A New Face

I don't wear my glasses all the time. I wear contacts alot, at least half of the time. Recently, I've had to wear contacts constantly because the nosepiece fell off my glasses. They were only 5 years old! Things just don't last.

Neither do styles. My old glasses didn't suit my personality, I don't think, and they were gold, which I never wear, and they were big and round. If you have glasses, they are a part of the face that people see when they look at you. So, in a sense, new glasses means a new face.

So I broke down and got a new, funkier face. Here it is:



I call them my "Hollywood glasses." Still pretty conservative, I know, but a long way from the old ones!

These actually were my second favorite. My favorites were similar in shape, but a little more dramatic looking. But, you know what? I'm not into paying 100 euro more just so the side says Gucci and has a little diamond. So I settled for my second best.

It's probably best that I didn't get the Gucci glasses anyway. I would have been so incredibly attractive that guys would have hurt themselves when they threw themselves to the pavement at my feet. So really, I passed up the Guccis for humanitarian concerns.

With these toned down Hollywood glasses, the guys will only have to kneel.

Bring it on.

Seriously, what do you think?

The Local Starbucks

I have kind of a love-hate relationship with Starbucks. I complain that their coffee is expensive and that they take over the market wherever they move in. I complain that you can't walk 10 minutes in the center of Madrid without running into another little piece of America with it's green awnings and its sugary drinks. I would hate to see any Spanish business lose out to their empire, especially when Spanish coffee is wonderful and cheap, and a staple of the way of life here. I guess I do not like the concept of Starbucks.

But still, I go.

In their favor, Starbucks has comfy chairs and lets you sit there as long as you want. For this, I love them--if not the whole chain, at least the one on Fuencarral at Bilbao, where I go every Wednesday night while a community group meets in my apartment. I have a favorite chair, in the corner by the window, and if I time my arrival just right (around 7:45 p.m.), it's almost always empty, waiting for me to curl up in its familiar arms with a book. In the past month, all in this same Starbucks, I have laughed out loud to no one in particular, cried and wiped the tears quickly so no one will see, and fallen asleep. Actually, I've fallen asleep a couple times. I'm comfortable there.

I knew I had become a regular at Starbucks yesterday. As I walked in, the girl behind the counter looks up and says "Oye, guapa! Hace tiempo que no te he visto! Que tal todo?" (Basically--hey, I've not seen you in a while! How's it going?) I smiled and chatted a few minutes before ordering.

It's a small thing, but stuff like this is huge to me. A Spanish girl, my age, completely unconnected to me except in the fact that I order coffee from her and chat with her some while she's cleaning on Wednesday nights, initiated friendly conversation with me. Not where are you from, are you studying here, or how long do you plan to stay in Spain? (the usual polite questions) Just a simple "Que tal todo?"

She remembered my name and wrote it on my cup without me telling her how to spell it.

I live here. This is my neighborhood.

Oddly enough, I had been considering going to Espresso Republic instead that night. It's right across the street, and the atmosphere is a little less laid back, but it's Spanish and doesn't feed the Starbucks empire. But I went to Starbucks because they know me, because they smile and say hi, not just politeness, but because they recognize me.

(cue the themesong from Cheers.....)

In a job and a country where I feel like what I need to learn is immeasurably vast in comparison with the bit that I've learned in these two years (y pico), where I seriously wonder if I'll ever really feel like I'll belong somewhere again, it's nice to be recognized. It's nice to hear a familiar voice say:

Oye, guapa! Hace tiempo que no te he visto! Que tal todo?

boo hoo

If you got my newsletter this week, you know I'm supposed to be leaving for the Easter Retreat today. Well, it's starting today, alright, but not with me there.

I went to Segovia (an old city about an hour from Madrid) for the day yesterday with Amy, and had some pork thing for lunch. I started paying for that at about 3 this morning. Ugh. I hate food poisoning. My system is empty now (and then some), but I'm too weak and tired to make the train/car/bus trip up to the camp today. So I'm going in the morning. Boo hoo.

Things, I'm sure, will go off without a hitch without me there. Kind of a humbling experience to realize that, but I'm glad.

Hopefully the crackers and casera (like sprite) will stick with me and I'll be able to go in the morning!

Funny Things

Funny things tend to happen around me. Actually, I'm not sure if that's true. Sometimes I really do think more funny things happen to me than most others. But other times I think I just notice more because my mind is eternally warped from watching too much Seinfeld and now feels the need to share the humor of every ridiculous little thing that most others would ignore. Actually, the exact quote from Seinfeld is "the excruciating minutiae of every single daily event." Can you name that episode?

