Unexpected Morocco

Unexpected. That’s the word that keeps coming to mind when I try to describe Morocco. Other words are friendly, dangerous, dirty, achingly beautiful, mysterious, joyous and sad. It’s full of contradictions, and it will take time for me to sort out exactly how I feel about it.

You definitely can’t put it into a box. It’s a predominately Muslim country that speaks French; a place where young guys in bright Adidas track suits haggle with bearded men wearing robes and slippers; where the music in one taxi can be Bob Marley and another a morning prayer. It defies expectation and definition. It makes no apologies for what it is.

On Skype talking to my Dad I had a hard time answering questions about what I thought of it. What did I think of the people, the food, the music and architecture? The fact is, I have no idea. I liked parts and found it hard to like others.

My first impression of Tangier on the northern coast of Africa was the view through a dirty taxi window, whipping through streets and roundabouts. We passed through markets and the neon glow of clubs, I saw half-constructed buildings and men on cell phones herding sheep through dusty fields between cement towers.

We rented a house through Airbnb, a site which I highly recommend. It lets you rent apartments, rooms, and houses directly from owners. If you look through you can usually find places way cheaper than hostels. Our place was located inside the Kasbah in the middle of the city. To reach the neighborhood you had to pass through an ancient walled gateway. The taxi dropped us and our bags off and we gave the driver our 150 dirham (about 15 euros) and waited for Anne, the owner of the house.

Anne and her sister turned out to be the two older ladies waiting underneath a tree, hair wrapped in scarves and wearing long robes. They led us through the dim, stone streets; at times the walls were so close you could touch either side with your hands. I got glimpses down alleys of men talking, snatches of singing coming from an open window, strange writing on walls.

The house we rented was five narrow stories and overlooked the entire Kasbah and bay. There were six of us and we each had our own room and the guys and girls had their own bathroom. The whole place was decked out in modern furniture and stocked with tea and coffee.

We dropped our stuff off and immediately set off into the city. It was about 10 and we didn’t want to get caught out in the city too late so we went straight to a place we had heard about through a friend who had lived in Morocco.

Saveur de Poisson was the best meal I’ve had in my life. Hands down. No question about it; from the service to the vibe to my new nickname given to me by our server (Gran Maestro). We walked down this wide, steep stairway and the restaurant was literally a hole in the wall to the right. A cook was up front, chopping piles of vegetables on a low wooden table, watching us with an amused grin as we navigated the slick stairs.

The restaurant itself was two rooms, the first separated by a small partition and set aside for the stoves and cooks, the second was the dining room. There were about 7 small tables and at that time there was only one other couple looking at us from the corner. On the walls were paintings and old cooking implements, pots, pans, woven baskets, and near the kitchen a porcelain sink with a nail holding grey napkins that could be ripped off to dry your hands.

Our server was a bald smiling Moroccan wearing a crisp white shirt. He spoke a muddled mix of Spanish, French, and Arabic and quickly made us feel at home, maneuvering tables around to fit us all and ripping pieces of paper off for us as placemats.

You don’t order here. The place has no menus but the food is brought out to you as soon as you sit down. Here’s a list of the courses and food:

1^st Course: Loaves of round brown bread piled high in a basket with chili paste and fresh olives.

2^nd Course: A steaming shallow pan of shark, calamari, white fish, spinach, garlic and other spices you scoop up with wooden forks.

3^rd Course: Grilled Flounder served whole with skewered shark meat and lemon.

4^Th Course: Fresh cut strawberries with pine nuts and honey, and an almond/nut mixture in a thick honey paste.

All of this we washed down with the house ‘sangria’ a chilled fruit juice made from figs, oranges, raisins, raspberries, and strawberries.

After living off frozen pizzas and cheap wine for six months my body almost shut down with such amazing food. We had to crawl back to the Kasbah that night, dodging merchants still trying to trap us in their shops and walking past homeless men wrapped in carpets passed out on the sidewalk.

The next day we started with a Moroccan breakfast, six loaves of bread and a wheel of goat cheese wrapped in a palm frond. We chugged some coffee and piled six people into a taxi to make the hour drive to Asilah, a white Mediterranean city on the coast.

 

Asilah was beautiful and the day was perfect, not a cloud in the sky. We wandered through little alleys and streets. The stalls on the side were packed with merchandise: cheap key chains, bracelets, teapots, hats, shirts, robes, belts, carpets, tapestries, spices, carved wooden boxes, paints, dyes, and leather bags. The walls gleamed white and blue and in the distance you could hear waves crashing against the stone walls.

 

Side note to people travelling to Morocco. People know you’re travelling, they know you have money, and they will do whatever they can to take it from you. That being said, all it takes is ignoring someone when they try to get you to come into their shop or a firm ‘No’, but all the same. Don’t follow anyone to a second location and don’t let someone tag along with you and your group who says they ‘just want to help and show you around’. I speak from experience and it took us nearly an hour and a half to shake this guy. Many of the people I met were friendly and it’s not everyone but all the same, be careful.

Cody getting cornered

We ended the day in Asilah with a few beers and lunch outside the medina, then caught a taxi back to Tangier where we munched on some loaves of bread and hit the markets.

It’s hard to describe the markets in Tangier. One reason is that there doesn’t seem to be any real starting or ending point to them. The fruit vendors and cigarette stalls spill over into the more residential areas of the Kasbah and even before you reach them you can hear the honking of horns and growl of motorbikes as they whip through the streets. There are women and children begging for change and old men sizing you up from the doorways of their shops, arms crossed over their chests. Young men call out the different types of spices and teas and medicines they have and all the while people are walking, shoving, pushing and you’re caught in this torrent of sights and smells. There are big shops full of swords and ornamental tea sets, little shops with a couple Playstation boxes on display, clothing stores full of red, blue, brown, robes, swinging in the doorways as people pass by. Little kids with their hands on the bars of balconies call out greetings in Arabic and French. One little boy was on the third story of an apartment building with his head pressed against the bars of a window practicing his numbers in Spanish.

