Eres un bombón...

I've heard a lot of funny pickup lines, but this one really made me laugh. Two nights ago as I was walking home at (I know, I know) 4:30 in the morning from the Metro stop, this Spanish dude pulled towards the sidewalk and rolled down his window. I realize that it's not spectacular to talk to strangers, but at first I thought he was going to ask me for directions (which I would have answered with, "Sorry, I don't know the area that well"). But instead, he asked me where I was going. A casa, I told him, starting to walk away. Eres un bombón, he told me, and then held up a joint and asked if I'd like to hang out with him for a smoke. I politely declined the invitation, said goodnight and continued on my way. I enjoyed being called a "chocolate candy," however.

Doesn't Ricky Martin have a "shake your bombón" song? He might, now that I think about it. No, wait, it's "shake your bon-bon." My mistake.

Below, is a picture of me in all of my "bombón-ness" underneath a Magnolia tree in Madrid. Apparently they are living fossils. They evolved before bees were around. I had no idea these things were so genetically solid. Way to go, Magnolias!

Also, I'm quite excited by this Metro ad (below). It makes me smile every time I see it: "Alicia. Teacher of young children. She's always the first to arrive to class."

That's me. Also, this chica has some seriously awesome style. She's gotta be the cool teacher. Some of the other ads show her very, very cool lace-up boots.

Lastly, I was pretty dang psyched to find the same advisory warning on a Spanish cigarette box that I saw on one in Italy. I wanted to compare the two. As you can see, they are very similar. I would undoubtedly find it (1) very easy to understand written Italian if I started learning it, but at the same time (2) terribly confusing to try to remember the which words belonged to which language, once I had to produce something.


I am off today to try to buy some things in the "Taste of America" store. As gifts, that is. I think it may be the only place in Spain that you can buy rootbeer. Or peanut butter. Or Jelly Bellys. :)

Venice Beach Ultimate

Finishing up the story of last weekend: Once I took the train to Venice, I took one of the canal boats to this island called Lido. That's where the beach tournament took place. As the Spaniards I hang out with already had all of the slots filled for their team, I was on the pick up team, which consisted of a couple of American (USA) girls, some dudes from France, a guy from Belgium, at least a couple of Italians, and probably someone else that I am forgetting. This was my team.

How we were able to communicate at all was semi-miraculous. It was largely thanks to the great lengths that Europeans go to to learn English. It makes me feel very fortunate, mostly. At first, we had to get used to each other. Then, little by little, we started feeling and playing like an actual team. The rest of the teams we played against had two main advantages: (1) the advantage of having played together for awhile for months or years and (2) the advantage of all speaking a common language. Cheers and instructions from our sideline came in many colors and languages. At the end of one of our games, our elected "speech giver" was asked to give the end-of-game speech in French. I understood about ten percent of it. Or less.

This is what Lido looked like (partly), with cute, windy roads:

Most of us rented bikes and rode around the island like that, ringing little bells. Of course, they were old 1950's-style bikes with giant baskets in the front and reaaaaaaally bad brakes. The good news about the bad brakes is that the bike rental did not come with the option of a helmet rental. Everytime a car passed me in transit, I held on tight to the handlebars and sucked my breath in a little bit. Here is me on a bike.

Below, you can see the gorgeous beach we played on. The sand was amazingly soft. Stepping in the sand was like walking through granulated silk. Scorching hot granulated silk.

Did I mention how suffocatingly hot it was in Venice last weekend? I don't believe I did. I just asked one of the guys I'm staying with how many degrees it was when we were there, and I really loved his answer: Ehhhhh... trienta y bastante. Which translates roughly to "thirty degrees and some unnecessarily high number in the ones place" or "dude, it was hotter than it needed to be." For the "metric impaired" (and I know I certainly am), thirty-five degrees Celcius is about ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit. Now, ninety-five degrees in Madrid is pretty tolerable, what with the air being very dry and all, but keep in mind that Venice is on the water. So the humidity "adds ten degrees" as my friend over here commented, but as he was talking in metric degrees, perhaps we can assume that it felt like it was one-hundred ten degrees. It did, I assure you. It was one of those lovely climates in which the only relief is a shower, a swim in the ocean, or a leisurely dip in a plastic kiddie pool with seven members of Madrid's ultimate team (true story). And once out of the shower/ocean/kiddie pool, there is never the luxury of drying off. Even if the water eventually evaporates, it is replaced by sweat.

So I spoke English most of the weekend, unfortunately... but I had some opportunities to utilize the Spanish at Saturday night's tournament dinner and after-party. I'd tell you what kind of nonsense my crazy Spaniard friends provoked at aforementioned party, but I'll leave you wondering. Because it's more fun that way. I will say, however, that the limbo was involved.


