This is the End...My only friend, the end...(Part I)

This week was my last one in Alberite, the most tangible sign yet that this adventure is coming to an end. I have been taking photos of every class to keep for posterity, but for fairly obvious reasons, I'm reluctant to post them on the internet. My last day was full of surprises: the 5th and 6th graders presented me with a book that all the students had made, full of drawings about me; the teachers gave me a leather-bound agenda; and at break time, the teachers had a small, chocolate-filled snack set up for me. It was all very nice and unexpected, and I made sure to take photos of the teachers too, as I'm sure they won't mind appearing on the internet...

Monica, Laura, Susanna, Maria Jesus, Loli, Valvanera, Me, and José Luis

Toni, Judith, and me.

Maria Jesus, Susanna, Monica, Maria Jesus, Ana, Pilar, Santiago, Santiago, José Ignacio (standing)

Vanessa, Amparo (seated)

What made me happiest was that all the teachers, not just the ones with whom I worked, made a point to say goodbye and wish me good luck. The nature of my position has made it hard to know exactly where I stand as a member of the faculty/school, and this was a nice reminder.  Judith saw me red-eyed at one point and thought I was getting emotional. What she didn't realize was that I was coughing due to what was previously bronchitis, and is now pneumonia.

Next week I have only two days at Albelda before I'm done teaching here for good. I would say it's hard to believe, but I've moved around so much in the past few years that it isn't hitting me as hard as it should. Or it could just be because I'm currently being hit too hard with pneumonia to feel any emotions. I'll find out before long, I suppose.

Recent Realizations

I am now entering my last month in Logroño, which sounds a bit odd as I'm also reaching my peak level of comfort here. Among many other things going on (which I will discuss in future posts) the regional and local elections are being held on Sunday. Political campaigning here is a bit more active and open than in North America - posters advertise candidates, but also public rallies at which they will appear. There are also cars riding around town with speakers on their roofs, delivering announcements about their party's positions. There are also a few more visible parties here - I can name five off the top of my head - which doesn't begin to include the smaller alternative ones.

Beyond that, this campaign is much the same as the ones back home: lots of talk about jobs and taxes, plenty of photos of candidates and campaign slogans that get burned into your memory. On that note, the PP (the conservatives, quite popular in La Rioja) had a slightly embarrassing moment early on, when they released an English slogan ("I'm with you"), probably to build off the fame of Obama's "Yes we can." It fell flat when people realized the irony of a party that supports public spending cuts advertising in a language that Riojans will only understand with a strong public education system.

Also politically speaking, you may have heard news of the "Egypt-like" campout that is happening in Madrid at this very moment. A small cousin of that larger demonstration has appeared in Logroño's Plaza del Mercado, but I have yet to see it. Although news coverage of politics in Spain tends to be more reasonable than in the US, they have already started referring to this demonstration as the 15-M movement - the movement of the 15th of May. Considering that Fidel Castro's revolutionary movement in Cuba was similarly referred to as the 26-J movement - for 26th of July - that's quite a title for what seems to me to be a fairly typical protest. But I do notice that news outlets seem less willing to condemn the protesters than they are in North America...take from that what you will.

But the real reason I wanted to write this post is a bit of a revelation on the language front. Improving my Spanish continues to provide challenges and successes, one of which is reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in Spanish (Harry Potter y las reliquias de la muerte). But I had a major realization a few weeks ago. Learning a language does not just depend upon learning grammar and vocabulary - it also requires you to learn how people use it. For example, some things that are easy to say in English translate to rather long Spanish words, and vice versa, meaning people are more likely to use certain turns of phrase in one language than they are in the other.

This hit me when I was grocery shopping and a child in front of me was carrying a Kinder egg to add to his mom's groceries. The cashier said the following: "Tienes que darme el huevito, y luego te lo doy, vale? [She rings it up] Toma, chiquitín." Putting that in English word order and literally translating, she said: "You have to give me the little egg, and later I give it to you, okay? Take, lad." Although that would make sense in English, it is not what we would say either.

Perhaps the best example of this trend is the Spanish word igual. It has a variety of translations, but none of them encompasses its use, at least in Spain. Rather than use the complicated subjunctive forms that every student of Spanish struggles to learn, many Spanish people begin sentences with igual to imply uncertainty. For instance, to say "I might take a bus," my Spanish education would teach me to say "Podría ir en autobús." But my experience here has taught me a much easier way to say it: "Igual voy en autobús." Its literal meaning would be "Equally, I go by bus," but for the reasons mentioned above, its understood meaning is different. If I ever needed validation of my decision to learn Spanish by surrounding myself with it, this is it.

