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.