On Leaving and Family

This originally started out as a letter to my family. It then became a diving board into updates of my life in town, wandered into life ponderings, and finally ends of course, with birth control.  It goes like this:

Hey family!!!  I love you.

This upcoming week is my last in Bollullos and I’m trying to tie up tons of loose ends.  It’s kind of strange to try to be completely present with the friends and coworkers and students that I value so much, while at the same time knowing that I may never see them again.  And while I know at “home,” I’m getting rid of all my extra clothes, trying to eat up or give away all my extra food, cleaning, and packing because I know I’m leaving.

It’s funny, I leave places all the time…. I left MA during high school to go to CA for the summer, then left CA in the fall to return to MA.  I graduated high school, had to pack up after every year of college, said goodbye to Buenos Aires after studying abroad 6 months there, was in Sonoma for a year,  now I’m leaving here, and soon I’ll be in Barcelona, only to leave for India….

And despite all my practice, I think leaving never gets easier. In fact, this time I’ve been quite given to sentimentalism and nostalgia, thinking: “this is one of the last times I’ll see Cafe Villa Sol from my window while eating breakfast, with all the parents hugging and kissing little kids and laughing or talking in their brusk, back-country Bollulos way, or seeing the different paces of crowds of old people on benches and spry, young kids running around kicking balls, gathering in their squeaky groups, and playing with monkey dolls.  I left art class for the last time, after telling the teacher he was the best art teacher I’d ever had, and telling everyone that this was the most open community and the most comfortable, homey time during my each week.  And as I left I started to cry.  I made it out of the classroom though and only started to tear up as I walked away.

So that’s the story.  I’ve analyzed nostalgia and wistfulness and have decided that it’s the idea of being sad that you won’t see things or people anymore.  It’s missing good times.  But it’s deep root is humans’ fear of change. I know I’m going off to something that will be just as good, so why should I be attached to this specific type of Bollullos good?  I’ll have just as nice of a piso, if not better, I’ll have (hahah, HOPEFULLY, if they don’t decide to get rid of me altogether because it’s too complicated with my papers!) just as nice of a job, if not a bit better. And I’ll be able to visit my family in NJ and MA and maybe go back to CA and see the step fam and THE PUPSSS!!!!!! And I knew that I wouldn’t see my students again anyway, and that’s fine because teachers always have students and then the students always leave and grow up every year.  And in life, things always shift.  One does not attend an art class indefinitely, and the faces in the class and the vibe always changes slightly anway.  So what’s the point of telling yourself that this is the last time you’ll see/ feel these things?  OF COURSE it’s the last time!  Every time’s the last time…and the first.  Because every time you go to teach a class or hang out with a friend or even listen to a song, you always come to it in a different mood.  So nothing’s ever permanent or recurs the same way as it did before.

I’ve realized what I really like about traveling the way I do–about traveling in order to stay in a place, get into a routine, see faces, make friends, make some kind of mark in people’s memories and have them leave marks in mine–is the same reason people like routines.  Instead of constantly being faced with the idea of this being the last (and first) time they’ll do something, they get some illusion of lastingness.  Maybe it’s like beating death for a while?  Embedding yourself in the day-to-day and then not having to look back and reflect all the time about the unbearable lightness of being.  Another thing about traveling to form a routine is because you put less pressure on your life; after all, if a class you taught didn’t go well today, you always have tomorrow.  It’s like having a daily yoga practice. It’s okay if today was SPECTACULAR and it’s okay if it was so bad it made you cry or if it was generally just okay or boring, because if you have to step back and “judge,” you’re not judging your one crappy day but rather the practice in itself to see if it’s progressing in some direction you want it to.  Takes the pressure out of living, ya know?

But anyway, enough deep ponderings on the nature of routine.  I’m changing mine; it’s that simple.  And there’s one thing that’s not affected by my changing of routine, by my moving from place to place around the world.  And that’s the wistfulness I have for my family (and pets).

I really miss you guys!!

Living in this sweet town has made me strart to understand what families are, after having spent years at college learning what families aren’t–un-thought-out, fleeting attractions between genders, young people with mostly the same goals like getting good grades, earning friends and earning significant others.  And because everyone’s the same age, they are either in some way in competition with each other (for grades/social standing) or being baffled at life in the same way together because everyone’s at the same stage and can’t really teach the other too much yet, etc… That’s what family isn’t.

Another thing that family isn’t: having relationships with friends, students, coworkers, and random old people in town. Having caring, rewarding relationships with older and younger people makes you realize also that there’s a familialness to working in a group and to helping others.  People who are older help others.  They just do, because they’ve kind of been there.  They’ve been broke just leaving college, they’ve been confused about what to “do” with their lives, they’ve been single and unmarried.  And sometimes all they can do is offer their support and loyalty, even if you haven’t earned it like you’d have to with friends in college.  Let’s face it, I’m super helpful everyday with people who act like seven year olds, interrupting me, coming up to the front of the room where I’m giving a presentation and telling me they have to go the bathroom even though they’re really just bored and want a break from the presentation, and people who still go home and wet the bed and have screechingly loud, high-pitched voices and can fit no life lessons into compact, logical verbal packages that will then make me a better person.  In college I would have never chosen to help or be friends with someone like that.  But I do it every day here, and really quite enjoy it.  I help people.  I give them things and information they’ll need to be successful without asking them any thing tit-for-tat style in return.  (Yes, I get paid, I suppose that’s the tat for my tit!)  But I do it with students outside of class or with old people crossing the street or having a rough time moving their luggage off the steps of the train.

From having lived in Bollullos, I’ve realized the differences in age/capability that leads one to help another without this other having “earned” it…is FAMILIIAL.

