New apartment, Birthday, and Christmas

Well, I know I promised a good romance for my next blog entry but I am realizing that I have to be in a certain mood to write about my romantic feelings and apparently that mood doesnt come often. lol. I have thought of multiple other topics to write about recently which all excite me far more than a love story at this point. And since the vast majority of my readers are friends and family, you all will forgive me for temporarily jumping over THAT topic. It would be nice if I could write a nice, organized and, best of all, chronilogical account of my time hear but I am realizing that my brain is not that organized. Many things do not come to me in the moment but much later after pondering and deliberating over my feelings or making sense of what is happening. I am going to try and make shorter and more frequent entries so that maybe certain things will make more sense.

Anyhow, last Friday I moved into a new apartment. I wasn't really feelin my previous apartment. I let Jesus find me a place while I was still in the U.S. because I was stressed to the max and decided to put some faith in my boyfriend and let him take care of all that. Meanwhile I said my goodbyes to family, friends and Bianca and stressed over my visa arriving late and me having to change my flight for 600 more $.

The old apartment turned out to be okay at first but soon water started leeking from every crevice of the house. Every time you would drop a duece in one bathroom, instead of the poop flushing down into the ground it just popped up directly into the other toilet of the other bathroom like the toilets were playing hot potato with the turds. So basically, the house always smelled like shit. And then there was my roomate, a Spaniard from Galicia, who was very friendly and outgoing but who turned out to be like a child trapped in a man's body. He took out the garbage once in 2 months and would start blasting his music in his room at 4 in the morning when he got home from his job at the hotel even though he knew I was sleeping. I almost think he subconsiously didnt want to have a roomate and thus began sabotaging our living situation. Anyhow, last friday I moved to a nicer place for the same price that is right across the street from one of the schools that I work at where I now have Wifi and sweet room that has a leather couch in it. It also has pretty, french doors and a nice, Feng Shui vibe about it. So far so good. I am feeling much better here already. I am currently living with a 22 year old French girl who is (here working on here degree and her Spanish but is due to go back home to France in 3 days), a Spanish boy (who attends the University) and the owner of the house (a Spanish lady in her 40s who is divorced and has 3 grown children who all live on their own). Soon another Spanish girl will replace the French girl and hopefully the dynamics of the house will remain nice and tranquil like they are now. So far I love it because its quiet and everyone seems responsible, respectful and seems to do their own thing..like me.

Now a little recap on my birthday in Spain. For me it was absolutely perfect. I didnt want anything big or crazy this year since I am away from so many of my friends and family which is what really makes those days fun and special. I was wanting something more low-key and private I suppose. So, my boyfriend planned everything perfectly, anticipating all my needs for that day. It was incredible because I wouldnt call him a particularly perceptive person or a good listener (sorry honey) for that matter but he certainly surprised me this time.

He sent me a text in the morning saying "Feliz cumpleanyos" and that he would be picking up around 1pm and when he gave me a "toque"(toque -one ring to signal you to do something that has been previously agreed upon in order not to waste minutes on your cell phone talking). In this case the "toque" was to signal me to come down from my apartment so that he didnt have to look or pay for parking and we would leave directly from the street in front of my place in his car. He had packed a cooler with sandwhiches, beer, wine and chopped fruit for a litte picnic in the countryside. This he did because I always complain that Spaniards don't spend enough time in nature and that I need occasional doses so that I dont go crazy here. I brought my guitar along and played intermittently while snacking and drinking beer. He even made the sandwhiches with mayo, mustard, pickles and tomatoes instead of the dry sandwhiches they make here with ONLY cheese and meat...NO SAUCE people. ( I know, hard for us Americans to imagine a sandwhich with only meat and cheese on dry bread) Anyways, the country side was beautiful, peaceful and romantic and I thought that was it. That was my bday present.

