Hot and Cold

They say you hit highs and lows when traveling. They being my incredibly thorough study abroad manuals from both Amherst and Colby. The initial euphoric wonderment of being somewhere completely new and foreign, the depressive realization that new and foreign is actually new and foreign. There are more steps than that, at least according to the photocopied 4.25" x 5.5" booklets sitting on my desk, but I haven't made it past the second yet. Obviously 'such feelings are perfectly normal' (Study Abroad Handbook: Amherst College, 51), but normalcy is unquestionably relative. [1] Normal doesn't make Spain any less not home.

And scene. Look, I'm fully aware of how obnoxious and overtly dramatic I sound. But, A. I am obnoxious and overtly dramatic. and B. See A. Honestly, though, the point I swear I'm going to end up making isn’t about sympathy. [2] Because it isn’t so much that I'm feeling a little depressed (because that's normal), but more the why and how of it all.

One of the ways I’ve tried to describe how the feeling started (and, ok, yes, this is definitely over the top) is as a sort of locked-in syndrome, a la Diving Bell and the Butterfly. I’m a reasonably intelligent and polite (if English-speaking) twenty year old male college student confined by the social etiquette and functionality, for all intents and purposes, of a three year old toddler. Because I swear I can understand; I just can't respond. Ordering wine feels a little weird when you have to point to the tapa you want with it, to tap on the glass like a little kid. Just once it would be nice to walk in, order and maybe even flirt a little without having to be a foreigner, without having to force anything. It's stupid, really, but I’d really, really like that. I want it to be easy. I don't want to be special or different or American. I want to be, well, the good kind of normal.

Except, of course, that is also the opposite of what I want. This second week abroad has been one full of contradiction, an uncomfortably liminal existence. Because, though I still have utter contempt for the other Americans eating in Burger King or McDonald's; for everyone who just tries speaking in English louder; for the fucking New Zealand [3][4] woman in my culture course for whom all other cultures/ages/sexes/etc. are inherently inferior to hers, for whom learning Spanish is about broadcasting said superiority and for whom class is the ideal platform from which to preach her smug self-satisfaction, I’ve realized that I am one of these people, that I identify with them to a degree I had hoped impossible.

It's not just that I am one of these people, though; it's that part of me sort of, kind of, maybe wants to be one of them, too. That I need, desperately, to be part of a group, to be accepted at I don’t even care whose lunchtable and that I really (really) want to go to McDonald's. I can't even remember the last time I went to one in the States, but there's something indescribably comforting about capitalism. Something that reminds me of family car trips to Maine and my mother’s insistence on always ordering a kids' meal. And about that one at time on our way to Indiana when my sister and I were little and dad accidentally got us regular coke. Of seventh grade geography class and learning about their military-grade franchise research and of Baylor and of my friends and of that one in Red Bank that scares Laurie and of the South. [5]

I want to talk in English, too. Loudly. I want to curse. I want to use age-appropriate vocabulary and dashes and semicolons and marginally complex syntax. I want people to see me for the reasonably intelligent, occasionally (ok, rarely) self-deprecating asshole that I am. I want them to be impressed by that, to think that I'm not just another tourist, that I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and, doggone it, people like me. I want to be on the other side of that counter, to be upset with someone besides myself for a change. And most of all I want to punch that woman in the face. To tell her to shut the hell up and listen instead of waiting to talk. And then to punch her in the face again. Not because she's contemptuous of the Spanish, but because she looks down on Americans. [6] Awful, I know, but completely true.

And though maybe I could, I won't. This is the why. We were watching television during lunch yesterday, like we always do in my little boarding house. Me, my Spanish madre and the three other Americans I would likely not have otherwise met and with whom I have very little in common, [7] chatting (a liberal definition) in our limited Spanish about the heat and the food when TeleUno ran a story on el Presidente de los EEUU, Barack Obama. I just stopped mid-sentence (I think I was probably saying something about lunch - we were having a sort of potato salad on fried bread – not that it matters) and just stared at the television. I was completely transfixed, hoping (to an absolutely unreasonable degree) that they'd let him speak, that they'd air the speech instead of rolling it in the background. That I could hear, if just for a minute, that ubiquitously American voice. But, naturally, they (and I'm still not sure as to who I thought that 'they' might be) didn't. And so I didn't. The whole segment can't have lasted longer than thirty seconds. And I was irrationally mad. Furious, even. Didn't they people know what they were missing? One of the most compelling and effortlessly didactic public speakers of the decade, and they couldn't even be bothered to translate, to listen for thirty fucking seconds.

It was as I was staring angrily at the television, though, that I realized what a tremendous ass I am. [8] It's me who's been missing something, who should have been listening - not my intangible they. Spain has universal healthcare and gay marriage. Spain gave birth to Cervantes, to the modern novel, to Unamuno and García Lorca. Spain has Goya and Dalí and Picasso and Amenábar. Spain invented the mop. Why couldn't I be bothered to listen to what they have to say? And there isn't a good reason.

The psychological etc. the handbooks warn didn't prepare me for this type of culture shock. Not of the differences between mine and theirs, but simply the awareness of my own, of my fragility and utter fallibility. I left fully expecting to be a cultured, polite and interested student abroad, one for whom every experience would be character building, ones from which I would learn a little bit more about myself, and only good things. Which is absurdly naïve and arrogant. And that's precisely what I've learned about myself. That I'm both (though I'm afraid probably more of the latter), and that in realizing this, I still have the potential to be neither. It's only been a week and change, but I was at least right about the self-discovery.

