Hell Yes

I GOT PAID!! I got paid I got paid I got paid I got paid! Oh joy, oh bliss, oh happy day! ...I only got paid for half the month of January, unfortunately, because of boring details that will interest no one, so no shopping spree or trip to Paris just yet, dammit. But still, I can pay my rent without using any more dollars, and I can go out without being a total cheapass. Very good news. And Columbia retains the award for the most incompetent institution ever.

My apartment is on the top floor of my building. (I'm gonna try to live only in penthouses from now on--I know, good luck with that.) That, combined with the draftiness, makes it feel downright apocalyptic in here when it's windy and rainy. Which is ALL THE FUCKING TIME lately. What is this shit?? I was supposed to be moving to paradise, not a more humid version of March in New York City. ...Sorry, got carried away there. I do hate rain. It's actually kinda cool inside my apartment when it rains because I can hear it on the roof. If the apartment were actually warm and I didn't have to go outside, this weather would be great....

The Last Shot

I've kinda been missing ethnic food lately, and so was excited to go out for Indian food on Saturday night. The first-choice restaurant was too crowded, so we went to a different Indian place. As far as I know there are no Indian restaurants in northern Michigan; but if there were, they would look like this place. It had this safari-scene mural of lions and tigers and zebras clawing each other and bleeding. And plastic place mats that sort of stuck to the plastic table cloths. The food wasn't great, but it was fine, and not only did they have naan but they also had... (drumroll)... NAAN CON QUESO! The Spanish people I was with didn't understand why I thought naan con queso was funny. Anyway, about halfway through dinner this very, very drunk man came into the restaurant and sat down. The waitress brought him a bottle of wine, which seemed to me like the worst idea ever, but in the end it didn't really matter because the wine didn't get drunk. He was sitting at the table across from us, facing me, and I thought I saw him lean down to reach for something, but then he just stayed down. And then he started snoring. He snored for a while before the waitress came over and tried unsuccessfully to wake him up. So a few minutes later a man emerged from the back of the restaurant and tried to wake him up by shaking him and nearly lifting him out of the chair. Still no response. If it weren't for the snoring I would have wondered if maybe he was dead. The people I was with kept suggesting and offering to call an ambulance, but the restaurant staff didn't seem interested in that option. I'm not sure if they wanted to just leave him on the street or what; not sure if an ambulance would even come for a passed-out drunk guy. He was still comatose when we left the restaurant.

Speaking of things that are less than uplifting, I saw Brokeback Mountain today (no foreign-language films for me for a while). So good; so, so sad.

Buckets of Rain

New Yorkers carry their shitty little identical black umbrellas like fucked up badges of pride. They have these stupid curved handles that serve no purpose; they neither open nor close properly; they invert if the wind is any more powerful than your average sneeze. Whenever it rains the umbrella guys come out of the woodwork to sell them on the streets, and they're cheap. So everyone has one and it lasts for maybe one or two rain storms and then breaks or you lose it and you buy another one the next time it rains. There was an article on the front page of the New York Times a few months ago about the distributor of these umbrellas; he was suspiciously vague about the details of his operation.

It's been pouring rain here all weekend, and I spent the early, early hours of this morning drunkenly trying to tell the above story, in Spanish, to anyone who would listen. I don't think it went over very well.

A Passing Feeling

I'm trying to remember how various things feel right now, because inevitably I'll get used to them and then they won't feel the same. Like motorcycles. Eventually I'll get used to the fact that they come whizzing by out of nowhere on streets so narrow you forget they're not sidewalks. For now, though, they continue to freak me out sometimes.

Speaking of getting used to things, I think I've more or less come to terms with my bathroom. As long as the hot water keeps working (knock on wood), I think I can deal with its smallness. And the fact that I have to dry my hair in the kitchen/dining/living room--for some reason my blow dryer has started overheating and shutting itself off when I plug it in in the bathroom. Whatever.

I've noticed that a lot of receipts and even the occasional menu here still list costs in pesetas as well as in euros. Spain has been on the euro for four years now--who cares about pesetas?

Here Comes the Sun

Spain is waaaaay over on the west end of the Central European time zone, which means that the sun rises late and sets late. There's not a ton of daylight here in the dead of winter (latitude-wise, Barcelona is in between Boston and New York--the reason that the climates are so different I think has something to do with jet streams), so right now the sun doesn't come up until around 8am. Which is great because it means I can watch the sun rise without having to wake up crazy early. The picture I took the other day from my roof deck (my apartment is definitely not all bad). Yesterday morning I went for a run by the beach and, if I hadn't hit snooze and had tied my shoes a little faster, I would have gotten to see the sun come up over the Mediterranean. Life is pretty good.

