Goodbye Spain...

Not for too long though. I´ll miss the blue skies and the midday sunshine, but going home for a break, to see the family, and to eat a whole lot of turkey will be lovely. I´m currently in school because there´s supposed to be a party for the teachers, but they´re all still in their end of term meeting so I´ll have to wait until they´re finished before tucking into the free food and drink.
That´s my first term over, then; three months yesterday, and how amazingly quickly the time has zipped past. I think I´m going to make some serious Ney Year´s resolutions this time: spend more time studying, get a job doing private language teaching, and travel more. And sleep more. I have decided that I don´t sleep nearly enough.
So it´s off to the airport at about 3pm, and away. Hopefully I´ll get there in time to get a decent seat on the plane; being crammed at the back next to noisy Spanish teenagers, in a seat with barely enough legroom for a vertically-challenged dwarf, is not a fun way to spend two hours. But at least it´s only two hours; most of the Yanks have a good ten hour flight and then a five hour drive or something stupid. But hey, they come from the most powerful country in the world, which probably makes up for it.

Christmas in Madrid

One of the refreshing things about being in Madrid during the run-up to Christmas is that I miss out on the frenzied commercialism that stains Christmas in England. Some shops here have Christmas music playing and sell Christmassy things, but they´re in the minority. There are pretty lights everywhere, there´s a huge tree in the Puerta del Sol, there are projected light shows in the Plaza de Santa Ana and the Plaza Mayor, and the whole thing is almost completely devoid of all the irritating, noisy razzmatazz that pollutes English Christmas time. I´ve only found two shops that sell wrapping paper, for example, whereas in England practically every other shop is screaming for you to buy it from them.
Not much remains for me to do here, to be honest; most of the Yanks have flown the nest, so it´s a little quieter and less funny than usual. I have some more shopping to do, a lot of packing to do, a fair amount of wrapping, and then it´s back to the homeland for tea and biscuits. And, er, Christmas. And rain. And the whole family together in the house at one time for the first time in.....I don´t even know how long. Lovely. Now, let´s see if those wacky Norwegians have anything to say about that....

More contacts....

Just in case anyone was unaware of what a strange and wonderful thing the Internet is, it seems I have made a couple of new friends who I have never met from a country I have never been to, who speak a language I have no knowledge of. Anyone who reads the comments section on my blog will know that a couple of completely random Norwegians got in touch after reading my blog apparently by accident. So, er, hello to them. Say hi to Father Christmas for me, yeah?
My last weekend in Madrid before Christmas is underway, and the crowds in and around the Puerta del Sol are truly something to behold. I love giving presents but I´m lousy at buying them, and Spain doesn´t have an awful lot to offer.
Went out to dinner last night with Kelly, April, the Colombian, and one of her English buddies from last year called Matt. The restaurant we went to serves roast chickens, cider, cheese, bread, and sausage, and not a lot more. And it is thoroughly excellent. Where else in the world could you sit at the bar, order a roast chicken and a litre of cider, chow the whole lot down, and get change from 10 euros? Nowhere I´ve been, that´s for sure.
Not much remains to be done here, to be honest. Most of the Yanks have returned back to the homeland, and I´ve done most of my shopping. One of them asked me if I wanted her to bring anything back from the States. I said "George Bush´s head on a plate". She didn´t laugh. Oops. Another promising friendship bites the dust....

Near the end

I´m really, really tired. In fact, perhaps weary would be a better word to use. The combined stresses of getting up really early in the morning to cram myself into an overcrowded Metro carriage with Spaniards who don´t like to wash, the stress of speaking Spanish all the time, the stress of worrying about money, the stress of having to buy Christmas presents and not knowing what to get, and the stress of living a long way from home for a long period of time - all these things combine to produce King Stress, a nasty monster sort of thing that follows me more or less everywhere. And I´m not the only one: most of the teachers at school have had enough, a lot of the people from Mountainview are similarly fed up, and even the kids at school want to go home and sleep. And who can blame them? The end of my tether isn´t too far away, but I think it´s in the wrong direction, and I´ve already gone past it. Hmmmmph.
In short, I am looking forward to going home. I really want to do my Christmas shopping here so that I don´t have to hack round town on the 23rd, the day after I get back home. But shopping in Madrid isn´t that easy, unless you want to buy clothes or cured ham or hilarious blue wigs.
Okay, enough grumbling. Whenever I feel worn out I think about Primo Levi, odd as that may seem. Anyone who has read "If This Is A Man" or "The Truce" or his collected poems will know what I mean; that guy had something serious to complain about, and yet never really did. So I really have no right to be fed up. Perspective. It´s all about perspective. We all have to put things into it. Kind of like a carrier bag, only nicer.
And on that bombshell...