-Uno. I heard from above.

I looked up and caught his eye.

-Dos! I shouted back.

-Tres! He returned.

-Cuatro!

-Cinco! Seis! Siete!

His brothers and sisters ran to the window then laughing grabbed him and dove back into the house.

After the sun went down we headed into the new part of town where the nicer hotels and bars are and where alcohol is available.

It took us approximately an hour and a half to find a shop that sold any.

We went bouncing back and forth from different bars and shops and either people honestly didn’t know where we could buy some beer or didn’t want to say. A younger guy in a grocery store heard us asking for alcohol and came over.

-It’s difficult to find alcohol but if you keep looking you’ll find a place that sells it.

I thought that these might be the vaguest directions to a liquor store I’d ever heard.

-Like in a basement somewhere or in a shop?

-No, they’ll have it out on display.

-Okay, so like a place close by here?

He shrugged.

-I don’t know. Maybe down that way.



Behind the counter the shopkeeper was eyeing us. We walked outside. Almost immediately after, our friend from the store popped his head around the corner and whispered quickly:

-Go down that way and look for Casa de Pepe.

Then he was gone.

Casa de Pepe turned out to be a little grocery store and they did sell alcohol, which we bought and consumed a lot of when we got back to the house.

The blue walls of Chaoen

The next day we took a van to Chefchaoen, a town that not one of us could pronounce correctly and what I thought was pronounced Chef Chow Mein for the first half of the day. Chaoen, for short, is a town perched high in the mountains two hours south on winding roads from Tangier. We had rented the van through one of the hotels in town and it only cost about 250 dirham (25 euros) apiece to get us there and back.

The old medina in Chaoen is a sprawl of narrow streets connected by stairways, cobble stones and little shops and restaurants. Many of the streets lead down to the central square where the Kasbah is and where you can get mint tea and check out awesome views of the mountains.

 



She wasn't impressed by the entrance to the market



View of the mountains outside the Kasbah

We sat and had tea and watched little kids trying to sell souvenirs to tourists while being kicked and shoved away from restaurants by the waiters, only to come scuffling cautiously back as soon as their backs were turned. I watched one little kid with a messy mop of brown hair, stick arms hanging out of a dirty sweater. The kid eyed us hopefully with his arm outstretched full of rings while our server (out of sight from us) cupped his hand and collected the cold water dripping from the canvas roof, smiling to himself and tapping his sheaf of plastic menus against his leg happily. When keychain kid got close enough he flung a handful of water into his eyes and the boy screeched and ran into the square, where he stood sobbing and rubbing his face. The server looked back calmly and continued smiling, tapping the menus slowly against his leg.

We finished the day with a long drive back to Tangier, a nap and a return to Saveur where we relived our infamous dinner from two nights before. This time our waiter invited us into the back where he showed us where they stew the fruits for the sangria and store the vegetables. We headed back to the apartment, exhausted and satisfied that whatever we all of thought of the things we had seen, Morocco wasn’t going to be a place we would forget, and that because we all went together the six of us could never forgotten.

Shout out to Sharon, Erica, Rachel, Cody, and Jake for making this such an amazing trip. You guys are family, thanks for reminding me that the company you keep when you travel is as important as the journey.

 

 



Abroad so far...

Five months in. My time in Spain is almost halfway over, which is crazy because it seems like I still have so much left to do and see while I'm here. I have changed though. Not that I can see it in myself but I can see it in my friends and professors, whose time here is a reflection of my own.  I can speak somewhat broken Spanish, enough to get the message across at least. I know what 4 degrees Celsius feels like and roughly how tall six meters is. I can order a beer, tapa, and ask for the check at a restaurant without stuttering and I can find the quickest way home on the metro anywhere in the city.
Spain has left it's mark for sure.
I don't freak out anymore when I can't talk to someone from back home for a couple of days, I've realized that as much as we try to hold onto things,  people grow up and apart and the relationships we had when we left won't be the same we come back to. And those that remain will be stronger for having lasted.
I know how to tell my preschool class to sit down, be quiet, and listen.
They ignore me.  But still I know how to say it.
I've met some incredible people. Some of the best-friends I've ever had and been lucky enough to land in a school that feels more like a giant family than work.
My backpack is tattered and coming apart from lugging my computer around to private classes and being shoved and squished into overhead compartments.
I've been in a snowball fight in Segovia, seen Flamenco in Cordoba, and drank scotch while watching the sun set in Sevilla.
I've used flamboyant hand gestures to ask for cough drops in a pharmacy when I've been sick and slept on the metro more times than I can count. I've been frustrated, angry, and lonely at times but getting through those days make the times when I'm taking a nap in Retiro on a Sunday afternoon all the better.

Living abroad so far has been challenging, difficult, and crazy at times, but I wouldn't trade any of my experiences so far for anything in the world.



Sevilla

     You could smell incense in the air. Two cops stood side by side blocking the thin street from cars. People were walking, trancelike, to a giant gilded statue of the Virgin Mary, perched on invisible shoulders hidden beneath a velvet curtain. There were black suited musicians, most of them young, with gleaming brass instruments and drums, silently waiting behind. I took my place among the other onlookers. The air was starting to get cold but the heat from a dozen candles warmed the tiny street and sent shadows dancing up the cobblestones. Suddenly, and with a volume that made me jump, the drums started. BOOM! Silence except for the echo rolling out like a carpet along the street. Then the brass started. One by one, the musicians started to sway.

