Heather Worley Living in St. Petersburg, Russia
Hola everyone!
I'm safe and sound back in Saint-Petersburg, everything's going well, and I
slept until almost 2 p.m. today, which I guess makes up for the lack of sleep
yesterday. I wrote this issue in bits and pieces, so if you can ignore
the inconsistencies in verb tenses, that would be best...
Que tengan un buen dia! (Scott, did I do that right?)
*******
Wednesday
There are times I've been walking around Madrid or Alcala and noticed that the
only people around me are men, especially in the plazas during mid-day or at
siesta time, and I think I now understand why. I think Spanish women do
their darnedest to avoid men they don't know.
I was walking in the park this morning, thinking how lovely Alcala is with its
pretty park and quaint old city walls and groups of little old men playing elacapunta
(or something like that - it's a game they play with silver balls the size of
poolballs, and from what I can tell it's sort of like horseshoes), and as I
started to leave, one of the old men began to follow me. At first I thought
I was imagining it, but then I stopped to look at something and he caught up
to me. He asked if I wanted to take a walk and talk for a while, so I
said okay. He asked what I was doing in Alcala, all those sorts of questions.
Then he suggested we sit on a bench, and when we sat down he tried to kiss me!
I stood up and told him no, I just can't do that. He said, "Well,
why not? You don't have a boyfriend." I said, "Yeah, but
you probably have a wife." And then he said, no, he doesn't, never
has, never even had a girlfriend or kissed a girl. Had I kissed a boy
before? well, good, then I could teach him how. I decided to quit
trying to be polite and just left.
On my way out, another guy (this one only slightly over middle age) tried to
get my attention, but I just ignored him. He caught up to me, tried to
get me to talk to him, but I was having none of this, so I told him I had to
go. He said I should meet him in the park tomorrow at noon...yeah, right.
I've heard of American students having conflicts with Spanish men in bars and
clubs over the girls, and that Spanish men have the impression that American
women are sluts. From what I understand, a lot of the conflicts arise
from the American girls getting upset that Spanish men are grabbing them, or
generally just coming on too strong. It seems there are some serious intercultural
misunderstandings here. I guess Spanish women stay aloof as possible,
and when women don't act that way, Spanish men take it as an open invitation.
I've been trying to observe interactions between strangers here. As I
was walking down the street the other day, a man standing on the corner said
hello to a lady who was walking her two dogs, and made some comment about them
being pretty dogs. She didn't even make eye contact, just said "uh-huh"
and kept walking. Maybe this is how Spanish women are supposed to act.
In Oklahoma, you would probably stop and say, "Thanks, yeah, I just love
Dalmatians..." blah-blah-blah, as long as the man wasn't especially creepy-looking
or something, but I wonder if maybe that's not the appropriate response here.
Last night we went to an Irish pub in town for "intercambio night"
- beers are two for one, so all the exchange students show up to drink and chat,
theoretically in Spanish, but often as not, in English. Scott's teacher
Maria Jose came, since classes were cancelled today for a saint's day, and we
were talking about Spanish men. She said they are not interested in a
relationship, they just want to have sex.* She's also frustrated because
they don't like smart women, so if you're smart like she is (and she's very
intelligent), it's extra-difficult.
We played soccer this afternoon with a couple of Mexican girls from Scott and
Barrett's program, Lucia and Montserrat. We went to a park nearby and
played against/with some neighborhood boys for two hours. It was a lot
of fun. I fell about a jillion times because the pavement was really slick,
but no bruises.
Thursday
I wanted to go to El Escorial, but Scott didn't want me to go alone, so Montserrat
went with me. It was pretty cool. Apparently, it's still a working
convent, too. Imagine that - taking a vow of poverty and then moving into
a royal palace. I think the room I liked the most was the library.
It was full of old books in many, many languages - I saw Arabic, Latin, Greek,
and, of course, Spanish. It reminded me of the Great Reading Room in OU's
library, except it was prettier and a little less like a tomb. There were
old globes and maps, and even a Galilean star-map-thingy that looks a lot like
a gyroscope.
Montserrat and I had a lot of fun together. She went to a summer camp
in Nashville for five summers when she was young - twice as a camper and three
times as a counselor - so she speaks English really well. Our conversations
went back and forth between English and Spanish, but were mostly in English,
because she speaks it so much better than I speak Spanish. She's also
traveled a lot, but this is the first time she's really done it alone.
She said Scott told her I was acting boy-crazy in Spain, but she also thinks
that Spanish boys are very cute. And, like me, she thinks their really
aggressive - she said Mexican boys are shy.
Thursday night we went out. Scott and Barrett originally planned to go
to a sports activity on Friday that the school put together for the students,
but we stayed out way too late. We started out at Can-Can, but decided
that it was kinda lame, so we headed over to Gabana. Scott wanted me to
meeet a Spanish boy, and I told him to pick one out for me and I'd become acquainted.
He happened to point out my Italian friend from last week, who acted a bit irked
that he hadn't been able to get hold of me. But, as they say in Spain,
no pasa nada. We hung out and talked for a while, and we all got in very
late.
