Any keyboard that has an Ñ on it is alright with me.
Things are rocking right along in Santiago, but today I had a feeling (for the first time since arriving) that, in light of my infatuation with the Iberian Peninsula, it COULD be...gulp...boring here. Not boring like ¨that rock over there looks neat! ...time to go watch the wall!¨ but more like, ¨what the hell would I do without tours to take, locals to watch and touristy kitsch to buy and pack into a suitcase before the return flight?¨
Anyway, there has been no shortage of cool stuff going on. The Galician tongue has been more a point of curiosity than a frustration, as it is very close to Castillian phonetically. It makes me want to drop down to Portugal for a few days.
Every barrio here has its patron saint, and it is customary to party HARD on that particular day of the year, while the rest of the city sleeps (or at least parties relatively less hard). Two nights ago we ran up to the Festa do Barrio de San Pedro, where the college kids with their crazy eurosporty shoes and mullets were absolutely nuts/inebriated but somehow holding a tune on their bagpipes (¨gaita¨) and saxophones and drums, marching in the streets between the latest models of Peugeot and Renault micromobiles. That night there was a local concert in a nearby plaza, and the old folks in their berets danced with their three-year-old ¨nietos¨ until the wee hours of the morning as the Gaelic music bounced and warped down Santiago´s clean, cobblestone alleys.
The days have definitely become all work, little play, and this will likely be the theme for the next week and a half. We have finished four class days, with five to go but a few nice breaks. My day starts at 8:30AM with breakfast of croissont (a tip of the hat to the north, despite Spain´s loss to France a few nights ago in the Copa Mundial). I teach grammar at 9AM, conversation at 10Am, then from 12-2PM we have reading workshops with written exercises. Lunch, the largest meal of the day (three courses) is from 2-3PM, then siesta (thank god) until 4:30PM. Every third night I coordinate an activity, so last night we played Ultimate and in a few days we´re going to do a cooking class with a local Galician dude. Pretty cool.
The teachers do get free time from 5:30PM until 8:30PM, however. I have been able to sneak away and explore the streets a bit, and last night was the best yet: a Montecristo No. 3 from Havana, good cup of espresso, a few chapters of a good book, and then a stroll through a few plazas to catch a bit of a local folk concert as part of this week´s gay pride festivities across Spain. The band was amazing; a local group that presented itself almost as a Cranberries/Sinead O/Pearl Jam but with some serious synth bagpipes. It was a really cool experience.
Last night we had ¨mejillones¨ (mussels) for dinner, and the kitchen at the monastery feeds us amazingly. Lots of potatoes and beef, cabbage, lentil or bean soups, calamar fillets or rings, paella, fish, etc. Roberto, the guy who runs the place, is a sweet, middle-aged man with an amazing tolerance for the bullsh*t he gets from the vegetarians and orthodox folks in our group, as well as those who simply don´t want to try what is generously offered to them. (Whew. I needed that. It baffles me that people can travel thousands of miles intent on learning and growing and experiencing, but somehow leave the adventurous culinary spirit back in Hometown, USA.)
Another point of interst: the ¨Nunca Máis¨ flag above is symbolic of the environmental mishap that left many Galicians jobless following the wreck of the oil tanker Prestige in 2002...the ship was havnig difficulties, then president Aznar decided that inaction was the preferred action, and the boat split in two. It killed everything off the coast of Galicia. People arrived in the province by the busload from all over the country to clean. The black and blue slogan is now representative of the environmental movement in the country, and a reminder of the cost of political inaction in the face of such disaster. Perhaps someone should have emailed G-dub about this before Katrina hit our Gulf Coast. OK, that´s enough political talk for one evening.
...off to dodge backpackers on my way back to the monastery for some dinner.
love from Galiza
nm