     We went down to Sevilla without a plan, without a place to stay, and without knowing much about the city beforehand. We knew we had a long weekend to take advantage of and my good friend from school offered us a cheap way to ride down. On the way we stopped off in Trujillo, a small pueblo an hour south of Madrid famous for being the birthplace of the conquistador Pizarro. It was the first truly cold day we had and people were wrapped up in big coats, walking across the town square where a statue of Pizarro stood beneath the shelter of a medieval church. We had café and tapas under an awning. Stalls on the outskirts of the plaza sold roasted almonds, walnuts, and sweet pecans. I bought a big bag before we headed back to the car.

    

Trujillo

          When we got to Sevilla, Cody, Jake, and I thought it best to go ahead and figure out a place to stay. It was the day after Halloween and we didn't realize that the hostels would be all booked up. We followed our phones around winding streets, looking for the blue and star sign of a hostel. Finally, after four rejections, the owner of one offered to rent us his private apartment. Altogether it was only 10 euros more a night than a regular hostel room and this way we wouldn't have to share a bathroom or kitchen.

          Not planning turned out in our favor. The view of the city was incredible. We spent the next two days travelling with a friend of mine who showed us all of the best places to walk, eat, and drink in the city. Here are a couple of my favorites:

1. Serranitos in El Patio: Serranitos are a specialty in Seville, especially if you find yourself in El Patio. The bar was packed with people and we had to scream to get our orders heard but the atmosphere was amazing. When you get your bocadillo you sit on raised steps in the back of the bar and eat, throwing your napkins and toothpicks on the ground in true Spanish style. A serranito is a ham, green pepper and mustard sandwich served hot. Wash it down with a glass of beer and you're ready for a couple more hours of sightseeing.

 

 

2. Las Setas : Literally The Mushrooms, Las Setas is the largest wooden structure in the world and dominates the middle of downtown Seville.  For around 3 euros you can go take an elevator to the top and walk around the curving stairs that follow the contours of the sculpture, getting amazing views of cathedrals and white washed buildings. At the end you trade your ticket in for a beer or glass of sangria. This is a great starting part if you're touring the city for the day because it allows you to orient yourself to where the major sites are.

 



 



3. The Cathedral and main square: Nearly every town in Spain has a major square around which are the major sites but Seville's was by far the most picaresque for me. Whitewashed walls, orange trees, clean streets, flamenco dancers, gypsies that try to steal from you while handing you a sprig of rosemary. It's the picture of Spain you always had in your head. Add to that amazing weather, horse drawn carriages and street music and you have an unforgettable experience.

4. Plaza de Espana : At dusk we headed to Plaza de Espana. Originally built for Spain's world fair, the massive complex is now one the greatest tourist attractions in Seville. We walked through giant pillars just as the sun was setting. I've never seen anything like it. The Plaza is shaped like a horseshoe with a circular moat on the inside. The size alone knocks the wind out of you and we all split up to explore it on our own before we were capable of speaking again. Around the outer walls are murals depicting the different regions of Spain. Bridges span the moat and connect to a giant tiled circle where carriages and street vendors sell roasted chestnuts and drinks.

 

 

Like the procession we wandered into that night, Seville was strange, beautiful, and totally unexpected. It goes to show you that sometimes the best adventures are those unplanned. 

Travelling Alone

"You know what no one ever talks about?"

A friend asked me.

"What's that?"

"The lonely times. The gaps when nothing's going on and you want to be home."

I've been thinking about that a lot lately and she was right. It's a dirty secret that we don't bring up, that travelling alone and living abroad isn't always what our posted pictures seem to be. The holidays can be especially tough when you're living four thousand miles away. Bus rides through the countryside can be bleak when it's dark and raining and you're tired and every mile is taking you further away from your friends. That's where I found myself a couple days after Christmas. Taking a night bus from Dublin to Kilkenny to see some more of Ireland before I flew back to Madrid.

For some reason the aloneness of where I was hit me. Any immunity I had to loneliness had been wiped out by the closeness of family and late night talks with my uncle and playing with my little cousins over the past week. Now here I was again, about to stay the night in a hostel in a town I didn't know, way out in the rainy Irish countryside.

After I dropped my stuff off at my hostel I walked into town to grab dinner. Eating alone that night I realized something about travelling alone. It forces you to think about the people you want to be with. Whoever you're having that imaginary conversation with, whoever you want to be using your shoulder as a pillow on a long journey through the country. It makes you really think about who you want to spend your time with.

Now that I've been alone for close to four months I've had long talks by myself with ghosts of people back home. I've laughed thinking of what I was going to tell my brothers and sister about my most recent trip. I've had my shoulder ache in a bar, wanting to put it around the person I love. You see so many amazing things abroad, you meet so many interesting people that sometimes you have to stop yourself from turning around and telling something to the person that isn't there. The one you can't see for six more months that's back home.

I haven't found a vaccine for this ache yet. All I can do is try and keep myself moving forward. Get myself out of bed, see new things, keep pushing myself to learn and explore despite it. When you get home and you're back in that comfortable warmth where you belong, you'll have plenty of stories to tell and adventures to share, and you'll be more appreciative of the people you left behind when travelling alone.

5 Things I'll miss about Christmas back home

Christmas time in Madrid

     The year is winding down. The other professors and I are finishing up our classes and planning trips back home or elsewhere in Europe for the holidays. Ticket's back are ridiculously expensive this time of year so heading back to Florida for a week isn't an option. Instead I'm flying to Ireland to spend it with family there. Although I'm so excited to be back in Belfast drinking Guinness with my cousins and speaking English for a whole week, there are somethings I'm going to miss about being home for Christmas.

