And then I went to Lisbon

Abi went to Lisbon in February. Abi loved Lisbon. Abi told me to go to Lisbon. I hopped on a 9 1/2 bus filled with exuberant snorers on Wednesday night and followed that with another 9 1/2 hours back three days later (complete with an even more exuberant snorer). Totally worth it.


Pretty Lisbon!


The view from one of the miradours.


Police on Segways!


So this is in my hostel with a Lithuanian guy whose name I never quite understood and the hostel worker, Benedita, whose from Angola and is generally awesome. You can't really tell, but Lithuanian guy is picking up both Benedita and myself--it was impressive, and probably wine-induced.


At the Castelo dos Mouros in Sintra, outside of Lisbon


The Castelo


Wandering along the coast in Cascais, west of Lisbon.

Emily and the Dromedary

Me, happily perched atop my dromedary in Tangier.



Trying to get off my dromedary without falling.



Very cute dromedary.

Trip to Gibraltar with the Family!

Me at the top of Gibraltar with the windiness!


I hate monkeys. Even contemplative monkeys.

It's my birthday; and I'm here!

The past couple of weeks have been busy with birthday celebrations. Upon returning from Sevilla--bag and camera securely strapped to me at all times--there was an E-Cubed birthday bash for Ellie, Emily 2, and Emily 1 (I'm Emily 1 even though I'm four years younger than my South Carolina-born Periana counterpart). The party was complete with an enormous laundry tub filled with homemade sangría, complete with floating pieces of chopped up fruit. It was like something out of the wonderful world of Carleton. Emily 2 had made peanut butter and jelly tea sandwiches; I had brought my staples: hummus and grandma specials; two kinds of salsas and two kinds of cake somehow found their way into the spread; and everything was topped off by lots of bouncy polyglots, a fair amount of song and dance numbers, and matching birthday headbands for E-Cubed. About mid-way through the party, my roommates Salva and Katharina, along with our friend Rafa, presented the three of us with presents. Ellie got a chic new belt, Emily 2 was given a torquise handbag, and then I was handed a plain white envelope containing a homemade gift certificate for a book of my choosing at our nearby bookstore. They know me so well :)


So much sangría! We (I?) were picking the apple chunks out of the bottom of the tub by the end of the evening.


Americans! The three birthday girls (Emily 2 with the pink butterfly headband, Ellie with the purple one, and me with the one-winged blue butterfly [it had become a full-contact party a few hours in]) plus Megan and Latané.

This past weekend, after shutting myself in my apartment all week to work on fellowship applications, I headed off to Granada along with a bunch of other language assistants to celebrate my birthday. I hitched a ride with Julia, a fellow teacher who spends her weekends in Granada, and we hurdled our way along the tiny roads that curve through the rocky mountains surrounding Periana, over the line that divides the province of Málaga from that of Granada, past crumbling farmsteads with herds of goats chomping listlessly at overgrown grass, and through tiny villages before hitting the main highway that leads into Granada. Though I wouldn't have guessed it from her less-than-imposing stature, Julia's approach to driving is of the aggressive, kill the road before the road kills you, sort. I tried my best not to look in front of me as trees and houses flung themselves toward my face, concentrating instead on holding up my end of the conversation. In the end, we arrived in central Granada in about one-fifth of the time it would have taken me to take the bus, and for about 20 Euros less.

Shortly after I arrived and had met up with Gondi and Anne, my German host, we were joined by Emily 2, Liz, Katharina, Miguel, and various other Germans. Taking advantage of the warm weather and clear skies, we watched the sun set over the city from Plaza San Nicolás, which has an incredible view of the Alhambra looking out over Granada. About one hundred people had gathered in the little square, and daylight ebbed they cracked open beers, played guitars, bought and sold homemade jewelery, and snapped pictures. My group, prepared as always, celebrated the colorful sky with clementines, magdalena muffins, beer, and tinto de verano.



