Galicia Profunda: part I

For those of us living in Catholic countries, this week is Semana Santa--the famous Spanish holiday where the faithful fill the streets, carrying wooden floats of saints and wearing Ku-Klux-Klan-like robes and pointed hats. We also get the whole week off from school, so I took advantage of the time to do a different sort of traveling.

Bright and early Saturday morning I walked down to the car rental place to meet with fellow auxiliar Noé from California and pick up our freedom-mobile, a little gray four-door Fiat. Once the car was loaded up with backpacks, groceries and board games we hit the road to Ourense to pick up our third partner in crime, Chelsea from Oregon. 

A few weeks previously, the three of us decided that we were sick of the usual European hostel travel. It had gotten sort of formulaic. Arrive in a city, navigate your way to the hostel you found the night before on Hostel World or Booking-dot-com, acquire a map and a list of destinations to see: a church, a museum, a castle or palace, a park and a restaurant... Rinse and repeat. So instead, we hit upon the idea of renting a car and a casa rural (see number 2) in the Ribeira Sacra. 

The Ribeira Sacra is a Denominación de Origen (DO), a sort of geographic certification of quality created by the Spanish government that primarily covers wines. This means that only wines that are produced in this region and that possess certain characteristics (the kinds of grapes and style of production, among other thins) can be labelled as DO Ribeira Sacra. Sort of like how real Champagne can only come from a certain region in France for it to be called Champagne. 

While the wines were a big draw, the reason behind the wines for me played a bigger part: the climate and geography. The region we visited has a much more continental climate than Santiago does, and about half the annual rainfall. That plus the wandering courses of the Ríos Miño and Sil make for a beautiful part of the world.

Entrance to the house with Chelsea and Noé in the doorway

We arrived at the house in the early afternoon and after a snacky lunch, we met with Manolo the house's owner, who hand-drew us a map of places we could see within the afternoon. 

I think most of the rest of this post will be photos, so sit back and relax.

The town of Castro Caldelas with its castle overlooking the Río Edo

A walk by a stream with some abandoned muiños (water mills)

Our first view of the Río Sil

An abandoned church

A field I shot while Chelsea asked the locals for directions

Up to this point I haven't mentioned just how disorganized we were leaving Santiago. Somehow I managed to leave the house with a wide selection of board games, but no towel, and Noé was stuck with two different shoes for the entirety of the trip. Originally, part of the reason we wanted a casa rural was because it gave us the option of cooking rather than eating out the whole time. Unfortunately we forgot some of the key ingredients for some of our dishes and ended up eating a lot of junk. But we were on holidays, so it was okay.

More pictures tomorrow of some of the beautiful awesome places we visited the next day.

How I Spent the Day with Fifty-five Twelve-year-olds

This past week I got suddenly invited to go on a field trip with my school to the big city of Vigo for the day, to see a theatrical production of The Portrait of Dorian Gray in English. And so, at the crack of dawn (quarter past nine in the morning) I found myself on the bus out of town with the bus driver, two other teachers and fifty-five middle-schoolers. Oh, God.

waiting in line

The bus driver dropped us off on some main drag near in Vigo and a vague idea of where the theatre was. The timetable seemed to have allowed for some getting lost, because even after a couple askings for directions and doubling-backs we found the theatre entrance about a half hour before the doors opened. For lack of anything better to do, we herded the kids to a plaza across the street where they wouldn't be blocking the foot traffic, while the teachers snuck off one by one to get a coffee pick-me-up at the cafe next door.

The play was about what I was expecting it to be. Nice, but nothing to write home about (so why am I writing this post??). A couple Argentinian dudes with decent accents, a British girl, and a local guy to do the lights. There was a rather painful Q&A session at the end where the actors invited the kids to ask them about the play, English, acting... 

Silence. 

In the end the actors ended up talking about themselves anyway, and asked the kids some comprehension questions about the play. Which they were calling the Picture of Dorian Gray. I don't know if this was a problem with the English-->Spanish-->English translation, or simply the name of the theatre version of the story, but that asshole part of my brain really wanted to ask.

Now, it just so happened that the day of our excursion was a strike day, and there was a demonstration going on in the town center in Vigo. Right near where the theatre was. Because of the demonstration, police had closed down the main drag, and the bus driver couldn't get through. One of the teachers used this delay as an opportunity to buy ice cream for everyone, which turned out to be not the best idea, because we then had to go running around trying to get back to the bus, avoiding protesters, television crews and police blockades. In the process we lost four students, including one little boy on crutches with a broken ankle. Let's just say thank god for cell phones. 