Unfortunately, though, the weather channel is predicting snow and rain for tomorrow. I'm seriously freaking out about this. Partly because I've already gotten soft, partly because cold weather is colder here. Nothing is heated properly (except the subway--I think every subway train in the history of the world has been way too hot in the winter), and it's pretty humid. So it's that damp cold that gets under your skin and then you can't get warm. 50-degree weather (that's 10° C) in New York doesn't require a heavy winter coat; here it kinda does. Please don't snow. Please don't snow. Please don't snow.

ABC

I was almost done grading the quizzes when I left the office last night. All I had to do today was finish grading one problem and record the scores. Should have taken an hour, maybe two at the most. It took all friggin' day. Admittedly that was partly because I spend way too much time screwing around, but only partly. Alphabetizing Spanish names is hard. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it's true. For one thing, Spanish people have two last names, and they get alphabetized by the first of them. (So Ignacio Carrera Sanchez comes before Ignacio Sanchez Carrera.) Easy enough, but that's like alphabetizing by people's middle names, which isn't what I'm used to. So I kept fucking it all up, which made entering the grades take forever because the quizzes weren't in the right order. Also, I'm not familiar with that many Spanish names, which meant that if people didn't write clearly, which they often didn't, I couldn't tell quite what their names were, which also fucked up the alphabetization. I'll recognize a handwritten name like Smith or Williams even if it's badly written because those are names I know. A name like Morillo though is easy to confuse for Norillo or Marillo if it's not written clearly, because it's not a name I know. I guess having trouble reading handwritten Spanish is the visual equivalent of only being able to understand spoken Spanish if it's spoken very clearly. So anyway, getting the quizzes in alphabetical order took forever--just another little reminder that everything is different here. Alphabetization... fascinating.

I had microwave paella for dinner tonight. How pathetic is that? It was on sale. What I neglected to glean from the instructions I didn't really read, though, was that although the paella itself was microwaveable, the paella container was not. (Again, things are just different here. What microwave meal in the US would come in a non-microwavable plastic bowl?) So after two minutes I opened the microwave to find lots of steam, a flattened plastic container, and paella everywhere. And you know what? I ate it anyway. (Don't worry, the microwave was clean.) It would be horrible and humiliating to be so broke that I had to do that. As it is, I'm just broke enough that I chose to do it and am now laughing about it.

Beginning to See the Light

My Spanish class has basically turned into private tutoring, at least until the Italian guy gets back, which is an incredibly good deal considering that it's free. I'm still stewing on the idea that I have no personality in Spanish, and I don't think it's that simple. I kind of have a personality in Spanish, a little tiny bit. I have voice inflections and intentional pauses and facial expressions--that's something, right? Also, I'm vaguely aware that people who are multilingual have at least slightly different personalities in their different languages. So what I'm wondering now is whether this glimmer of a self that I have in Spanish is some stripped-down version of my personality that's constant and independent of language, or whether it's the beginnings of my new Spanish-language personality. I'm also wondering if maybe I think about myself a little too much. I had no idea that trying to learn Spanish would stir up so much psychobabble.

...

Sometimes the only appropriate way to respond to me when I'm ranting is to ignore me completely. Yesterday was one of those times. Who the hell do I think I am, whining about my personal finaces in front of all of cyberspace? That's just inappropriate. Also, I'm better off than probably the vast majority of the people on the planet. Momentary lapse of reason. And dignity.

...Oh, and the quiz went off more or less without a hitch. I may not be good at teaching Spanish undergraduates (they don't think I'm funny), but so far at least I haven't sabotaged the course or anything. Although it would probably make for better stories if I had.

Soy un perdedor

SHIT. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. God damn me. My students are having a quiz tomorrow and I was supposed to pick up the quizzes from the secretary today but I forgot and now it's late and everyone's gone and the doors are locked and my class starts early tomorrow and if the secretary isn't in before that I am totally FUCKED. God damn me, I totally suck. The quiz was gonna be a big mess anyway, because there are a total of 8 different versions of it (to try and cut down on cheating) and even though my sections are in English the students have the option of taking the quiz in Catalan. Argh. But it's gonna be a much bigger mess if there are no quizzes. Shit.

And oh my god being broke sucks. I'm basically counting cents (centimos, en Español) right now and praying I get paid before my rent is due. I'm letting people buy me coffee. I'm hoping at least I'll lose weight.... Okay, I'm being a little bit full of shit here. It's not that I don't have money, I just don't have euros and I'm being a cheapass about converting American dollars. I deserve no sympathy. But it's easy to get wrapped up in my pseudo-brokeness. Social security number, where are you?

There She Goes Again

There was a transvestite prostitute outside my office building tonight. It's really not the kind of neighborhood where I'd expect to find prostitutes, but there she was. I've seen her twice, in fact, so I guess maybe she's a regular. Tonight she was wearing really tall high-heeled boots, hot pants, and a long coat that she was kind of flashing open at oncoming traffic to reveal the boots and hot pants. Straight out of an Almodóvar movie.

