15 Things I've Done the Past Three Months

1) Started attending a playreading group with friends.  Did dramatic readings of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and "Act Without Words I."

2) Absorbed more art around Madrid: Museo Sorolla, El Hermitage en el Prado, "The Garden of Earthly Delights."  

3) Won a trip to Berlin in March to attend a weeklong European conference.  Am forever grateful to the Fulbright Commission.  

4) Went to a few meetings of the Auxilares Artists Group, played board games, saw "Attack the Block," went to Zombie Bar.

5) Did Thanksgiving activities at school.  Two students drew Mike Young turkeys.  Celebrated my first Thanksgiving away from home at a potluck dinner with a group of extranjeros (foreigners).

6) Attended a "Country Night" at a bar, in which I danced wearing a cowboy hat on a straw-covered floor and rode my first mechanical bull.

7) Went to Expocomic 2011.  It was comforting to know that comics conventions are just as nerdy here in Madrid as they are in the States.

8) Took a weekend trip to Cordoba.  Ate bull's tail, saw flamenco, and juggled oranges that I picked off the trees.

9)  Attended the Peace Corps 50th Anniversary Ceremony at the Ambassador's House.  Heard a lot of inspiring stories.  Made me think that the Peace Corps would be worth doing someday.

10)  Found the one New York-style pizzeria in Madrid.  Savored the flavor I miss most.

11) Picked up Brian Kateman at the airport dressed in a Santa costume, then proceeded to come back to the house where the family played a game of "amigo invisible" Secret Santa unlike anything we've ever seen.  Definitely the rowdiest Christmas of my life.

12) Went to Lisbon, Portugal.  Saw the westernmost part of Europe.  Came back to Madrid and ate 12 grapes at Puerta del Sol.

13) Took a solo trip to Amsterdam and Paris.  Wore three pairs of socks and underwear to bear the cold, but saw the Anne Frank House, the Van Gogh Museum, the Eiffel Tower, and the Louvre.  Looked into Mona Lisa's eyes and am forever a changed man.

14)  Picked up new private lessons.  It appears that English is in demand here.

15) Started an introductory German class.  Proactively answering the question of whether I could ever learn a third language.

New Year, New Blogging

Welcome back to the blog!  We left off somewhere midway through last fall, when I let the blog slip away, and so begins my after-a-long-absence meditation on blogging.   Throughout the past months I've taken a lot of satisfaction in maintaining correspondence with close friends, as their robust responses are my biggest reward.  I also enjoy the form of self-disclosure and revelation that a one-on-one meeting with a friend provides, so I have chosen to divide my blogging time between e-mail and meetings.  However, the trade-off is while I am forging good relationships, I also miss out on the opportunity to share my experiences and impressions with the wider community, anyone who might potentially have an interest in reading them or could benefit in any way.

When I was in Florence, I wrote a blog entry just about every day.  The composition of my peer group was a bit different back then, as there weren't specific individuals to whom I wrote frequently, and since it was my first time traveling abroad by myself I wanted to make sure I kept every detail for posterity.  Sometimes, when my roommates went out for a night on the town, I politely declined so that I could craft my blog entry.  I traded potentially fun social experiences for nights of introspection.  In some ways, I am happy I did as I have a very thorough record of my times I can easily read through and share with someone who might be interested in Italy.  

During my trip to Tokyo one year later, I kept a blog for a week but I had two other things pulling at my time and attention: the pen-and-paper journal I was required to keep for the class, which proved to be a good personal outlet, and a few correspondences with people abroad I had an interest in keeping.  My professor, Sensei Morgan, was against online blogging and felt it detracted from contact with the culture and more personal forms of writing, and said that "you can watch videos of Tokyo on YouTube from your computer at home."  So, I adopted this philosophy and stopped the blog after my orientation in Chiba and upon my arrival in Tokyo.  

When I taught in Guatemala, much of my energies were put towards fostering ties with the children and other people there, so I continued the trend of pen-and-paper writing when I most needed an outlet and wrote e-mails.  I started a blog, but never updated.  It was one of the best summers of my life, and I'm glad I became completely immersed.  