So here's the plan: I'm going to start listening. All this cultural baggage I didn't realize I had, I'm going to try and let go. Or at least tuck under the bed for a while. I’m not going to speak in English in public because it's rude and because I need to practice, however embarrassed and infantile I feel. I am not going to McDonald's, because a Happy Meal is not my mom and caffeinated coke is not my dad and the golden arches aren't home and no amount of calories will change that. I am, however, still going to smile when Katy Perry comes on in a bar, and I am still going to read Faulkner and Chappell in my spare time. I am going to try and become a better person, or at the very least, not a worse one. I am going to open myself up to step three, whatever it is. [9] And I am going to punch that woman in the face.

1 - Though 'you can prepare yourself psychologically to accept the temporary discomfort' of this 'psychological disorientation,' it’s important to remember that experiencing the aforementioned discomfort and disorientation 'does not imply any psychological or emotional shortcomings on your part' (SAH: AC, 51). Damn book should come with an emergency Prozac.
2 - It totally is.
3 - So I thought she was English at first, and that totally made sense. And then it turned out she was from Canada, which was still acceptable. And then she had to open her goddamn mouth one more time and say she was from Christchurch. I hope she asphyxiates from whatever terrible smell her mustache is emitting. I hate her.
4 - For the record, though, I still blame Canada.
5 - And, naturally, of barbecue and sweet tea. Which I really just need to get over.
6 - So help me, I even got pissed when she took a shot at Dan Brown.
7 - One got 'matón' tattooed inside his lip. Which means thug. He is not a thug. He is an idiot. But he speaks English, and beggars, alas, cannot be choosers.
8 - I'm well aware that it took me over a week and nearly eight paragraphs to realize this. I am an ass, obviously. But at least I have enough self-awareness to be ashamed. Right?
9 - I'm sure I seem a little glib. And, though I keep telling myself that it isn't true, it probably is. And I think this realization might be worse than all the others. That not only have I been harboring this extreme arrogance, I have the indecency to feel proud of myself for recognizing it. Look, I know I'm a terrible person. I'm working on it, but these things take time. More than a week and a half, at least for me. WE CAN BUILD ON THIS.

Leaving Home

Well, my flight for Madrid leaves in just under 72 hours, and I'm sitting here wondering just why the fuck I have so many ties and why the hell I think I'm going to need all of them and shit, where did that stain come from? Because if I didn't have something as idiotic as that to worry about, I'd probably be having a legitimate panic attack.

'Why would I have a panic attack?' you ask, instantly regretting it. (Tip: I'm slightly more tolerable when drinking. Clarification: When you are drinking.) Well, to begin, there's a minor hiccup in my inability to form a coherent sentence, let alone one in Spanish. For legal reasons, I'm not naming names here, but if you were to ask Professor Ara-Say Enneis-Bray, she (or is it a he?) would back me up on this. And probably dock you a letter grade just for admitting you know me. (Haha! But seriously.) So, yes, that I'm going to a country where they don't speak a (and I hesitate here to say 'real') language is a little intimidating. My hope is that my usual approach, that is assuming that it'll all be intuitive, will work. And that eight years of classroom Spanish has not been completely replaced by 30 Rock references. There is also the fear/reality that this is not in fact a vacation and that I have to go to class, that I'm being graded and that attendance counts. Not that I don't like school, of course - it's a warm and cozy little bubble sheltering me from the real world - but I'm, how you say, lazy and easily distracted. So there's that potential failure, too. And, dear reader, there is also you. And how much I'm going to miss you, particularly if you're related to me or were my roommate or have written on my facebook in the last twenty-four hours. Where does separation anxiety disorder hurt? Everywhere.

I've decided, however, that I'm willing to suck it up. (Though the more astute reader may have noticed that this paragraph follows one of me decidedly not sucking it up, it would be kind of a dick move to point that out.) It's going to be difficult, I'm sure, but nothing ventured nothing gained, why do you climb the mountain?, etc. There's something to be said for experience, however poorly it might turn out. You build character, and God knows I'm in desperate need of some of that. And, ignoring the language barrier and the occasional lapse into fascism, the Spanish really have perfected culture. They wake up late. They eat a big breakfast. They work for an hour or two. They eat a big lunch. They take a nap. They work for another hour or two. They snack. They eat a big dinner. They drink. They stay up late. And forget any of that working on weekends bullshit - overtime is for the Germans. The Spanish are the Romans just as they invented wine, orgies and vomitoriums; the English at the eave of taxation and gin - they know they've gone one step too far, but, goddamnit, they're not giving up their naps or their pork products. History be damned, this is what life should be like. And hopefully the deans' office is going to respect that attitude, too.

So I don't know that I've actually made much headway in terms of the panicking (I still don't know how that stain got there), but I think that I've at least (sort of) come to terms with why I'm (sort of) leaving the happy irreality that is my life with my friends and family/at Amherst/in the God bless the United States of Amuhrica. Because you have to live every week like it's Shark Week, Liz Lemon. That's why.