Journey Through the Past (and France)

It's now been almost two weeks since my last post, but they have been very full. As I wrote about then, I spent my Easter holidays back in the low countries with friends from the year I spent on exchange there (2008-09). The ambitious part of the journey was getting there, as I planned to do it without flying. As it turns out, I'm a pretty good at being my own travel agent. Everything went off without a hitch.

The bus ride to Hendaye (just over the border in France) went smoothly - it was full of people heading to the beach in San Sebastian, including one of my first-grade students and his family. Part of me was grumbling about not being able to leave work behind, but it also made me feel much more like I actually live here, rather than just being a visitor. The majority of the passengers got off in San Sebastian, and from there it was a guessing game as to which of the remaining small stops was Hendaye. It was particularly fun considering I was reading signs in three languages - French, Spanish, and Basque. The train station in Hendaye is the terminus of the Euskotren system (the Basque region's commuter rail) and the terminus (in the other direction) of the French national rail system. At the Euskotren platform, the station is known as Hendaia, while at the SNCF platform, it's called Hendaye. It was an interesting glance into the oddities of regions with linguistic minorities.

I had high expectations for the TGV train that I took to Paris, and it met them. The staff were helpful and friendly (although their quick transitions into English reminded me how poor my French has become), I had two seats to myself the whole way, and we made a total of only 5 or 6 stops, most of them in the first hour. The rest of the trip was simply watching France fly by in comfort. Upon arrival in Paris, I realized I wasn't going to see any of the city if I took the metro to my hostel, so I walked from Gare Montparnasse to my hostel near Gare du Nord, which took about an hour and a half. It was a slight shock to be in such a big city again, but Paris is always fun to look at. Perhaps the most memorable part of my walk was near the Île-de-la-Cité, when a young man decided to throw himself on the ground in front of me in a push-up position and crabwalk to prevent me from passing. Not able to yell at him in French, I let another pedestrian's right foot do the work of clearing the way, and then checked to make sure I hadn't been robbed.

After a fairly uneventful stay at the hostel, I woke up at 6 and walked to Gare du Nord, where I ordered a muffin and thanked the woman in Spanish (a habit that took me a few days to kick). My Thalys train left just after 7, making one stop in Brussels before dropping me at Liège 5 minutes after the hourly train to Maastricht. I wasted time by reading Metro, the free newspaper available in train stations, and made it to Maastricht a little before 11. The whole journey took a little over 24 hours (with a sleep in a bed included), and was generally comfortable.

The rest of my week was like updating an old photo album. I went to Guillaume's house in Louvain-la-Neuve (near Brussels) with Chris, where we played croquet, enjoyed his mom's always amazing cooking (including waffles, which somehow are always on the menu when I'm around), and enjoyed sunny 25°C weather, for which I had to borrow shorts and flip-flops. Once we got back to Maastricht, I whiled away a pleasant 3 days hanging out with old friends and meeting new ones, playing soccer by the medieval city walls, and brushing up on my Dutch. I actually feel like I've improved simply by virtue of being more accustomed to speaking a second language. On Friday, I left Maastricht with Rene, Guillaume and Chris to go to Nijmegen, where Rene's sister lives, to enjoy the Queen's Night celebration. The following morning, we headed to Amsterdam to celebrate Queen's Day (the annual celebration of the Queen's birthday, a public holiday and tax holiday). I spent only a few hours there before heading to the airport for my flight back to Madrid, from whence I caught the bus to Logroño and arrived back, exhausted, at 5 AM.

Altogether, it was an enjoyable trip that reminded me of the little things I forgot about my year in Holland, like the impossible-to-navigate train ticketing system and the fun-sounding language. But mostly, it was nice to see my friends again and enjoy their company with no other responsibilities. I was also happy to find out that Spain got drenched with rain while I was gone, while Holland and Belgium were both almost perfectly sunny and warm.

Near Guillaume's house in Louvain-la-Neuve.

On the east side of the Maas.

Market Square in Maastricht.

Queen's Day in Amsterdam.

A little souvenir of the Dutch language - "I'm the boss."