This is Periana

What serves as the town’s main square sits right outside my señora’s front door. This small plaza, complete with gurgling fountain, stone benches, and a view of a church constitutes the principle—and only—ventricle of Periana’s rather tiny heart. At almost all hours of the day, the town’s entire population of 80-year-old men, which is impressively large, can be found milling around, gossiping about assuredly manly topics, and glaring unashamedly at the American oddity, should she pass by. They wear 1920’s-style paperboy hats and sweater vests as they progress from bench to bench, then slowly around the outer rim of the square. In the hour or two that precede and follow both sunrise and sunset, the plaza’s three ample trees become overrun by tiny squawking birds seemingly hopped up on amphetamines. Near that time every evening, children pore into the nearby playground and younger, middle-aged men join in the milling as everyone waits for dinnertime. Earlier in the day, 9-year-old boys careen through street and square on their bikes, disturbing passing dogs and cars. Next door there’s a restaurant called El Verdugo that is constantly open and constantly filled with at least a few chattering townsfolk, be they 80-year-old-men or middle-aged expats. At night when I try to sleep I hear their steady business through the wall. From my window, I have a perfect view of it all, including the gauzily painted mountains in the backdrop. At sunset, pink and orange first sifts and then sears its way through my curtains, skirting the trees and the bars of my balcony. It eventually turns to slate, finally hiding the mountains in black.

My señora is a 4-foot-5-inch woman of about 75 with a limp and missing teeth. Her name is María, and Luís, the bilingual director at my school, considers her the town gossip. She lives alone in a house with six bedrooms all meticulously decorated and tidy. She has nieces and nephews flung throughout Spain and beyond, including one named Emily in the United States. She eats salads almost as much as I do, and is forever stocked with fruit (and fruit flies).

My room is the first one at the top of the stairs. A picture of Jesus that hangs on the wall separates the two twin beds. The bathroom down the hall has a hurricane for a shower. Each morning I fight to see my way to my shampoo, the unrelenting torrent of spray completely encompassing every square inch of space on the inside of the shower curtain. I have to hold my hands in front of my to get back toward the dials. Despite my best efforts, each time I stumble out I find vast puddles of water engulfing the bathroom floor.

I.E.S. Alta Axarquía is a school of about 500 students between the ages of 12 and 19. It sits on top of a hill at the edge of town, about a 15-minute’s walk from my señora’s house. The building, which is encased by a wrought iron fence, is surrounded by spindly olive trees. On days when I have early classes, the walk is mostly dark, with hints of sunrise coming up behind my back. When I arrive an hour later, a flat light sits upon the valley and the mountains, softening the landscape’s contours and the chill. Everyday, I seek refuge in the relative quiet of the teacher’s lounge, along with the other 50 teachers who seem to socialize and dawdle just as much as their students. One wall is lined with wooden locker cubes, of which #47 is now mine. There are several computers, daily copies of El país show up at some point during the day, and there’s a poster about “getting to know autistics.” The English Department, where I take my small groups of students several times a day, is a small room on the second floor that, like everything else, is always locked. There are ruthlessly abridged copies of A Christmas Carol and Sense and Sensibility along with maps and dictionaries and posters. In the basement, there’s a little cafeteria that dishes out pitufos, simple sandwiches of cheese and any of several Spanish hams and doused in the town’s famous olive oil. Students can go down and buy food during the 30-minute break for “breakfast” that happens at 11:15, and the teachers seem to disappear down to there at multiple times each day.

At 2:45, school officially ends and everyone heads home for lunch. This is when I’m usually at loss for what to do. The municipal building has free internet access at certain times during the week, so sometimes I go there to work on grad school applications or update Facebook. I tend to wander repeatedly between the school, which also offers free internet, the grocery store, the (single) postal drop-box, the plaza, and my señora’s house. Occasionally I search out streets that I haven’t yet wound my way down, or I sit on a bench and read or write or plan the next day’s lessons. After awhile, I notice that the birds have gotten significantly louder, the temperature’s dropped, and the sky is turning colors, at which point I retreat back into my room.