There are desert places everywhere here. Gelato, candy, Belgian waffles, chocolate. Most of the restaurants have a prix fixe (menú del día) option at lunchtime, and that usually comes with a fancy desert. I don't understand how people stay so thin here.

A Place Called Home

It's starting to feel like I live here. I went for a run by the beach this morning. I live ten minutes from the beach, and in January it's warm enough to go running there. Wow. Anyway, after that I tidied up my apartment a little, went into work for a while. Regular stuff. Stuff you do when you live somewhere, when you're not a tourist anymore. I'm still kind of a tourist, of course, and probably will be the whole time I'm here. Definitely an outsider. But I kinda live here, too. And that's pretty cool.

AND I have a confession to make. File this under the category of "Be careful what you wish for because you might get it." Remember yesterday I was ranting a little bit about coffee? Well. I was walking on La Rambla today, which is about as close as Barcelona gets to Times Square. I wasn't hanging out there, but it was the most direct way to get from where I was to where I was going. And I had to go to the bathroom. And right when I started thinking I should look for someplace to go, I came to a McDonald's. They usually have relatively clean bathrooms that, unless you're in New York, you can sneak in and use without buying anything. I went in. Sure enough, there was no key or food purchase necessary to use the baños. But I kind of wanted caffeine and there was no line, so I thought What the hell, I'll just see what the coffee's like here. And it was wonderful. 200 mL, in a paper cup with a lid, strong but not too strong, fresh, hot but not too hot. Shit. I love the coffee at friggin' McDonald's here. I am so not European.

One More Cup of Coffee

The coffee here is very good. And very strong. And very small. And that's fine. But sometimes I just want a big old mug of coffee. Even worse, sometimes I want a big old insulated paper cup of coffee to drink, say, at my desk. While I work. [What I thought looked like a nice cozy quiet cafe to sit and write is now blasting Abba.... I may not know what I'm doing here.] It's certainly very civilized to stop what you're doing and enjoy your coffee, maybe carry on a conversation, relax. I'm all for that. Sometimes. But I want coffee several times a day. If I completely stopped what I was doing every time I wanted some caffeine, I'd do nothing but enjoy coffee. Which doesn't sound so bad, but I do have some job responsibilities. I don't have to work all the time, but I do have to work sometimes. It's not even really all about work. I spend large chunks of every day fucking around in my office--email, websurfing, etc.--and sometimes I'd like to have a mug of coffee while I do those things. I'm not a crazy super-sized American; I think Starbucks' Venti or whatever their stupid Italian-sounding name for large is is absurd. Even Starbucks' size small is pretty big. [Oh god, now they're playing Whitney Houston--from The Bodyguard soundtrack. Get me out of here! ¡¡LA CUENTA, POR FAVOR!!] I don't want Starbucks--all I want is to occasionally have good coffee in a slightly larger serving size. Does that make me terribly set in my American ways? I'm not saying it's better in the US. There the coffee sucks but there's a lot of it. Here the coffee is good but there's not enough of it. I want a compromise: a medium-sized cup of good coffee. For the road.

What a Piece of Work is Man

It's probably good for the ego to feel like a complete idiot for at least a few hours every week. Not that I was lacking in time spent feeling like an idiot, but my Spanish class will give me even more. Learning languages is hard!

I pretty much take for granted my ability to communicate (I think we all do), but it's really a phenomenal skill that we humans possess. We're pretty fucking smart. With words we can express such abstract and complicated ideas and emotions, and we do it all the time without even thinking about it. With the languages in which we're fluent, that is. When you're trying to communicate in a language you don't actually speak, it's not just that it doesn't really work. You lose so much of your personality that the usual defenses (humor, humility) are harder to come by. And there's a huge, inescapable power differential when you don't speak the right language. Suddenly the cashier at the grocery store becomes a little intimidating. You can't take in everything that goes on around you because you don't understand it all. You don't overhear conversations, or read headlines as you walk past a newsstand. If I pay close attention I can understand some conversations, and I understand a lot of what's in the Spanish newspapers if I sit down and read them. What I'm missing are the things that, in English, I would pick up without trying or even noticing. I can communicate on a very basic level; the problem is that the rest of the world doesn't operate on that level.

It's definitely not all bad. The learning part of learning a new language can be exhilirating--I still get all excited about understanding even basic things or conjugating a verb correctly without thinking about it. I go back and forth between being amazed by the human mind's capacity for language and humbled by my own overwhelming inadequacies with same.... Good for the ego.

...After writing the above, I found the following quote in "The Conquest of Happiness" by Bertrand Russell (who, by the way, was incredibly sexist. Maybe not by the standards of his time, but certainly by those of ours.):

"It is in the moments when the mind is most active and the fewest things are forgotten that the most intense joys are experienced."