So, here in Madrid I decided since this was a big undertaking to once again rekindle the blogging spirit.  Since I've once again found an outlet in other places, I've been less hard on myself and instead followed my courses of inspiration.  If responding to a message or meeting a friend for coffee is more compelling, I will do that.  Though, I do want to still keep the blog going from time to time.  One of my goals for the New Year 2012 is to improve my concentration, an area I did not previously realize needed work but now would like to make better.  I also found a new way to express my art and writing in the form of ¡Extran Hero!, a comic travel journal that I'm looking to update this spring.  

Which do you prefer: writing to loved ones, seeing people in person, keeping a blog, or turning experiences into art?  Or, do each have their separate or linked value?  Are they all worth doing?  

Monster Mash

This week, Halloween was on the mind.  Here's the rundown:

I showed up to class on Tuesday and was asked to give an impromptu reading of "The Raven."  It helped that we did a reading exercise about dress codes beforehand, entitled "Are You a Goodie With a Hoodie?" about bans of hoodies in schools and shopping malls (and conversely, a school in which hoodies are part of the uniform).  I threw up my hood and recited the poem. 

I read "The Raven" to an older group of students the next day, and showed them "The Simpsons" short to give them a visual aide.  Then I broke down some of the language of the poem to make it easier to understand:

"many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore" = interesting old books

"rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore" = beautiful dead girlfriend

I had my candle with me all week and frequently turned out the lights to recite scary stories.  One such story I invented involved a boy getting lost in a forest and entering a haunted house, and asking Frankenstein, a witch, and a skeleton if they were his daddy, mommy, and sister.  Largely inspired by a Maurice Sendak pop-up book, "Mommy?" in which a boy goes looking through a haunted house and asks various monsters if they are his mommy.   In my story, the boy finds his real family, he tells them what happened, and they think he is crazy. 

The teacher came up with an interesting twist: I would repeat the story a second time and the kids would recite back the lines of dialog and sound effects during my pauses.  I thought this was a great way to test their comprehension and memory and boost audience participation. 

Since today is the last day before a long weekend, we celebrated in school.  I dressed up as a vampire, with a cape and formal wear (though my make-up job was Joker-esque).  The kids bobbed for apples hanging from a volleyball net.  I was supposed to read scary stories inside one of the classrooms, but coordination was limited and nobody was directing students.  Instead, I ran around the playground saying, "I vant to suck your blood!"

On Monday I found the Peanuts 60th Anniversary Collection, which contains "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown," which I was excited to screen for my class.  However, when I tested the disc in the classroom DVD player I received a Disc Error, which didn't happen when I put in the second disc.  So I went back to the store from which I bought the DVD, Fnac, and they told me the only replacement copy was in a store outside of the city of Madrid.  I took a bus outside of the city to Plaza Norte to obtain the replacement.  When I tested the new DVD the next day- disc error!  Apparently the problem was not with the disc but with the DVD player.  Fortunately, my coordinator was able to project it off of his laptop for one of our classes, so I had the satisfaction of showing a group of students this holiday classic. 

Then, at the end of my final class, we danced the "Monster Mash."  A perfect way to end our celebration!

One of those days

Note: So we’re 2/3rds into October and I’ve decided to write my first update for the month.  As I exchange e-mails with friends and family about personal topics, I question the value of keeping a blog.  I would love to hear your insights- perhaps it is to maintain a flow of communication with a broader audience, or to disseminate information to everyone at once.  Mostly, I believe a blog should be a fun creative outlet, a forum for storytelling, a place to share thoughts and ideas.  So I will try to get back into the swing of it, since I believe there to still be unexplored value.

