A Non-linear narrative

(Author's note: as will become painfully apparent very shortly, I wrote this blog quite a while ago. Friday morning to be exact (so please understand all relative terms as if this were Friday). I fully intended to publish it Friday night when I got to the hostel. However, upon my arrival, I discovered that my computer had decided that the internet at this hostel was against its religion, and refused to acknowledge its existence. And so this blog was trapped on my laptop. Whoops. So upon my return to Valencia, I am publishing it. Sorry bout all that.)

Good morning, all!

And when I say good morning, I do mean morning. It’s before 7 and still dark here, and I’m on a train to Madrid.

I write a lot of these blogs on trains to Madrid. It works.

So let’s see. I got back from Lisbon very late Sunday night, and, tragically, my Asian food place was closed, so I just went back and went to bed instead. It was so sad. I really wanted Asian food.

So then Monday morning we didn’t have our 9am class, but I went over to the school earlier than normal, because it was the first day of my TA position, and I wanted to know where it was, since by the time I got out of class it would have already started. And thus begins a long and confusing tale, the ending of which only happened yesterday. So, yeah. Hold on.

According to the email- no, wait, we have to go further back. So in order to get this TA thing, I got an email from Dr. Pennock, the English professor who runs the tandem program (remember him? Really British, very funny.) on a listserv of TAs, which I assumed was just the native English speakers at the university. This email said that Dr. DiNapoli (another English teacher) needed native speaker TAs in his class. I emailed Dr. DiNapoli, he said that I could come to his English VIII class from 12-2 on Mondays and help out. I have class until 12:15, but he said I could just come over afterwards. He said that the location of this class was Aulario (building. I mean, like, don’t use that to say building in Spanish, but in the context of this story, it means building.) So Aulario I, classroom M-15. Ok. That’s the background, back to Monday.

So I have looked Aulario I up on a map and I find it without much of a problem, but when I get there, there is no M-15 listed on the building map. Finally, I look so confused that someone who works there comes to ask me what I’m looking for. I tell him M-15, and he tells me that it is actually in Aulario V and gives me directions. So I go to Aulario V and sure enough, there is room M-15 and the schedule on the door says that Dr. DiNapoli’s English VIII class meets there from 12-2. Mission accomplished.

Now, you can probably guess by now that something is not going to go as planned. You would be right.

But sadly, life is not a linear narrative, so I spent the next hour and a half in film class. We watched the movie el día de la bestia (day of the beast), which is about a priest who discovers that the apocalypse (like the one from Reveltations) is going to take place in Madrid on Christmas eve of 1995. Inevitably, he discovers this on like December 20^th 1995. So there’s a mad dash around Madrid to try to sin as much as he can so that he can sell his soul to the devil and find the location of the birth of the antichrist so he can kill the antichrist and stop the Apocalypse. It was… interesting.

More than anything the portrayal of the devil fascinated me. It was very much a pop theology devil, but it lacked a lot of the traditional influences of Dante and Milton on the portrayal. Like, it didn’t show him as a fallen angel, nor a prisoner in Hell, but a malevolent force that is God’s opposite. So actually very Zoroastrian. That isn’t very typical, usually it’s more of a blend, so I found it very interesting.

Of course, watching this movie took a little bit longer than the normal class, so I didn’t get to classroom M-15 until 12:30. I opened the door and saw… Dr. Pennock. He was very polite and very British in informing me that he had no clue who I was or why I was there. I gave him a very mini sparknotes version of what I was doing, and asked where Dr. DiNapoli was, and he said that Dr. DiNapoli was not here, but wouldn’t I sit down and help out.

So I did. I still don’t actually know what happened to Dr. DiNapoli’s class. I don’t know if I was in the wrong place or there at the wrong time, or if the schedule was wrong. In fact, I am only marginally sure that Dr. DiNapoli exists.

But I helped out anyway. The students were discussing Brave New World and dystopia, so I sat in on their small-group discussions and took notes on grammar mistakes I heard. I also chatted with the students a little bit, which was interesting, but not actually enlightening as to what on earth was going on. We finished up the class with a TED talk on moral absolutism, which was fascinating, though difficult to understand, even as a native English speaker. Oh, I should probably mention that the level of English of some of these students was so impressive. They were good. They made mistakes, but not many. Anyway, so we watched the TED talk, and Dr. Pennock said to shoot him an email and he would figure out what happened and how I wound up in his class.