Well, you're wrong Jessey!!! Next we stopped at my house, I made us some chamomile tea and we starting sipping when, all of the sudden, he said we had to go. I was like "huh?", where?, why? and I started to get nervous. I was wearing my signature sweatpants, hoody and baseball cap and was so worried he was gonna pull some stupid, surprise on me with people I barely knew with me looking stupid in my American attire. I also started worrying about how I LOVE surprises but how I also HATE them because if its something you dont like, that look of disappointment always creeps its way onto your face and I wasnt in the mood for social awkwardness. Anyhow, we started down the road on foot in the direction of his sister's house who is also a friend of mine. I was hoping and praying that we weren't going there for some strange surprise party with people that dont really know me. BUT Jesus kept saying "trust me" and I kept thinking that I had it all figured out and it was gonna suck. BUT then, we passed the street to his sisters, we stopped and he said "turn around, your present is behind you." I turned around to see a sign that said "Physical Therapy"...huh? Then he started explaining that he wanted to bring me here so that they could look at my hip since I always talked about how it had been hurting me for 10 years and how I never had health insurance to really get it looked at. My body and nerves suddently decompressed and I just felt so cared for in that moment. Somebody cared about my health. Rather than a stupid teddy bear or some ugly shirt that I will never wear again, a boyfriend cared about my health. I suddenly felt relaxed and like trusting my boyfriend for the first time in a long time(Yes, I understandably have trust issues). He came in with me while his friend/therapist took a look at everything and did all kinds of manipulations and massaging and gave me some interesting feedback. Once again, very impressed with the medical treatment compared to the U.S. They actually spend time with you here and at least pretend like they care about whats going on with you rather than treating you like another hamburger at a fastfood joint. In that initial visit without an x-ray or MRI, he basically confirmed that which I had already suspected but took it one step further. He said that because of years of softball and waitressing, one side of my body in certain areas is stronger than the other side (which I figured) and has pulled everything over, creating scoliosis but also (one step further) one eye to be more closed than the other, symetrical differences in my body AND face and possibly to have one ovary higher than the other, etc etc. As he said all this, I couldn't help but feel like a Salvador Dali or Picasso painting (coincidentally Spanish painters known for melting effects and lack of symmetry.). He noticed right away a lump on the right side of my innards and asked if I had a cyst on my ovaries. I said no but that I DID find out about a golfball-sized non-cancerous tumor on the right side of my uterus last year during my stint in Spain. Anyhow, if I need to fix it I will have to do the work which will start with strengthening the left side obliques and so on. If they take my insurance I may start going to physical therapy so that I dont end up a crooked old woman, with a crooked old cat, in a crooked old house or so the story goes. And last but not least, he bought me a little speaker system for my computer and ipods because my computer's sounds sucks ass and when we try and watch movies or I want to listen to music its pretty much a joke. I had mentioned it several times that I wanted to buy speakers and I now I know HE DOES LISTEN TO ME!!! Its so nice to have that confirmed finally. Sometimes having a relationship in another language I feel as though maybe I am not even speaking Spanish but some other language because the combination of just dating a man in general and then throwing another language on top of that, I feel like maybe I am speaking Yiddish because there are many miscomunications and misunderstandings to be had. Needless to say, he did good and I had a wonderful birthday that I couldnt have planned better for myself.

So today is Christmas and I am basically not doing anything besides taking ibuprofen for cramps while drinking a 40 oz of Amstel and writing on my blog at 5pm. Last night we celebrating at Jesus' aunt's house with a family dinner. It was really chill and once again I enjoyed myself in a nice laid-back way. (Could this mean I am getting old? Or that I am just not myself in another language/culture? Its a bit of both I would wager to say). Anyhow, his aunt is from Boston but has lived in Spain for 20+ years. She did study abroad in Sevilla, decided to stay one more year and then met her husband. They got married, had 4 kids, maintained a successful boomtruck business and then he passed away. She has made her life here with her kids and has an absolutely gorgeous Spanish-style house with a pool on the outskirts of town. She is supersweet and humble, works as an English professor. She speaks English with a slight Boston accent and speaks Spanish, suposedly, with an ever- so- faint accent that most Spaniards can't put a finger on where its from. Anyhow, we spent the evening there, starting out with Spanish-style appetizers and then moving into the American food for the main course of turkey, gravy, baked yams, stuffing and salads. It was all fabulous and I ate WAY too much.

