October 16, 2003 -
The weekend is a fucking brilliant idea. Mornings are pretty cool too. They take a little getting used to, unlike the weekend, but once you get over the whole being awake thing, they’re quite beautiful. These are the sort of discoveries I am making during my first tentative footsteps towards a responsible adulthood. How did the bass player for Skid Row ever get a day job? I wasn’t even a real limousine-and-supermodel-riding rock star, yet my entrance into the world most people take for granted is one of shock and awe. I’m easing into it like a cold day at the beach: wading up to my knees, staring at the vast impenetrable surface before me, holding my nuts for safety.
Breathe. Dive.
I have more structure than I’ve had in a years. People expect me to be places daily. While the sun is still up. Fortunately, the climate smoothes the transition to reality with a dose of exoticism. It’s still warm. T-shirt warm. Usually, I tend not to acknowledge the occasional colder morning when I should be wearing a sweater. Apparently, I'm not the only one. The city’s architects have neglected to put heating in the buildings. So far, this hasn’t even come close to being a problem, but I'm warned that there are cold nights in February when I will curse their optimism. When it rains, the whole city gets slippery. The tiles that pave the sidewalks get slick when wet. My only waterproof shoes have no traction, so I'm faced with risking either soaking feet or spinal injury.
There are green parrots that live in the trees along my daily walk to the subway. Several years ago, they were quite popular pets and are still sold in cages at markets. However, they are really loud, and live for decades. Their owners would get fed up with them or die, and the birds were released into the city. It stays warm enough for them to survive, and they have no natural predators in the area. Now it is not uncommon to see a little bright green guy hanging out with a flock of pigeons.
At school, we’ve been divided into groups of four to teach actual students. My group is made of up Lorraine, Katie and Matt. Matt is a bookish Brit boy from Scotland. He’s so easy going I can’t help but like him immediately. One drunken night out together, he reveals that he and his friends in school would speak to each other in Latin. Both the admission and his obvious discomfort at it make him even cooler.
Katie is also from Scotland, though neither she nor Matt have what I would consider a Scottish accent. Granted, my entire exposure to a heavy brogue is from Groundskeeper Willie on the Simpsons, so my expertise is limited. However, Katie assures me that it is an accurate portrayal, and that neither of them have the accent.
When not in an American vintage T, she always seems to be wearing horizontal stripes. Her dry wit makes everything out of her mouth screamingly funny in the way I sometimes envy the British.
Lorraine is a woman in her fifties who plans on retiring to the Gambia in west Africa where she spent her peace corps service. Her face lights up when she talks about the house she is building there.
We have become quite the clique. We eat together at least once a day, and roam the halls like high school students sneaking out for a smoke.
On the second day of class, we are put in a room of Spanish people, our students for the next two weeks. They trickle in slowly. There are only six of them, to be taught by us four aspiring professionals. I move about the room, meeting them. It’s an advanced level, so their English is quite good. I wonder how they feel about being taught by such an obvious novice. Fortunately, they have been forewarned.
The first woman I meet is Carmen. She has short graying hair and coke bottle glasses. Her knee is injured and she is wearing a dress that proclaims her spinsterhood with proud Victorian correctness. She is forty and lives with her mother. She has lost her job as her eyesight has deteriorated, and now comes to class to socialize and learn. She comments on my being left-handed, something we have in common. I will discover over the next two weeks what an amazing mind she has. She can’t see the board or read the handouts, yet is by far the best speaker and the quickest learner in the class. Her brain absorbs information like a sponge, where it preserves everything she is told verbatim.
Miguel is also in his forties. He is how I imagine a Spanish man to be: tall and serious, opinionated and courteous. Because of his job, his attendance is spotty, and he is often answering calls on his cell phone.
Mari-Carmen is a shy woman who lost her job in the human resources department of her company when it merged with a German corporation. She speaks better English than she thinks she does, having studied in Scotland for a semester.
Lee is a twenty three year old student from China. He has been in Spain for three years and can speak Spanish. However, his English is hard to understand as he spits a rapid fire of disjointed words at me.
“From New York?”
“Yes.”