It’s also very different, because there appears to be something more that family offers: a routine.  A long history of the subtle ease of their loyalty!  Yes, they’re there and they’ll hang out with you or help you (in your siblings’ case, if you can convince them).  And there’s this unquestioning care/affection that your family has for you that you didn’t earn, and rather has built up over years of having NO CHOICE but to be near you and take care of you even if they were tired after a long few weeks at work or you were annoying them or genuinely, malevolently, hurtfully mad at them.

What a crazy thing for the human race, this love thing!  It makes groups close and gives them a “together” feeling; makes people feel inclined to altruistically help each other; and imagine this: you too can build it yourself if you fall in love and aren’t careful with your birth control!  Amazing.

Semana Santa and an unrelated comment about the cold

Apparently there’s NO WHERE for Semana Santa better than Seville.  They take out all their religious monuments and put them on ornately-decorated platforms and carry them all throughout the city on their NECKS. The people take this job very seriously and are often covered in bruises afterwards, I think symbolizing the passion of the Christ when he was walking.  They practice all the rest of the year with the platforms covered in weights and supporting the beams with their shoulders.   But during Semana Santa, it’s different and they carry the weight on their necks, and it’s very serious and requires apparently a lot of coordination.

And the religious icons are quite frankly works of art.  I was never one for caring about religious icons, but then I started taking art classes in Bollullos and saw my art teacher’s sculpture of Jesus and my classmates’ pictures of one or more members of the holy family…and it’s impressionante!  These people take on the charge of a) representing GOD!  and b) representing sacredness in such a way that their statue or painting will make church-goers really experience a feeling of sacredness, thus augmenting their faith.  And it works on the contrary too, if the work of art is just the slightest bit off, like my picture that you saw was, even though you can’t really place why or how, then people notice and don’t feel as connected to their God.   The whole city comes out to see, and i’ve seen really emotive photographs of people’s hands and arms reaching out to try to touch the religious figure or platform, all hands searching out this beautifully ornate piece of culture and art.  Should be fun.

 

Also the cold:
My practice has become almost exclusively meditation (and that pretty rarely) because it’s SO cold here…You’d think southern Spain is not known for being cold, but it’s regularly 56-58 degrees in my house, no matter what time of day.  The apartments are very poorly insulated–I guess they’re  prepared only for the heat and not for the cold, because EVERYONE has marble floors and often white, cold concrete walls. 

But it’s so funny, it’s been colder than usual here (between 1 and 8 degrees C, about 34-46 F) and people just stay inside!  Because no one heats the air in pretty much any buildings except for the schools, which might actually have insulation.  Instead they heat one very small area of the house: they put a heater underneath their table and then put big, thick table cloths over the table, stick their legs underneath, and that’s how they keep warm.  It’s rare to find restaurants and bars heated because (imagine this!) they’re also poorly-insulated.  So when it gets cold, NO ONE goes out, they just stay by the only source of warmth they have!  It’s been really funny to see.  But if ever I slip and say that I can’t wait for the heat to come, people give me this look like I’m crazy and say: don’t rush it, it’ll come soon enough, and it’ll be very, very strong! 

What stands out to you about Spain?

“What stands out to you about Spain?”

“I’m interested in meeting people from abroad–how do you see us?”

“You came all the way from the United States (pause for longing sigh accompanied by starry-eyed idealization of the U.S.) to come here?  WHY?!”

…Same questions, but from a different types of people.

The usual way I answer these is by saying: “Me encanta Andalucía.  La gente aquí es alegre y tranquila como nunca he visto!  De hecho, pasé 6 meses en Buenos Aires, Argentina y me gusta Bollullos muchísimo más.”  In other words, “I LOVE Andalucia.  The people here are joyful and relaxed like I’ve never seen before.  In fact, I spent 6 months in Buenos Aires and I like Bollullos way more.”

Usually I’m not the type to lie my butt off to make people feel like I’m happier than I actually am.  Or to make people feel that I like their town more than I do.  The above statement is actually incredibly true.I couldn’t imagine a region of Spain that’s better-suited to me, at least at this point in my wanderings.

When I say that people are “alegre” or “joyful” it means that people here are just open, in a way that most would consider extroverted.  It’s pretty convenient for travelers like me to be in a town like this. I enrolled in a yoga class, and now I have a group of friends who call me to practice energy work, meditation in the countryside, or generally to sunbathe naked on the beach or drink tea/coffee in the park every Sunday.  Would this happen in a big city within about a month?  I joined an art class, which had to move to a different site that wasn’t walking distance anymore.  So the art teacher picked me up outside the old site and brought me and a few other people to the new place.  Moreover, I thought art class started at 5:30 so he was driving to my house to pick me up for class when he was technically teaching it—class actually starts at 5 o’clock!  Two weeks of this passed before he told me what time class actually was.  Also, you know how in art class, people walk around a bit and see what other people are doing?  I’ll find that there’s someone behind me, putting her hand on my shoulder half hugging me, half taking my arm.  She says how beautiful my art is, and really wants to connect over this.  She later says she comes from a different town and that one day she’ll drive me there and we can go out for coffee.  (I still don’t know what her name is.)  I gave a yoga class to my co-teachers, and after class it’s typical for people to hold someone’s hand when they’re making a really emotional comment or point, just to add emphasis and add that shared level of contact.  As you can imagine, I’ve taken quite a liking to this and now do it regularly.

Another example: I made an arrangement to rent a bike!  I met the bike-owner when I went to Bollullos’ tourism office to ask for maps of the surrounding nature areas, he just happened to be in a different office talking to someone else, when the woman I was working with walked in and asked if someone knew where to rent/buy a bike.  There it is, that easy.  No want ads necessary, just ask walk around and ask: anyone know anyone with a bike?  Also, when I decided to rent the bike (50E for the next 4 months! That’s 12.50E per month—who could even ask for that price to rent a bike for a day??), the owner took me on a half-hour bike ride to show me the closest country road route to get out of this town and into the next…  When he saw I was excited, he also agreed to take me out on a few bike rides to show me around.  Where else can you rent a bike from a stranger and he goes the extra mile (or 15 or so Km) to show you where to go with it?  For no charge, just because he recognized I was excited. I’m telling you, people are extremely inclusive and helpful here.