For lunch we stopped at the little town of Baiona, unleashing our terrors upon the unsuspecting restaurant owners. I went with the other adult to a more secluded, pricey place away from the children, and played along with everyone else when we said that we would be on the road again in an hour and a half. 

Just short of three hours later we were counting heads on the bus, headed up the hill to look at some petroglyphs. The bus wound its precarious way through the one-lane track that lead into the mountains. At one point we ran into a truck wanting to go down into the town. The driver quickly changed his mind and backed up at full speed until a driveway presented itself where he could back into.

At the top of the hill we were met by a very Galician, very energetic man who, after getting various degrees in history, anthropology and goodness knows what all else, discovered he still wasn't really all that qualified for any jobs, and wrote a book about petroglyphs instead. 

Xosé, the author, told us a little of what he knew about the people who had lived here around five thousand years ago, picked up from the scant traces they had left behind--some carvings on stones, some burial chambers called dolmens, and perhaps a few linguistic remains left in the names of places and plants. 

The petroglyphs and the people who made them pre-date the Romans and the castro-building celts. They were most likely a stone-age society that had some concept of astronomy (many of the carvings look like solar calendars) and placed some importance on stags and the hunting of deer. They had horses and dogs and bows and arrows, and must have had some way to accurately cut into stone.

Xosé brought with him some butcher paper, and got the kids to make some rubbings of the petroglyphs, which I hope are in the school now, and not still in the back of the science teacher's car. 

It was getting to be dark out soon, so after making the rubbings we ran back down to the bus so as to get back to Baiona again before all the coffeeshops were closed. 

By this point I was getting to be overwhelmed by the seething mass of children and took the opportunity to go for a walk by myself and take some photos.

Now, it may have sounded like I don't like my students, or children in general, but that's not true. My students this year are (by and large) good kids. They are enthusiastic and happy to be in school, and I'm happy to be there with them. But fifty-five of them, for twelve hours... I think you get the picture.

Great Britain Part II: Looking at Things

I got back to London on Sunday and started the great adventure of walking around and looking at things. But not before learning:

new word #2: left luggage: a place to drop off your bags for a bit while you wait for your train or coach. ex: I left my suitcase with the left luggage so I could go for a walk before the train came.

The first thing I looked at was this cemetery close to Tamsin's cousin's house, and it absolutely fulfilled all my expectations for what a European cemetery should be. It was big and sprawling, walled-in and somewhat overgrown, and there were haphazard gravestones filling all the available space. In Spain, things are (surprisingly) done in a more organized manner, with a cupboard-with-drawers kind of arrangement for the coffins. A little more space-efficient perhaps, but not nearly so spooky and charming. I even saw a real live raven perched on a rubbish bin. 

After formulating a plan of attack, Tamsin and I set out to see Parliament Square--that one big, chaotic square where it's possible to tick half the landmarks of London off your list. We saw: Big Ben and the houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, the Methodist Central Hall, and a bunch of Great Men statues, but did not go inside any of them (least of all the statues). The square was huge and crowded and overwhelming, so much so that it was hard to appreciate the grandeur of it all. I'm sorry, but you're just going to have to imagine (or google image search) the scene at the square--I didn't manage any worthwhile photos.

Because it was there and free, we did check out the new supreme court building, which, even though it was only established within the last decade or so, managed to stay inkeeping with the square's aesthetic of monumentally impressive buildings. In the basement, they had an exhibition of the history of the court, some various gifts and artifacts pertaining to justice, and a live video feed from whatever court proceedings were going on at the time. No photos here either.

View of St. Paul's from St. Paul's

Neither did I manage to take any good photos of the whole of our next sightseeing site: St Paul's Cathedral. Like anything else that's worth seeing in London (except the museums), it costs an arm and a leg to get into the cathedral, so Tamsin and I made an effort to make the most of our visit, listening to the whole audioguide and investigating the length, breadth, height and depth of the entire building (500-something steps from top to bottom). I got really tired and hungry by the end of it, so I don't remember many of the facts.

Like so many other cathedrals, St Paul's has gone through many incarnations, the current one being architect Sir Christopher Wren's 17th century masterpiece. The building supports the world's tallest dome, made of two parts--a lower, more geometrically perfect dome inside, painted and mosaic-ed, and an outer shell made of wood and lead designed to look impressive from the outside. A pretty clever idea in my opinion, since no one would be able to get a good look at the art inside if it was way the hell up on the outer dome. 