“Is good?”
“Yes. I love it.”
“Girls good?”
“In New York? Yes. There are a lot of beautiful girls.”
“Hard, get department?”
“To get an apartment in New York? It’s very hard. Very expensive.”
“Expensive.”
“Yes. Is it easy to get an apartment here?”
“Very easy. You should get Spanish girl.”
I laugh.
“You know this word? Shag?”
He holds up a little electronic dictionary the size of a two way pager, displaying the word.
I laugh again. Over the next two weeks, he will do this trick several times with different words. He will also ask to learn how to write love poetry to impress the Spanish girlfriend he hopes to some day seduce.
And then there is Darling, name after a South American soap opera star. She has the body that men (at least this man) think about in their most intimate moments alone. Occasionally, even with others. Her eyes glowing, her whole face is engulfed by her beaming smile.
“Noah!” she cries after I first introduce myself. “I love name. It’s great name. My best friend, her son. He’s name Noah. He is three. He is beautiful.”
By extension, I hope, so am I.
“What is your name?” Luis, the theatre producer who is as obviously enamored with her as I am, asks me.
“Noah.”
“It’s Hawaiian name?” asks Darling. “My friend is from Hawaii.”
“No, it’s from the bible” I explain, not for the first time today. “In Spanish, the name is Noe. Noah is how you say Noe in English.” This is obviously a country that inquisited all of its Jews out of existence centuries ago. But a look of recognition dawns on both their faces.
“It means ‘energy of life’”, exclaims Darling.
I nod. After all, she could be right. In any case, I won’t argue her. She might stop smiling.
“Are you from Barcelona?” I ask them.
“I am from Barcelona,” says Luis.
“Me, no.”
“Where are you from?”
“Costa Rica.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Six month.”
She has left her husband, some poor gringo from Minnesota, back in Central America. At twenty six she has run away to Barcelona with her new Catalan boyfriend. And her name is fucking Darling.
Add to them Monica, a quiet girl from Ecuador, and you have the class that we spend our first two weeks getting up in front of and stumbling through some game or exercise to explain various grammar points. It’s a lot of work, but also fun. We help and taunt each other through it all, and the students seem to actually enjoy it. They keep coming, more or less regularly.
After school, we gather together with other classmates at a bar around the corner, deplete their stock of Estrella, a cheap Spanish brew, and devour fried things covered in garlic. We gossip about who has a crush on who, if that one really annoying guy actually has any friends anywhere, and whether the other one is socially inept or has suffered a stroke.
I walk home. Europeans have different ideas about personal hygiene. There are always a couple of people who, after a long day hard at work, I would really rather avoid on any given subway car. Instead, I navigate my way through streets crowded with cars and scooters. Men play bacci ball in the park by my apartment and teenagers make out. Holy shit, do they ever make out. On a walk through the city at virtually any time of day or night, I am guaranteed to pass some couple locked in a passionate embrace. And not just the teenagers for that matter. I have yet to see any septuagenarians frenching on the corner, but certainly adults. Sober adults.
On weekends, we stumble around medieval streets, searching out hidden bars and restaurants. This is a late city. The night I decide to go home early, and leave my new friends after dinner, I make it home at one thirty. They don’t eat until ten on weekdays.
One Saturday afternoon, I go to a bar with Matt to watch a soccer game. England are playing against Turkey. Although I’ve never been a fan of the game, I figure that maybe millions of people in the rest of the world are on to something.
We’re late. We get to the pub twenty minutes after kick off, and there is no way we’re getting in. The crowd is spilling into the streets, as those assembled crane their necks, trying to see the television screen through the glass. Outside, they cheer for a penalty kick like they are rushing the stone ramparts of an enemy fortress. To me, the game still looks like a crowd of guys running around and occasionally faking injuries. The final score is nil-nil. An hour and a half passed without a single goal. This is good for England who now progress to the next round. The fans sing drunkenly for hours afterwards, and I’m off.
Next on the agenda: meet some locals. Everyone I know is a new arrival. I want to go native, not just hang out with other ex-pats. At least, I hope to find someone who has been here for a year.

- J Guevara