When I say the people are “tranquila” or “relaxed,” I mean people very rarely seem angry, complain, or are in a rush to go anywhere.  I’ve never seen people in painstaking service interactions get huffy at the bad service.  Sometimes they playfully yell at each other (spoken Spanish is a little Italian in that way) if someone’s smoking indoors and it bothers someone else. Here’s an example of times I find my tranquila self getting huffy when no one else is… There’s a convenient hardware/drugstore on my way to work that I pop into when I’m doing errands.  No one’s ever in any type of line, you just ask who’s last and from then on, it’s the honor system.  I say the honor system because there seem to be cases when it’s acceptable for people to cut in front of you, and I’m only just starting to understand who and when, but certainly not why.  If an old person comes, kiss your spot in line goodbye—they always push their way to the front.  Also, people with a “quick question” generally cut to the front and end up buying something and not having exact change…  At Droguería Mauro, they don’t have things displayed for people in aisles so you can look for what you want, pick it up, and ring it up at the cash register.  You have to wait until it’s your turn and then you Mauro will get it for you.  Mauro’s the owner and it seems sole worker in Droguería Mauro so any trip to his store takes about 5 minutes longer than it would if there were enough staff and things were run efficiently.

Here I am, gritting my teeth and thinking about how little time I’ve left for this errand, how it should take 2 minutes but is taking 7.  And all the other people waiting are laughing and joking and talking about anything from recipes to the poop dogs leave in this one area of town.  And they’re just generally being what we’d consider extroverted, shooting the shit with people they’ve just met or barely know  because the shop is owned by 1 guy who will attend to 3 other people instead of realizing that he could just take your money, which of course is 2 Euros, and he doesn’t even need to give you change, nor does he have a cash register to ring you up, so no need for a receipt or any of that time-wasting stuff.  And let you leave with your 2-Euro light bulbs.

-Of course, this cultural easy-goingness could play a part in the reason the economy is the way it is today.  People complain about not being able to join a gym, take classes, take advantage of a service someone else might be able to give because they just don’t have “enough time.”  Today, my roommate commented on this: “You don’t have enough time?  You have one kid, I can tell you what you do with your time: you teach until 3 then get off work, have lunch and a nap for three hours, then have coffee for another hour on your way to a four-hour grocery trip. That’s what you do with your time!”  Granted, my roommate’s from a big city… I’ve noticed that of the 4 out of 7 auxiliares who aren’t from big cities seem less likely to experience the feeling of being trapped that seems more common to big-city dweller compadres.

Travelling begets travelling–oh, the places you’ll go

After having traveling for the holidays i’ve come back with lots of umph and passion to travel more! I realized once that there is a part of me that searches out love that’s manifest in an affectionate way.  But this same type of seeking out love can also be funneled into getting to know/learning from people. Really wonderful. Each different person seems to have parts of you that you enjoy but that they’ve developed more, and by understanding the extremities they’ve taken your tendencies to makes you closer to your and their Self. For example, I missed my bus back to Bollullos from Sevilla so had to take an hour and a half later one to the town neighboring mine. I happened to coincide with one of my coworkers, Felipe. Felipe is one of my yoga students and one day after I taught, he came up to me and gave me the most intense hug that was almost shaking with emotion. I couldn’t tell if it was tears or laughter, joy or pain or tenderness, and then I realized that it was all of those. And that you can say “me dio mucha emocion” in Spanish, which is a way of saying both that you were excited but also very emotionally moved. And that’s where he was–you think it’s because there was an established phrase in Spanish that he could fit into to and comfortably feel what he was feeling?

Perhaps before I’d been so refreshed and interested in travelling I’d have thought: how nice, a chance to see Felipe–but what will we talk about for the next hour and a half bus ride? But we were open, it was an open day or week for me, right after seeing how amazing it can be to get to know new people.  And of course, it turned out that he has a LOT to offer. He listens to music and radio all the time, he has it in every room in his house (he lives alone); sometimes he even carries it with him portably as he wanders. He loves a literary radio show called “Hoy no es un dia cualquiera” BEAUTIFUL name–it analyzes the etymology of palabras moribundas, dying words, and where and when people stille use these words and why they might be dying out and what they’re being replaced by. VERY interesting! And later on in the show (I believe it goes all day) they read fiction, which I would LOVE. And I love the voices on the radio. I told him I was jonesin’ for the soft, intellectual and accepting way people debate on NPR in the U.S. He said he loved that too, and that he’d get me a radio so I could listen on the weekends. People are so generous here, I’m telling you… Because anything like that, even down to the littlest night stand, sheets, or a pillow to take to yoga class, I have to go out and buy because we came into a barely furnished apartment and are leaving soon anyway. He said he’d invite me (in other words, pay for me) to go to a reiki training course with him and some of our coworkers from the elementary school. WOW! I told him, “Felipe, that’s expensive–a hundred euros or more.” And he said it was an investment, and that we could practice reiki on together on each other and I could pass the knowledge on in yoga classes later, so in the end he and I and everyone would benefit. You can meet the most absolutely benevolent people if you’re open to it…

He also told me that he got into classical music by listening to flamenco-rock-classical fusion. And that he realized when he first started listening that classical music, especially from the baroque period, was the composer imagining what it’d be like to have a conversation with God. He later read or heard this affirmed somewhere else, that indeed that’s what Bach and his contemporaries were thinking. And that he’d make me a CD so I could listen to it and see what I thought.

People take the tendencies, the parts of ourselves we vaguely know we’d like to learn more about and develop them to greater extremes than we have (yet). And can almost always teach us something we’ve been wanting to know. This is one of the many case studies that I found while traveling this vacation that has showed me that going out and meeting new people–in short constantly learning–is for me, a primary “meaning of life.”