Later that night, I found myself in a bar near Anne's apartment being sung "Happy Birthday" in Spanish and English by random bar-goers, including one guy who was similarly celebrating his birthday. Free tapas and free serenading makes for a good city.

My actual birthday started with a somewhat-recognizable version of french toast we made using tupperware and lots of cinnamon, and then led to wandering, tapas-ing, 2-Euro coffee-and-Bailey's-ing, skirt-buying, dinner-making, and then party-prepping. In my time away from the apartment that day, party decorations, a hand-drawn birthday sign, and a bottle of Bailey's had all Dinner was tasty and hummus-accompanied, and followed by a steady stream of people, some I knew and some I didn't, entering the apartment. Before too long, there were party-goers donning plastic bags (not me), flamenco outbursts, coffee and Bailey's pick-me-ups being passed around, balloons being popped, and no more hummus. At some point, someone gave me earrings and someone else gave me a Portuguese dictionary (this has become quite fortuitous). Around 3a.m., I couldn't fight it anymore and headed to my inflatable mattress while others partied on. They later told me they'd been up until 4:30, at which point some had decided to go out. I felt old.

After some intense cleaning Sunday morning-ish, we headed back to Vélez on the bus, making it back in time for a deluge that has only stopped for a few hours at a time in the four days since. Rain-soaked Vélez was a welcome sight, though, because much of the 3-hour ride had been spent listening to shrill, old Spaniards arguing heatedly about the price of garbanzo beans. I still don't quite understand why.

Up in smoke

The computer in my little classroom exploded today. I was sitting with two students working on a dialogue about them meeting Brad Pitt in Hollywood when we heard two popping explosions and then saw modest plumes of soot-colored smoke shoot out from under the monitor. It looked kind of like a pyrotechnics display that had backfired; the showy blast was replaced by an anti-climactic, almost laughable few puffs from a smoke machine. Still, the three of us were rather alarmed. I told the students to get out of the room, shut the door behind us, and led them downstairs to the office.

"My computer exploded," I told Enrique, the man who is in charge of handing out room keys and buzzing people in from outside of the school gates. We went to find Felix, the guy in charge of all things technological. He was outside smoking and said he'd come upstairs to look at it when he was finished. My students and I went back upstairs to retrieve their notebook from the room so we could continue working. Opening the door we were bombarded by the smell of singed computer parts that had invaded the small room. The girls squealed and ran out; I grabbed their notebook. They girls later laughed about the look that had come over my face. "Well, obviously," I told them. "I've never seen anything like that before."

Spanish safety nets

Every so often I feel as if there is some kind of magic safety net sitting quietly below me, biding its time until called upon to hold out its sprawling arms and catch me when I start to fall. This is a convenient thing to have.

I arrived in Sevilla yesterday to meet Ariel, a friend I had made in Chile, who is on vacation while studying in Istanbul for the year. Soaking up the sun and clear skies, we wandered from bull ring to cathedral to windy street to eclectic store, picking our way through various neighborhoods and working up an appetite. Consulting my ever-present guidebook, we found our way to a cheap tapas bar tucked down curving side streets. We sat down to tinto de verano, patatas bravas, and bocadillo, losing ourselves in the kind of conversation that's been so hard to come by with my less-close friends in Velez, and marveling at the enormous crowds of American college students nervously arriving in Sevilla, and our chosen bar, ready for their study abroad orientations to begin (for once, I wasn't the only North Face-wearing joven in the room; there were at least three other girls sporting my most-loved outerwear). As we were getting ready to pay before heading off to our next stop, I grabbed for my wallet and discovered that it, along with my entire bag, was missing.

I've heard horror stories of women getting their purses stolen off the backs of their chairs at restaurants, of people reaching into backpacks as tourists walk down the street, of cell phones being ripped out of unsuspecting hands. I know not to put my stuff out of my own reach or where I can't see it. Every time I sit down at a restaurant or a bar I consciously loop my bag's strap through my leg or I put it on my lap or between me and the wall. I thought about this very thing when I sat down at this bar. And yet, for some reason I put it on the chair next to me and promptly forgot about it.

