okay, now I can relax

I was reading an article in the magazine section of El País about los frikis, a blanket term for anyone who dresses outside the box, and I find out I´m a gafapasta. "The gafapasta are a friki subtribe known for their intellectual tendencies, their interest in the arts, in addition to using, naturally, their distinctive plastic glasses (gafas de pasta)." Phew, I was starting to get worried, now I can just go around Madrid asking, "Are you a gafapasta?" and in no time I will have found my pretentious thick-glasses brethren.

There is even a wiki-style website devoted to cataloging all the urban tribes:

http://www.frikipedia.es/friki/Gafapasta

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.)

baffled by the nation-state

So me and José got to talking last night about traveling and stereotypes and national identity. He said that he was really surprised when he went to San Francisco, because he expected it to be more like Texas, even though he never had been to Texas. And then he met me and he said he was surprised by how socially conscious I was. I tried to say that if there was any such thing as typically American, neither I nor San Francisco are it, but he said that wasn´t the point, and he´s right. Both me and San Francisco certainly are inextricably American, and I don´t why I was trying to convince José that America sucks and I´m not part of it. Luckily, he was too smart for that. The best part about going abroad is that it reminds me that I do in fact love the U.S. of A., even in the midst of this torturous election year.
Then he asked me what Americans think about Spain. And I didn´t quite know what to say. I told him we don´t think that much about Spain, which I think is fairly true. Then I tried to sum up what I thought about Spain before I came here, but it´s hard to rewind like that. The first thing that came to mind actually was Ernest Hemmingway, bull fighting, basques drinking wine out of goat skin sacks, Carmen, flamenco, La Casa de Bernarda Alba, Don Quijote, chivalry, but also gay marriage and socialism. But I´m curious what other people think. Obviously, you´ve all been prejudiced by reading this, but I´d like to know what you think about when you think about Spain.
I hope that wasn´t too boring. It´s what´s on my mind right now. I´m working on getting more pictures up, but that involves getting my computer connected to the internet which is a little complicated since I don´t have wifi. Those other ones were from José´s camera.