I like to think I have greater joys than those that come from speaking or understanding Spanish; still, the idea is interestingly relevant.

Brand New Key

Okay, this is weird: To use the elevators in my office building, you need a key. And only University staff are allowed to have keys. So the students have to take the stairs. The building only has three floors (numbered 0, 1, and 2) so it's not such a big deal, but still it feels kind of elitist or something. I haven't gotten my special priveleged elevator key yet--stairs are about the only exercise I get right now, so I think I'll keep taking them.

The sidewalks are funny here. They kind of outdent (is that a word?) at intersections. I tried to make a picture of how they look: The *'s are the streets, and the dashed lines outline the sidewalks.

So to stay on the sidewalk you have to walk out of your way. I rarely do this (I'm a New Yorker now. I walk wherever the fuck I want.) so I'm always almost getting run over by cars, motorcycles, scooters, etc. Keeps things interesting. And people here often obey the Walk/Don't Walk sings at crosswalks, even if there are no cars coming. I'm just waiting to get stopped for jaywalking one day. The "I'm from New York" defense probably won't go over very well....

I went back to Human Resources today to see about my paycheck. The good news is that the University now has all the documents necessary for them to be able to pay me. I guess they somehow got them from the Spanish consulate in Washington rather than the one New York, which explains why obtaining them didn't take months and involve tears and yelling. (Fuck you, NYC Spanish Consulate.) Anyway, I signed my work contract, which I can't really read because it's written in Catalan. Was that the dumbest thing I've ever done? I hope not. So now all I have to do is take a form to a bank to pay a tax of 6.57 euros; wait for my social security number; and take it along with a bunch of other documents to the police station, where I'll get a work permit and have my visa extended. Could y'all keep your fingers crossed for me, please? Thanks.

American Girls are so Easy

I've been spending too much time at Tabacs. Cheaper than spending too much time at El Corte Inglés, but more likely to make me fat. Anyway, I was there the other day buying snacks and wasn't sure what I wanted so I bought this bag of what looked like some kind of nuts with a Spanish name I didn't recognize.* [It's my new way of dealing with indecision--opt for the choice about which I'm the least informed.] And they were really good! So I was eating them and wondering about this new Spanish delicacy I'd happened upon when I typed 'cacahuetes' into Google to find out exactly what I was eating. Do you know what cacahuetes are? Peanuts. Peanuts. I got all excited over some goddamn peanuts. Christ, what a twit I am.

Anyway. Teaching was much better this week. The students were quieter and have started asking me questions, so I'm glad for that. It seems like the less coherent I am, though, the more they pay attention. Not really a beneficial feedback loop. My phone rang in class today, making me feel like an unprofessional spaz. No one ever calls me here, and then the phone goes and rings the one time I accidentally bring it to class. When I was at Harvard and Columbia, students' phones rang in class not that uncommonly, but not here. Just mine. Oh well. And I am covered in chalk. It's hard to be the young hip professor when you're inadvertently dressed like an absent-minded physicist.


*¿Como se dice 'run-on sentence' en español?

Baby, It's Cold Inside

So I cut the shower curtain. And it looks fine; it's a cheap plastic one so you can't even tell it's been cut. (No duct tape or Elvis pictures yet, but I'll keep them in mind.) The shower curtain is the least of my shower problems right now, though, because I haven't had hot water for two days. Bathing without hot water hurts--no wonder people didn't do it much in the olden days.

The reason I don't have hot water is that I ran out of gas. My apartment has what is apparently called a tankless hot water heater. It's this contraption on the wall that has a large gas can attached to it and a little flame constantly burning. When you turn on the water it makes a loud "whoosh!" sound and the flame gets big. Kinda scary.

I vaguely remember my landlord saying something about buying cans of gas from guys on the street. But apparently I tuned out most of what she told me about that very important aspect of my life here. So I don't know if I'm supposed to get the gas from the guys on the street, or if she does that, how much it costs, how long the tanks last, how to tell when they're running out, how to light the thing.... And it's a little embarrassing to ask now, because we talked about it so I should know. Argh--how have I stayed alive this long with such bad life management skills? The landlord's son is bringing a new gas can over tonight. Hopefully he'll just keep doing that, preferably before the gas runs out again. Cold showers suck.

...I was doing this example in class today comparing the fuel efficiencies of Japanese and American cars, and a student raised her hand and asked what a gallon is. Damn America and our stupid English system that not even the English use anymore!

Every Grain of Sand

I guess I can sort of see the appeal of religion, even though it doesn't appeal to me. We wandered into a church tonight and it smelled good like candles, and people were singing. It felt peaceful; churches don't usually feel that way to me.