     1. Christmas Eve at Dads. Drinking too much wine, opening presents while Andrew and Dad play guitar together (Paul and I making fun of them the whole time), eating dinner and telling the same stories we told last year, and the year before, but laughing just as hard. Hayley and I talking about books or travelling and trying to have a real conversation before Andrew strikes a goofy pose from across the room and I spit up my drink.

     2. Midnight Irish coffee with Mom. Taking a shot of Jameson and Baileys with my Mom at midnight in our coffee while everyone tries to figure you sleeping arrangements. In 25 years this is the first time I won't be sleeping on someone's apartment floor or squeezed onto a couch with my brothers and sister snoring next to me. My Mom always made sure we were together.

     3. Christmas Morning. Seeing my Grandmother, a little smaller than last year but funnier than ever. The most upbeat, happy, amazing, intelligent woman I've ever met. She beat cancer last year and every Christmas I get to spend with her from now on won't be taken for granted.

     4. My Dad. Just my Dad. Walking around in his boxers in a Hawaiian shirt playing Christmas carols on his mandolin with glasses hanging from his collar and his hair in a cowlick in the back.

     5. The best dinner of the year. Hands down my favorite meal of the year. A couple of years ago Hayley, Paul, Andrew and I started going to a restaurant for Christmas dinner. We buy a couple bottles of wine and talk for hours. I never laugh that hard with anyone. It's the kind of laughing where you can't breathe and your sides hurt and you have tears running down your face. When I leave and walk out into the cold I feel flushed and exhausted and happy. All it takes is that one dinner to make everything okay. I'm 5 again and I'm with people that love me unconditionally and everything is a big ball of significance and meaning. For those couple hours we beat back the world and nothing can touch us.



     I miss my friends and family but I'm excited for what Christmas and the new year will bring. Merry Christmas to my new family in Spain, my family in Chicago, Northern Ireland, and Florida, have a great one guys.

Teaching

 

      Sometime around noon today I looked down to find myself in an apron with a giant tortoise printed on the front in bright pastel colors. His name is Tex. Because I'm wearing the apron, I am now Tex. I want to tell the three year-old student sucking back snot who is holding on to my leg that although my appearance has been cunningly disguised as an amphibian I am still his teacher before bubbles of mucus soak into my pant-leg. While trying to disengage him however, I am still trying to get three students to understand what I mean when I say 'please get that out of your mouth, it's not safe and you'll be electrocuted' and calm down a hysterical young Chinese girl. I look up at the teacher I'm supposed to be assisting and her head is in her hands.

     

Luz Casanova-The front of my school in Carabanchel

 

 My teaching day usually starts off so full of promise. I wake up and take a quick shower, throw on some clothes and pop my I-pod on and run out the door. I grab a coffee at the metro stop closest to my school. The air is cool, I have a hot drink in my hand and I'm awake and ready for the day.

      My first few classes are primeria or elementary school aged kids. These are my best behaved students of the day. They can be bribed with anything. Telling them I'll draw an American flag on their work if they finish is enough to get them in a frenzy. They ask questions, they are quiet when I ask them to be, and they are generally respectful and nice to be around. About 10 I get one of the older students to grab me another coffee and I chug this while writing in the staff room.

      My next group is harder. The seconderia students are not interested in where I'm from or how I can help them. I'm just the guy standing in the way of the chalk board speaking too fast in a foreign language. I try to get through the next hour without causing anyone bodily harm.

      By noon I'm out of steam and it's time for the big leagues.The infantil or preschool group is like if you took a group of the criminally insane, made them bite-size, then got them drunk. As I walk into the classroom I'm confronted by a litany of offensive sights and sounds. I rank them in my head to organize which to deal with first:

 

 

-There are two boys holding another, extorting payments in the form of jigsaw-puzzle pieces.

 

-A thin girl has her hand shoved up her nose to the wrist, searching for something that is probably better off lost.

 

-The boy in the corner being quiet and pensive as he stares at the wall just shat his pants.

 

-A crazed three year old has just taken ahold of a plastic cup and is wielding it as a weapon against four cautious students who are looking for their opening in what appears to be the toddler version of a classic bar brawl.

 

       I quickly disarm the cup kid, send the two mafiosos back to their seats, and (with paper towels encasing my hands) remove the girls forearm from her nose. I avert my eyes from the boy in the corner and wait for the real teacher to arrive to deal with the rest.

 

       When I get home I'm exhausted, my clothes need to be fumigated and I feel frustrated. Not because I feel overworked or mad, but because I didn't expect to care this much about teaching. I catch myself getting really excited when that light clicks and a student understands a tense or can answer me in broken English. When I flop down on the couch at night and grab a beer I thank God for the thousandth time that I had teachers in my life that stuck it out and put up with my snot, disrespect and insanity so that I could be here now.

     

 

 

 

 

 