I’ll be home for Christmas…if only in my dreams!

I couldn’t visit home during the holidays! Way too expensive to get a $1000 plane ticket to the U.S.  It was tough as Christmas drew nearer; everyone knows that holidays are about family.  In my classes, we talked about what we traditionally do for Christmas, who we’re with, where we go, what we eat…  I open presents with family on my dad’s side at Nanna’s house in NJ, but only on Christmas Eve.  We always eat mountains of seafood and some kind of Italian pasta with meatballs and Nannala’s special sauce.  We eat the same pepperoni bread and delicious chips and dips that Aunt Pam makes every time.  We only open our stockings on Christmas morning. 

I realized that Christmas is not just about family but also about pretty strict tradition–how the heck do we not get bored doing the exact same thing every year?  I don’t know, but it’s actually pretty important it is to hit the “reset” button for your life by doing these same traditions, being with these same people, eating the same foods, etc.  So imagine my dismay as I tell my students what I usually do in the U.S….and realize I CAN’T DO IT THIS YEAR!

It wasn’t worth fighting or being sad about.  Most people are bound to have a Christmas away from the family, and it happens the same way for everyone: you’re a little bit sad and lonely that your family’s not there.  This is something that was written in the cards the day I decided it wasn’t worth the thousand bucks to fly back there.  And if there’s nothing you can do about something, why worry about it?  So I resigned myself to the idea of having fun and making the proverbial “best of it”!

I went to France to visit a lovely friend Juliette and stay with her family for Christmas Eve and Day.  Her family lives in Tours (well actually a suburb outside of it), a medium sized city that’s very hip and young and old at the same time.  It was wonderful…If I couldn’t be with my family on Christmas, at least I could be with hers!  Her mum’s British and even though she’s been living in France or 30 or so years, she hasn’t lost a lick of her English because she watches the BBC everyday and has continued to teach English while in France.  She’s extremely well-informed, very helpful at finding the perfect English translation, and setting an English tone in the household even though they all usually speak French to each other.  Juliette’s dad is a Frenchie and is extremely interested in Latin and Romance languages.  We never tired (let’s rephrase that–he never tired!) of guessing what a French word would be in Italian or Spanish and learning new English or Spanish phrases.  What language geeks we all were!  Wonderful for my confidence in Italian, but also a little bit confusing… He was also an amazing history/architecture buff.  He gave me a wonderful castle tour or the Loir Valley.  We saw one with a spectacular moat, the one that inspired the writer of Sleeping Beauty, and one that was a really good representation of Medieval architecture.  Adjacent to said Medieval castle was the remains of the oldest castle in probably all of Europe! Pictures to come.  We also visited a lot of different churches and were able to see the mix of architectures and artistic styles as they changed and were marked–three or four pieces of history all artistically built into one edifice!  Pretty cool.  And of course (most importantly!) there’s Ms. Juliette, who has been one of my closer friends for 2 years while we were both at Colorado College!  I met her because she was teaching French there.  It was so wonderful to have a shared history, rhetoric, values set, friend group.  We talked about the same people, caught up on with one of our fellow teachers/friend Helena, and generally had a wonderful person.  Juliette is a very accepting, perceiving, nonjudgmental person–incredibly encouraging and refreshing to be around.  She also is a good partner for touring Paris!  I went to a party with some of her friends from Tours area–always a multinational crew who spoke a combination of at least two of the following languages: English, French, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, etc!  Keepin’ it international…

 

More updates to come!

What’s it like to teach?