Onto the update:

Next week is Halloween, so I went out and bought a sticker book filled with Halloween images.  I had the students draw bats, jack o’ lanterns, spiders, witches, haunted houses, mummies, Frankenstein, and Dracula during English class.  I drew these images on the chalkboard and wrote their English names alongside.  Pandemonium filled the room each time I erased the images to replace them with new ones, but kids need to understand time allowances.  One student helped me in this endeavor, as he kept track of the ten-minute intervals on his watch and shouted the countdown at the front of the class as the other students raced to finish their drawings and yelled at him.  The exercise went well, and the students’ pages were filled with Halloween drawings. 

Then, two periods later after a long break, the art teacher was absent.  The teachers were once again on strike today and the students asked me if they could play futbol outside.  I almost relented and let them play until one girl came up to me and asked:

“Are we going to have art class today?”

“Do you want to?” I responded.

“Yes.”

“Then lets go inside.”

One student made me realize the importance of holding my ground, of committing to the act of teaching.  So I brought a class full of mopey faces inside, when all they wanted to do was play.  The class was so noisy that I cut them a deal; if they work for 25 minutes we could play Seven-Up at the end of class.  I started explaining the project: draw a three-panel comic strip using the Halloween characters from before.  Turns out, after the 25 minutes were up the students wanted to continue working on their comic strips.  A few kids rebelled- we had made a deal, after all- but I told them to look around at all the other students working.  When the bell rang the students had produced some amazing work.

Then, some students came running back into the room to tell me there was a disruption on the stairway.  One of the students in my class had fallen down and was in tears.  Time to maintain order, stay with the student, make him feel better, and seek help.

Once the day was done, I asked myself, “Did I really just do all that?” 

Yep, just another school day. 

Like Mike

Today the teacher for which I was a language assistant used me as the subject of her lesson.  She put me in the front of the room and told the students to ask me questions about myself.  Then, when the questions were finished, the teacher asked the students to repeat back some of the information I gave them.  I thought this was a great exercise, and not just because I was the center of attention.  Some of the questions were:

What is your favorite food?

            Pizza.

Do you have any siblings?

            Yes, one younger brother and his name is Matthew.

Where are you from? 

            Staten Island, New York (I drew out a crude map of NYC to explain this one)

How old are you?

            23 (I’m open about my age.)

Who is your favorite famous person?

            Paul McCartney (I had to explain to the class who The Beatles were- I hope to bring in their music one day.)

What is your favorite futbol team? 

            I know very little about futbol, but ‘Real Madrid’ is the only right answer here. 

What is your favorite sport? 

            Basketball (lies- I just enjoyed playing it the other day so I get points for consistency)

Who is your favorite basketball player?

            Michael Jordan  (because I can count the number of basketball players I know on one hand)

Then I explained to the class that when I was their age, Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls was the most famous player in basketball, and thousands of kids across America wanted to be “Like Mike.”  To clarify what this phrase meant, I asked them if they knew what a “role model” was.  They didn’t.  So, I said:

“A role model is someone who has qualities or characteristics of a person you would like to be.  Thousands of kids wanted to be Michael Jordan because of his athletic ability.  Just like Paul McCartney inspired thousands of aspiring young musicians, maybe even to pick up a guitar for the first time.  But a role model doesn’t have to be somebody famous; it can be a parent or a teacher or someone in your community, so long as that person teaches you something.”   

I don’t know if the students understand what a role model is, but I felt I had a teaching moment.

Teachers on Strike

This week a number of the teachers in the Comunidad de Madrid, the body that oversees the school system, went on strike.  The reason (as I understand it anyway) is that the teachers received pay cuts a couple years ago, and now the Comunidad is increasing their teaching hours by two hours per week, time they would normally use for planning.  Also, lots of teachers have been fired this year (my school lost 12) due to budget cuts. 

There are a couple of unions here, and one of the unions at my school decided to strike for two days this week.  I thought that strikes didn’t end until the demands were met, but the teachers can simply not afford to lose their salaries for more than two days.  The sad reality is that, in a country with a 20 percent unemployment rate, they are lucky to have jobs. 

