AnsolabeWHERE?

So, I recently realized that I live in Spain. I’m not just on vacation or studying abroad or couch surfing through Europe. I live here. This realization came as quite a shock as I sat, stealing internet, in Café Aldonza, one of my favorite old man bars in Alcázar that is conveniently located less than a block from my current apartment. I’d ordered a Magdalena and a café con leche from the man behind the counter and was deciding whether it was worth it to run back home for my umbrella or if I should cheat fate and start the cloudy walk to work sans rain gear. It wasn’t any particularly special moment. I don’t even know what I’d been thinking about in the minutes before. As I finished my coffee, the waiter (with whom I’ve developed a sort of shorthand rapport) approached me and asked if I wanted another. I nodded and decided to consult him on the whole umbrella quandary.

“What do you think the weather will be like today?” I asked him, “I left my rain things at home. Do you think I’ll be okay?”

“It might be worth it to get them. Do you live far away?”

I expected everything in my body to scream YES. Yes. I live very far away. I live in the United States, dammit. Can’t you tell by the fact that I massacre your language every time I open my mouth? But instead, I answered automatically, “Sure, just around the corner.” And that sentence didn’t cause any twist in my chest or overwhelming sadness or even exuberance. It was just a fact. I’m an immigrant. I live over in Plaza Mayor and I like it here.

I won’t live here forever. There are fundamental differences between the Spanish and American sensibilities that I’ll never get used to, but it’s only now sinking in that being a part of this world for a year is a tremendous privilege, and one that will change me.

Because of this recent realization, I’ve decided to finally get off my butt and start recording this experience. I live in Spain, in tiny but adorable Alcázar de San Juan, for a single precious year, and this will only happen once in my life.

Most people I talk to, even Spaniards, have never heard of Alcázar de San Juan. In fact, it seems like Google has barely heard of it. The town of 20,000 inhabitants, according to Wikipedia (but 35,000 if you ask anyone who lives there), rests smack dab in the middle of La Mancha, vast flat Spanish wine country whose greatest fame comes from Don Quixote. There’s a statue of Don Quixote in Alcázar’s main square, and another statue of Don Quixote in the main square of the town next door, and the town next to that. They also sometimes have re-enactments of the Don Quixote Vs. Windmill Smackdown at the old windmills just above town. The old DQ is a really big deal here. A bigger deal for me, however, is the fact that Alcázar is also home to one of the biggest Manchego cheese factories in the nation. No one else seems to be quite as excited as I am about this particular Alcázar bragging point, so I try to make up for it by eating enough cheese to keep the factory in business.

When I’m not eating my weight in cheese, I live on the north end of town with a nice Spanish girl named Laura, following a move from an ill-fated but hilarious living situation upon which I’ll elaborate in a later post. I’ve been making friends. I’ve been speaking a fair amount of Spanish and have been keeping a book of new vocabulary (among them “armpit”, “dish towel” and a whole constellation of swear words). I’ve also been learning how to spend time alone. I didn’t think this was good at first. I thought that any moment that I wasn’t surrounded by people and violently happy, I was somehow wasting my time and my money and was letting down everyone back home who was expecting me to have the time of my life. In fact, recently, as I've made more friends and started to have actual responsibilities and social commitments, I've been actively seeking out time by myself to write and drink coffee and think. I’ve slowly been coming to understand that being alone is the only way I can really process and internalize my experiences, and that learning to be alone after four years of college and constant social stimulation is incredibly important.

In any case, photos and everything to come, along with more detailed descriptions of where I am, who I’m with, and adventures in line-drying clothes. Get set.