Delusions of Glamour: The Time I Went to Spain and Told Lies to My Boyfriend

Ch. 2: My Secret Diary

January 9

Plane!

Quickly: the other kids in my program seem really cool! I’ve already bonded with a few of them. I’m not so nervous now. Mainly excited. And dehydrated. It feels like we’re all off on this grand adventure. Can’t believe I’ll be away from America for so long, this is good for me I think! I love airline peanuts!

--Holly

January 15

In my new apartment!

I can’t believe this is the first time I’m writing but I literally haven’t had a single moment to sit down. I’m so tired from everything, and it makes you even more tired when you have to translate everything around you in your head, but here you go:

I am here! I have arrived! Madrid is massive, like a million times bigger than Reno it seems. I’ve been riding the Metro every day! Ahhh I ride the Metro it’s so cool I feel so cool! The city is an interesting mix of old crumbling historic buildings and newer nondescript blah buildings. It’s so fucking cold (wasn’t expecting that) and everything has that winter wash of cold pink and gray, when the days are really short so it never seems to get fully sunshiney and bright. It’s acceptable to throw your napkins on the floor in cafes, and a lot of people throw litter, so it looks dirty everywhere. But I’m from Reno so whatever.

The air smells like food frying and exhaust from the buses…they drive tiny cars and eat outside, even in the cold. Everyone stays up all night, the young and old (I’m home!). It’s amazing, there are discos that don’t even OPEN until 3am. Good thing I earned my party stripes in rager Reno, the kids from other parts of the U.S. are having a hard time keeping up but I have no problemo keeping my dancing shoes on til dawn. ¡Olé!

How do I describe the feeling of being in the discoteca?!!!! It’s like this fishbowl of a perfectly engineered party. The lights flash to every beat, the music is what I guess you’d call “house,” not what I’m used to but super fun, the beat all high and driving. It’s easy to meet these foreign boys, probably because they think American girls are easy. I toss my hair around and strange hands grip my hips and I twirl away, or I don’t….I feel like I’m dancing away my goodie-two-shoes, casting them off and putting on the sexiest I AM A WOMAN heels in their place…this is my heaven, dancing all night long in the Spanish discoteca!!!!

Will tell more about that fun stuff but first have to admit: its pretty scary being by myself in this city. The first afternoon in my apartment, I’m in this new room in a new city, sitting on my suitcase, looking at all the laundry strung up outside because they don’t have dryers here, and I can hear a man and woman yelling next door. It sounds scary, but I don’t understand all the Spanish so I try to pretend they’re yelling jokes at each other, but I know they’re having a wicked fight. I feel so sheltered, I’ve never even lived in an apartment before, so white and suburban America my life has been. I also realize I’m hungry as fuck and if I want to eat something I must go out and converse. In Spanish. Something I’ve really only done in a classroom. 

So I wander around until I find a market, go in and realize you can’t just pick things up like markets in America, you have to ask for what you want (in this market at least, it was like a Euro market you’d imagine in a movie). It was like a Spanish final exam on steroids. I was truly hungry so the DESIRE to know the words was heightened, not just “I studied with flashcards all night cramming for this exam.” I’m standing there, a line forming behind me, furiously flipping pages in my vocab book, just trying to get milk and cereal (words I KNOW, but my mind was like, blank from the pressure!). 

It’s like language survival mode. I will admit when I got back to the apartment I cried for a minute. A long minute. I felt foolish and young and dumb and hungry. Then I ate my bowl of cereal and felt triumphant, because I made that whole process happen (exit apartment, find a market, obtain food, find apartment again) in a foreign country in a foreign land. Such a simple process I wouldn’t think twice about at home, but tricky and satisfying as fuck here. Hmmmm. This is going to be harder than I thought.

Ah! I had my first day of school yesterday! I know I SHOULD have written about school before the fun discoteca stuff and going to the market (mis)adventure…but, hey, this whole experience is as much about the lifestyle as it is about actual class, right?

I don’t have too much to report yet, other than I’ve never had to be so fucking responsible in my LIFE! My apartment is a forty-five minute Metro ride from school, blahhhhhhhhh. And class is at 9am which means I have to get up at like 7:30am boooooooooo, haven’t done that shit since high school. So it’s still dark when I leave my apartment which feels TERRIBLE.

My solace is the bakery by my Metro stop, the smell of fresh baking dough-things is divine. If I get to the Metro on time, I treat myself to chocolate con churros, which is the most delicious, sumptuous, ridiculous thing these crazy Spaniards eat for BREAKFAST, on the regular. It’s basically a basket of fresh churros, but a bazillion times better than churros we have at ballparks and Disneyland. You take these churros and you dip them into a cup of thick hot chocolate, not your grandma’s hot chocolate, but real, thick chocolate in melted form. This is what they eat for breakfast here! Of course this breakfast stopover makes me late, but it’s extremely worth it.

I have to change trains twice on the Metro, which fills me with anxiety because if I miss a stop maybe I’ll end up in Portugal and be late for class. Of course the announcements are in crazy fast native Spanish so I have to really keep track of where I’m at, not easy when you’re full of chocolate con churros, all warm and snuggly smooshed between people. I admit to missing the leisurely seven minute stroll across campus I’m used to back home, but I also like feeling caught up in the urban humanity of it all.

Class itself is more difficult than I expected. But it will be a good challenge. Profesora Mar is adorable and very helpful, but strict about the being on time thing. If you’re late three times you get lowered a whole letter grade! And she conducts the class entirely in Spanish (duh, I know, but in classes back home the professors say they will speak only in Spanish, but always break it a few weeks into the semester. Not here.) I will APPLY MYSELF and become fluent! I certainly feel more motivated than I ever have, being here, needing to use the language on the daily.

To Do: Go to a museum already! Do something cultural! Don’t just spend your life in the discos….although that could be fuuuuuun!

More later because right now I desperately need a siesta (siesta!) and I have vowed to start my travel writing thing tonight. I will write a long letter back home, which will feel good to record the events of my life here, and to launch myself into the realm of travel writers. YOU CAN DO IT!

--Holly

p.s. Don’t get fat! The food is all jamón everywhere, as in salted pork bodies hanging from restaurant ceilings…I like bacon as much as the next guy but this is slightly yuck…and lots of beer and wine. Okay you can get a little fat, but make it worth it, like from eating cheese. I love cheese.