speaking and understanding

On Saturday I spent the night at Kate’s home. She invited me over so that I wouldn’t be alone of November 26th, the date of mom’s death 11 years ago. It was a kind gesture. Kate lives with her husband, Enrique, and her Brazilian friend Lillian. Lillian is teaching Portugeuse to Kate and Enrique, and Kate and Enrique are (kinda) teaching Lillian Spanish, though she already speaks well. So it was a night was a rich lingual exchange.

I’ve found that there are a number of obstacles getting in the way of my participation when I’m in groups of more than one person and the dominant spoken language is Spanish.
1) Unlike in class, when every direction or phrase is repeated, in conversation, people usually say things only once.
2) As I try to process the words, and I get stuck trying to remember the meaning of one word, I do not listen to the rest of the sentence and therefore, lose a lot of meaning. Multitasking is too difficult.
3) By the time I’ve formulated, in my head, what I’m going to say, the conversation has moved on and my thoughts are irrrelevent. I struggle mightily when I speak w/o rehearsing.
4) Depending on the size and attitude of the group, I’m more willing to take a risk. When I am not confident, my tendency is to shut up. I do not want to take risks.
5) Often, in conversation here, there seems to be lots of maneuvering to make your comment, the conversation is quick and the content is rich. I’m not always willing or able to try and butt my way into a conversation just to say something that I don’t feel confident about. That is sometimes the case in NY as well. In conversation, you want to be a quick and witty participant, and it’s not worth participating if you don’t offer something juicy to help move the conversation along.

One curious part is that when someone says something funny, that I don’t understand, and someone else tries to explain it in english, it’s no longer funny without the timing, the humor is lost. I usually chuckle politely and offer a quick acknowledging comment, then the conversation moves on. It’s a continuously humbling experience.

NEXT: last night, Monday, after a culture class about Flamenco, a group of us went for a cerveza. 1 turned to 2 and 2 turned to 3 and by that time we were hungry. I took 3 others to a restaurant in my neighborhood. They called me “Jefe” boss, because I was in charge of where to go and I spoke to the waiter and ordered. However, thorough the whole night, we spoke Spanish. A full 4 hours only reverting to English when the idea was too complicated. I realized that I feel much more comfortable taking risks and understanding other Spanish learners. However it was nights like last one, that give me more confidence for speaking with non language learners. I dreamt in Spanish. Yet in class today I knocked my head with my hands because I had so much trouble going between the passed indefinite and the passed imperfect.

From the perspective of speaking and understanding, I have good days and bad.

thanksgiving

This year I’m thankful to have met Chris, a CIA graduate, because he cooked thanksgiving. We went to Shana, Elizabeth and Moa’s flat and ate all the traditional things. Except instead of a full bird, We had boneless breasts, which I think I might prefer, though the perfect oval slices seem a little unusual and uniform. Also, there were no cranberries, so he made a current and orange sauce instead. Great, I ate 3 helpings, it’s now the next morning and I’m still full. No special K today! I need to go running.

The table wasn’t big enough for us all to sit together, so we settled in around the living room eating on our laps. We went around the room and talked about what we were thankful for. No-one was particularly creative in their responses and I kept it non-personal (I didn’t want to open my heart to 8 strangers) by saying that I’m thankful for Madrid, because it’s a city that closely mirrors my current mental state. The culture here is very spontaneous, and I am too.

But truly, I’m thankful for soooo much. I realize how blessed I am.

I am thankful:

that I will probably be an Uncle by the end of the year
that The School at Columbia gave me an “ano libre”
that I have enough money to travel and live comfortably for the year
that I am never hungry
that I can wake up at 9:30 every day and study
that I am still able to learn new things at 29 (and for the rest of my life)
that my computer didn’t die when I spilled orange juice on it.
That I have a good friend living in my apt in New York.
That I leave near the Mercado Anton Martin, where I can get clementines for 99 euro cents a Kilo.
That I have met supportive and kind people during my traveling so far
That, 2 nights ago, I smacked the hand of the pickpocket and he didn’t get my wallet.
that Mike Parker invited me to Barcelona for turkey day but understood when I told him that I felt too overwealmed to go.
If I didn’t want to study now, I could continue this list forever. I am blessed.

After dinner I brought out a bottle of Anis and Blueberry apertif. I took a tiny sip and my heart started racing and I got all hot, so I didn’t finish. I wasn’t the only one, I think the sink digested best; everyone poured it down the drain.

