La vida cotidiana, y pensando en PR
Life in Madrid is amazing, but maybe it doesn't continually amaze any longer. The near hourly combination of wonder and putting one's foot in one's mouth seems to have abated. Maybe my posts will be less frequent. I mean a lot of the stuff that goes on now is the same stuff that would go on had we been in Brooklyn, and I don't konw if I would be blogging about it because it probably wouldn't be that interesting.
I have to say I have been thinking a lot about my wonderful friends Wanda and LIsa. They are in Rincón Puerto Rico and I think they really suffered a lot of damage at their inn, Tres Sirenas. My great friend Yael had visited a couple of years ago with our boys and it was a magical week with magical friends. I haven't had much information from them but I think I read that the swimming pool ended up in the ocean. I am thinking about them every day, multiple times.
Last week started off with a bang. The boys told me that the new bus schedule allows them to sleep in a little more, so they left the house at 07.30am to arrive at 07.45am at Casa de America. Lo and behold I get a phone call from them saying that the bus has left already. My day was already going to be chaotic; this was just the icing on the cake. I quickly made a reservation with Respiro, met the boys at the garage, and drove out to the school, berating them along the way. It was bound to happen once, but I was furious. It took us 45 minutes to get there and I could see heavy traffic heading back to Madrid, which is what I would have to suffer through to get back home in time for my meeting to be empadronado or whatever its called at 09.30am. On top of all of this gas was running low and I'm supposed to fill up the tank whenever gas is below 1/4 tank, and I really had no idea what to do. There is a credit card in the glove box to pay for gas so I found the right station after entering it on Waze. There doesn't seem to be self serve so I waited for the attendant and the tank was locked so he asked for the keys, which are attached to a cord in the car to make sure you don't accidentally walk off with the keys (this is getting boring even as I am typing it. See, if this is the day's excitement I should blog less frequently). I called Respiro and they said the key just snaps off the cord. Duh. Tank filled, incredibly inefficiently with me having to walk leisurely into the store of the gas station and wait for him to ring me up. Then back on the road, driving like a bat out of hell to get to the house ASAP.
I raced off to my meeting, took a number and sat down. I really have no idea what this is for, but Markus needs it to play on the team. Something like verification of domicile? No sei. My number was called, I showed the lease and the passports, but alas the lease was in English and he needed it in Spanish. Momentary panic. I had to wait 2 weeks for this appointment and I didn't want to wait another two weeks. But I was charming enough that the guy asked for his supervisor and the problem suddenly wasn't a problem. Now I am an official Madrileño, a word I still can't say properly despite a lot of practice.
That afternoon I started Spanish classes, 02.00pm-05.00pm Mon-Fri. It is a big time commitment but I need to learn. The school is a 5 minute walk from the house, which is why I chose it; 3 hours a day of Spanish is going to chew up a lot of time, and I'm busy enough already. They put me in Level A1, week 3, which means the third week after having zero knowledge of Spanish. I thought that was too low for me but I really need to learn the fundamentals. There were 7 of us in class: 2 from China, 2 from France, 2 from the US, and 1 from Germany. Teacher was great but students not so exciting, and some of the accents were akin to fingernails on the chalkboard.
Some parts of the class were interesting, like verb conjugation. In Portuguese they combine the 2nd and 3rd person:
falar = to talk, speak
eu falo
você fala
ele fala
nos falamos
vocês falam
eles falam
In Spanish there are six totally different conjugations:
hablar = to talk, speak
yo hablo
tu hablas
el habla
nosotros hablamos
vosotros hablais
ellos hablan
I do pretty well in a lot of converstation if I can totally avoid the 2nd person. "Ola Ana. Como va Ana? Que va Ana hacer esa semana?" It makes for very stilted conversation to talk to everyone in the 3rd person.
So that stuff I like, the things I don't know, but I was about to pass out sometimes from boredom. How to tell time in Spanish. How to use the 24-hour clock. I know all this stuff already. But better to suffer through this and learn what I need to learn before moving up.
It is interesting to consider the fact that Chinese people must really struggle because the sentence formation in Spanish isn't really so different in English:
Como tomas el café Olavo?
Lo tomo con leche.
The teacher, who is great, made it confusing talking about "direct object pronouns" but I guess she has to do that for the people who don't speak European languages. Do the Chinese have direct object pronouns? Actually, scratch that. I don't really care.
Most of the week was really busy with Spanish and work and life, but on Thursday I jumped on the subway to an Asian market I found online, near the Tetuán station. It was great and I loaded up. I really found a lot of stuff that I will use, which I was really happy about. I love cooking Asian food and we have tried a few Asian places that have been mediocre at best. This was booty from the trip:
On the way home I stopped at the market to buy fixings for Pad Thai. I was aching for Pad Thai and it turned out delicious, although I bought raw shrimp to cook and it was more challenging than I thought. Each time I removed a head, goop would come out in all directions; is this normal? I'm not much of a shrimp fan anyway, so next time chicken. If my airline work goes to hell in a handbasket maybe I will open a Thai restaurant where I only serve Pad Thai. Next target is to make some Bim Bim Bap and potstickers.
Friday I was invited to Clair's for dinner. I had met Clair, a friend of Ana's, a couple of weeks ago. I went to Clair's house where there were about 8 of us, mostly Brits who married into Spanish culture and were living in Madrid. Lovely evening. Clair's house reminded me of a brownstone in Fort Greene: quiet street, small townhouse, lovely garden. Really great. Clair made a delicious aubergine dish, asparagus with avocado and orange sections (I need to try that), and couscous. I brought wine and brussels sprouts because when I met her we were pining for odd vegetables that can't easily be found, and I stumbled across brussels sprouts at the market. At midnight I had to bow out early - soccer game in the morning.
We had been told that Markus would need to bring white shorts and socks to the game, but Saturday morning comes and he says he doesn't have that, so before picking up the Respiro car we rush down to Gran Via to pay more than we needed to for what I should have gotten last week. Game was fine, another triangular. Markus scored a goal in the first half and his team, Alcobendas Sport, won 3-1. 2nd half Markus didn't start and the team fell behind. He was brought back on late in the half, which must be a good sign, but it was too late and the boys lost. Just a friendly. Markus complained that he didn't get enough passes, but that's what center forwards do, complain about lack of opportunity. Things couldn't be better as far as soccer goes.
After retuning the car, Markus and I went to a restaurant called Chan (Calle de Barbieri, 4) which I walked passed every day to/from Spanish class. The place bills itself as a purveyor of Chinese street food, and although the interior was cute there is no way we are going back. The service was tortuously slow. We order a duck bun, Korean rice, and potstickers, and we were there for an hour and a half. Good god. You can get 10 dishes at Republic on Union Square in 20 minutes. What could possibly take so long?
Sunday the three of us just chilled at home. So much rushing around. Markus went out to meet Mateo in the afternoon, they walked around the Real Madrid stadium before the game. Next week: gotta start swimming.