It was cool because last year in that same house on New Year's Eve, I met Jesus for the first time. "Memories...all alone in the moonlight..." Also, last year I didnt feel very comfortable at all with my Spanish and I remember being so happy to talk to his aunt Maureen in English and we had a couple of long conversations that night in English. But this year, we hardly spoke a word of English to each other. Besides "Merry Christmas", "are these yams?", "my pleasure" and "everything was really good", we stuck to speaking to each other in Spanish. I love it...2 American girls speaking to each other in Spanish when it would have been easier to speak our native languages. And we kept to the Spanish script, communicating perfectly and felt no need to use English. YESS!!! Little by little things are improving. Not as fast as I would have liked but then again I am discovering that I am a VERY impatient person, who hardly EVER lets anything happen organically and it has been huge blind spot in my life. Anyhow, glad to be learning, improving and, little by little, enjoying myself, these small improvements and like they say "the little things." I am fortunate to be the position to learn these things and finally starting to enjoy doing it. Merry Christmas!!!!!

That was last year

"I'm here at my darling's house and I want to be allllll my life with him"

-Jesus Daza putting words in his girlfriend's mouth

Well, there you have it, what better way to start my first blog entry of my second year in Spain than with a quote from my boyfriend, the one who convinced me to come back a second year and who also decided to jump on my laptop while I was cooking just now to put his two cents worth on my blog. But I think its a good start since this year, I have decided to take this blog to a more personal level. I can only write so much about travelling and food when I am doing more than that, I am living here. I can no longer get by without letting my more personal side enter into the equation. So, for good or bad, this year I'm telling my readers how I REALLY feel.

So, as my family will attest, I had a very hard time making the decision to return to Spain for another 9-month school year. The first year seemed to be full of disappointments and awkward moments. I had dreamed so much of travelling abroad, solidifying my language skills and learning about another culture that I think I really must have built things up in my head while also forgetting that every great lesson comes with an equally potent dose of emotional suffering. And boy did I suffer. Last year, due to lack of vocabulary and linguistic expression, I had to slowly put my ego aside and temporarily abandon the personality that was 32 years in the making. I had to live through 9 months of regressing to an infant-like stage where I was learning new words every day and having trouble pronouncing them and worst of all not being able to express myself properly. I had to depend and trust people that I only knew on a very superficial level because I didnt understand the half of what the plan for the day or weekend was and had to follow along without having any idea of how we were getting where we were going, when we were coming back or any of the details for that matter. I had to truly learn to go with the flow, like a child does before they can speak and really ask questions. They just trust their parents and go with the flow and can't exactly express how they feel about things or voice their opinion or have much of an influence on their day to day happenings. Like a child, I was at the mercy of others.

What made things even harder was that I was always listening to people say rediculous things about the United States on an almost daily basis like "in the U.S. people only eat fast food" or "the food in Spain is much better than in the U.S. huh?". That was hard to listen to constantly because in the U.S. as a "melting pot" of cultures we actually have a bigger variety of food and ingredients to choose from than any other country in the world I am willing to wager. Also, coming from Washington State at least, I grew up making many many things from scratch and eating tons of food from the garden. I was raised almost NEVER eating fast food or in restaurants period. And here almost everything seems to be deep fried, full of salt and seriously lacking in the vegetable, spice and flavor department. Sure, there is good food to be found here but I can't say that anything is the best I've ever had or anything that worthy of constant bragging.

Then, I would have to hear the stories of how ignorant Americans are and how everybody here saw a Spanish program about how they went around asking Americans geography questions and that our answers where so stupid that we didnt even know where Spain was and we thought it was in South America, etc etc. And when I told them that media is always biased and that someone could easily travel around Spain TRYING to find the most ignorant people in the country and make a video of all their stupid responses compile it together and packaged that as "Look how stupid Spaniards are everybody", they looked at me like "huh?" Many didn't seem to understand the magic of editing and media manipulation and couldn't believe that what they saw maybe wasn't a good representation of American people. There were so many things that normally are so easy for me to explain but not having the words to sound intelligent, so many times I just chose not to say anything at all. This slowly ate away at me until by the end of my stint in Spain, I had all this tightness in my jaws and found myself with shortness of breath and almost to the point of what many would call an anxiety attack. When I got on that bus with all my things packed, heading out of Cordoba to catch my flight from Madrid back to the U.S., I thought for sure I would never come back.

