Primero
Went to bed the night before the big trip way way way demasiado tarde. Woke up a few hours later at 9:45, having to leave at noon for the new land dubbed the Old World, headed to rejewishize the land of la reconquista and the inquisition. Still had a lot of packing to do at that point, so I did it while Bonnie got a nice book with pictures of RI for a present for la nueva familia. Two of the hardest goodbyes, then, to my perro, Astra, and Shan, mi gato favorito…posiblemente mi animal favorito. Certainly along with Astra my favorite living things in the house. In fact, the only actual picture I took with me (not counting all the ones on my computer) was of Astra, when she was a bit younger. I remember my mom stood to the side of me holding a treat up in the air so Astra would sentarse and pose for the picture. The ride to JFK was extremely short compared to what we had expected, so I arrived plenty early to worry about my new family, my new friends, mi nueva idioma. Needless to say, I first got to the airport reasonably apprehensive. Made the rounds more or less with the kids que ya estaban. I made a good first impression, which I’ve been doing a lot of these days, oddly enough. Fancy that, a personable Baruch. Pues, una chica who was EXTREMELY striking came around. Not stunning physically or anything like that, her personality was just extremely out there. No era overly talkative or too cheery…just extremely memorable. También, hablé con una chica que estoy SEGURO que ya hemos conocido. I’ve seen her somewhere, and I’m not sure where. She agrees…we ruled out Model UN because she only goes to Montreal with her school…not CTY either. Hm. And a pair of girls out of texas who are very nice. In fact, I don’t think I met a single person there who I didn’t find it perfectly pleasant to be around. One of the guys is mildly sketch, and a couple of the girls are un poco ditzy, but all in all I think they’re going to be an excellent group of people to spend the year with. OH, AND I MET A CTYER THERE. She was wearing a 2003 staff shirt. That is all on the people front.
So after a while waiting in our little corner of la aeropuerto, we moved over towards seguridad. I had a box of cheez-its with me, and, claro, I had to put it through the x-ray machine. Radiation soaked cheez-its in hand, I walked towards what I know now to be a three hour wait. Most of which was spent standing in a long line waiting for information as to the status of the airplane. Hah, I forgot to mention when I said goodbye to dad and Bonnie. I guess it shows you about how important an event it was to me.
So: el vuelto. Era LONGASS. Usualmente, I can sleep on anything: trains, planes, automoviles, you name it. For some reason this was not the case, and the seven or so hours seemed their actual length, and then some. Because I slept JUST enough to feel like it was a couple hours later when en realidad it was only a few minutes. Gar. Pero I had a nice conversation with said outgoing girl, who seems to be interested in a lot of the same aspectos de lingüísticas that I am. Coolness. Es interesante, porque posiblemente va a mover con su familia a Boston como yo. Made good use of my brand new iBook, thanks to the sudden death of the old…MUY ANTIGUO, Powerbook G3 that my dad had used for a while. I remember one day in something like sixth grade getting really excited about how new it was with the late Eric Jacober. He, and this will seem obvious for those of you who knew him, of course flaunted his knowledge of electronics in praising this great piece of technology. So that gives you a sense of how old it was.
Wow, I’m good at this getting off track business. So after an extremely long ride, we arrive in Madrid. We didn’t see much more than the airport, as we unloaded our bags directly from the luggage conveyor to el camión, y fuimos al autobús para our newest trip: the four hour ride to Zaragoza. That one was a lot shorter, as I was able to sleep almost all the way. The little I was awake for was a bit disappointing: lots of barren rocks. Quite deserty, actually. We stopped for lunch along the way, which is what made the trip four hours instead of three, and I had paella y una tortilla. It really wasn’t very good, and I’m quite glad now that all Spanish food isn’t of the same quality as that little rest stop. Spoke to this girl who I understand is from Korea, goes to school at a boarding school in the US, and is now taking a year of that and going to Spain. Jeez.
So we’re within a couple kilometers of Zaragoza. It looks like the least interesting town in existence. Lots of squat apartment buildings, and one cathedral in the middle. That’s it. No skyline whatsoever, no surrounding greenery, nada. It all seems sort of depressing, this being the place where I’m going to be living for six months. Sorry about all the tense changes, but I like living in the moment when it isn’t actually the moment. Funny thing about that.