I think the closest I come to understanding religion is in how I feel about New York. Like I'm part of something that's a lot bigger than I am. You can go anywhere in the world and find people with New York connections. When the subway won't come, or keeps stopping, or the sky opens up and pours unexpectedly, even though no one is making eye contact there's sort of a sense that everyone's in it together. And I like that.

...Had a huge hunk of meat for dinner tonight--Aragonian food (Aragon is a region of Spain) is good. I don't know if I can ever go back to being a pseudo-vegetarian....

Excess Baggage

So my saintly friend from New York brought with her all my stuff that I couldn't fit into my suitcases when I flew here. But the airline lost one of her suitcases, so this morning was spent sitting around waiting for it to be delivered. Which may have been worth not having to carry it up five flights of stairs; I'm not sure. At least they found it. The other good thing about having the suitcase delivered is that I was able to have a whole conversation, on the phone, about exactly where my apartment is. Speaking Spanish on the phone is hard. Small victories.

I know I was a tiny, tiny bit down on the Sagrada Familia before. But it is amazing, and doesn't get any less so on a second visit. There are a lot of creative ways in which one could commit suicide there. Sorry, that was inappropriate.

In addition to lots of great buildings, Gaudí designed a park. Wowowowowowowow. It is so fucking cool. You've gotta go. It even smells good there, the kind of flowery earthy smell that air fresheners I think are aiming for.

And we had an attempted robbery. A guy riding by on a bike tried to grab my friend's purse. She was holding on tightly enough that even though he knocked her down, he didn't get the purse. A word to the wise: Don't fuck with Czech women.

Missed two classes and no homework

Today is exam revision day at the University; it's the one day that the students are allowed to complain about the grading of their final exams. The halls are packed with students waiting to talk to professors. Complaining about grades seems to be pretty universal. And final exams are way more important here than in the US: In my course the final exam counts for 70% of the final grade, and apparently that's pretty common. It would have really stressed me out as a student.

I learned something good yesterday: The stores called Tabacs don't just sell tobacco. I had been silently bemoaning the lack of convenience stores here, but it turns out that Tabacs have snacks and soda and stuff (and CD's, which in Spanish are called CD's, not discos compactos) in addition to cigars, and have locations all over the place. Good to know. Especially because I've been eating an absolute ton lately. It's not just that I kinda feel like eating a lot, I'm starving all the time, ravenous, like I might just fall down and die if I don't eat immediately. Weird. Does being in a new place speed up your metabolism? I hope so, otherwise I'm in trouble.

A friend from New York is visiting this weekend, and I took the bus to meet her at the airport. I confirmed (in Spanish) with the bus driver that the bus was going to (rather than coming from) the airport, and then he said "Three sixty." (As in, the fare was 3.60 euros.) Not tres sesenta, three sixty. I don't want to be answered in English! Except of course when I ask for English....

Get Real Paid

I guess deep down I knew, when I picked up my Spanish work visa, that the New York City Spanish Consulate wasn't really out of my life for good. They're too incompetent to just go away like that. Turns out I need some documents that they told me I didn't need, so now the University has to get the documents from the Consulate, and I won't be getting paid for a while. What a shocker.

I'm probably forgetting some things, but getting my visa required no fewer than six trips to the Consulate; four trips to NYC Police Headquarters; a doctor's appointment and two follow-up visits; three trips to the New York County Clerk's office (employer of the most miserable clerk I've ever personally experienced, ever); at least $300, most of which was payable only by money order so throw in some trips to the bank; hours waiting in line; miles walked all over Manhattan; one very sketchy notary; several bouts of talking to myself in public like a crazy person; and one crying fit. And it's not over. Fuck. [Don't get me wrong. Six months in Barcelona may very well turn out to be priceless; I'm not saying that the above list of errands wasn't worth doing. But it was a huge hassle.]

...so that sucks. But still, it will take more than one late paycheck to top the levels of incompetence I got used to dealing with at Columbia. The bar's been set pretty low.

I bought a new shower curtain today. The old one had some mildew on it and my shower is so small that you can't not touch the shower curtain when you're in it. My shower is also so small that the new shower curtain is way too big for it. So I was all frustrated about everything I do being wrong, when it occurred to me that I can just cut it. Is that ghetto or is it yankee ingenuity? I can't decide.

Oh. And I did laundry today. I knew that European washing machines are much slower than their American counterparts; I nearly had a nervous breakdown once waiting for a Russian washing machine to finish. I thought an hour was a reasonable or slightly conservative estimate of how long a load of wash would take. It took an hour and a half, and that was on the delicate cycle, which is probably the slowest one. Jeez. I was almost late to my meeting with Human Resources which, in retrospect, would have been okay since all I did there was find out I'm not getting paid any time soon. But still. An hour and a half is a really long time. And, 12+ hours later, nothing's dry. So washing clothes is a very slow process here. Whine. It's free though, and I guess I'd be complaining more if I had to carry everything up and down 5 flights of stairs to go to a laundromat.

