My Final Post

Since I last posted, well over a month ago, many things have happened, including my return from Spain. That being said, this post will be the last one for this blog. Who knows, maybe my next adventure will be blog-worthy, maybe not…

After San Sebastian, I went to London for a week. My cousin Jenna was there setting up a group of summer abroad students and I had the chance to stay in a hotel for free. London is a wonderful city. I was also floored by the fact that everyone spoke English. Laugh all you want, but after nearly 8 months of being surrounded by non-English speakers it was actually quite jarring to be of the language majority. I reveled in this fact from the moment the plane landed. I had to pass through customs and was probably more chatty than necessary with the guard. Suspicious? Probably. Halfway through blabbing at him about living and teaching in Madrid I realized that I probably sounded like one of those people who had rehearsed a story to get through customs. Luckily he didn’t mind, much.

When I arrived at the hotel my number one goal was to watch TV in English. Thanks to globalization there were plenty of American programs on the British channels. I loved every minute of it. I watched Friends, Cold Case, CSI and so much more. I even caught up on some music videos.

I saw a few of the museums London has to offer, wondered Hyde Park and enjoyed a Pims. All in all, I loved London. If I had moved abroad there, rather than Madrid, I might not have been so desperate to come home after a while. This is probably because it wouldn’t have presented the same challenges and, on the tourist level, seemed way easier to live in.

Upon return from London school was on half days, so I only had to work until 1 each day. I’d love to report that I took advantage of that time and saw more things in Madrid. Honestly, I took naps and taught private lessons. At night my friends and I went out more, mostly because we knew our time was running out.

The first weekend of June our electricity (and eventually hot water) went out. When it went out we didn’t have a massive freak-out, like most people would expect. We decided to eat the ice creams Audrey had in the freezer and wait for the electrician to come. Eventually, Monday night he came and told us that the problem was the hot water heater. It was some problem with the current circulating. Lets be honest here, they don’t teach electrician vocabulary in Spanish class, so he could have said about anything and we’d have gone with it.

Audrey and I were leaving early Thursday morning for Alicante and, after lots of time working on Spanish time, we knew we wouldn’t get a heater anytime before we left. I took chilly showers and dealt with it, since I was leaving on vacation soon.

Thursday came and we boarded our Ryanair flight. After 40 minutes in the air we landed in Alicante. The four days we spent in Alicante went something like this. Wake up. Go to Beach. Home for lunch. Lounge until dinner. Dinner. Lounge until bed. It was a lovely time with seven other wonderful ladies. We prepared our meals in the apartment and ate family style. The weekend was quite relaxing and full of laughs. Basically it was great.

Upon my return to Madrid, my experience started to go south. In May, perhaps April, my Grandpop was diagnosed with cancer. Being 91 years old, we didn’t have the highest hopes for remission, but they decided to give him radiation treatments to try and shrink the ones causing him pain. In early June my mom went to Pennsylvania to be with her family and await my arrival. When she got there Grandpop was still getting up and getting dressed for the day. He would come down stairs and basically be the Grandpop I’d left in September. The Tuesday after I got back from the beach my mom sent me an email saying that, if I wanted to, I should come home early.

Originally we had changed my ticket from July 2nd to June 27th mainly because I would’ve been one of the last few people in Madrid and I was ready to get out sooner. This time we changed it to Saturday the 20th with the hopes that I could get back to Philly in time to say goodbye. This had me leaving my school before the last day of school, which meant I had to tell them.

I’m sure you’ve heard the stereotype that Spanish people are family oriented. I got to experience that first hand on Wednesday morning when I told my director that I was leaving early. I waited for about 45 minutes outside her office. When it was my turn, she asked me what was up and before I could say anything I just started crying. She rushed me into her office and sat me down. The head teacher followed us in. It was rather scary to have these two Spanish ladies trying to get info out of me. I managed to get the words for “Grandfather” and “die” out. I was trying to explain that he was close to dying and I was going to leave early to be with him and my family, but at those two words they knew what was going on.

The offered to do anything I needed. Marisol, the director, told Eduardo and he left his class to rush in and talk to me. It took about another 45 minutes for me to calm down enough to go to class. The people at my school really are the sweetest, kindest group of teachers one could ask for. I lucked out being placed at Rosa Luxemburgo and anyone who gets that school in the future needs to know how lucky they are.

On Friday I was out doing my final gift shopping, mostly as a distraction from the situation in Pennsylvania I could do nothing about, when my mom called with the news. My Grandpop had died early Friday morning. So that was the situation I left Spain under.

I was devastated by his death, sad to be leaving my friends but delighted to be going home to my friends and family whom I had not seen since September. The only word I can come up with to describe the feelings I had were bittersweet. Bitter because I was landing in Philly only to begin preparing for a funeral, but sweet because I was finally going to see my mom and family.

Hopefully this post has given you some insight as to the abrupt end to posts. I didn’t want to leave you all hanging, though I’m sure most of the people who read this knew most of this already. Also, for those of you whom I didn’t call immediately after landing, please don’t take it as a comment on our friendship, but more a representation of my extreme mixed emotions. I promise to pick up the phone soon enough.

San Sebastian

A few years ago I went to visit a cousin in Boston. To prepare for my arrival she asked my mom for ideas. My mom offered the suggestion that I am usually very happy near bodies of water. Until I heard my mom's observation I was unaware of this fact, I guess I had just never noticed how true it was. I spent the first 12 or so years of my life living on the Oregon Coast (one of the most ruggedly beautiful places on Earth). When I went to college in DC I quickly found that the Jefferson Memorial is my favorite, probably partly because of its location on the tidal basin. Now in Madrid, one of my favorite places to have a coffee is at a cafe next to the fake pond in the middle of Retiro park.