A typical day in Madrid

One of the reasons I wanted to move abroad was to live somewhere long enough for the place to sink in. I wanted to be changed. I wanted to adapt to the things around me. Vacations aren't really enough time to get the full effect of a place. I wanted to really live somewhere. I wanted to buy groceries and ride the metro, be annoyed and frustrated at times and become a local. I'm only a month in so I can't really say whether or not living here has made a permanent impact on me yet but I do know that I love it here.
The people have a lust for life you can taste. The culture is centered around living, not working. And although their economy is one of the worst in Europe at the moment, you could never tell by looking at them. My walk to the metro every morning takes me down a two-lane road separated by a wooded boulevard. I wake up early when the steam is still rising from the sidewalks as fruit and vegetable vendors hose off the walks in front of their shops. Open cafes line the street and offer café con leche, churros, zumo de naranja, and pan for breakfast. Students run to catch buses, parents lead their kids by the hand to their schools and the air is thick and fragrant like a birthday candle has just been blown out.
The metro is fast and efficient. It's clean and has color coded lines that make it easy to identify and remember. I usually only wait about five minutes for one to come rushing into the station.
My school is located in Carabanchel in the southern district of Madrid across the river. The neighborhood is working class but lively. I found a kebab place across from my school that sells thick lamb sandwiches in a white and brown sauce packed with lettuce. They bring it out to you steaming, cupped in a square of parchment paper. During lunch I usually grab a cana to go with it, a cheap half-pint sized cerveza. After my regular classes I head to some private ones located in different areas around Madrid. My last class is located twenty minutes form my apartment so I cut through Retiro park to get there.
Retiro park is a massive expanse of fountains, garden, glades, ponds, atriums, and cafes right down the street from me. I take any opportunity to pack a backpack with my laptop, some food, and a book and head there for a few hours.
After I cut through Retiro to my neighborhood I stop off at the mercado to grab dinner. A loaf of bread still warm from the oven, sliced jamon, olive oil, and a bottle of wine costs me three euros.
I go to sleep full, content, and tired.
You would think a month would be long enough for the honeymoon phase of living here to wear off but I still find more things I love about living here everyday.

Running with the bulls in Moralzarzal

The main street of Moral, you can see Cody, Jake, and I looking nervous there in the middle

I rubbed my hands together for warmth in the thin drizzle of rain and regretted not bringing a jacket. Multi-colored streamers flapped over the narrow street as young men smoked cigarettes nervously and laced up their shoes. The air smelled like coffee and beer from the cafes that were packed along the streets, their entrances now boarded up with thick wooden beams that stretched between iron fence posts. The posts are designed specifically for these fiestas and are there to keep shops, bars, and onlookers safe. People snapped photos and hunkered close together on top of the fences. Through the thickening rain I could see a white gate at the far end of the street. In the center was painted the rough outline of a bull. Suddenly, I heard a crash. The gate trembled for a second then settled. The bull run was about to begin.
Jake and Cody, my buddies from the BEDA program, and I had been invited to the pueblo of Moralzarzal by Greg, another professor who lived there and wanted to check out the town's week long fiesta and encierros, or bull runs. Sipping coffee on the forty-minute bus ride from Madrid, talking about running with the bulls seemed fun in an abstract, bucket-list kind of way. Cody and I joked about how close we would get to it and who would chicken out first. We had both grown up watching Real TV footage of the carnage at Pamplona every year when thousands of people descend on the city to drink and tempt fate with the torros. Shortly before leaving for Spain my Dad had sent me a youtube video compilation of the worst mano-y-torro clips to deliberately dissuade me from ever partaking.

Lacing up for the run

The good, or bad, part about this experience was that it was 9 o'clock in the morning when we arrived. The encierros were scheduled to begin in 30 minutes and Cody and I were stone cold sober. No liquid courage no warm us as we walked along the street and noticed dozens of police officers and paramedics in reflective yellow, standing behind the fences. We began talking strategy. What ifs. Maybe we should sit the first one out, you know, just see how it all goes down.
So we stood in the pouring rain. Trying not to shake from the rain and the low, ferocious bellowing emanating from beyond the white gate.
The way it works, two castrated bulls are herded through the streets from the bullring (plaza de torros) to the corral where the bulls are kept. Then the bull comes out of the gate and, ideally, follows the other bulls down the street and into the ring. The sound I heard next caused a ripple of excitement along the crowded street.
Bang!
The shot rang out and in the split second or so I had before I started running I realized with startling clarity that bulls are big.
Bulls are VERY big.
This one was pissed and running straight at me. In that moment I could see everything. The cords of muscle straining underneath it's slick hide. Its horns a foot and a half long and sharp. Rain slid off of them and onto the cobblestones as it shook its head, registering the street, the people, the confusing cacophony of sounds and sensations. Its eyes turned to slits, its haunches lifted and it pounced, hooves clacked loudly on the street, connected, then shot forward all in one motion like an arrow shot from a bow.
I was on that fence and scrambling to the top, pushing old folk and children out of the way, faster than you could say man-card revoked.
After the bull went past and I was able to pry my fingers off the wooden beams of my seat and avoid the looks of the elderly and children I had shamelessly manhandled moments before,  I determined to make the next one count. I was going to do this.
The next bull was even bigger than the first. And faster. It was a black blur as it flashed out of the gate and once more I found myself scampering up the sides of the fence and folding myself praying-mantis like inward to avoid getting snagged by a horn. I was lucky, but the guy standing five feet in front of me wasn't. When he tried at the last second to leap out of the way his feet went one way and his body another. His head ricocheted off the street and was immediately awash in bright red blood from a gash above his eye. The bull's left horn pierced his thigh to the bone then ripped it open in all in one motion before it was past us, down the street, then out of sight.
As the paramedics and police ran over and determined whether or not the man's femoral artery had been severed and the crowds continued to order beer and wait for the next bull, I thought to myself what a strange country I was living in.
The third bull was about to leave the gate. I tied my shoes tighter and got whatever a sensible distance is from an animal that has every reason to want to kill you.
When the shot rang out this time, I was ready. I took off. Bounding around tracksuits and Real Madrid jerseys, cutting close to walls and trying very hard not to look behind me. As the street grew narrower near to the plaza de torros the crowded fences began to point and raise there voices quickly to the action behind me. Somewhere behind me there was a mini-van with spikes hurtling towards me, gaining on me every second. I didn't look but pressed forward, underneath the arched gateway of the plaza and into the sand of the bullring then immediately to my right, running along the fence then vaulting myself over into what I hoped would be the arms of impressed onlookers but ended up being an unforgiving floor of cement. Milliseconds later the bull came flying into the stadium.
I wiped sand from a busted lip and heaved myself up to join the cheering crowd as the bull was marched away until the fight later on that night.
I promised myself that I would never do anything that stupid again. Then I ran three more times.

