My other home

Spain has played an integral part in the tapestry that is my life. It has been the backdrop to many memories so powerful that upon triggering them alone I can smell aceite de oliva, café con leche, jamón serrano, and queso manchego. Traveling to Spain is a sensory experience—there is an exquisite beauty, while at the same time rugged grunge, in the sights, the smells, the tastes, and a telling juxtaposition entre lo antiguo y lo moderno.

There was the winter quarter of 2002 when I studied in Pamplona—and found, among other things, my wings, an amistad with four girls that still thrives today, my passion in life and myself. 

Then there was the summer of 2005, my return debut to Spain teaching for the Program I now direct, in which I found my calling as a teacher and my love for la Mancha. 

Los profes in 2006. We were all so different, and that's why we worked.

In 2006, the stars aligned when I returned to Ciudad Real to teach for the Program, and encountered the most incredible group of kids I’ve had the privilege to know (and dearly love) and the most fun group of profes with which to spend a summer. 

In 2007, Jack and I took our honeymoon to Spain and he finally ‘got it’—he came to understand why that country meant so much to me as we toured cities large and small—our two favorites being Zaragoza (home to the Basilica that Pili is named after) and Sevilla. After that trip, we knew two things: if we ever had a daughter, her name would be Pilar (after the Basilica and the patroness of Spain) and if we were so lucky to live a long life together, we would make it a goal to walk El Camino de Santiago. In fact, when we visited Pamplona, we each bought El Camino key chains to keep that dream alive. I have to smile every time I see Miss P pick up my keys. Strangely, but I am convinced it is not a coincidence, the first item she chooses to put in her mouth is always El Camino keychain. After our honeymoon to Spain we had our most difficult goodbye ever in the airport in Barajas—Jack returned to the U.S. as I went to la Mancha to teach. What a bittersweet 8 weeks it was to be apart from one another.

Jack in Zaragoza in 2007, with Pili's namesake in the background.

Then there was 2008.

That summer, before I taught for the Program, Mom toured Spain with me for two weeks. It was the trip of a lifetime for both of us. I could teach my Mom all about the country that had taught me so much. I took her to Ávila, where we saw so many remnants of Mom’s namesake, St. Teresa of Ávila. I took her to Pamplona, my stomping grounds. To Sevilla, to Barcelona. And, of course, I took her to la Basilica in Zaragoza, too. And just like with Jack and I, Mom, too, felt the power of the place—and understood right away what I saw in it so many years before when I first visited it in 2002. I hope Mom and I can make a trip like that again sometime soon. And I certainly hope and pray to la Virgen del Pilar that Pili and I will be able to do the same.

Mom and I in Avila, walled city and home to St. Teresa of Avila.

I put Mom on a plane after two weeks so she could head back to the States, and then waited for my group of students to arrive to Madrid. That summer teaching with the Program was a remarkable one for more reasons than I can count, the most salient because it was my last. The other most salient because it’s when Spain won the Europe Cup—and I learned to appreciate fútbol. I mean real fútbol. I won’t ever forget the memories that summer watching games with my students and the other profes brought. Rather than try and recount them, I will copy and paste a group e-mail I sent to my loved ones while in Ciudad Real that summer. It sheds light on my newfound love for fútbol, and sheds light on what it meant to me to teach for the Program that year, and the three years before it. It goes like this:

**********

July 3, 2008

Subject line: In My Life

Campeones!

Greetings to all,

Never In My Life have I seen anything like what I saw Sunday night.

To commemorate the three week anniversary of our arrival to Ciudad Real, the arid, oven-hot land of Quijote, fútbol, pisto and queso manchego, the Spanish national fútbol team won the Europe Cup Sunday night, defeating Germany 1-0, and ending the cursed 44 year streak of going without a title win.  And we were there.  Sort of.