Down in the crypt you can see the tombs of the heroes of the Napoleonic Wars--Nelson and Wellington--and throughout the whole place you can find many lesser known military figures from the same period. The cathedral was fairly new at this point in time, and I kind of wonder if someone made a conscious effort to fill up the space with statues to make the whole thing feel more authentic. 

The next thing we looked at was the Tate Modern Museum, the modern art museum across the river from the cathedral. To get from one to the other we had to cross a pedestrian only bridge where we saw: tourists; a rainbow; and a man painting tiny pictures onto the dropped pieces of gum embedded into the walkway. Once across, the museum itself was big, cold and kind of complicated, with escalators that skipped floors and no clear timetable of hours. The art inside was definitely... modern. There was at least one whole room of pieces with titles like blue square and orange and yellow triangles on white field.  And thus museum number one was crossed off the list. 

Museums two and three we put off until the last full day, opting to first look at the Tower of London and a line painted on the ground. 

The Tower of London is really more of a collection of towers that make up the castle-fort that has over the years served the British royals as home, fortress, prison and extra closet space. Because, God, it can be tough to find room for all those jewels. I mean where does the rest of the world keep their meter-wide solid gold punch bowls? Also on display were the mythical ravens whose presence forestalls the end of the monarchy. Just to be safe, their feathers are clipped, and they live in a hutch on the lawn. 

The line on the ground, as you may have figured out from the picture, is the Greenwich Meridian, the line which divides east and west because that happened to be where some guys built a telescope. Those guys (and some of their friends) also made some very important observations and calculations that gave Britain the navigational edge the empire was built upon. So, for a line on the ground, it's pretty important.

The whole building was decked out in green for the show

The evening of our second day in London, we looked at what I think was the funnest thing that we looked at in London: the musical theatre show Wicked. 

Both of us had really wanted to see The Book of Mormon, but tickets for that were exorbitant, so instead we snagged some day-of, half-price cheap seats to a Wizard of Oz fanfic. Definitely worth it. The story was cute, the songs were clever, and the special effects were gorgeous. 

My theatre-going experience up until this point had been pretty slim--one childhood trip to see a matinee in Seattle, and far too many high school productions directed by Mrs. Neilson. I was expecting essentially a Neilson production with fewer mistakes. So of course my expectations were blown out of the water. Now I understand why the tickets are so pricey--you're going to get a heck of a lot more out of a live play than you are watching a Hollywood blockbuster at the local multiplex. 

On our third and final full day in the UK, Tamsin and I hit the museums and really dedicated ourselves to looking at things. SO MANY THINGS. Fossils, skeletons, minerals and crystals, bugs and birds and dinosaurs. Statues, pots, paintings, sculptures, icons, artifacts, mummies. 

All the things that Brits have dug up, discovered, identified and stolen over the course of the last three or four hundred years are on display, and for free. All of it is fascinating, steeped in history and aesthetic beauty, but what struck me most was the sheer volume of objects on display. By and large there wasn't a whole lot of information available about the things we were looking at, but it would take an army of grad students forty years to make a dent in the task. And once it was out there, it would probably only serve to make the experience that much more overwhelming. In all honesty I preferred the Aberystwyth museum with the spoons and taxidermied dogs to the grand treasure chest that is the British Museum. 

We rounded out our trip with the cultural experience of Evensong at Westminster Abbey, which was pleasant after the day of museums. The priest gave a nice speech about Nelson Mandela and perseverance, and the choir sang to us in Latin and perfect fourths. They even handed out pamphlets to tell us when to stand up and sit down, and the lyrics and notes to the songs. 

After that it was back to the land of siestas and Catholicism and work. It was a nice break and worth it, but I think my next trip will be centered less around looking at things and more around... I dunno. Food or something. 

Great Britain: Part I: Welsh Weekend

Three-for-one tourist shot right there.

Just so you know, it took me about three tries to spell 'britain' correctly in that title.

Over the most recent long weekend, I took advantage of my being in Europe to see a little more of the continent. Or at least the general europe-y sort of area. Great Britain is (in case you didn't know) an island to the north of Spain, and about as far away as Seattle is from Redding CA. (600 miles) I went with fellow auxiliar Tamsin from New Zealand, although we both flew in and out of different airports on different planes at different times.

We arrived Thursday and met up at the house of Tamsin's cousin, a kiwi expat who lived in London with her husband with a broken leg. London, like it has been described to me in so many fantasy novels, was cold and gray, teeming with quaint place names and spaghetti-like streets. Somehow it managed to be cute and massive at the same time.

Tamsin and I poked around a bit on Friday, then went our own separate ways as I took the bus out to Aberystwyth, Wales, but not before learning:

new word #1: Coach: long-distance bus. ex: Greyhound is a coach company.