To make a long story a bit shorter, it was a year of listening to rediculous things about the U.S. that I didn't have the words OR the energy to argue about especially when dealing with a very prideful and stubborn culture. I felt like all year I heard over and over "Spain has the best food in the world, our ham is the best, our lifestyle is the best, I bet you don't have seafood as good as ours in your country, our way of speaking Spanish is the only correct way, Mexicans dont speak correct Spanish and neither do South Americans, Spain is the most diverse and beautiful country, our beaches are some of the best in the world, we have more parties and funner people, and on and on and on. I just didn't see any of those things as being true based on my experiences in the world.

On top of that, I heard racist comments on just about a daily basis, even in my elementry school. And these comments came from people who are supposedly educated people with degrees and such. And the hard part was that I know better. I HAVE been to other countries and experienced other cultures, not on a grand scale but enough to know not to ever say rediculous, ignorant things like that about my country or any other for that matter. Every culture has its wonders and beauties and also their downfalls, mistakes and atrocities. Countries are like a macrocosm of human nature. We all have our good and our bad and just likeits people, not one country is all good or all bad. We can all learn from each other if we are open to it. I guess what I didn't like was the lack of openness. I would cook a meal and invite people to eat and many of them were afraid to try my food and didn't trust that I could possibly know what I was doing or had anything that could possibly taste good. All because I had a different way of doing things. People treated me like I was a baby or a person with down's syndrome or some other mental deficiency it felt like, instead of just a person from another country with different customs and different yet equally, if not more effective ways of doing things. Anyhow, that was then...

And THIS Is Now...

I must say that this year my feelings have changed dramatically. Through much effort to change my attitude/perspective, I have begun to see things through a different lense. And I can't deny that it has everything to do with love. I suppose all the great spiritual leaders are right when they talk of love breading tolerance and acceptance. Although my goal in coming to Spain was to learn the language and culture, instead what I have been learning, which is far more important, are patience and tolerance. I see that love is transforming me from impatient and critical to being more tolerant of others.

New Year's Eve 2010

As many of you know, last year on New Year's Eve, I met someone. Someone but not just anyone. I went to a New Year's FAMILY party with a co-worker who I hardly knew but who I felt was a good, generous person (slightly hippie, hence a good vibe). I really didnt want to go to be honest. I was exhausted from trying to understand all this Spanish and trying to communicate with everyone during Christmas in Ceuta with my roommate's family. I reluctantly got dressed in a long cardigan sweater and some leggings, which those of you who know me know that is not a typical Jessey outfit. I basically had to look myself in the mirror and give myself the ol' pep talk which consisted of "you NEVER know when you're going to meet someone important, so get your ass ready and "guapa" whether you feel like it or not. You are stronger than this Jessey." I quickly changed into my white pants and a aquamarine off-the-shoulder, sequin-lined number of a shirt. When my friend Angela called to see if I was ready, I valiently answered to let her know that yes, indeed I was coming although everything inside me wanted to bail on her that night. But thank God I didn't.

That night I met her brother. Right away, I felt something...giving him the typical dos besos felt all but typical. He was definitely my type of handsome. He also seemed a lot more open to me than the other Spaniards had been so far. He asked me questions during dinner and even tried to speak a little English with me. He also told me about the tradition of eating the 12 grapes for each month for the New Year's countdown. His name was Jesus (as in hay-suse :). When we finished eating, we all got in the car, including Jesus and we made our way downtown. He continued asking me questions that I didn't know how to answer in Spanish. He asked what I studied and I didn't even know how to say that I needed 2 more years of study if I wanted to be a psychologist because I didn't know how to say psychologist. I remember he asked me how old I was and I said "old". Then his sister stopped the car to let him out, he grapped an umbrella from the back and was on his way to the bars with his friend. My heart sunk slightly in that moment cuz I was naivly thinking that somehow he would spend the night with us. But no, he had other plans. I went with his sister and her boyfriend to some bars while some ugly and annoying guy followed me around, giving me a t-shirt and a lighter from the bar he worked at. Instead of listening to him, I couldn't help but think of Angela's brother. And I felt a little bad because instead of hanging out with my new girlfriend who was supercool and supernice, I would have rather been with her cute and interesting brother.

Stay tuned if you like a good love story :) Until next time.