When I realized it was gone, I panicked. Well, I calmly panicked. I went up to the bar and told them my bag was missing, that I didn't know what to do. With genuine concern, they looked around, commenting that they'd seen a suspicious-looking man come in not too long ago; he looked at the menu and then left. They told me where the police station was, and I asked for their card while Ariel paid for our order. Wide-eyed and stammering, I put on my coat and we started to leave. Then, materializing out of nowhere, was a policeman gripping my bag's bunched-up strap as if it were a dead chicken hanging upside-down. I gaped. He asked me if it was mine and I stammered, "yes, yes!" I showed him my Spanish I.D. card that was sitting comfortably in its little card slot, which was right next to my credit cards, my ATM cards, my driver's licence, and the almost 200 Euros I had just gotten out of my bank account. I showed him my digital camera I had bought to replace the one that had met a sad and unnoticed death in the wilds of Patagonia (which had been a replacement for a previous camera that met its death in my backpack on its way to a geology lab) along with the special case I had bought to keep it safe. I showed him my omnipresent guidebook and my Spanish cell phone--one of few lifelines in the sea of frequent social boredom. And I showed him the bag I had bought at a street market in Rio, having spent half the day walking past its stall trying to decide if it was really worth the 20 reals.

Following the policeman outside of the bar, I saw a second policeman standing next to a slight, shifty-looking man who seemed kind of bored. I looked at him quizzically and then, as he put his hands together as if in prayer, realized that he had stolen my bag. The policemen debated about what to do between the two of them, Ariel, myself, and the shifty bored guy watching. They presented me with my options: take my stuff and go, or follow them to the police station where my stuff could be valued and a formal denunciation could be filed. If I chose the latter, and the items added up to a certain amount of money, the man's charge would be raised from a "falta" to a "delito," but the police would hold onto my things for the next three days; if I chose the former, shifty bored guy would be allowed to walk away with just a "falta." As I stood there trying to decipher what was actually involved in making a "denuncio," and whether it meant that they weren't going to let me have my money or my I.D. or my camera until Saturday when I was supposed to go home, the thief stood across from me, sporting a very disingenuous look of pain, asking for mercy and absolution. The policemen got confused. They whipped out their cell phones and walked across the street to be out of earshot, telling the man to stay where he was. Ariel and I waited. We exchanged awkward glances with the shifty guy who, looking more resigned and less bored, had sat down on the curb.

The policemen finally came back over and told me that they could value all of my things right there and then let me take everything with me. The guy would go free for now, but they would denounce him in the morning. They would call me if my presence was needed. The possibility of a denunciation actually getting filed seemed unlikely but, as we stood their shivering in the cold, it was becoming more and more important to me to just get my things back and leave. So I agreed, and we started enumerating the contents of my bag and their values. The camera, I told him, had cost me $400, but I'd also bought an $85 warranty for it. "Camera Sony," he wrote down. "485 Euros." "Um, yeah..." I smiled. I pointed to the back of my guide book where $22.99 was printed. "Guía de España," he wrote down. "23 Euros." The policemen snickered. I love that law enforcement takes advantage of exchange rates.

When we'd finished writing everything down, the two policemen said goodbye to the thief, telling him not to let them catch him again. His eyes twinkled and he shrugged his shoulders as he gave a sheepish, but also conniving, grin. Finally, still somewhat gaping, I thanked the policemen and Ariel and I hurried away from the bar and the darkened winding streets and the mysterious safety net that seemed to sit beneath them.

Jewish Quarter Falafels!

Falafely goodness!!















Our popular falafel-eating corner.

Notes on traveling and snow

I'm noticing that a lot of my posts have to do with food. This one will be no different.