The night Spain ruined pizza

     Moving abroad has its share of challenges. In Spain, for example,  most apartments don't come with dryers or air conditioning. Totally cool, I'm fine with that. Just don't use a comforter and leave your wash out for three days until its starting to sprout. I can deal. One thing that definitely doesn't suck about Spain is that the food is fantastic and super cheap. You can get a mini beer and a plate of paella for 2 euros down the street, and a weeks worth of groceries for 20. Not bad at all. But one thing I have been missing is pizza.
     I'm going on record now to say that pizza is the perfect food. It's portable, deliverable, can be folded, cut into squares, reheated, eaten cold. It's cheap and has a high calorie count,which makes it ideal for starving college kids. You've got the whole food pyramid hidden in its layers of cheese, tomato sauce, pepperoni, and crust. It's beautiful really.
     So last night I started going into withdrawals thinking of that greasy perfection that I had gone nearly a week and a half without. I decided to take a run at a frozen pizza from the mercado down the street. After spending exactly 18 minutes trying to understand the three strange flavors they had in the frozen food aisle I decided to go with Atun y Bacon. Being that bacon was the only ingredient I recognized, I snagged it and a bottle of vino and headed back.

     With two episodes of Breaking Bad on my laptop, my roommate out for the night and a pizza in the oven I was good to go. Soon my lust would be quenched and I would fall into that zone of greasy comfort that one experiences post pizza guzzling.
     Suddenly a smell began to waft its way into the living room. A pungent, thick smell. A fishy smell.
     I cautiously entered the kitchen and closed the window to the courtyard outside, thinking some awful paella related food disaster had drifted in. But the smell grew stronger. I sniffed the trash, the sink, the fridge.
    Then I opened the door of the oven and out came the horrific burnt fish smell. I turned off the heat and rushed to my computer to find out exactly what the hell was on my pizza.
    Atun. Tuna. I had bought a bacon, and tuna, pizza.
    I wanted to rush down to the market and demand my money back. I wanted to explain to them that there was a reason most photos of pizza show the simple but elegant relationship of pepperoni and cheese. You don't mess with a classic. But they were closed and my stomach was growling menacingly.
     So when I got over the initial shock I tried it. I really did. I sliced a piece off and gingerly tested it...and it came right back up. This was no freshly caught tuna but dehydrated, grated tuna, with a sickly grayish color. I felt defeated. And hungry. Mostly still hungry. So I did the only thing I knew. I scraped off the cheese, bacon, and tuna, and doused the sad looking pile of dough and tomato sauce in front of me with balsamic vin to cover up the smell.
    When this farce of what was supposed to be a gluttonous feast was over I donned a hazmat suit and deposited the tortured remains of my meal into the trash outside.
   
    I rinsed my mouth out with a heady dose of red wine and lay down to a comfortless sleep. It was  the night Spain ruined pizza.

Madrid-The first couple of days

     The cool thing about Barajas airport in Madrid is that the metro, the underground subway that has lines running through every major barrio in the city, connects to it and allows you to get anywhere you need to go in less than 30 minutes. I had just spent a long, cramped airplane ride trying not to think too much about the fact that I was leaving everything behind for a year. So I sat on my thick duffel bag, zipping through the dark passages underneath city. I wrote down which lines to take in a little blue book that I kept in my back pocket and lugged my bag up and down stairs and through ticket booths until I arrived at the Bilbao metro station. Because the metro is underground and the airport a few miles away from the city, I had technically been in Madrid for an hour but hadn't seen any of it. This was my first sight as I walked up the steps and stood blinking in the fresh air.
     The Bilbao stop has 5 streets running through it in a tangled web. Overlooking the monument in the center are tall, pink and tan apartment buildings with wrought iron balconies and ceramic flower boxes. Mopeds zip by as white vans park crookedly on the clean sidewalks and unload massive cuts of Jamon Iberico, Madrid's specialty cured ham that's served sliced on baguettes with olive oil or tomato.
      Waiters in black and white moved around tables clustered under an awning, serving café con leche and churros. Always in the background was the rush and swirl of air as cars zoomed by and people ran down the steps into the metro to catch their early commutes to work.
      I let my bag slip down my shoulder.
      The sun was just coming over the top of the plaza, and I was finally here.
      That was nearly a week ago. Like I've told some of the other BEDA teachers, Madrid has completely blown away my expectations. When I was doing a bit of research on the city before moving I got the feeling that Madrid was much like any other big city. Noisy, dirty, with a few museums, some nice parks, etc. Nothing about that is correct.
      Madrid is clean. Cleaner than the majority of cities I've been to in the states even. Although the city does have its barrios that are more crowded and busy than others, it only takes a five minute walk to find a thin winding street with a café or a quiet square lined with trees.
     My first few days I stayed in Malasana (the n has a tilde above it but I still haven't figured out how to do that on an American laptop). The hostel was small and cramped. I had to lug my bag up four flights of narrow stairs to get to the room I shared with twelve other guys on aluminum bunk beds. After nearly 48 hours of no sleep I was jet lagged, my arms were killing me, and I started to have a sinking feeling that maybe I had made a mistake. I dropped off my things and rented a locker so that I could stow my laptop and passport while I walked around the city a bit.
     When I went downstairs there were four other BEDA teachers waiting to be checked in. These guys have since become some of my best-friends in the city but more on that later.
     That night I was alone on the bottom bunk of my room wondering what I was doing. I had little money, no plan on how to find an apartment, and didn't know anyone within a couple thousand miles. I was overwhelmed that I would go at least nine months without seeing my family or the other people I love. Sometime during this pensive, obnoxious self-pitying I must have dozed off.
    The next thing I knew someone was nudging my foot. The room was dark and I could hear snoring coming from the other side of the hall. I immediately made sure my pants and belt were securely fastened. Then I turned on the light.
     It turned out to be the guy from the bunk next to me, asking me if I wanted to go out and have a drink with him and some of the other people in the hostel. What I really wanted was sleep. I wanted to not think or talk to anyone or have to worry about the logistics of changing clothes in a room full of people. But I nodded and struggled into a wrinkled shirt and followed him downstairs. The next thing I know I'm in a square a few blocks from the hostel, sharing a beer with two British girls, a hilarious Londoner named Nathan (who turned out to be in BEDA as well), a few university students from Holland and Germany, and the guy who had woken me up to begin with from Mexico City, who was finishing up the last leg in his month long travel binge around Europe.
     We stayed up until 3 in the lobby of the hostel, talking until we had to drag ourselves up the stairs to bed.
     This post was supposed to be smaller and kind of recap everything over the past week; how I found a place, made friends, and explored that city. Its rambling and its hard to describe everything about the past week. All I can do is flip through the snapshots in my head and try to make sense it all. I guess the one thing that stands out the most is that first day and that rush of excitement and fear.