We arrive to see the families a little while later, and I was nervous as hell along with everyone else. Would my family be full of smokers? Would they have a hard time understanding “Soy alérgico a los frutos secos y a los cacahuetes?” So I get there, am chosen as one of los chicos altos y fuertes, and help get all the extremely heavy baggage off the truck. I drag out my share, and when I finally find my own baggage we’re organized into groups, with whom we’ll be the rest of the year as advisory clusters. Our advisor is Ana, the school secretary, who seems like a perfectly nice lady in her 30s. Didn’t get much chance to talk with her, though, as we were soon sent towards the main attraction: the crowds of older men and women with little kids or older sons and daughters, with sisters and brothers and aunts and uncles, none of whom spoke una palabra de inglés. Vale, dos o tres palabras, como “Cheekehn.” I was introduced by Ana to my new family, this youngish couple and what seemed to be a sister. Besos a los tres, y a minute passes before Ana approaches me and asks “You are Frahnk?” I say yes, and she points to the sheet. Frantz, it says. More than a slight bit of embarrassment to go around before I get to meet my real family: A short, oldish couple, both slightly rotund, and what seems to be their son and daughter, Mario y Elena. I’m introduced as “Barooch,” which is easily as close as any of the American students got, and I find out that it’s Mario y su novia, and Elena is in Bronchales, en el sur de Aragón province, getting set up for the first week of elementary school there. She teaches the wee ones. Conversation is slightly strained as we head to the car, but I make do and eventually get más cómodo with the small talk en español. We drive the two kilometers or so back to la casa, and I’m again slightly disappointed. It looks perfectly nice from the outside, really, sans the incredible amount of graffiti on all the houses in the neighborhood. Once again, I judged too early. The inside of the house is muy bonita, a small middle class deal. It has a BEAUTIFUL porch in between the first and second floors, with flowers and all. I’ll be posting pictures of the house, so there ends my description. Except for the garden. This, really, is the centerpiece of the house, even though it’s outside. Mi familia grows EVERYTHING. They have una granja pequeña, tambien, outside of the city, but even in this small little jardín they have so much. Vines above you grow hundreds of grapes, pots grow herbs like lavender, mint, parsley, and several others I haven’t been able to figure out. They grow tomates, pepinos, melocotones, guisantes, y everything else. They have hens, as well, out at their farm, as well as an orchard. It seems as if they work ceaselessly to make this garden work, and their work pays of so, so much. Every meal has fresh fruit…oh God, the meals. I capitalized God, for once, so this must be important. Everything is homemade, everything is perfectly fresh, every meal is better than the next, which was itself the best meal I’ve ever had. Paella con gambas y pollo, homemade tortilla de patata y de varias verduras, mejillones y almejas con a little bit of mayonesa (which I’d always thought I’d hated with EVERYTHING), y a veces bombones y siempre frutas del jardín de postre.
We have a cat, named Pecas, who seems very sweet. Pictures of Pecas and everything else to come. I went to bed bastante temprano, porque I hadn’t slept well enough in days. Woke up quince horas later, got myself a little bit of leche, y went out exploring with José Antonio (mi papá nuevo. We walked over to this parque cerca de la casa, which is pretty big, and has a library and this amphitheater thing where bands can perform and there are dances on weekends. This week there’s a fiesta celebrating la independencia de Aragón or something like that. They have carnival rides and prizes and a huge stand marked “COWBOYS” que has these automated bulls which you get on and ride. Everything looked like quite a bit of fun, including and especially the bumper cars. There was a parade which came through, marching bands and people on stilts and guys in drag and dancers and people in Spanish looking hats and costumes, and one guy who tried talking to me in extremely slurred Spanish, beer in hand. There are lots of quite attractive people around here, so hurrah. No, that was not related to the guy with the beer. Anyway, we then moved on.
I encountered an SYA girl with her family in the park, said “Oye,” as I passed, and José Antonio had the obligatory chuckle and nudge and “Es muy guapa, ¿no?” before I had us move on towards Calle La Milagrosa, and home. After another superb meal, we went back towards one of the boulevards to see la “Milla,” apparently a running competition. Lots of middle aged guys and young chicas running in circles, which, as interesting as it was, seemed a hell of a lot less compelling than another walk through the park. I did meet some friends of the family though, who spoke much much faster than I was used to, and made my Spanish ability seem slightly less than superb. There was this particularly gorgeous girl who, I admit, I was ogling for a bit before I looked away and later made eye contact for a moment before turning back to the race. Afterwards, I met a friend of Angelines, mi madre, y the friend’s daughter, who teaches inglés en una escuela en Barcelona. Claro, it was gorgeousgirl. It was MUY raro hablar en inglés, because I’d been only communicating in Spanish for a couple days. I seem to forget which language I’m speaking in, until I’m forced to speak the other right away. Anyway, I really should be getting to bed now. ¡Buenas noches! Thanks for reading all of this, it means a lot that you’re taking an interest. Especially since this thing is damn long.