Friday and Saturday
Friday was a day for chilling. Our original plans were to go to Scott's
favorite restaurant for dinner and then to El Capital, a seven-floor club in
Madrid with a different kind of music on every floor. We were supposed
to have quite a group, but somehow the only people that showed were me, Scott,
and Maria Jose. Honestly, that was just fine with us. We just wanted
a nice dinner. We decided that none of us were really in a clubbing mood
- a lot to do this weekend, and we wanted some quiet. So we ate at Rincon
en La Cava - Hemingway's hangout. We had some truly fabulous veal chops,
the freshest calamari I've ever eaten, and chorizo (Spanish sausage).
We also between the three of us split two pitchers of sangria and talked until
almost two. After that we went to Maria Jose's place and went to sleep.
The next morning she made pancakes (she got the recipe from an American student)
and chocolate - which is almost as thick as our pudding as twice as rich.
Saturday morning Scott and I ran around with Maria Jose a little bit, and then
we went home. I met up with Massimo (the Italian), and we hung out for
a while, and then I went home and packed. I ended up getting only about
two hours of sleep, partly because I was worried about the cab - every time
Scott tried to call the company the line was busy. Apparently, everyone
out on the botillon (the Spanish word for hanging out on the streets and drinking
all night) or la marcha (bar-hopping) was calling cabs to get a ride home.
Yes, clear up until 5:15 we couldn't get hold of the taxi company.
Sunday
Very, very early Sunday morning in the airport.
I got there early, like I'm supposed to, so then I got to wait at the gate for
an hour, board, and thirty minutes later is take-off. My flight left at
8:10, so I was there 2 hours early, like you're supposed to be, which is actually
just kinda silly. I waited at check-in for thirty minutes because the
employees weren't even there yet. And Czech Airlines does this tricky
thing where they put the "departure time" on your ticket (e.g. 8:10),
but when you get to the gate, you find that time is actually the boarding time,
except they've moved it back five minutes (8:15 boarding, 8:45 take-off).
So I was really there two and a half hours early. They did this all the
way to Madrid, too. I was pretty bored, so I started reading the regulations
on my re-entry visa, and it turns out that the Russian Federation is still
using the same forms they used pre-fall-of-communism. All persons entering
the USSR are required to register their addresses of residence with the government
within 24 hours of arrival.
But my flight was good. I got in another two hours of sleep or so here
and there and read Harry Potter in Russian to try to bring some of it back.
I was tired enough that I was asking the Czech stewardesses questions in Russian
instead of English...and then they'd say, "I'm sorry, I don't understand.
Do you speak English?" At which point I'd feel really silly.
I'm also throwing a lot of Spanish words into Russian sentences, but that should
stop soon, I think.
I had a minor culture shock on the way home. Russians are so darn polite,
but at the same time, not what you would call friendly. I had no fewer
than three people help me carry my luggage, but none of them talked to me.
As I was walking down the stairs into the metro, a young man picked up the back
half of the suitcase I was dragging, carried it down the stairs. Then
when I said thank you at the bottom of the staircase, he looked at me like,
"Why are you talking to me?" and just set the suitcase down and walked
off. Very different temperaments in these two countries.
I also had a very good surprise awaiting me, however. My room is done.
Remember "And the rain rain rain came down down down..." about a month
ago? Ever since the pipes broke, I've been in the guest room, because
the ceiling never really dried out. Every time Evgeny fixed it, it came
down again, so they finally had to tear the whole thing apart and put in a new
ceiling altogether. There is now a ceiling, new wallpaper, and my stuff
in here instead of spread out over the guest room and the front hall.
This is so much better than the guest room.
I was also afraid that in the past two weeks I'd forgot everything I learned
in the previous four months, but that didn't happen. I have no problem
understanding people at all. I thought it would take a day or two to readjust
linguistically, but my only problem is that I'm using Spanish in the middle
of sentences or else having a bit of difficulty recalling words.
More notes on Spain:
1 - Bathrooms here have lights that turn off automatically after a minute or
two, so generally about halfway through, you're left in the dark. I'm
sure it's more environmentally friendly, but it is rather annoying.
2 - Coffee here is super-strong. For a real cup of Spanish coffee, you
pour two tablespoons of very strong, but good-quality, coffee (the liquid, not
the grounds) in the bottom of a cup, fill the rest up with hot milk, and then
add sugar. The resulting color is about the same as a cup of American
coffee with half a creamer and a pack of sugar, but it tastes soooo much better.
3 - In addition to everything being closed during the siesta, pretty much everything
is closed on Sundays. The only exceptions are museums and the street markets.
4 - In Spain, it is illegal to sell marijuana (but not to buy), and illegal
to have more than three ounces on your person at once. Consumption is
legal. Drinking on the streets is theoretically illegal, but you see it
a lot, although not nearly as much as in Russia. And according to Maria
(Scott's host mom, who is a policewoman), prostitution is not illegal (because
you can't tell someone what to do with their own body), but soliciting on the
streets (street-walking) and pimping are. So bordellos are completely
legal. But, oddly enough, the streets in Madrid seemed very safe to me.
*What she actually said was different, but in the interests of keeping this
PG-rated...
Next Story: The foreigner treatment