In a tiny sports pub tucked away on a hidden side street in Ciudad Real, Cesarina and I (the only two teachers on hand) and about 15 of our chicos, found ourselves camouflaged in a sea of red and yellow flags and t-shirts, to witness history in the making, and to see a nation´s hopes answered in the form of a solid, swift kick from the cleat of Fernando Torres, also known as "El Niño," (the kid)
Spain´s beloved fútbol hero, the apple of every Spanish mother´s eye, and the idol of every Spanish boy who wishes to make it big and go from playing the game in the Plaza Mayor to the stadium of Santiago Bernabau in Madrid.  The goal came in the middle of a well-played game on behalf of both teams, a game that got my blood flowing and my heart racing, and I can´t say that I´ve ever been a big fan of fútbol.  But to see this game and see what the win meant for these people--Spain´s curse of not winning a title in 44 years was lifted Sunday night and our chicos were there to see it.

As soon as the end of the game was signaled, madness ensued.  Folks ran out of the bar and piled into the streets as firecrackers and fireworks were set off, the Spanish national anthem blasted from cars and open patios, and everyone, I mean everyone, old and young, made the street their home, parading around with Spanish flags, horns, and noisemakers.  The chicos wanted to fulfill one and only one dream if Spain won: partake in the Spanish tradition of jumping in a fountain in the plaza mayor to celebrate.  Cesarina and I were clearly outnumbered, and the chicos were going to do it whether we were there or not, so we conceded defeat and at least offered to take their pictures and get video of the celebration.  Silly us, did we actually think we were going to get away with not getting tossed into the fountain ourselves? Because after we took everyone´s picture, the kids (once again we were outnumbered) came at us in two different directions, picked us up and plopped us in the fountain, along with the rest of the population of Ciudad Real.  And I didn´t care.  Yes, I was the adult in the situation, and yes, I am their ´director.´  And yes, the water in the fountain was probably never before (and never will be) cleaned, which means I could break out in a rash any moment, but, again, I didn´t care.  I looked around me and realized that a simple 1-0 victory would be icing on the very delicious cake that is this trip for these kids and I smiled bigger than they were smiling because I now know the power of nostalgia and I know that they will look back on that moment as a defining one in their Spanish journey.  As the plaza mayor began to fill to its brim, photojournalists and camera news crews snapped and filmed away, trying their best to capture an unforgettable night.

The party pretty much never ended (it´s still going on, really), so on Monday morning we came in to school confronted with many tired faces, but the excitement was still burning in the kids, especially when they discovered they had made it in not one but THREE newspapers, all pictures of them in the blessed fountain next to the statue of one of Spain´s greatest kings, Alfonso X.  And guess who else made it in the newspaper?  Yours truly, the adult, the director, the "one in charge." So the first thing we did in my class was to head to the kiosk down the street to buy a copy of each paper for the good old memory chest.

In a nutshell, that has been the experience thus far in Ciudad Real: one outstanding memory followed by another, really.  We have been smooth sailing for about two weeks now, but things did not start out so easy...

The kids arrived nearly three weeks ago on June 9th.  If you all recall, around that time, there were pretty wicked storms hitting the midwest, more specifically Indiana and Illinois.  So while 32 students
were supposed to arrive in Barajas on June 9th, only 28 actually made it.  After many, many phone calls and a lot of hassling the airlines, we finally figured out where the other 4 had been re-routed to (from Indy to Cleveland to Newark to Madrid), and found out that their flight from Newark to Madrid was pushed back another day.  So we left Paloma (one of the teachers) behind in Madrid to tend to the remaining four the next day while we took the majority to Ciudad Real to meet their families.

The following day, the four students arrived safely and soundly to Ciudad Real by train.  I was worried these four kids might be traumatized by their experience and arrive to Ciudad Real feeling super
behind, lost and scared.  Seeing the first three kids step down from the train, I was at ease.  But the fourth immediately worried me.  He looked like Chicken Little, waiting for the sky to fall at any moment. He looked nervous, unsure of himself, and like he just wanted to stay on the train and keep going far, far away from that moment.  I became even more worried when his host mother came to greet him and instead of giving her the customary one kiss on each cheek, he backed away and at
my urging to give her kisses he said "No."  Well, okay.  It was then that I came to know him, the boy who would return to the US.

