progress

the spanish government has approved gay marriage and adoption privileges, which will be exactly equal to those of straight couples. progress! at the same time, it´s not unusual to hear gay jokes among my students, and the word "maricon" (equivalent of fag, from what i can tell) is used widely among teenagers, though seemingly without that much malice. today´s classroom discussion about the new permissiveness elicited a universal (7-student) response of "why shouldn´t people be able to do what they want, with whom they want?" although the subject matter proved a bit giggle-worthy. to me, this attitude feels much less homophobic than the stateside attitude of say-one-thing-and-practice-another, where it´s politically incorrect to acknowledge in public that someone plays for the other team (one of my favorite american idioms, due to the intensely masculine metaphor and the images it conjures...pink baseball uniforms?), yet time and again, personal liberties are infringed upon by the law. american hypocrisy becomes more intolerable after some time spent in a country that handles this kind of business so well, a country that can mourn the death of El Papá and throw a little fiesta at the same time.

more on the personal, what´s-been-happening-lately business in the next few days!

spring is coming

what can you do when, despite all of your best efforts, your cell phone is stolen by yet another wandering gypsy asking for change? the only reaction that seems reasonable is to adopt a sort of perverse pride over the list of stolen items accumlated in your life: 1. passport and train tickets (stolen by children of gypsy whose aim was to distract uptight americans with suckling baby at her bare breast) 2. wallet (routine of MUNI commute + a very fascinating new yorker article=not at all paying attention) 3. loose money (band of wanderers surrounding unsuspecting, hungover foreigners with dancing touching and who-knows-whating and leaving them light on pocket change) 4. mobile phone (after foiling another´s attempt to steal my intercambio´s phone the previous month by cagily placing a newspaper over it while asking for money--sorry if that scene isn´t quite articulately described--i fell prey to basically the same trick when i turned away from an overly-insistant query)
i swear these are my best efforts. i just can´t *be* any more careful, so i suppose these things will continue to happen throughout my life. so be it.

perhaps i haven´t mentioned that group spanish classes have ended and i´m going to begin individual classes with a girl who is basically doing the same thing i am (and all of my friends are), but in spanish. it´s a little strange, because i recognize the "i´m speaking verrry slowly" voice, the "i´m listening to your grammar but not to what you´re actually saying" smile-and-nod combo, and the "i know what i´m doing, despite being only 27 and having very little teaching experience, really, i do!" knowing chuckle. and, similarly, i hear myself being a kinda bad student, nervous about making mistakes, struggling with prepositions, and rambling on and on about something-or-other that may or may not match the question asked. hopefully, both the english teacher and spanish student sides of my slightly addled brain with learn a thing or dos.

will and i have purchased ping-pong paddles to use in the square near my apartment. i LOVE these outdoor ping-pong tables...just one more thing to bring everyone outside. i believe that spring may finally, at last, por fin, have arrived in barcelona. morgan and riley will report back the truth.

calçotada

here´s another traditional catlonian spring obsession: large gatherings for the purpose of eating calçots (large spring onions) dipped in romesco sauce. melanie´s language exchange partner invited her (and me and will, by extension) to his friend´s house for a twenty-four-person feast of onions, butifarra sausage, and bread rubbed with tomato (another catalonian constant.) the first difference from an american party that i noticed was that snacks were brought, but not opened right away. several bags of potato chips, olives, crackers, and cheese sat out on the table taunting us, but weren´t opened until it was time. yes, snacking was a separate course! the onions were strung on to wire to be roasted over an open flame, which took about five minutes, then they were un-strung and rolled in newspaper to keep them warm until we could pluck them up, peel off the charred outer layer, dip them in sauce, and eat. the sausage course followed, then dessert. it was a lovely day, full of nice people and their babies.

semana santa

PLANS!
for anyone who still reads this blog, i´m pleased to announce my summer plans: at the beginning of july, i´ll return to highly-anticipated, greatly-missed san francisco. still uncertain about employment prospects, there is a high chance of acquiring some weird and unprecedented (in my life, anyway) job. summer english schools are few and far between in the bay area, it would seem.
if you would like to make a donation of your sofa or other soft surface for some of the duration of july and august, please send me an email. expenses are being kept to a minimum, and reciprocal cooking in return for lodging is definite.
near the beginning of september, i´ll return to spain for another year of english teaching. so there IS still time to visit!

This week is Semana Santa, which has meant a week without work! It also means the five-year anniversary of the first time I ever visiting Barcelona, with Karen Revitt, easily the most decadent vacation of my life. The only respite was on Easter Sunday, when we went to services (in Latin) in the Cathedral, then allowed ourselves to be buoyed along in an Easter procession, flanked by weeping women screaming for Jesus like teenagers at a rock concert. A man took this opportunity to press his erection against my back as we pressed on down the street, and due to the fervor of the crowd, it was a good five minutes before I could escape. But it was a lovely parade.
This year, Melanie, Ann, and I took the train to Valencia, the third largest city in Spain, where we drank and ate our way around the old town, followed by park-lazing, a little bit of pervert-fleeing (must be the season), then more eating and drinking. The city was very quiet. We had arrived on the day *after* Las Fallas, one of the most famous festivals of the year. Artists spend 11 months planning, raising money for, and finally building/carving giant satirical sculptures out of wax, paper mache, and wood. All the Spanish politicians of the day are represented in caricature, displayed in dazzling detail for the city to see, then--finally--burned to the ground on the last day of the festival. Only one effigy (chosen by popular vote) is preserved for the fallas museum; all others are destroyed. Much ink has already been devoted to ruminating on the fleeting beauty and ecstacy of Las Fallas...especially because I still haven´t seen it myself, I´ll avoid re-ruminating. But the part of me that loves to let go also loves to think about such a profound and dramatic letting go...
...a pre-burning man burning.

intercambios

some of you may know that i lost an intercambio partner a few weeks before christmas. no, not due to windchill factor or arsenic-laced sangria or an unfortunate tumble from la sagrada familia, but rather to indiscretions of the usual boozy, bodily sort. details aren´t even fun, because i wasn´t interested beyond the conversation. just shows what happens when a person isn´t accustomed to using so much body language to express herself.
after christmas, i obtained--much like mail-order brides--two more intercambios. (please don´t hate me for sounding so glib. i´m trying to diffuse my nagging guilt with humor.) one is named raul, and he´s a genial, but fairly pretentious piano player, composer, and tentative speaker of english. we went to see an urban-themed photography show, and he said new york was an ugly city, which offended more than i ever imagined it would. tomorrow, we´re going to see the robert frank exhibit at the contemporary art museum. i have a bit of dread. more latent patriotism will undoubtedly be unleashed.
the other guy is lovely. gerard was looking for someone to speak english with, because he´ll be going to school at UC-Davis in either the spring term or the fall. he´s intelligent, polite, he´s been to the upper peninsula of michigan and ENJOYED the rather campy experience, he entertained me for 90 minutes with the story of his trip to india, and we´d only made it to the second month when i had to leave. yes, the verb was "entertained," and if he can do that in a foreign language...basically, he´s the perfect language exchange partner for me, and i don´t want him to go. he corrects my spanish ruthlessly, which makes me--after i swallow the irritating defensive impuse that initially bubbles up--very happy and grateful. i learned about a lot of the dumb things i´d been saying, which other intercambios had been too polite to mention...the equivalent of a friend not telling you there´s something stuck in your teeth.