Back to Me

I deserve this. What goes around comes around. I had this one course in grad school that I didn't really like, and my friend and I talked through it nonstop. We were obnoxious, horrible, miserable rude people. I deserve a class full of students who won't shut up.

I met my landlord (landlady?) tonight. She's very well-dressed and has this cute little son named Dmitri (I'm allowed to like little kids if they're named Dmitri) who forgot the name of his pet bird. She's a humanities professor and teaches a course on Russian literature, so of course I'm completely enamored with (of?) her. She was complaining about how most people in Spain don't speak any languages besides Spanish (and Catalan in Barcelona). I guess Spain is pretty monolingual compared to the rest of Europe, but it still kicks the US's ass.

...I will learn Spanish while I'm here. I will I will I will I will I will.

Smokin' in the Boys' Room

As of January 1, Spain outlawed smoking in most public places. It's taking a while for the ban to actually take effect though. I see people smoking in my office building, and lots of students smoke in the halls between classes. There was an old guy walking through the building smoking a cigarette today. He came up to two cops who were hanging up No Smoking signs, paused, frowned, looked at his cigarette, and help walking. The cops looked at each other, shrugged, and went back to their signs.

The good news is I was finally able to pay my rent, so no eviction this month.

My first day of teaching was tiring, but pretty uneventful. The only problem is the students TALK. And talk and talk and talk. But not to me. I gotta cultivate a better look of death.

Castles made of sand

I wonder if Gaudí ever made drip castles. (You know, drip castles: You take a handful of wet sand at the beach and let it drip out of your hand to make a wet, bumpy sand castle.) They're what the Sagrada Familia reminds me of. The Sagrada Familia (Holy Family) is Gaudí's unfinished masterpiece, whose construction began in 1882 and is scheduled to finish sometime around 2040. It's amazing, it really is. Very ornate and detailed, parts are very colorful, it's really tall. You can go up inside some of the towers: a steep climb up a narrow spiral staircase with lots of little nooks and incredible views. It's really windy up there, and I got a little vertigo-y coming down. Like I said, it's amazing. BUT.... It's very unfinished. The inside is nothing but a construction site, and entire sides of the outside are still unfinished. They have photos of its construction on display, and it doesn't look much more done now than it did in 1904. The part that is mostly done, the Nativity Facade, is breathtaking and should absolutely be seen before you die. But the good thing about photographs is they cut out all the construction.... I just wasn't quite as blown away by it as I thought I'd be, that's all. Go ahead, call me base and unrefined; I can take it.

Today I didn't even have to use my A.K.

Remember that Ice Cube song "It Was a Good Day?" It came out I think around 1993 (Jesus, I'm getting old) and was about a day that was good for mostly pathetic reasons. Like he didn't have to kill anyone. That's kinda how I feel about today: I got a cell phone and had a conversation with my neighbor, both without having to resort to "¿Habla inglés, por favor?" One thing about being in a place where you don't speak the language is that whenever you are able to communicate effectively, it feels pretty great. The problem with my phone (aside from the fact that it's just kind of shitty) is that everything (instructions, menus, voice prompts, etc.) is, of course, in Spanish. I've figured out the basics, but my voice mail message may be a Spanish recording for a while....

There's something really decadent about waking up on a rainy morning and going right back to sleep. That's what I did this morning, and it felt good. It finally stopped pouring rain but stayed pretty grey all day, so I went to the Picasso museum rather than the Sagrada Familia like I was planning to. Crazy architecture should be seen in sunlight. Anyway, I would love to go back to around the 1960's and give Pablo Picasso a big hug. He was adorable. And absolutely fucking brilliant. He could have stopped around age 20 and still had a remarkable career. The museum focuses mostly on his early works; he was producing phenomenal paintings by age 15. Fifteen. Wow. Also, there are three rooms full of paintings from his Blue Period--those alone would have been worth the price of admission. There are almost none of his cubist works on display, but you barely even miss them because his other stuff is so amazing. Also, Picasso has this great quote about punctuation being the loin cloth that covers the private parts of literature. I like that.

In other news, there was a guy playing the accordion on the subway today, which made me miss New York. He seemed to be making a lot more money than the average NYC subway performer. Also, there was this homeless woman sitting on the sidewalk with a cat. And the cat was wearing a scarf. What kind of cat would put up with that? Oh, and on La Rambla, which is one of the main streets here, they sell birds in cages. Mostly typical pet-type birds: parakeets, cockatoos, etc. And pigeons. Who would buy a pigeon?? I can't imagine why you'd want one, and even if you did, they're everywhere for the taking. I guess maybe they're hard to catch?