Roll up

Last week was reasonably insane. Four different people came to visit, which was lovely. Seeing friends from Oxford is always wonderful because it enables me to stay in touch with the university world which otherwise feels a very long way away at the moment. So I did the tour guide thing and showed them around the Reina Sofía (which I enjoyed a lot more than last time) and the various bits of the city. On Sunday we had the Christmas church service and the drama, which all went swimmingly, I think; the English gags got a good few laughs from the (predominantly American) congregation, which is always nice. The lack of sleep is annoying though; for the past four days I have been out of bed before 8am, which in Spain (and over a weekend) is more or less unheard of.
To celebrate the end of this festive madness, Matt 3 (aka Prince William, aka Brian Nicholson´s godson) and I went to the Cirque du Soleil. I had heard of them before, of course, but didn´t really know what to expect. Well, the whole thing was utterly stunning from start to finish. The acrobatics and the skill of the various participants were almost unbelievable; it was embarrassing for me, with my rugby-induced disability, to see what the human body is capable of if you train enough. Some highlights: a Chinese acrobat "standing" on a pillar on one hand and twisting her body around until her toes were touching her forehead before hopping to the other hand; another Chinese acrobat somersaulting from a see-saw onto the shoulders of three more Chinese acrobats who were standing on each others´ shoulders; people running on top of giant spheres and doing backflips on them (while they were in motion), people doing somersaults and twists through a two-foot wide brass ring - I could go on. Every single thing was gobsmacking. The costumes were gobsmacking, the stunts were gobsmacking, even the music was gobsmacking. In fact, I left with my gob so thoroughly smacked that I felt as if I had had a run-in with a Basingstoke townie. It was incredible, and I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone.
I now have a mere eight days to do all my Christmas shopping and prepare for the end of term, which is marked in Spain, judging by the English department, by all the English teachers ganging together and singing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" with undisguised glee. I haven´t laughed that much in a while. Ah, you had to be there.

What I think of Starbuck´s

Walking down Gran Vía yesterday on my way to see Kelly and April I had a serious craving for something sugary. I´m not entirely sure why, but these things happen. Anyway, as it was a national holiday the city was really crowded, and the queues for cafés were massive. An unwillingness on my part to spend the best part of an hour queueing for a slice of cake drove me into Starbuck´s. Now, I´m not a fan of gigantic global corporations. Not for any ethical reasons, of course, but because they are inexorably erasing all the differences and variations that make the world so interesting and making every city in Europe more or less the same; for this reason Starbuck´s is not my favourite place in the world (although it´s still better than McDonald´s). Anyway, coffee I wanted, so in I went.
I was persuaded by the girl at the counter to order a "Toffee Nut Latté" and a cookie. Then I had to give my name so she knew who the coffee was for, even though I was the only person in the place. Briefly considered giving her my surname, then realised that when most Spaniards try to pronounce "Vaughan" they sound like they´re trying to cough up one of their lungs, so I said "Matt" instead. Then the coffee arrived.
At first I wasn´t convinced that there was actually any coffee in it; I was greeted by a fluffy mound of whipped cream with brown sprinkles on top. After eating my way through this gelatinous mass of fluffiness I eventually got to the coffee, which was lukewarm and unexciting. This made me drink it quickly, and soon it was gone.
The whole experience was somewhat underwhelming; the coffee itself was rather like what I imagine the offspring of a 99 Flake, a bag of brown sugar and a jar of Nescafé would look like, and it was expensive. I could have got four or five coffees at the school caféteria for the same price.
Naturally I won´t be darkening their door again. In fact I feel slightly guilty about funding, albeit in a miniscule way, their company´s march towards total global domination. But hey, don´t knock it until you´ve tried it. Now I have tried it. And knocked it. So now I shall be quiet.

Back to civilisation

After a pleasant but chilly break in England, it's back to Madrid for a couple of weeks. I came perilously close to missing the flight actually, thanks to the breathtaking incompetence of the British train system; my train was late, then was delayed in transit, then was delayed at Redhill as the door-opening software broke down (their excuses are getting better and better), and finally arrived at Gatwick roughly three minutes before check-in closed, resulting in a rather undignified sprint through the airport to the EasyJet desk.
I am undoubtedly here now, though, and have a fairly hectic two weeks ahead of me, with Christmas shopping, teaching, friends visiting, Christmas drama and lots of other stuff. To be perfectly honest though, I just love being back here. Madrid is almost more real to me than Basingstoke at the moment. And a whole lot friendlier, too. Although the food is nowhere near as good. Man, I'm still dreaming of Sunday lunch....

Exile

Going to Oxford and seeing all my friends again was truly lovely. Truly bizarre, but lovely. I haven't been there for six months so it was completely weird to be walking around college, seeing all the sights of Oxford, and knowing that when I go back for my final year most of my friends will have left. In fact, being in England again is weird. Apart from the freezing cold, the banal newspapers and the oddness of speaking English, the people seem less friendly than they are in Spain and the trains are completely lousy. I've only been away from the country for two months and I already feel like a foreigner when I come home.
Much as I might dislike Basingstoke though, it is truly, spectacularly lovely to be in my house again, sleeping in my own bed, and eating as much as possible. And the BBC is a delight.

Back home

My word it is cold in this country. I walked half of the way home, due to the spectacular badness of the local bus system, and came reasonably close to contracting hypothermia. Having said that, I had been in the house for roughly thirty seconds before being offered my first cup of tea, which was thoroughly excellent. So maybe England isn't all bad.
I'm off to Oxford shortly to celebrate the end of term with my friends, and will return to Basingstoke tomorrow afternoon at some stage, when my elder brother will also be joining the fun. I'll be returning to Madrid on Monday afternoon for all of seven days of teaching between now and the Christmas break. Between now and then I will be mainly eating English food (thanks for the cooked breakfast Mum), sleeping in my own bed, marvelling at how idiotic the English press is, watching rugby, going to the cinema, and drinking actual beer. And freezing half to death, of course.