I’ve delayed a lot in describing what it’s like to live here. What’s it like to live in another country? What’s it like to teach and are the schools very different in Spain? How much are you teaching? Do you have to do a lot of lesson planning? So you’re an “assistant,” what kinds of things do you do? And do you like it? I think it’s been difficult to describe “life” here or “my job” because it’s such a big topic. But perhaps I’ll start with the parts that stand out—that I’m passionate about—and work from there. I do like working at schools. I always thought when I was in high school and college that “when I grew up” I would never want to teach; especially not in high schools. All I’d heard about teaching is that it doesn’t pay enough, school funding is always getting cut, you’re always with people who are not your equals—how can you be challenged in your work if you’re around people who are so young and sometimes so downright immature? Teaching to me seemed like a categorically thankless job…maybe you get the random thank you note from parents or students, but how can people who aren’t really people yet thank you on the level where you are? Well. First off it is really challenging, and in a good way. Think about it: teaching is basically putting ideas into other people’s minds. That’s crazy. How on earth do you do it? Moreover it’s incredibly dynamic. In classrooms, so many different swirling parts meet. Individual students and their lives. The class dynamic, or the synergistic combination of all the students together. The subject being taught and the teacher’s knowledge of it. Learning itself—the process of going from not knowing to knowing. And then…there’s you, the teacher, and your moods, your goals, and your personality. So picture this: in thousands of schools on the planet, there are hallways connecting room after room after room of people in the process of formation, all of them sitting down and listening for hours to one other person who’s trying to change them. And that’s where all these things meet. I’m telling you, it’s wild. Individual students—all of your them are good. And I say that not in the way that they’re all smart or even motivated: hell no. But they’re good in the way that they’re good humans-in-progress. No one is malevolent or selfishly hurting others to get ahead. No one has any intention to hurt anyone else or you. Rather, each individual is his/her own story, swirling world of family/friend situations, upbringing, and mental capacities. Sometimes they have a tough home life. There’s one student whose addicted to affection and to touch. She’s like Guinnes the 2 year old chocolate lab…people are like crack for her and you can watch it in her face. She knows she’s not supposed to jump out of her seat and run up to you and hug you while you’re beginning to teach class. She knows she’s not supposed to pop up when you come near to monitor whether the kids are understanding how to do the activity you just gave them. She knows she’s not supposed to grab and caress your feather earrings as you lean over. And she gets yelled at everytime, but she keeps doing it! You can see the second of decision where she almost frantically gives into a compulsion that she’s given in to so many times that she’s maybe never felt what it’s like to actually not give in. I can imagine that that could be troublesome for her later on in life as she blossoms into an attractive young 16 or 18-year old. And it makes me think that she’s very starved for attention at home. Other teachers have commented that she seems separated from the other students. I’ve seen her on her way to school and met her mother. Her mom holds both her girls’ hands on the way to school. So it comes down to: I have no idea what’s going on and why she’s that way, she’s an okay and relatively intelligent student. There’s just a lot of things that make a person, and how can you know? There’s another student that I’ve noticed a lot of other teachers in class publicly branding as “always” misbehaving, “never” caring, and generally being a bad student and a bad kid. Chances are, this kid never had positive enforcement from learning to realize that this—not doing drugs or being comfy and complacent—is a really good way to enjoy your life. But I don’t think he’s ever enjoyed learning. That’s tough… because what is it that people do in their lives? Make “something” of themselves. Contribute to society. Work on being a better spouse/parent or better at their job. Whichever way you slice it, people who are still excited about life are always doing one thing: learning. So much of kids’ abilities to “behave”/ “do what they’re supposed to” in your classes depends on all this complex history that makes a person, and that a teacher’s goal is to help students wherever they are, not yell at them because they’re a lost cause or blame them for not having had the proper upbringing that makes them easy for you to deal with in class. A decent amount of other teachers sit in the staff room and complain about the “gritos agudos” or piercing shouts of their students during recess or the laziness of their students. Or are complaining how students aren’t like what they used to be, and how they’re less respectable, have less manners, and this is because in general society’s getting worse, blah blah woof woof. And I’ve finally gotten to the point in my Spanish where I 1) actually understand what people are saying enough and 2) feel comfortable in composing an answer and saying it well in a timely enough manner that I can start confronting these teachers by asking questions. Like, “do you think that you think students pay attention less because you started teaching at an all girl’s school?” Or “is there something you can do about this kid’s laziness? Could it also be that he feels like he can’t do work in school and maybe he just needs more time and encouragement than the others…?” I’m starting to teach yoga to other teachers every Monday so instead of asking these questions in a confronting manner while they’re busy letting of steam and doing what makes them feel comfortable, instead I can implant these questions and ideas when they’re calm and have called in their senses and complaints for the purpose of “getting more calm,” and whatever else that means. And then there’s the class dynamic. No matter how wonderful and how much potential all your students have, sometimes when they all get together, they’re honestly unreachable. If there’s a big enough group and they’re distracted enough and there’s something else going on in the school that day, you sometimes have to surrender whatever goals and expectations you have for “illuminating” the students’ enthusiasm. For example, one day I was being an assistant to one of my favorite teachers. She’s wonderful—extremely helpful, whenever she saw me she would take my hand and hold it while she was telling me about lesson plans or showing me around. Her husband just recently got a knee surgery and all the students were preparing a song and a big march for Gender Non-Violence Day. But because the students were distracted and because she’s stressed I think with her husband’s knee (which I later found out was infected), she was constantly angry. She spent more class time shouting at the students than she spent teaching. I think raising your voice sometimes works to get students’ attention and to focus them into paying attention to what’s going on in the classroom situation, but generally if you want student to be calm you should be calm yourself. If you’re making noise and it’s just a noisy atmosphere, then it will just stay a noisy atmosphere. And if you’re teaching word-for-word from the book, the kids are going to be bored anyway. So often the key is to find ways to engage the students more, not to yell at them more. That’s my idealist optimist’s take; older teachers will probably tell me different things. So finally she left the class, closed the door, but I couldn’t get the students to care about the subject either. We were reviewing, and it was clear that they’d heard the information so many different times, they were absolutely bored. But they also didn’t understand it. It was senses—there are five of them, here are the organs you use to feel them (skin, ears, eyes, etc), and here’s how each of these organs works. And they clearly didn’t get the categorical nature of these random English words: “ears” “eyes” “senses” and “vision” were all words they’d heard before and were absolutely bored with, yet they had no idea which concept was a subcategory of another. The kids were constantly running out of class to see the preparations for the nonviolence day that were going on in the hallway, going to the bathroom, fighting with each other, and generally doing everything they could to not pay attention. And I, by the end of class, had a hoarse voice. Ya win some, ya lose some, but I suddenly grasped exactly the frustration of facing up against what seems like an impossibility of a big, distracted group. I mentioned earlier the process of learning—of going from absence of knowledge/ability to presence of it. How does this knowing get assimilated into these kids? Not by magic—it can be really hard. When you’re sitting in a class and being asked to do something new—especially doing something like speaking ENGLISH!—it’s absolutely embarrassing. I’ve seen shame on these kids’ faces, not just embarrassment. That’s usually the days before they just give up and start staring off vacantly. I tutor a 5-year old who regularly stares vacantly at th e table and has told me before (in Spanish) “this is boring!” So I’m thinking: what a challenge, this unmotivated kid who doesn’t care about English. But then I was teaching him feelings like “happy,” “sad,” “scared.” I asked what he was feeling—“mad?” No! he shouted. Tired? No! Scared? He looked down and wouldn’t answer. He’s afraid of his English lessons. And it’s because he’s with a girl who’s a year older than he is who regularly gets what she wants, including unintentionally feeling good about English at his expense…because she’s the one who knows and he’s the one who doesn’t. So part of the challenge of teaching is constantly probing the knowledge you have, dancing around it, cutting it apart, and finding ways that it best suits and excites your students at that precise instant. Requires a lot of putting yourself in your students’ minds… an finding out that deep down if they’re obstinately not paying attention, there’s probably a fear of failure under all that. Who knew, teaching students is an empathy lesson for the teacher her/himself! Cultural differences.