This of course raises the question, “If teachers from Spain are being fired, why is the Comunidad bringing in so many teachers and auxiliaries from other countries?” It seems a lot of funding was put into the bilingual program, to improve the English level of Spanish students.  I’ve been very well received at my school, but this still gives me the drive to prove my worth. 

On Tuesday, one of the strike days, I was hanging out on the playground when a couple students came up to me and started cursing in English and making sexual innuendos.  Though I am told to only speak in English while at school, I broke into Spanish and said:

“Listen, I’m here to take part in a cultural exchange with you.  I studied Spanish for seven years in school, and I’m still learning.  I’m here to understand your language and your people, so I hope you will respect mine.” 

With that, they shook my hand.  Then we went and played basketball.  This year is off to a good start. 

Morning to Night

A recurring theme of my time here in Spain, during my immersion period, is that from the moment I wake up, until the time I go to sleep, I don’t quite know what’s going to happen.  Most of this is being in a new place with new people without many established routines.  

Things I have done this week:

1) Attended a U.S. Embassy film screening on the fallout of the Al Qaeda bombing of Atocha train station on March 11, 2004.  I gained insights into the psychological impact of attacks among people and communities affected.

2) Had a massage from a physical therapist for my neck.  This was no ordinary massage; I was contorted in ways I had not thought physically possible.  I have one final follow-up appointment tomorrow, and I’ll be all set.

3) Went to the school for a few days, helped out with the lessons.  Spanish students have to take preliminary exams as classes begin, so I proctored those.  I’m placed with a small group of eager-to-learn students in a wide range of classes (science, technology, P.E., art, and English).  Tuesday through Friday, so I’m excited to continue. Very happy with my coordinator, who gives me responsibility and takes an active interest in my progress.    

4) Received a guided tour of Madrid by a young guy (friend of this family).  I saw Goya’s tomb, Palacio Royal, and the Museo del Prado, free evenings from 6-8. Since we only saw a part of it (mostly Goya and Velazquez) I’ll be making more trips out there.

5) When I opened my bank account, the banker gave me a referral for private English classes, in which I led two one-hour conversations with each of two girls who live in a wealthy neighborhood.  I wasn’t asked to come back (I could only assume they wanted a “real teacher”) but I made 50 euro.  While I would have made more money, it’s probably for the best, since won’t have two of my evenings per week tied up.  I value my free time (in which I can learn Spanish, explore the city, see friends, create things) more than extra money.   

6) Spent time in the Museo del Reina Sofia, where I saw Picasso’s Guernica.  Took stock of this moment; I had used it as the basis of 9^th grade art project, and on September 17^th, 2011 finally saw it in person.  It is watched by one seated guard on each side, and has is massive.  It had a lot more scenic depth than I thought. 

7) Explored La Tabacalera, an incredibly cool abandoned warehouse filled with graffitied walls, live musics, workshops, gardens, and lounge areas.  It’s free to just come and hang out.  I saw a neat play there in which one guy plays a mother and son (wearing a mask for each, swapping one for the other in alternating scenes). I’ve never seen anything like this place. I’ve found my creative haven, and will be going there a lot with my sketchbook. 

8)  Enjoyed the Spanish nightlife.  Evenings here begin at 12 midnight and end at 6 am, which is ridiculous by standards I am used to, but exciting.  It’s strange to hear the night is “just beginning” at 2 am.  And the Metro stops running at 1:30, which means I end up sleeping at a friend’s house close to the city center.  Going to bars and clubs is the thing to do every weekend.  I find it hedonistic and wonder how this manifests into a sustainable lifestyle, but it’s great for meeting people, dancing, and having a good time. 

9) Ate doner kebabs and fried calamari sandwiches.

I’m finding this experience to be very broadening.  Being placed among a new group of people, from different life experiences, who are first forming impressions of each other, is a mirror into who you are.    I’ve had to challenge some of my ways of being- I’m a routine person with a sense of ordering my time, so here I am in situations in which I just  “go with the flow.” Back home, I had all of my events planned weeks in advance.  Here, I never know what the next day will bring.  Which, as I see it, is a recipe for adventure.