     Travel isn't safe. Not real travel anyway. We can try to explore another culture and its people but it's hard when we return to the nice hotels and comfort of the familiar that we use to protect ourselves. I know, because that is all I wanted that first night, but what I got in return was much more valuable, and I can't wait to see where the rest of this journey takes me.

Sunset over Retiro Park from the roof of my apartment

    

Why I'm leaving

     The last month has been full of goodbyes. I said goodbye to the amazing friends I worked with for over six years, my family, and all of the friends near and far who have supported me throughout this decision. It seems strange now that just four days until my flight the reason WHY I'm leaving has become obscured. Six months ago when I was applying to the BEDA program  it was all so clear: drinking a beer in a sun drenched plaza, seeing the Mediterranean, bull-fights, sleepless train rides, and the freedom to be anonymous. Now the vision is clouded by the press of goodbyes, as if this whole time I've been walking backwards away from it. A fog rolls in and the logistics of what I'm about to undertake confront me.
     So I think I need to take the time to remember the reasons why I'm leaving.
     Travelling is not a selfless pursuit. We call attention to our conspicuous absence  by our empty chair at Thanksgiving or the presents left wrapped under the Christmas tree. So I can't really use the excuse that my leaving will somehow be better for the people I leave behind. I'm going to miss weddings, birthdays, and births. I might not be there when a friend calls and needs help or to help cheer up my brothers or sister when they have a bad day.
     If that's the case then maybe it's the experiences I will have that will be worthwhile to them when I make my way home. Maybe it's the challenge of seeing how adaptable you are when you're stripped of comfort, financial security, and your ability to communicate. Maybe it's the rush of having a few clothes rolled up in a backpack with your passport and no plan that makes travel so alluring. Maybe it's the chance to feel fear, and to overcome it, to start from scratch, learn something new, recapture your youth, meet new people, recommit to your curiosity, fulfill a promise to your twelve year old self that said that no matter how uncomfortable it may be, or scary, a normal 9-5 just isn't going to cut it. Maybe it's all of these things.
     These are just the final death throes of the me that thirsts for control of any situation, and the growing pains of a new life abroad.
     I leave for Madrid in four days. I'm terrified and exhilarated to start this new chapter of my life and so thankful that I have people in my life that make this a difficult decision.

     So I guess I'm leaving so that I can come home again. Ready to share my experiences with the people I care about.

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." -- Mark Twain


    
    
    
    

Breathing Out

     Life has been, for the past couple years, the accumulation of things that make me comfortable. I left for school six years ago with a used vacuum cleaner, a mirror, a couple plastic bins that I used as a nightstand, and a blow up mattress that let air out slowly over the course of the night and left my feet sticking up over a pocket of air and my head jammed against the floor. Fast forward six years later and I had a nice apartment that I paid for without the help of my parents, nice furniture, TV, and a car that worked (although with a series of quirks such as no handles on the inside, making crawling out of the driver side window an awkward but necessary means of escape).
     I guess I'm bringing this up because the next month for me is all about giving things up. In order for me to leave the country and start this new part of my life I have to give up all of those things I worked for over the past six years. My last month in my apartment I realized the futility of trying to pawn off my stuff to my parents for the year that I'll be away. Plus I needed whatever money I could before I left. So I sold off all of my stuff, bit by bit.
     When my couches were gone I dragged in my damp porch chairs to sit on. When my TV was gone I stacked books on my entertainment center. My dvds I gave away to friends and everything else that I couldn't throw in the back of my car I left out at the curb.
     My last night in Tallahassee I slept on the floor of my living room in a sleeping bag. The counters were wiped down, the floor mopped and the walls were plastered over. My apartment which was packed with 'things' a month before was empty. I learned something that night. Everything I cared about, the things that were really valuable to me, could fit in the back of my truck.
     So now I'm breathing out. Letting go of the things that don't matter so I can make room for the things that do.