We Three Kings

Last night I was woken up by people on the street chanting "Catalonia is not Spain!" Apparently most people here are not hard-core separatists, but they really want more money for Catalonia from the central government. More on that when I know better what I'm talking about.

This place really shuts down for holidays. Today is Three Kings Day (Día de los Reyes Magos)/Epiphany; traditionally it's when Spanish kids get their "Christmas" presents. Apparently Santa Claus is getting more popular though, and now most kids get some presents on Christmas from Santa Claus and then get the rest today from the kings. There was a big parade last night--had more of a discotheque feel than the average American parade, but still had the requisite fire trucks and ambulances. Anyway, the stores and most restaurants were closed and the department was empty. Except for me, translating statistics homework problems. I gotta get a life....

Dear Landlord

Someday I will grow up, get my shit together, and stop relying on my mother to bail me out of things. But not today.

I have to pay my rent. Since I live in Europe now, I have to pay my rent in euros. But of course I haven't been paid yet, so I don't really have euros. Converting and transferring euros from my bank in New York was a nightmare a few months ago; now it's just impossible because they won't deal with me over the phone. I hate them. Depositing the money into my landlord's bank account using a credit card no es posible, they need cash. No ATM will let me withdraw that much cash in one transaction. But apparently trying to make two withdrawals in a row makes me look like an ATM card thief, so I couldn't make the second withdrawal. So I can't get enough cash, and my bank still won't talk to me over the phone to resolve any of this. I hate them. So thanks to my mom (again) for coming to the rescue and wiring money to me. But because of time changes and the fact that Friday is a holiday here I won't be able to pay the rent this week like I was supposed to. I hope I don't get evicted. I don't think the street is much colder than my apartment, but there's nowhere to plug in my electric blanket.

January 4

It's late, I just got home, am half drunk, and have to wake up early tomorrow because I didn't finish most of the work I should have done today. I guess life is getting back to normal.

Had a two-hour, three course lunch and an amazing seafood dinner. It was fun hanging out with people from the department. I am gonna get so fat....

When I went in to work this morning, there was a little kid in the entry way of the building. I'm a little more receptive to kids here than in the US because my language skills are about at their level. He said "Como te llamas?" [What's your name?]. I said "Me llamo Samantha." [My name is Samantha.] He looked bewildered and said "Como?" [What?] I repeated "Samantha" and he said "Samantha?" and I said "Si" [Yes]. He frowned, turned his back on me, and asked someone else's name. I guess Samantha doesn't go over well with Spanish kids.

January 3

I'm spending way too much time and money at El Corte Ingles. (It's the Barcelonan Macy's.) I've been here for three days and the only site I've seen is a park near my apartment. But it's hard to do touristy things when your shower's broken and your blowdryer keeps overheating. I think I'm almost settled though--I just need to find some toilet paper that's soft and doesn't come in packs of 12 or more rolls. Oh, and speaking of toilets, one of the good things about my apartment is that the toilet doesn't have a display plate. Whew.

Speaking of things that stink, Spain apparently outlawed smoking in nearly all public places as of January 1. Except bars and restaurants. I noticed there were No Smoking signs all over the Barcelona airport; it reminded me of being in the Madrid airport a few years ago where everyone was smoking and ashing and stomping out cigarettes on the floor. Yuck.

Anyway. I went into the department today and now have an office and an internet connection. And a TON of lecture notes to prepare. One really nice thing about my building is there are coffee machines everywhere. The coffee is pretty good, given that it comes from a vending machine and only costs 50 cents. So far the course I'm teaching fits the stereotype of Southern European disorganization. The software we're planning to use isn't available on any campus computers and won't be available until the first day of classes at the earliest. Some of the homework problems are only available in Spanish and others are only available in Catalan. Organizing big classes is hard enough without having to do it trilingually. This should be interesting.

One of the furnishings in my apartment is a wine bottle with an orchid-type flower in it, and the writing on the bottle is in Cyrillic. I think it's Serbian Cyrillic not Russian, because there are j's, but still I'm choosing to take it as a good sign.

January 2

Not to be all melodramatic, but I am completely alone right now. The very few people here to whom I have any connection are still gone for the holidays. I have no phone. I don't even have regular internet access. I don't mind being by myself, but I am looking forward to going into the department tomorrow. I think I think too much when I'm alone.

Anyway. I spent way too much money on a new bedspread. But I didn't like the one that came with the apartment and six months is too long to not like your bed. Plus the new one is warmer, which is important given how friggin' cold my apartment is. I broke my shower today, so until I can find some superglue it has no mount and I have to hold it. The hot water comes and goes, and there seems to be no way to shower without getting the floor all wet. I used to say I didn't feel like a real New Yorker because my apartment was too nice and too easy to find. I guess I'm making up for that now. It's fine, really, but definitely lacking some conveniences.