I do not want to go into much detail about him, there is much to say. Let´s just leave it at this: half of my heart breaks for the boy and the other half just doesn´t understand him.  The part of my heart that
breaks is the part that wanted to always hug him, comfort him, tell him he´d be fine if he´d just let go a bit and be able to laugh at himself. The part of my heart that doesn´t understand him is the part that worried that he wasn´t eating (nor at school or at home), that his nose seemed to never

stop bleeding, that he just didn´t "fit" with the program.  I worried about him, we all worried about him, but we knew just what to do when he came to us and said he wanted to go home.  If you had looked into his sad, lost eyes, you´d have agreed to send him home, too, and that´s what we did.  After a little over a week, he went back to the US and I certainly hope he was able to learn something in his few days here.

I learned from him, sadly, that no matter how much you believe in someone, no matter how much you want them to succeed, they cannot do so unless somewhere, somehow they believe it themselves, too.

For a few days, things were going smoothly, then we came to learn an ugly, ugly word here in Spain, and it hasn´t really left us: huelga (which means "strike").  Due to the (you guessed it) high gas prices, many of the truck, bus and taxi drivers have decided to go on strike. Kind of problematic if a fourth of our students arrive to school via bus.  Even more problematic if all the excursions to other cities involve a lengthy bus ride.  Our first excursion it was easy to plan around the strike: we bought 2 euro train tickets to get to our destination, which was only about 25 km away.  The next excursion,
however, brought on a further and more popular destination: Córdoba and Granada, and there was not nearly enough money in our budget to get us to those places in a train.  So we scrambled, looked for solutions, and were at the point of calling in the Marines to haul us out of this desert land and transport us just three hours south when we made an executive decision and decided to move the excursion to a different day.  You see, the "huelga" is only for Tuesdays and Fridays--and Fridays are our excursion days.  And did I mention the "huelga" is only going on in the province of Ciudad Real?  That is to say, if you were to drive across the borders of the province (about 50 miles), you´d be
in another province where the strike is NOT in effect.  Yet buses cannot enter or leave Ciudad Real.  You can imagine how tricky this makes things.  To avoid problems with the strike, this Friday we are headed to Madrid in the train, and the following weekend we have already switched the excursion to Toledo from Friday to Saturday.  Problem solved, right?

Wrong.

As of July 7th, the huelga is taking on more days--going on strike Mon, Tues, Thur and Fri.  We leave Ciudad Real to fly back to the states on July 24th which, as luck might have it, is a Thursday.  So we have already begun the scramble to find a way out of this land and back to Madrid.  Do not get me wrong--I am having a great time and the summer has been a remarkable one, the kids have been super good, all has gone about at smoothly as I could ask for--but come Hell or high water, I am
coming home on July 24th.  Getting home is like any goal you set in life: I´m at the three week/half-way point in the program and I´m thrilled with how things have been going--training hard for the finish,
but not yet counting down the days to come home.  At the same time though, the goal and the finish (i.e., the date I´m coming home) is etched into my brain and it ain´t changin,´ end of story.  So, as I
said before, we´re coming home on time, I just don´t yet know how.

About coming home...I´ve gotten many e-mails asking if this last summer has been living up to my expectations and/or if I was getting to do all that I wanted to.  Funny, I thought you´d never ask...

Though I was 99% sure this was going to be my last summer upon arrival, I am not the kind of person who says ´never,´ so when I left the States, there was still that 1% chance remaining that I might go to Spain again next summer.  But almost immediately when I touched down in Barajas, the 1% chance went away.  It was not a bad feeling, and it certainly does not indicate that I was having a bad time (quite the opposite), it´s just that very soon into my trip (if not immediately) with Mom, I could feel that Spain, a country that I believe has grown to love me as much as I love it, was finding little, subtle ways to let me know it was okay to not come back next year, as if to say to me "I´ll always be here and you are always welcome."  Those little, subtle ways continue to manifest themselves here in Ciudad Real every morning.  I wake up early every morning to take a nice hour walk before classes and it is absolutely beautiful: most mornings I head east towards the sun and catch incredible views of the flat land, which in the distance meets rocky hills, which then, further east, climb into the sky.  It is so flat and so dry that the sky stands out brilliantly, a tapestry of shades of orange, yellow and pink.  When I get to the "Puerta de Toledo" (a roman gate built centuries ago, that leads you to Toledo) it
never fails, I see the same old couple walking arm and arm, not saying a word but communicating in their own way, with their German Shephard, unleashed, on their heels.  They are not going anywhere, their dog is not going anywhere, and the manchegan lanscape is not going anywhere. I could come back in 30 years to the same countryside, and though the couple might be gone, another couple will replace them.  The setting will stay the same and that is what Spain is trying to tell me.  Even if the people change, the place, in its essence, will stay the same.