Aberystwyth is a small college town on the coast of Wales, home to a 19th century university, a ruined castle, hills, sheep, daffodils, and ex- fellow auxiliar Laura from Ireland. It is situated about 230 miles away from London, roughly the same distance as between Seattle and a certain town in Oregon that I as a child mistakenly believed to be the home of the famous seventeenth century witch trials.

Because the coach ride was so long, I really only had one full day in "Aber" as the locals call it. (because honestly, who can spell that?) We took advantage of it however, and saw pretty much everything the town had to offer. 

View from Constitution Hill

Castle ruins

A parade?

The day I went just happened to be St. David's day, and as such everyone was decked out in daffodils and their best Welsh duds to celebrate the patron saint of Wales. St. David, according to the town museum, is the only patron saint on the British Isles who was actually from the place he was patron of. The rest of them, (St George, St Patrick etc...) were adopted from other locations. 

The town museum also had some neat examples of woodcarving, taxidermy, and paintings of shipwrecks. 

Wales was neat, and put me in mind of a British Galicia--not only for the green rolling hills and unpredictable weather, but the presence of a bilingual community in that small, tucked-away corner of the world. It was kind of homey feeling, and made me wish I knew how to pronounce words like gŵyl. The best part though was getting to see one of my friends from the Lugo days. 

The Worst Blog Post

By and large I like to think of myself as a calm and quiet person. Maybe it's the Canadian in me, but I don't like being angry. But once in a while, things just twist the wrong way and I feel like I need to make a list about it. So here it is: things that make me mad.

1. "Teachers have it easy."

No, no they don't. First off, do you remember those days way back when, when you were in high school (or college even) and you had to give a presentation? Was that scary? Picture it now. Making that long walk up to the front of the class past the staring, judging faces. At best, you're going to get out with acceptance from your audience. At worst, you'll embarrass yourself and know in your heart that from now on, whenever these people see you, they will be replaying in their minds the scene in which you ate shit in front of the entire class. But, much more likely, you will face indifference. You are boring, not worthy of their attention, nothing you say could be of any interest to anyone ever.

That is your job.

No, that is only the visible part of your job. You still need to correct the half-assed homework of a hundred indifferent teenagers, and come up with a new, inventive, engaging way to make them think about why Robert Frost repeated the last line twice in Stopping by Woods or how unit conversion works for tomorrow. Because there's a test next week, which they are not going to study for and you will spend the better part of your weekend grading.

And then there's the emotional stress. These kids are your students. Maybe they don't care and maybe they don't like you, but you at least have invested something into this relationship, and want to see them succeed. And then when you think you're about to get an insightful comment or thought-provoking question, Pablo asks if he can go to the bathroom. No, you can't. You're fourteen, you can hold it in for ten more minutes.

2. "You don't need to learn grammar to learn a language"

I'm looking at you, Pimsleur. 

This idea came about back in the bad old days of Skinner and Behaviorism. The thought was "language is a behavior" and that having students do language behaviors was the best way to get them to reproduce those behaviors in the future. Thus was born the "listen and repeat" school of language learning. These students got really good at saying phrases and dialogues, but in the real world, people are going to go off script pretty quick. 

The pendulum has swung back towards the grammar side of things, but not everyone likes it. I took some surveys at the beginning of the school year to see what my students wanted out of their classes. The winner by far was "improve speaking" with a distant second of "improve listening." "Excellent" I thought, and started planning role-plays and information-gap activities, pair-and-share... anything to get an exchange of ideas going. But I was soon stymied because most of my students didn't have enough grammar background to do more than parrot my examples during the activity then complain when I take time to explain things.

I'm sorry. I know you want to talk, but first we need to learn what a verb is.

I've heard the argument that we're all naturally adapted to learn languages, and if you stick some illiterate shmuck in a foreign culture, they're going to learn the new language. The problem with this reasoning is that you are not illiterate or stuck in a foreign culture. You don't have the years and years of constant exposure and forced usage that will make you pick up the rules on your own. 

3. "Yes, it's !#@$%ing raining"

I get it, you don't like the rain. You don't like damp socks and broken umbrellas. I know that we've broken rainfall records this past day/week/month/whatever. I've been here too. 

And no, you can't say, "oh, she's a PNW-er, she's used to this kind of weather." No, no-one gets used to this kind of weather, I just realize that for this part of the world in this part of the year, gray skies and rain is the default. Sometimes you just have to put on your big girl boots, buy a raincoat and squinch up your face a little. 