This is important information because I think it explains why I loved San Sebastian so much. To take advantage of my remaining time here I attempted to organize a trip to San Sebastian. Audrey and Eimear also wanted to go, so for the weekend of May 15th we went north. San Sebastian is a small-ish town in the north of Spain located on the Bay of Biscay. Our guide book listed a few sights to see, like the Cathedral, but we spent most of our time just wandering the old narrow streets, walking next to the beach and eating Pinxtos. The touristiness of our trip was minimal.


After taking the 6 hour bus ride from Madrid we took a little nap before exploring the city. Our first stop was the boardwalk, just 3 blocks from the hostel. It was beautiful. There were sandy beaches, clear blue water and tree-covered hills. True to my mom's assessment, as soon as I laid eyes on the bay I was in a happy place. I loved it. We continued on walking the city and found the Cathedral and lots of shopping. Then we paused long enough to make a plan, which was to wander some more then eat Pinxtos.

Pinxtos are little servings of food, typically on bread, that you eat with a drink. In San Sebastian the Pinxto experience goes as follows: go to bar, order a drink, pick up a pinxto from the plates laid out on the bar, eat, repeat until you move to the next place. In our adventure we ended up trying four different places, all with yummy food. I couldn't tell you exactly what I was eating most of the time, but it was good.

Saturday was our only full day in San Sebastian, but we were not worried about sight-seeing. We got a late start to the day and started off with lunch of Pallea at a place recommended by our hostel owner. The hostel owner knows what he is talking about. The Pallea was fabulous. We then went shopping/wandering. Then it started to rain, so we hid out in the hostel, watching a movie until it was time for a repeat of our Pinxto adventure. Just as delicious as the first night.

On Sunday we had a few hours before the bus, so we decided to try and walk up to a very large Jesus statue that offered good views of the city. After fueling up with ice-cream we found that the hike up there was a little more than we wanted to do, so we walked around a cape and took in some fantastic views of the water. On our walk back to the hostel to collect our things we took off our shoes and walked with the waves brushing over our feet. Finally, it was time to make some sandwiches and get back on the bus for a 6 hour ride back.


San Sebastian was amazing. I'm not at all upset by the fact that we didn't see any "sights" nor did we really "do" anything. I think we successfully completed my goal of setting aside my American idea of conquering locations and really did "aprovechar" my time away from Madrid and next to the sea.

If a Cat Has Kittens in an Oven are they Biscuits?

PREFACE: I've been debating for a while if I should tackle this post or not. Yes, I did study issues of Nationalism while at American University, but if anything that has taught be just how complicated these issues can be. With that being said I've decided to go for it, but please take this only as an exercise in applying my studies to a real life situation and not a definition of my stance on issues of citizenship or related topics.

A few weeks back I went to an Irish themed bar in Madrid. These things are popular everywhere, but there is one in particular that we frequented when I was studying abroad. At Dubliner's one can speak English with most of the patrons, watch American sports like basketball and for an evening forget that you are in Spain. This particular time our group ended up talking to an individual named Pepe.

Pepe is from Barcelona but he has an American passport. Pepe's parents were studying Medicine at John's Hopkins when he was born and they lived in the US until Pepe was about five years old. Throughout the night Pepe continually told us that he was American too. I'm certain that he was saying it with the best of intentions; probably as a way of showing us that we had common ground and not in that he was claiming to be as American as us. But really, are there degrees to being American?

The way that US law is written means that anyone born on US soil is eligible for citizenship, but what does that mean in practice? I know that America is the great melting-pot (or some in the cross-cultural communications world prefer the salad-bowl analogy because the individual pieces can maintain their original forms rather than melting away in a pot...) and we are able to accept all types of people. Even though intellectually I knew Pepe was right I still found myself put-off by his claims to be American.

Never before have I struggled with a thought in the same way as that one. But honestly, he lived there for 5 years and then moved back to Spain with his Spanish family. I'm not certain that he had the common cultural experiences that define American life. Did he go trick-or-treating? Did he make hand turkeys for Thanksgiving? Does he know the basic rules to baseball or kickball?

When discussing issues of nationality and definitions of national heritage one has to consider the question of where do we get our nationality from. Does one belong to certain group because they were born in the "right" geographical location or do they belong because they inherited the "right" set of genes? Or does your belonging come from a shared heritage of experiences? Personally, I can't say if one definition is better than another. When twisted, any criteria can be used for good purposes or bad.

My experience with Pepe has forced me to evaluate just what I think it means to be an American. Technically, yes he can call himself American. But as someone who spent 23 years living in America and learning the subtle nuances of the culture I have a hard time seeing him equally as American as me. This probably has to do with the fact that he lived the majority of his formative years in Spain and inherently knows more about what it means to be Spanish than what it does to be American.

My view of issues of identity was also called into question when I had to referee a debate among some of my 4th graders. Many of the kids were ganging up on the new kids, Nicholas, saying that he wasn't really Madrileño because he was born outside of Spain and his dad is from Holland. I tried to explain to them that it is possible (especially in the European Union, with its fluid borders and all...) for someone to be born in one place but rightfully claim to be from another place.

I guess the bottom line is that my time here has challenged me to think about issues I'd never considered before. If anything, I will go home with more questions than answers but I think that is a good sign.