ineffective) untruths.) (funner is too a word.)

(Welcome back to my blog by the way. I'm in Spain at the moment but I left cookies.)

(What?)

(I pray to Jesus, Brahman, the Holy Spirit, Buddha(who is not a god), Shiva, KamaSutra, and the ever-loving L. Ron Hubbard that my room has been left unlocked.)