It’s getting cold here, supposedly there will be snow on Sunday. As long as I sit between the 2 space heaters, the apartment is warm enough.

listo

So in class we learned that the word "listo" usually means "ready." However when I went to see Match Point, the new woody allen pic, I noticed that when a character said the word "clever," the translation in the subtitle showed the word "listo." Huh, I think it's neat that the word for ready also means clever. . . because a clever person is really ready all the time. Learngin the 2 meanisngs of listo is my first "aha" moment about the language. It's neat to learn and think about how different cultures express ideas.

On Friday night I saw a play written in 1995 by Howard Zinn called Karl Marx in Soho. It was a one man show imagining what Marx would think if he came back to modern times and reflected on the state of capitalizm and the fall of communism. It was kind of a jumbled bunch of ideas, most notably (but not surprisingly) that he wouldn't be a marxist based on how coommunism play itself out in the soviet union. The most interesting part, I thought, was when he described the Paris commune in 1871 a 3 month period when Paris was controlled by the workers. I never knew it existed, but it was as close to a situation in which cammunism, as Marx concieved of it, actually thrived. On Saturday, I went to Segovia, a small city north of Madrid that boasts an aqueduct and a castle on which they claim Walt Disney based the castle at the Magic Kingdom.




thats all for now.

back in Madrid

So I've returned to the city that I kinda call home right now. New apartment, new esquela, new friends. I just had a beer with a young french fellow named Joseph whom imports fruit to France for a living. He speaks less English than he speaks Spanish, so we really had to work to speak in Spanish. It's good, we kept if up for 45 minutes. Now I've found a coffee shop with free internet which will do for now because my new apartment has a wifi router and a dead DSL line :(

Anyway, the apartment is OK. Esther, the landlord is eccentric. A dancer and physical therapist who works for Martha Graham company in NY, she has filled her apartment with posters of Wonderwoman, a pink showercurtain (that isn't on the shower) and a dreadful multi hued pink armorio (protable closet). I've made a few adjustments but it's still a little funny to walk into it.

So I'm posting some pictures from Nuremberg. The parking lot is located at 12 Hochstratte, Oma and Harry's old address. The sausage is very typical street food, and sure beat the hell out of the dirty water dogs that you get in NY (and I like dirty water dogs) because they're crispy and come in chewy bread. The rally yards are just that, rally yards, and they're intimidating. Now they are used as a public park space and a venue for occasional concerts. (Oh, I didn't take the picture on the last post, so don't give me any credit for masterful exposure)

Nuremberg

Yesterday morning I left the hotel and went directly to the tram station and bought a ticket to Zaum-Centrum, the stop at the old Nazi rally yards 15 minutes from the center of town. The documentary Museum at the rally grounds is housed in the old outdoor congress hall. The congress hall was originally designed like an outdoor coliseum that could accommodate 50,000. But, it was never fully completed, in 1999 began to house the museum. Interestingly, an enormous glass and metal point sticks out 100 feet from the entrance. It has speared this former physical center of the Nazi Party through the heart.

Most of the rally yards were never completed, but the plans were massive. A stadium for 450,000 people, 2 sport complexes, a Zepplinfield, Even housing! In 1936, Nuremberg (a city of 440,000) hosted over 1 million socialist party (and sympathetic other parties) members at the yearly rally. The film clips from that September show the city overflowing with soldiers and families. Therefore the rally yards had strips of semi permanent tents and housing and enormous kitchens and beer gardens to feed all the members of the party. Even though Germany was handling the global depression differently from America, there were still images of party members standing in lines for soup (a similar look to the American images produced at the same time.)

So after the museum, I walked down the old parade lane (where the Nazi’s marched) and I sat at the Zeppelin field and wrote postcards to family members. There are no guards or groundskeepers keeping the public from going into the seats. And the place has been neglected. Gum and cigarette butts and cracks and grass and graffiti cover the old place. There was a fellow with a tennis racket hitting a ball against the tall, cold, stern, rear wall. It’s as if the current German citizens know that caring for it could be interpreted as sympathy for the ideas it symbolizes.

I went back to the city and walked through the old castle on the way to Hochstrasse 12, Oma’s first address. Now it’s a parking garage. I couldn’t find Tiergarten Street, and when I asked at (not one but two!) Tourist offices, they were not helpful, only guiding me toward tiergarten square (of which there is no #48).

Last night Phillip met me and took me to classic Bavarian dinner. I’ve eaten 14 sausages in the last 24 hours. They have these special white ones that look like Jones (the American brand with the little log cabin on the front) but they taste a lot better. I also had 2 slices from different loaves of meat (one had chunks of carrot) the other had lots of green herb (parsley I think). They also have these tasty fresh baked pretzels that you can buy on the street for .45-euro cents. Oh yeah, and I had hot strudel with lots of whipped cream and vanilla ice cream. It was drizzled with chocolate too.