So then I went back to the dorm and did homework and chilled and went to Elena’s class. We talked about Picasso and his blue and rose periods, which was interesting. I like Picasso’s cubism, but I think I prefer his less abstract paintings. There’s something really nice about the colors, and I think in art I tend to enjoy realism, but even more, like a soft-focused realism. Impressionism when viewed from a distance and that kind of stuff, and that’s a lot of Picasso’s early works. Plenty obvious what the subject is, but just different enough to make you want to look again. It also reminds me that for all his distorted figures, Picasso really could paint. I firmly believe that, like it takes an intelligent person to successfully play a dumb character, it takes a very talented painter to break conventions, and that’s Picasso. Not that cubism or modern art is dumb, but I know I have heard the “I could do that” attitude towards it sometimes. Actually, my favorite definition of modern art is “I could do that. But you didn’t.”

So then we had a meeting and got our sweatshirts, dumb pictures of which are probably on Facebook (update from real time. They are indeed on Facebook, and very, very dumb), and went for ice cream. It was just a little too cold outside to really be ice cream weather, but ice cream is always good.  Then I came back and did more of the homework and chilling and such.

I also got an email from Dr. Pennock. I had emailed him before this whole insanity started about coming into a class and basically just speaking to the students, because there are a lot of British accents in the classrooms, but not a lot of American ones, and he wanted them to hear a different accent. He thought that I had  gotten somehow mistaken and was trying to do that when I wound up in his classroom, but he also said that if I wanted to come back to his English VIII class (because the class I walked into was English VIII, just… a different teacher. I think.) and help out that I could.

So I emailed Dr. DiNapoli and explained to him what had happened. I asked what had happened with the class, and told him that Dr. Pennock had offered to let me come back to his class, but that I didn’t want to abandon his class if that indeed existed.

Tuesday we had our lit class, and since she’s heard so much about it, Alexz decided to come and sit in. We talked about early 20^th century Spanish literature, and the Spanish “edad de plata” which is the “silver age” because Spain already had a Golden age, and then they got a little silver one. And in that edad de plata there was a bunch of stuff, a Generation of 98, Modernism, the Avant Garde movements, the generation of 27. It was crazy. And then the Spanish Civil War happened, so that’s a happy ending.

So then after class I went to the train station and bought a ticket for Granada. That was interesting. I bought my ticket just fine, but Jess who has never bought a ticket before needed my help. Unfortunately, at that point, I was still trying to get my own tickets, so I was bouncing back and forth between two ticket windows trying to translate. Once my transaction was over though, there were still more adventures in store. First, the train was much more expensive than Jess initially thought, and then the guy tried to sell her a ticket for Tuesday night, not for Thursday night, and then when we communicated to him what day she wanted the train to leave, he told her that there was no train that day. Which seemed kind of odd to us. So we’re desperately trying to work out the best way to get her to Granada, when it turns out that the computer system is messed up, and they get that fixed. At which point, it turns out there is a night train to Granada Thursday. So we’re saved. In reward for a job well done, we get crepes.

We then went back and ate lunch, and went to climb the torres de Quart, which look a lot like the torres de Serranos. Except there weren’t people there and there are more cannon marks. It was fun. We then all went back because we had an essay due Wednesday. I basically spent the rest of the day working on that essay. Not terribly exciting, I know, but this is a STUDY abroad, not just a run around Spain and Portugal on weekends abroad.

Also, at some point Tuesday afternoon, since Dr. DiNapoli had not responded to me, I emailed Dr. Pennock back and explained in more detail what had happened. I told him that if I didn’t have anything for Dr. DiNapoli, I would love to come back and help in his class.

So I went to bed and set my alarm for 9:03, because class started on Wednesday at 10:45.

Except class on Wednesday starts at 9.

Which is a fact I forgot until my alarm went off Wednesday at 9:03.

I was out of my room by 9:06.

So I ran downsteairs and double checked that we did indeed have class, and then proceeded to run the mile to class and made it before 9:30, which was still 1/3 of the class, but I did not miss as much as I could have. And I apologized profusely. We talked a little bit about the transition from Dictatorship to Democracy and the coup d’etat that happened in 1981. After class I went up to our professor and apologized again, and explained what happened. He seemed to be Ok with it, but I still am going to try not to repeat that trick again.