Teachers drink at school here—there are beers in the staffroom fridge.

Today was filled with numerous of the following

It’s all yoga, baby

(Herbs, spices, & teas.  Relatively unrelated to yoga.)

One of my biggest goals is to reach a place where I can teach yoga in Spanish and be able to speak the language well enough to communicate what there is to love about yoga. This will be the perfect challenge because it’s a stretch for my Spanish skills, and a push for me to seek and find personal, genuine yoga practices in my own life. To learn the difficult, specific, and necessary vocab, I just started going to a yoga class here in my town and bought Yoga Journal in Spanish.  Who knew that in order to say “head stand” you have to say so many words including “apoyo sobre cabeza” and that Uttanasana is “inclinacion de pie hacia delante.”   At first I was disheartened by how specific these words are that I’ll be using. I thought: wouldn’t it be nice if someone quizzed me on some of the vocab? But then I realized that I’m not so good at sitting down at a quiet table to study when I can go out and learn by listening and by experience.

First though, I have to say I’ve been a little bit more distanced from my practice. Not having a strong a yoga community has made me lightly question the strength of my spirituality. I noticed that the translation of Yoga Journal is less relevant here in Bollullos; it talks about local food and a lot of the environmental/geographic things that are specific to the U.S. Here in Spain, there’s far less sprawl crawling out and destroying farmland and nature. And half the people in Bollullos have “campo” or land that they farm. So if they read Yoga Journal and there’s an article about how eating local food parallels the practice of yoga, they probably wouldn’t even recognize why something could be written about the need to make an effort to eat local. This also made me ask myself, if some of the advice people give about life is so geographic, maybe also the spiritual message is geographically specific too? I did notice the mag/yoga community it represents totally toots its own horn. I never realized how much a yoga community is people getting together and feeling like/talking about how they’ve gotten it right and trying to communicate this “right”ness to others. Because I was on-board right from the beginning, it didn’t seem like people preaching or a community feeling good about itself, but rather people finally putting words to a truth I’d been looking for and ready for.

But when I have questions like this, all I have to do is find a way to get into a genuine practice and the proof is in the pudding.  It reminds me of graffiti I saw in Buenos Aires, “ideas are bullet-proof.” (“Las ideas son a prueba de balas.”) This saying isn’t exactly the phrase I was looking for…but it reminds me of an idea that “the truth is bullet-proof.” So I can’t know whether the idea of spirituality is objectively true, but I can go on my experience and the experience of others—for us who’ve experienced it, the truth in yoga is real.

Also, I realized so much of my yoga experience has to do with community. A community of people with shared values and constant reminders of the life lessons to keep mindful of like the concept that everything’s a practice, patience, etc. I realized this also because of my Spanish Yoga Journal magazine, which made me feel more psyched to do yoga because I felt there were others feeling it with me, being it with me, and that’s something that I truly miss when I practice alone. I leave my roommates as they facebook and study vocab words on lists online instead of going out and talking to Spaniards, and say: “I’m going off into Yogaland, see you” and they say, “k, cool” as if I were going to do sit-ups in my room for an hour… So far, it’s been my big challenge to keep a vital, intentioned, and spiritual practice without a spiritual community around me. I’m starting to meet some really cool spiritual people I can practice with, so that should be really good, and maybe I can start practicing on weekends with my yoga teacher Mar (translation: “Sea”) and the presidenta of the association, Manuela.

A beautiful friend who is part of how I define yoga skype called me recently and our conversation was an incredible reminder about what it was that I fell in love with around yoga and more specifically a physically challenging practice. I dedicated one of my recent practices to him and it was one of the more graceful, challenging practices I’ve led myself in for a while. Also, recently I discovered something amazing– my roof! It’s private, there’s tons of space, and as it gets colder, during siesta it is the PERFECT place to do yoga. It’s warmed by the sun, and no one can really see me when I’m up there. (I could sunbathe naked if I wanted up there…) It has a view of the much of the city and a bit of the countryside to the north and east.

And I can sense the beginnings of a community building. I went to yoga class yesterday with Mar and Manuela. The class is always more meditative than I’d normally lead myself in, so it’s a good challenge to let go and be totally present. But yesterday the teacher really read the energy of her students. Mar gave us a very mobile class exactly when I needed to use all my energy, get sore, and work hard to burst through the cobwebs I had built up from having a humbling, weakening cold and then traveling with my family without exercising or eating well.

It’s interesting; we humans are more connected than we give ourselves credit for. I remember when I took yoga classes from the yoga teacher at CC, unlike at Pranava (the yoga studio I went to where I could just not go to class if I felt tired or sick), it was compulsory to go to yoga class no matter how I felt. But when I felt sick or exhausted, the teacher always noticed and gave the class exactly what felt good at the time. And what’s more, most people in class seemed to be on about the same wavelength. Around cold season or finals, she did a lot of restorative classes, and on days we really wanted to move hard, she’d give that to us too. Well, usually. And that’s the same experience I’ve had with yoga here (in the three classes I’ve taken so far…). Yesterday the teacher Mar put on the swing type song on the Chips Ahoy commercials and had us stamp our feet to the beat and move our hips and move around the whole room–in other words she had us dance in yoga class. It was so fun, I thought of you because I got totally giddy. When the other women in the class got tired and even I was a bit winded when we were done with our dancing, the yoga teacher Mar went to change the music and told us to keep moving. The other ladies groaned said, “Ah! How can we keep moving, we’re exhausted!” And then there I was shouting: “Woo!” And dancing around the room. I even took Manuela’s arm and swung her, my partner ’round and ‘round. It made me remember the way a friend I danced around intensely or at inappropriate times, but he never put a damper on my dancing because he said it was so obvious that it makes me happy and that I love it. And it’s funny I’ve mulled over that a lot in my mind, trying to see what is it exactly that makes me love dance? Does it make me happy? Do I love it? Is dance the same as yoga? I didn’t believe my friend at first that it was a love because when I hear a song I like, dancing is more a compulsion than a choice. It’s like having a song stuck in your head and you really want to hear it except instead of just hearing the song, I need to sing with it and dance with it so that I feel it as thoroughly as I want. Of course there’s the slight idea that I want to dance well, but when you’re dancing alone or in yoga class, that’s a total non-issue.