Even without the hints that this, what at times seems to be more my mother land than my own country, tells me, I can come to the conclusion on my own that, quite simply, this river has run its course.  My time with the program is almost up, it´s just something I can sense.  It´s like when you finally realize it´s time to stop dressing up for Halloween and going out trick-or-treating (which for me was freshman year in high school, a bit late), or when you finally realize it´s no longer appropriate to play drinking games at parties (which was grad school, again, perhaps a bit late--though some of you out there still believe it´s appropriate to play drinking games, more power to you), or when you realize that the hot topic between you and your girlfriends is no longer grad school or reminiscing about undergrad, rather weddings, kids, and mortgage payments (still making this realization, bare with
me).  If you notice a pattern, I seem to be a little late in coming to these previous realizations, but not with this one.  The time has come to fold, to hang it up, to gracefully (ha, Steph does not equal "graceful") bow out.  And having made that decision before I arrived to Spain this year, then being reassured of its rightness in my first days here, have allowed me to enjoy every minute much more than I could have imagined.  The trip hasn´t been about places I´ve visited or monuments I´ve seen.  It´s been about moments, about conversations, about morning walks and Spanish dinners (tapas, wine and cold, cold drafts), about church bells ringing at all hours, about deserted streets during

My 2008 chicos and I at the 'despedida.' Tears and smiles.

siesta.  I have been lucky enough to see some monuments four years in a row that some people would wait a lifetime to see, but the monuments and sights are not what is in my heart, it´s the people I was with when visiting them, or the people I thought of when visiting them, or the song that was running through my head when visiting them.  I´m learning now more than ever that the best memories I can make are the ones that I can connect to memories I already have.  Which is why, before I left, I made the soundtrack to my life so far (I love itunes) and broke it down into four volumes.  It tracks my memories set to music, and on those morning walks I spoke of, I run the spectrum of emotions that songs have the power of bringing to me.  And each song takes me to a different place and time, which triggers other memories, and then others, and all I can do is smile.

As far as the kids go: they are a super, super group.  Don´t worry 2006 kids, they still do not reach your level of "super"--the 2006 kids will forever reign as my favorites.  But I do have to say that factoring in the combination of students, fellow teachers, living situation, and the school that we are in, it´s been my best summer yet in Ciudad Real.

Well, I must be off.  I´ve been writing this e-mail since Monday, in 15 minute segments at a time, so it is time it was sent.  Beware of grammar and spelling errors.  Limited e-mail access does not allow for much editing.

This weekend is a big one for us: tomorrow we go to Madrid, Saturday we go to a bullfight in Ciudad Real, and Sunday Sanfermines coverage begins in Pamplona, so I will be watching.

Happy Fourth of July to all.  My favorite holiday after Christmas, and next year I´ll be home (in every sense of the word) to celebrate it.

Besos,

Steph

"There are places I'll remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I've loved them all....

**********

Reading that e-mail makes me smile from ear to ear. I knew that summer that some big changes were in store for me when I returned to the States from teaching in Spain. Little did I know the changes in store were me being appointed Managing Director of the Honors Program, and becoming pregnant with my little Peanut shortly thereafter. The summer of 2009, just one year after teaching for the Program, I was directing it and feeling little kicks from Mr. Joseph Anthony Goetz to keep me from suffering too much nostalgia. Oh, the joy of reading in hindsight!

So thank you, my dear and sweet Spain, for allowing me to take a trip down memory lane tonight. And thank you for being so instrumental in helping me find my way over the years, for helping me to forge a half-Spanish identity that I hold dear to this day—my time in your unbelievable country has left a profound mark on me and I cannot wait to return. How I wish I could be there with you to celebrate and to jump in a fountain. Congrats, campeones de Europa. ¡Que viva España! 

The kiddos and I celebrate Spain's win. Note the kiddos in their Spain uniforms.