Visa Appointment Recap

     Alright, so last week I finally made the dreaded drive down to Miami for my visa appointment. I drove down to Orlando where my family lives on Thursday then woke up at five the next day and made the four and half hour trek down to the consulate. If everything goes right then the next time I'll be down there I'll be transferring planes on my way to Madrid.
     So the whole process was actually very simple and wouldn't be worth the stress if it weren't for the distance down there. I can't complain though, the father and daughter sitting next to me drove all the way from South Carolina for their appointment. The consulate itself occupies the second floor of an office building on the outskirts of the city. There's a small waiting area where you listen for your number to be called and gives you plenty of time to frantically search for missing papers, notarized forms and your money order. Also, there's a Publix right next to the building so you should be able to get your MO right before your appointment if you're like me and put everything off until the last second.
     The consulate is open from 9-1 (why have such a small window for people who have to drive such an exorbitant distance is beyond me),  but try and get there early! Even if you have an appointment at noon, get there at ten. Because this visa process is not based on ease, convenience or sanity, even though you have an appointment it's first come first serve. So, my appointment was at 11:15 and I went ahead and checked in an hour early to be safe. I didn't get to see anyone until 12:15. Although, this did afford those of us in the waiting room to air our grievances about the visa process and talk about how we would very much like to burn the building down. Most of the people I met were in the Ministry program and were basically doing it for the same reasons as me, travel, learn a new language, escape debt collectors, become a matador, etc. Anyways they seemed like good people, and if others in the program are similar it's going to be a fun year.
     So finally my number was called. D-Day. Three months of preparation and paperwork coming down to a smiling woman behind a sheet what appeared to be bullet-proof glass. One by one she asked for my official acceptance letter, my apostilled BGC, medical cert. and money order. One word of advice, try to have your paperwork in order. I had everything loose in a binder and I could tell it was not making her happy that I was having to dig around every time she asked for something.
     I gave her my express envelope from USPS so they could mail me back my passport and paperwork. Apparently the visa itself is actually a stamp that they put into you passport. Five minutes later we were done. The only issue I had was that my medical cert did not follow the model provided on the consulate website so I had to get that redone by my doctor. The good news is that if you're missing documents, at least at this consulate, they allow you to just mail them back in rather then driving all the way back down. So I went ahead and mailed the corrected cert. back down yesterday. It's officially out of my hands now and I couldn't be more relieved.
     If anyone comes across this and has any questions about any step of this process just message me and I'll be glad to help. Hopefully in two or three weeks I'll be getting my passport back with my Visa!

Me after the appointment

      

I would rather be sitting in an office when I'm in my fifties, surrounded by the memories and adventures that I had in my younger years than struggling my whole life to have an adventure I can no longer enjoy.

Wanderlust

"Escapism, we are led to believe, is evidence of a deficiency in character, a certain failure of temperament, and like so many -isms, it is to be strenuously avoided. How do you expect to get ahead? people ask. But the question altogether misses the point. The escapist doesn’t want to get ahead. He simply wants to get away." J. Maarten Troost Getting Stoned with Savages

One thing I’ve heard from family and friends quite a bit after telling them of my plan to move to Spain is "Oh that’s great! Get it out of your system. Do it while you’re young. Then you can come back and settle down" As if wanting to travel was a sickness that has to be purged. An uncomfortable wanderlust that will go away with time, then real life can begin.

From what I’ve seen of the adult world in the six months since I graduated, I’m not sure I ever want it to.

Right now I work for the Florida House of Representatives, editing legislature and bills for the Clerk. In my time here I’ve come away with three important life lessons that have helped solidify the idea that I’m just not cut out for the real world.
1. You can have a considerable amount of mimosas on your lunch break and still function. For those of you who don’t know the sweet ambrosia that is a mimosa, let me enlighten you. A mimosa is an ingenious alcohol delivery system that is both acceptable as a midday drink and can pack a nice punch. Perfect for smoothing over the rough edges of your day and leaving you feeling flushed, smiling, and amicable to surly co-workers.

2. If you position your back at the correct angle to your cubicle door you can catch a quick 15 minute nap while appearing to be diligently poring over reports.

3. Upon entering a government building, don’t ever feign a look of nervousness, clutch your bag and slowly back away as the police officer ushers you through the metal detector. They tend not to have the greatest sense of humor.

Call me immature. I prefer to believe that life should be fun, exciting, and interesting. And if wanderlust is a disease, I’d rather not be cured.

 

The Schengen Visa

After rereading that last post I realized how discouraging it must be to people who are thinking about moving abroad. In an effort to make up for that I want to talk about one of the biggest hurdles you come up against when trying to join a language assistant program, the Schengen visa.

 

 



Much to my dismay, after the paperwork submitted for my initial interview with BEDA and the worrying about plane fares and selling off all worldly possessions before moving abroad, there's still one last (huge) step. Put simply the long-term student visa needed to stay in Spain longer than 6 months is a confusing purgatory littered with the bodies of those who simply give up and break under the strain of the process. The thing that makes it difficult is that NO ONE seems to know exactly which documents are needed or which sites to visit to get reliable information. There are only a few consulates in the U.S. and the majority of them require you to submit your documents in person. So, to give you an idea of how much a pain in the ass this is, if you live in say, South Carolina, you have to take all of your documents and physically bring them to the consulate in charge of your district. In Miami.

                                                                                 

 

The good news is, everyone who has been involved with these programs before you had to do this and are more than willing to help with any questions. I had planned originally on going in-depth into what exactly the requirements are and how to go about getting them done. But, the thing about writing is that someone before you has probably said it, and said it better. If you live in Florida, Georgia, or South Carolina take a look at Nicole's blog post about what the reqs. are and a great breakdown of what they cost. http://theperksofbeingawanderer.blogspot.com/2013/05/passport-to-paris-or-madrid.html

 

To set the actual visa appointment I used a third-party website. They charge a fee but it's only about six bucks and that was worth it for me not to have to sit on the phone for an hour listening to a Spanish rendition of My Heart Will Go On. http://www.vfsglobal.com/Spain/usa/Miami/

 

Right now I'm still in the process of getting everything together. My appointment is later on this month and I'll make sure to keep everyone posted on any issues that come up.