So here is some excruciating minutiae from my life. I hope you enjoy.

A herd of segue's. Yep, a whole batch of 'em.

Last Sunday was one of those beautiful Spring days that's so gorgeous you don't have the option of staying inside. One nice thing about having our Oasis Madrid services on Saturday night is that, come a Sunday like this one, you actually have the day to spend outside if you want! After getting home late-ish and sleeping until almost noon, I decided to take a blanket and a book out to Templo de Debod and spend the day relaxing in the sun. And so began the next 5 hours. Amy joined me a couple hours later.

At about hour four, I heard a strange swooshy-buzzy sound to my left. At first I thought I was dreaming (I might have dozed off at a point or two in the afternoon), but the sound persisted, accompanied by some unmistakably British accents. I turned my head and there they were, in all their glory. Six or seven middle aged and up British tourists, each mounted on their own segue, rolling along at no more than 3 miles per hour behind their fearless leader.

If you're confused as to what a segue is, here's a picture I found on flickr:

4888_roller boy
Originally uploaded by thomask.

Now imagine six of them, all inhabited by grey-haired Brits in the middle of Madrid.

Come on, guys, Madrid is a compact city. Do you really need to tour it in segue's? Are there enough even sidewalks for those things to even be useful? Do you really have nothing better to do with your time and money than roll around the park with your bum bag (or fanny pack, if you're American. But a Brit would never call it that!) and visor? And the most important question: can I have one?

The breakup

Sometimes, when I hear people speaking English on the train or the metro, I talk to them and ask where they're from. It's something to do when you're bored. But other times people are having a conversation that is obviously not meant for you, and then it gets awkward. What do you do? You're trapped in the car with them--you can't NOT hear. If you say something, then they know you speak English, and then they think you were eavesdropping, and then everyone feels awkward. At those times, I find it best to keep my mouth shut--it doesn't relieve my awkwardness, but at least they don't know that they've publicized more than they should have.
This is a good time to add a side note: DON'T HAVE PRIVATE CONVERSATIONS ON THE METRO, IN ANY LANGUAGE! Someone else will always understand you.

I was on a cercanias train (the above ground public transportation) from Las Rozas to Madrid yesterday, and I witnessed a scene that was at times painful and at times hilarious. Since I have no idea who the two people involved were and everything turned out ok in the end, I don't feel bad writing about them here. After all, they were the ones to do all this in public.

At the first stop after I got on the train, a crowd of people came on, including a sullen teenage girl with too much makeup and a boy who looked old enough to have known that the waist of his jeans were actually at his knees. Guys, do you really think that's attractive? Anyway, she sat down next to me, and as the train was crowded, he had no choice but to stand in front of her.

It took 5 seconds for me to realize they were speaking English. I was bored, so I turned and started to strike up a conversation. Then I heard the words "I want to die." Uh-oh. Better stay out of this one. "Shut up!" said the guy. (I'm totally cleaning up the language here, believe me).

"Get off at the next stop. It's over!"

"Just get away from me!"

Insert more colorful language....

After this, the girl proceeded to give the guy a 5 minute quiz about her life. "What do you know about me? Nothing!" He failed the test miserably. Then again, she fired the questions so fast, he didn't have time to answer, and he mumbled so much she wouldn't have understood if he did.

"You're such a child! Get off at the next stop! I want to die!"

That line repeated at every stop, with some really creative language, I must say. It's amazing how people can make some words into a verb, a noun, and an adjective, all in the same sentence.

About 10 minutes later there came a 30 second pause. I was about to think that maybe he had gotten off at the next stop like she commanded, but then I heard a telltale lip-smacking sound.

You have got to be kidding me. I turned around to see if my ears deceived me. Nope. He was in her lap, and they were wasting no time in making up. Let's just say that they were no more private about their mutual affection than they had been a minute before about their mutual loathing.

I caught the eye of a guy across from me. He had understood it all. He was surpressing a laugh. We both kind of smirked and looked away from each other quickly, embarrassed to be unwilling parts of the scene.

Smack, slurp, smack. They made the most of the next 3 minutes until their stop, which was also my stop. I hurried to the front of the crowd to get away from them. As I passed, I heard the "I want to die" girl make one more brilliant statement to the mumbly boy.

"Don't ever change."

What?

So here I leave you with my two pieces of minutiae. It's a bizarro world, huh?
(extra points to any who can name all the Seinfeld references in this post.)