Yesterday, Mar also had us shout too while we were dancing! She said, “Don’t be embarassed!” (“No tengan verguenza!”) So we shouted, grunted, and cheered with the music. It was AMAZING. And we also did this thing where we tensed all our muscles in our arms and went “Hayah!” as we made fists like we were about to kung fu somebody. It was HILARIOUS! And yes, quite embarrassing. But when everyone else is doing it, and you realize that holding back like you normally would is the socially weird thing to do, then it becomes totally fine. I came outta there completely beaming. I can tell it’s going to be like my past with yoga–I’m starting to build a community around it. I can’t help it. I love it so much, I come out of class glowing and can’t help but talk about it to everyone I run into. And they say, “There’s yoga in Bollullos? I didn’t know that!” And I say, “Why yes, in fact– let me give you the president’s number!” I’m going to start pulling people in to yoga, of this I am quite sure. I did it in CO and CA, now in BOLL. (I’m not doing this single-handedly of course. It seems that the way to create a community is to really want to be a part of it, and that’s my plan of action.)

Yesterday I felt suddenly a lot more open to venture into speaking Spanish with the other women there. We were in a super relaxed meditative Shavasana and someone banged on the door, one of the ladies got up and was like “coño” which translates to “f*ck!” or “c*nt!” I smiled inwardly at hearing that in yoga class… After practice I asked if next time we might do a sea of Ohms, and Mar responded, almost complainingly: “Yeah, we were going to until that door-knocker interrupted us.” And I replied: “Really? One of my favorite teachers said that anyone can do yoga on the beach or in the mountains, but it takes a truly practiced yogi to feel yoga in the noisy city.” I also told the class about how one of my favorite teachers said: “Never miss a trigger.” In other words, if something unexpected in your yoga practice jars you and suddenly makes you upset or mad or sad, it’s not the thing itself that made you feel that, but rather something else; here’s your opportunity to analyze yourself and figure out what that thing is. Also, the presidenta of the yoga club, the lady whose arm I’d taken and swung ’round while we were dancing, asked how old I was because she was exhausted and I was giddy. And I told her later: it’s not a question of age. My biggest role models are a couple in their sixties. They just got married. They don’t reflect light, they glow, and have been practicing all their lives–and THAT’s what I want to be like… People who’ve taken a long time to figure things out, to be disciplined, and who’ve chosen to be vibrant and still totally in love at their age.

Something else to look forward to: if I save up a bit of money I want to travel around India with Brie this summer. She’s doing a yoga teacher training!!! I’m so proud. She’s doing it with a guy who studied extensively in India and who also studied to be a physical therapist, so he goes at poses from a very active but healing angle, which I really appreciate. I think from not being corrected in some of Pranava’s classes, I was doing hyper flexible back bend tricks that weren’t necessarily great for my weak lower back. (They’re something I’ll work up to when I’ve strengthened and protected the area. I actually met a yogini who cracked a rib from “breathing wrong” while she had both her legs behind her head. No good! Yoga should not crack your ribs and hurt your body! Even if you have to give up looking as cool and bendy as possible. That’s not where my yogic values lie.)

For when/if I finally do teach, I’ve already decided to borrow some words from Spanish Yoga Journal and I think they sum up what I’m trying to say quite well: “El yoga suele definirse por la forma de su asana. Pero el yoga consiste en la intención. Todo lo que hagamos, podemos hacerlo con autoconociencia.” In other words: “Yoga is usually defined by the shape its asana. But yoga really is intention. Everything we do, we can do with self-knowledge.”

Economics and self-worth

On Wednesday I had a horrible no-good, very-bad day.  All I wanted to do was press the reset button by skyping my family.  But nothing’s ever easy, and my microphone doesn’t work, so I couldn’t.

But it was only one day, and I’ve seen my other American friends go through the same.  It was the kind of thing where you say grrrr arrrr, nothing is EVER easy!!!  I’m getting a cold and had a sore throat and was exhausted.  And everyone wears cute shoes/flats here instead of comfortable ones, so I caved and bought flats and was wearing them.  My feet were so sore they felt like cushy, hyper-sensitive, bloated blood-pillows that I had to stand on.  I was worried they’d pop.  My knees were hurting too.  And that day was a day that I didn’t have a key to get into my house… I still don’t–no matter what we do, we can’t find a key that’ll work; I have no idea who the landlord got to make the key originally, because that key certainly wasn’t made in Bollullos.  But until then, I keep getting locked out of my house, so when I need to relax because I’ve been running around all day, I cant! And when it gets cold and I’m locked out of the house, I’m locked out without the ability to change my shoes or get a sweater.  Which, is tough when you’re getting sick and your body hurts all over.

Feeling a little bit entitled can make your life better…?

That’s not what I’ve always believed leads to happiness.  But there’s a balance we have to follow between wanting more–and getting it–and being satisfied with what we have.  The following day, Thursday, my sense of entitlement kicked in and things were a LOT better. Let me tell you what I learned.  I was thinking about how I need to value myself more, and feel just a LITTLE bit of entitlement. Like many salespeople and lawyers: they seem to get what they want if they just push for it. I realized that I was taking part in an long-standing pattern of inequality.  I’ve read that most women in America get paid less because they just don’t ask for raises.  Whereas men get paid more because they don’t worry about seeming demanding or feeling like they are imposing too much of their will on others by asking to be paid at the higher end of the fair range of money alotted to people in their position.  And here I was, offering tutoring but at the very lowest of LAST YEAR’S prices.

