the metro

So after meeting up with fellow Macalester alumna Charlotte, I found myself in the metro listening to a musician play the score of Amelie on an acordeon thinking, "How delightfully continental!" (Of course he probably was only playing this because he knew that the foreigners would think "Oh how delightfully continental!" and give him money.) But as I turned the corner on to the platform I found my expat reverie interrupted by a pair of frat boys turned corporate tools. I immediately judged them. The easiest way out of an identity crisis, is to define yourself in opposition to someone else after all. But I checked myself. Had I not just been talking to Charlotte about how I felt judged by madrileños for being a foreigner? How could I be such a hypocrite? So I decided to eavesdrop on them, which was not hard to do. And what were they talking about? One of them was recounting how he had seen a Mexican in a Home Depot back in the states using a funny gesture to ask for a plunger. And the other responded, "that´s weird cuz everyone who works at Home Depot is a Mexican. They shoulda just spoke Spanish." They went on to an enlightening discourse concerning which US celebrities would like to live at each metro stop on a nearby map. Chueca of course would be home to Boy George. So I said fuck it and went back to judging them.

Of course, one of the stereotypes of Gringos that José insists I uphold is a stubborn unwillingness to adapt. Considering that anti-immigrant sentiment is a strong current in Spanish politics I suppose those dudes were doing a better job at assimilation than me. Even things like bike-commuting or making out with boys that I proudly think of as setting me apart from the red-blooded cowboy types, become stereotypically American when I refuse to budge to fit in with Madrid. For example, I keep on talking about buying a bike to get around, and José insists that this would be not only dangerous but worse still culturally inappropriate. No one in Madrid rides bikes, according to him. I mean it´s dangerous and culturally inapporiate back in Crystal Lake, too. But I wonder, when in Rome is it okay to ignore what theRomans do as long as you´re doing out of a desire to promote positive change (oh god, that word just isn´t the same anymore)? How does one assimilate when his fragile little postadolescent identity is so deeply rooted in deliberate defiance of cultural norms? At any rate as long as the metro keeps running and providing interesting anecdotes, I doubt I will buy that bike, but once I get that first pay check of euros burning a whole in my pocket who knows....

(p.s. I have you noticed that my favorite punctuation mark is the ellipsis, although I´m sure any good editor would hate the way I use it.)

(p.p.s. In more mundane news I started working at my school last Wednesday, and I started some private lessons today. Some day I´ll do the rundown of the school and such, but right now I have no desire to do that.)