And I think maybe I live in Queens: easy enough to get to, but definitely not a destination and still kinda industrial. There are a few bars on my street that look like they could be in Northern Michigan. I kinda like that it's gritty, though. And two people asked me for directions today, so I must not look like tooo much of a tourist.

I like that the posted prices here already include tax. And alcohol is really cheap, although water is kind of expensive. The tap water in my apartment smells a little funny--I doubt it would make me sick but I'm not excited about drinking it. The subway is cheap and easy to figure out. The stations have screens that show you how long until the next train--one of my favorite advances in transportation. I love the NYC subway, but that's only because I'm a total sucker for New York.

Catching Up

Okay the first few posts here will have screwed up dates because I started writing before I set up the blog. Here goes.

...you'd think the spell checker that comes with blog software would accept the word blog as spelled correctly. but no...

January 1, 2006

Okay I've stopped crying. I managed to miss my connection in Paris--what a twit, maybe it was Freudian--but once I finally got to Barcelona it was sunny and pretty and I finally started getting excited. The cabs here are yellow and black, which is both more distinctive and uglier than all yellow. My cab driver was nice and patient with my awful Spanish.

My landlord's son met me at the apartment to give me the keys but was about ten minutes late -- I spent all ten of those minutes waiting to be robbed blind because I had way more luggage than I could handle. I'm a little paranoid about muggings since I was robbed in Spain myself a few years ago and it seems like everyone I know has a Barcelona robbery story. Getting robbed isn't the end of the world or anything, but it would have really sucked to have ALL my stuff stolen. It didn't happen.

My apartment is bigger than I thought it would be, but also a little less nice. And really cold. There's a little space heater in the bedroom, but that's it for warmth and I'm on the fourth floor with a lot of windows so it's pretty drafty. Should be good for keeping the place cool in the summer, anyway. And the roof deck is very, very cool--I can walk out onto it right from my apartment and see the Sagrada Familia and (almost) the Mediterranean. And there are clothes lines to go with the free washing machine--very authentic.

So far it's hard to tell much about the neighborhood. EVERYTHING is closed because it's a holiday. I accidentally slept through lunch on the Paris-Barcelona flight, so by around 7pm I was starving and completely without food. I wandered around for about 20 minutes before finally finding an open restaurant. (Honestly I would have been happy to eat a candy bar for dinner, but no open convenience stores anywhere.) The waitress asked what I wanted to eat. I asked what they had. She said they had everything. I forgot the Spanish word for menu so I just asked for a menu. Turns out that menu here means a three-course meal so that's what I got. A little more than I needed, but the paella was good and when I ordered red wine (I just wrote whine before correcting it to wine) they brought me half a bottle. My six-month Hemingway imitation has begun.

December 31, 2005

Okay, enough with the crying. It's getting old and making me ugly. I've been crying off and on since Wednesday; I think the lowest point was losing it at the airport bar. Nine Inch Nails and Tori Amos seem to be the only music I can listen to without getting all teary. And I'm not even a crier, usually. I guess it would be worse if I didn't have anything in New York to be sad about leaving.

Crying is sorta like throwing up: in the end both are releases, but the buildup to them is pretty awful.

I'm planning to move back to New York, and I'm only leaving for six months. But people come and go and change and whatever I come back to won't be what I'm leaving behind. Change is good; it's just making me sad right now.

December 25, 2005

I'm moving to Barcelona in six days. It's gonna be great. I'll get to travel all over, maybe climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, hopefully learn Spanish. My family's freaking out. My friends are jealous. Only six more days of winter.

I so don't want to go.

This will pass; I've gone through a phase like this before every big trip I've ever taken. I get lazy or scared or cheap and start to dwell on all the things I could do instead of taking the trip. After I finished grad school I went to Russia for a month, and I remember thinking on the subway ride to the airport (at the Charles/MGH stop) that instead of going to Russia I should stay in Boston and learn to sail. Of course I shouldn't have stayed in Boston and learned to sail. But right then, facing a monthlong solo trip in a scary country where I knew no one and didn't speak the language, the sailboats on the Charles looked pretty inviting.

If I weren't going to Barcelona, I could keep my apartment. I love my apartment. I could keep dating the guy I just broke up with only because I'm moving away. I wouldn't have to miss the Superbowl, or find movers on two days' notice, or risk having my teeth worked on by a Spanish dentist. I could keep my volunteer job. I could walk in the park and run by the river. I could try that Portuguese restaurant on Spring Street I've been meaning to check out. I could see the Darwin exhibit at the Museum of Natural History, and the gay cowboy movie, and the Alfred Hitchcock festival at Film Forum.

This will pass. It will. I'm just too in love with life in New York right now to be excited about leaving.