A gender difference in pay

All the other female auxiliares I know have been talked down to 6 or 8 Euros per kid when they could’ve or had already been getting 10.  That’s SO little.  You get paid $40/hr in the U.S.  And there was a father who kept seeing me around while I was on the street doing errands and calling out to me from his car that we needed to talk about tutoring.  He called my phone five times, sent me texts, and even went to my house (everyone knows where you live in Bollullos).  So it was clear he really wanted my services.  And when I told him everyone was charging 8, he looked me in the face, said: “No, come on, the kids are just six year olds.”  And he successfully knocked me down, made me blush and sweat, and got me to agree to 6 Euros instead of 8 E per kid… All my friends charge the latter (8), unless it’s a pity case, and the people don’t have a lot of money.  There’s one male auxliar in town who talked to me yesterday the way my dad would, lecturing me on how I have to count on people bluffing and how I have to tell them to shove it, there are ten million other people who want me.  This male auxiliar is charging 15 Euros if he does single classes and 12 Euros (he can be worked down to 10) per kid if the kids are in a group.  Yep, even here in Bollullos, the men get paid a lot more than the women.

But when I got to the guy’s house who worked me down, I realized he had wood floors, a super modern and beautiful decor, and absolutely enough money to pay 8E. His kids were with some other family’s kid, and when I went to the other family’s house, they picked me up in a brandy spankin’ new BMW.  As we accelerated cleanly and quickly along the cobblestone Bollullos streets, in the way that only a very expensive car can do, I realized there is something very wrong with charging these people what other auxiliares charge for pity cases.

I’d agreed on that low price because I kept saying to myself: it’s so easy for me, all I have to do is speak English, and the kids are so young, all we’re going to do is talk about colors and numbers.  Easy.  And I’m doing this because I’m afraid I’ll lose them as customers–I really want extra cash.  And I don’t feel like it’s fair asking more just because I want more.  That’s greedy.

Oh!  It’s not just a question of entitlement, but rather self-worth.  Mixed with self-knowledge.

In the end my prices and the consequent schedule and lifestyle I have, turned out to be a question of self worth.  How much do I value my time and how much do I feel I can legitimately expect from others? I realized: I value my time definitely more than pity cases.  And on principle, I will not willingly hop into a long-standing pattern of women getting paid less than men.  That and it’s stressful running from one group of little kids to another; I have 4 tutoring sessions on Tuesday and 3 on Thursday back-to-back without even time to arrive at the next kids’ houses!  That, and I’m one of 8 in this town who speaks unaccented English. I deserve to be paid AT LEAST 8E per kid considering all that.

These realizations translate into a higher self-worth than I had when I when I was knocked down to 6E in the beginning.  A friend once said that often people don’t make as money as they could in life because they don’t feel like they’re worthy of it.  That sunk in for me.  That’s not to say that I’m going to do a job just for the money, though.  “Let the beauty you love be what you do.  There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the Earth,” as Rumi says… In other words, there are a thousand jobs I could work my way into and all of them, because it’s part of my value system, would involve appreciating life, making it better, and “kissing the earth.” I.E.: teaching and/or helping others.

There. I understand where my passions lie and that what would make me satisfied in a job or career would be teaching/ helping others.  Now I’m going to combine that with the feeling of greater self worth I was talking about earlier.  And this translates into being a good “salesperson” for oneself.  Because I know I like to be excited with kids, because I know that I like to see them improve and I’m on their side, I can safely tell the parents: “This is going to be great.  Your kid is going to love this and is already improving a lot.”  So on top of selling my services by believing in them because I know I’m the right person for the job, I also figured out the supply and demand.

Supply and Demand: I can see it happening

I told myself: this is not that much to ask of a person–the rich guy who was following me around clearly wants English lessons.  But what really helped was that there were TWO other people who wanted his exact time slot who offered me more money than he was offering.  So it made me realize–I am a lonely ship in the spinning waters of commerce.  I am seeing the basics of micro econ supply and demand swirl around and be manifested in people asking me, bargaining with me, telling me their problems with prices, telling me what they want for their kids’ English skills, telling me what they paid last year, bluffing about how much they think it’s worth, and in the end, making completely economic decisions.  I see it happening.  They can complain and weigh me down all they want with what they feel about their kids’ English level or what they want for their kid, or how expensive it is, but in the end, it’s business.  I don’t have to feel bad about people and all the tough decisions and opportunity costs they have to reckon themselves with in order to to hire me.   Because it turns out if I put myself out there enough, I’ll keep getting more calls for English class.

To my knowledge, there are 8 people in this entire little village who speak unaccented English.  I’m one of them.  The town has 13,000 people, and A LOT of them want to speak English better.  They’ve had okay grammar education, but they never really practiced speaking.  Now it’s changing I can see with the bilingual programs.  They really are working, I think.  I can see the kids start practicing speaking English from the age of 3 on!  But anyway, the bilingual school program has only been in existence for 5 years.  When more and more kids start speaking English because in the bilingual schools, there’s a lot more focus on speaking, then maybe I would have less students.  But now, that’s not the case.  Everyone wants a real English-speaker.  And I had to put myself out there to be exposed to them, but they’re definitely there.  It’s interesting how I’m becoming a business person, and have shifted my point of view from empathizing with people who don’t want to pay a lot to feeling entitled to being paid a certain amount and using my actions to say: “Sorry I don’t care how hard this decision is for you or that you think your five year old (who doesn’t even know the alphabet in English yet) is smart enough to be put in with 8 year-olds who are ten times more mature, focused, and can read at English at a high-level. It’s just not worth my stress or time trying to teach the 5 year old class close and I have to leave now to tutor TEN MILLION other kids, so bye! Oh and by the way, if you want my services, tell me asap and maybe I’ll be able to give them to you.”

What an adventure…navigating through self-worths, passions for teaching, bluffs, worries, money.

Views of the town