When all was said and done, I left Lido and returned to the Venice "mainland" I guess you could call it. I spent a full twenty-four hours with my new friend from Colombia, during which, I was babbling on and on in Spanish, and wishing it had been like that all vacation. We stayed in the house of a really sweet Spanish couple (also in their twenties) who were living for a year in Venice. This is a picture of the downstairs of their house.

There, we hung up all of our wet things to dry for the night, all sat down at the red and white checkered table cloth, and ate dinner. This was one of the precious times this trip when I have been "in the groove." I was following normal-speed, slang-filled, conversation with four native Spanish speakers. Not only was I understanding everything, but I was participating like a normal human being, and even joking around. And they were laughing! Not at me either, but with me. I love those moments. I wish I could bottle them and let them out the next time I trip all over a verb conjugation and feel bad about myself.

Okay, I think that's all. Tomorrow, I'll have to write about today.

Adventures with Italian... and, as always, Spanish

Part 2: Milan

After a rather uneventful (and happily so) flight to Milan, I was at last in Italy. I took a bus ride to the central bus station, and talked to an Italian who knew neither English nor Spanish. It was tricky, but Spanish served me well. I was able to ask him questions in Spanish and he was able to answer in Italian. Pretty awesome. That's what I was hoping would happen.

I decided to catch a later train to Venice so that I could wander around and pretend that I was Italian for awhile. Thankfully, the "looking Italian" part went pretty well, as I have that genetic advantage of having Italian descendants on my mother's side of the family. Check. What usually thwarts such illusions is the fact that when I open my mouth, the language I'm most likely to speak is not Italian. Sure, I know some words and phrases like molto bene! and ciao and grazie, along with foods like linguine, spaghetti, ravioli, etc... but those are not likely to sustain me in any situation except for buying pasta in an Italian supermarket.

I talked to as many Italian people as I could, always asking first if they spoke Spanish because... boy do I hate letting people hear me use English! I don't know... I guess it's just a part of me that wants people to see that, although my language is not perfect, I am putting in the effort. I always feel that, as an American, I have to represent my people well. I want other people to say, "Hey, maybe all Americans aren't bad after all... that one was trying really hard to speak our language." We (native English speakers) have the luxury of having the world at our fingertips. We don't have to learn other languages. We let other people learn ours. I like to struggle through to show that I appreciate how much work the rest of the world does to bend over backwards to talk to us. Anyway, enough of my soapbox rant... I had a few people thinking that I was a Spaniard... including two native Spanish speakers from the Dominican Republic that I later met at the train station when I bought my tickets.

Here is a picture of the first place I stopped in... a little Milano cafe with a sign bragging of soymilk accommodations in their caffeinated beverages. Be still my beating vegan heart.


Then I stopped at a bookstore to enjoy their air conditioning and found a few gems:


Diary of a Wimpy Kid! Apparently schiappa (skee-AH-pah)** is someone who is incompetent. Not a direct translation, but pretty fun. Love it.


Then I happened upon this book, which, to my best knowledge, is entitled "Vegetables: Cooked and Raw." Now, all was going just fine, each page with a giant picture of a vegetable, until I turned to this page. The pages went something like this: Carrot, tomato, artichoke...squid? What?! I wish I had been able to read it to see the justification for such an obvious blunder. Last I checked, squid was filed away under "c" for "certainly not a vegetable." Apparently, according to Italians, I am wrong.

More to come. Ciao!

**Thank you to my friend Justin for steering me correctly on my Italian pronunciation.

Italy for the weekend.

I am taking a last-minute, impromptu trip to Venice, Italy to play in an ultimate tournament on the beach called "Redemption." I am leaving in a few minutes to catch the last metro of the night and then I will sleep in the Madrid airport. In case that doesn't hit home for you, my flight is at 6 in the morning. I don't really know where I will be sleeping this weekend, but most likely outside. We'll see if someone is nice enough to let me into their tent. I've been told that it's too hot for sleeping bags in Italy these days. So basically, I will be living like a bum. Don't tell my mother. Oh wait... she reads this.

Also, this is the first time in my life that I bought a plane ticket without really being certain if I was going to be allowed into the tournament, where I would sleep, what I would eat, how I would return, etc. For a gal whose job it is to plan every square inch of a day for ten and eleven year olds for nine months of the year, this is rebellion to the opposite extreme: Plan nothing and hope for the best.

This is for you, mom.

I'll let you guys know how my Spanish fares while talking to Italians.**

**I'm technically half-Italian.

Ciao, Madrid! I'll update when I get back on Monday night or Tuesday!