Then in film class we discussed the context for día de la bestia, and what happened in the movie. It was also, sadly, as we found out at the end of class, our last day with that teacher. Monday starts the second half of our film class, and there will be a new teacher. We all liked both the guys when we met them at the beginning of the semester, but I think we will all miss this teacher. He was a lot of fun

In between classes, I got an email from Dr. Pennock. By the way, I still haven’t gotten a response from Dr. DiNapoli. But Dr. Pennock explained that I got added to the TA list by mistake. It is a listserv for EU students who are getting internal credit for the time they spend, and that he did not want me to feel obligated to help out, especially since I need to practice my Spanish more than my English. He did, however, say that if I was still interested, I could do a speaking thing for his class to help them get used to American accents.

Then in Elena’s class we talked more about Picasso. We covered his cubist period very quickly, and then were given pictures from this period, and told to analyze them, identify what was in them, and name them. The first ones were very easy. The subjects were distorted, but still recognizable, and it was fun to see those paintings. Then we moved on to the very early cubist works, which are completely and totally unintelligible. Jess and I got a picture of a man (apparently, we only found this out later) and managed to come up with an absolutely brilliant and totally made up analysis of the picture as an homage to the Trojan War. We found a horse and skulls beside the horse, to represent both the people inside and the cost of the war on Troy. We found ships that the Greeks sailed in on, and even the walls of the city. It was truly impressive how ridiculous this was. It was a lot of fun, even if Picasso’s early cubist stuff isn’t my favorite.

I then went back to my room and skyped Mimi for her birthday and worked on homework and watched some TV. Then I went to dinner, and discovered that there was not much to eat. Fortunately, we were going out for tapas as a group Wednesday night. It was a lot of fun. Those of us who had lost at bowling went with our hair done up like falleras (I don’t even know how to describe it. I took a picture of Alexz’s.) but I don’t have enough hair for that, so I got to wear a fallas bandana. We went out, but the tapas were both expensive and not to my taste, so I walked over to Wok to Walk, the Asian place I had been meaning to go, and got some food before returning to tapas. After a little longer at tapas, I went back to my room and ate my noodles and watched Mythbusters. A lovely evening.

So yesterday I managed to wake up on time for my classes, and went to lit. We kept talking about the edad de plata, but also got off on a surprisingly long tangent about… oh something or other. It was fun. We also read some Greguerías, which are… they’re these little compositions of one or two lines and they are supposed to be “metaphor plus humor”. And they’re great. They range from poetic: “Dreams are the depository of lost objects.” To strange: “And what if ants were Martians already established on Earth?” To black humor: “The person most surprised at an inheritance is the one who has to leave it.” To philosophical: “He who is in Venice is lying to himself to think that he is in Venice. He that dreams that he is in Venice is the one who is in Venice.” To the just plain amusing: “An astronomer is a man who falls asleep looking at the stars.” And I really enjoyed that. (please note, those were all very bad translations of Greguerías of Ramón Gómez de la Serna done by me on the fly.)

Then I came back and started working on a timeline of important events in Spanish literature to begin a study guide. That class is hard, and there’s a lot to remember, so I’m making a document for the people in it to use to study, and I figured that timelines wouldn’t be a bad place to start, so I did that for a shockingly long while, then I did laundry and skyped a couple of my friends, and got all prepared for my journey to Granada.

I also emailed Dr. Pennock back and, as professionally as possible, expressed the sentiment “You’re doing what I want to do for my job. Please just let me come in and at least watch.” I got a response very promptly, and I’ll be back in English VIII on Monday.

This morning, my alarm went off at 4:45, and the first thing I heard once I turned it off was the sound of people getting back in from the bars and clubs, which to me seemed pretty unbelievable. But they were laughing, so it sounded like they were having a good time. And they had been leaving just as I was going to sleep.

So I woke up and packed and got ready and checked some last minute things, and left the dorm at 5:45.  It was absolutely the most silent and empty I have ever seen this city. I got in from Lisbon last Sunday after 11pm, and there were people everywhere, but at 6am on a Friday, there was nothing. The only reason I saw people for the first 5 minutes of my walk, was because it led past the market, and the first vendors were arriving, but only maybe 2. The coffee shops and pastelerias (umm… bakeries?) were still dark and closed up tight. It looked more like 3 or 4am than almost 6. As I got near the train station, there were more people, a few cars, but I felt very comfortable jaywalking nonetheless. The sky was still very dark, and even in the city there were a few stars. It was a perfect temperature, not quite warm or cold, but just there, and there was a light breeze, like by the ocean at night. It was very strange, but also serene and lovely.

I arrived safely at the train station and got on the AVE to Madrid, where I wrote most of this blog and watched the sunrise. I then got on the train to Granada, and finished the blog, and here I’ll be for another 4 hours.

Amor,

Katie