4. A wide variety of small inconveniences

• Shops being closed 
• Holes in my shoes
• Compliments
• Mold
• Needing a new glasses prescription
• Having to switch languages at the drop of a hat
  
  And lastly:
• This blog post

I may need to go look at pictures of kittens to calm down after all that.

Obligatory photo:

It's the view from my 5th floor apartment on a sunny Sunday morning. 

Sometimes

Sometimes I forget that I don't have to look both ways before crossing

Sometimes I forget I don't have a clothes dryer

Sometimes I forget free food with my drink isn't the norm

Sometimes I forget to put saldo on my movil.

Sometimes I forget to write blog posts. and emails. and text messages.

Sometimes I forget to buy the tickets ahead of time

Sometimes I forget what time it is at home

Sometimes I forget the supermarket is closed on Sundays

Sometimes I forget about peanut butter

Sometimes I forget about dinner

Sometimes I forget how the song ends and I have to turn on my computer in the middle of the night to remember how it goes

Sometimes I forget to watch the news or check the weather report

Sometimes I forget I'm in a whole different country

Sometimes I forget how great the world is

But then I usually remember

Haircuts!

Guess what guys. I just got my hair cut for the first time in over two years. Wow! For reference, on the left is me in college, and on the right is me a little more recently.

ignore the time stamp, this is from Hursday

Me, cerca 2010

All through college and much of high school, I had my hair pretty short and life was good. A little wash, a little gel and I was fit to be seen in public. No getting my scalp ripped off by the boom vang either. 

But now, living in inland Spain, I've had the opportunity to experiment with long hair. It turns out that, like make up and fashion, I seem to have missed the part of my childhood where you learn about these things. I was reading Ender's Game instead. What I've learned from this long hair experiment: 

1. Ponytails are tricky but easier than holding your hair out of your face with your hands.
2. Braids are nearly impossible, requiring superhuman endurance, dexterity and patience. It's not the under-over pattern, (Heck, I can bust out one of these bad boys in less time than it takes to braid that mess) but keeping the clumps of hair separate from the other clumps of hair; that is difficult. Curse you, hair clumps!
3. Washing every day is a bad idea. This goes against everything I learned in health class, but I just don't have two hours every morning to blow dry my hair. In Galicia, you must blow dry or it will never dry.
4. "Looking nice" is as easy as doing nothing. Just leave the ponytail thingy at home and spend the evening holding your hair out of your face with your hands! You're beautiful!

But Meghan! It sounds like you don't like long hair at all! Haha, me. You're wrong. I just like to complain.

And speaking of complaining, let's talk about getting haircuts. 

In college, I averaged about one cut every three months or so. If I wasn't forced to get a new cut while visiting the padres, I pretty exclusively went to this little hair salon next to the Fred Meyer that was run by this little old woman who I think was Greek, or maybe Italian. One of those countries whose civilization peaked a couple thousand years ago.

My Greek lady wasn't the best stylist, and I'm sure there were cheaper options, but she did have the benefit of not speaking English very well. I would say "shorter" and she would go to work. No asking if I want "layers" or "feathering" or "magic waxy goop that'll make me look great for ten minutes and then leave me feeling inadequate until the next haircut". No small talk with someone whose life revolves around hair and fashion (It appears we are both wearing clothes. How interesting. And hair. I have hair, and you have hair as well. Isn't that a coincidence?)

I thought that getting a haircut in Spain would be a similar experience--getting out of the small talk thanks to language barriers. And, since there is a barber school at my high school (which is more like a combination high school/community college) I figured I would just drop in one day after class. 

Which I did on Thursday. And I remembered the other reasons I don't like getting haircuts. Mainly it's the whole "strangers touching my head and pulling my hair" thing. I've come a long way since I was younger, but still I'm thinking "I don't know you, what're you doing near my face with scissors?" It doesn't help that the scissors are the only thing close enough to my cummy eyes (see reading) for me to see.

It turned out that I had forgotten all about the questions part of the ordeal. And while my Spanish is good enough to understand what you're asking me, I still don't know what I want you to do. You're the stylist! Just do some styling, I dunno. Shorter? Yes. Layers? Okay. ¿más liso o más volumen? ¿...Sí? The one question that really threw me for a loop was "how do you comb your hair?" Is... is there more than one way? I thought down was the only option, but now I'm questioning myself. Have I been combing my hair the wrong way my whole life? What else have I been doing wrong this whole time!?

All in all it wasn't that bad. Not the best haircut ever, but for three euros (about four bucks) it was worth it. Even the minor existential crisis.