It's 2:15p.m. on Saturday afternoon. I was supposed to be back in Vélez two days ago, but instead I'm standing on a street corner in Paris eating a delicious and ginormous falafel with a tiny plastic fork. Beth, my enthusiastic host and fellow teaching assistant, is standing next to me and pointing out the growing number of other falafel-eating individuals who are migrating to our street corner and its shaft of warm sunlight. I slip my camera out of my coat pocket and "subtly" snap pictures of our quiet, chomping neighbors. There's a half-eaten loaf of fresh challah in my purse.

It's not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon. If it weren't for the hours spent in a frozen, snowed-in train station in Marseille and the canceled trains and missed buses that had characterized the last couple of days, and the obscenely expensive airport mistake I would make later that day, it would have been just about perfect. We'd even managed to get ourselves into the Pompidou Museum for free, Beth talking her way past the fact that I had no verification of the fact that I was a teacher. My favorite falafel place was closed because of Shabbat, but luckily the Jewish Quarter is full of non-holiday-conforming food joints, and I even got to introduce Beth to her very first challah.

The freak snowstorm in Marseille had started on Wednesday. It was the most snow the city had seen in twenty years, and it almost immediately closed the airport, stopped all southbound/-originating trains, and immobilized the entire city, blanketing it in as much as 30 centimeters of snow. That day's attempt to check out the town of Arles, where Van Gogh had his yellow house, ended in Avignon, when the train suddenly decided that it couldn't brave the remaining 5 or 10 miles. Hovering around computers and airport webpages that night, my chances for actually making it to Madrid on sch edule the next day were looking grim. A little before 5am the next morning I learned that my train was canceled, but I was able to catch a later one that finally got me safely to Marseille. Having said goodbye to Abi several hours earlier in the still-dim early-morning light of Valence, I suddenly found myself shivering and decidedly not French-speaking in the icy chaos that was Marseille's bus/train station. Not only was the airport still closed, but the shuttle buses between the station and the airport had stopped running, leaving me stranded in the station with my large suitcaseas many inches of wet snow sat unshoveled outside. No one seemed able to give me any information so, after traversing the length of the station in hopes of inspiration, I sat down at one of the few empty booths at a McDonald's bistro to take advantage of its free wifi. Several hours of shivering later, my flight finally showed up as canceled on the Ryanair website, and I hopped a train back to Abi's warm apartment. There, we did a bit of research and decided that the best plan would be to take a train to Paris the next night, spend the night there as well as the following day, then take a late plane from Paris to Madrid, spend the night in Madrid, and then take a bus from Madrid to Málaga. All in all, I'd get back to Vélez three days later than I'd planned.

There are worse things that can happen to a person than having to spend three extra days in France. 1 Euro crepes, Italian movies accompanied by Italian subs, Jewish Quarter falafels previewed by Jewish Quarter challah tend to make me smile, as do life-saving friends in really convenient places. It all seemed rather meant to be, a happy little accident of snow--that is until I walked into Charles de Gaulle Airport, having successfully maneuvered various subway lines and trains to get there, and discovered that I was in the wrong airport.

Cities should not have multiple airports. I am against this on principle. It is showy and presumptuous. It is potentially dangerous and costly. It very nearly made me cry. And it made my memory of Jewish Quarter falafel seem bitter and somewhat caustic. The taxi driver doubted that he could get me to Beauvais in time for my flight, not to mention the fact that it was going to cost me 100 Euros. The Vueling flight four hours later ended up costing me 180, plus the cost of the lost Ryanair flight, plus my travel fork I had stashed in my carry-on, plus my pride. It all got a little worse when, just as my new flight was getting ready to board, it was suddenly delayed, due to the heavy snow in Madrid that--probably--had delayed my original flight as well, meaning I probably could have foregone the 100 Euro taxi and opted for the train. When I finally landed in Madrid around midnight I had an hour and a half to collect my luggage, get out of the airport, and take the three different metro lines necessary to get to my next conveniently-located friends' apartment before the subway closed for the night. Despite managing to get on a train going in the wrong direction a couple stops before her street, I avoided that last problem, ringing her buzzer around 1:28am. Amber, knowing me all too well, sat me down in her kitchen and handed me an apple. Things got a little better.