Let's put a little Gift Wrap on 2008

And so, we put the final details on 2008 and prepare to move into the next round of 364 1/4 days. I feel pretty good about this past year. I graduated from college, got to work in Alaska, and moved to Spain. On top of that, I continue to be blessed with family and friends who love me and support me. Yes, life has been good. And it has been scary. I can feel my perceptions quickly altering as I begin to see the world through these new adult eyes. I have a deeper grasp on the significance of the passing of time and it makes me want to cling to the here and now because I know things can be so different in a matter of months. Just look at stock markets around the world. Yes, we may go down, but at least we will all go down together. I can think of no better time for us to all join hands. And keep a loaded shotgun under the bed.
So, here is to 2009, possibly to be one of the toughest years to have been faced in generations.

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This past Friday I aired up a borrowed mattress and my dear friend Matt showed up on his 'tour de Spain'. The weather turned amazing; right on cue.
I had spent the past 2 weeks sloshing through heavy Mediterranean rains. Every morning I go up and looked out at the dismal clouds, but resigned myself peacefully to them, in exchange for the weather promising to turn perfect for my visitors. And it did.
We spent Saturday riding the Paseo Maritimo enjoying the sun and the brisk winter breeze was invigorating. It was lovely and I wondered if my Papa Morris was somewhere on the other side of the Ocean, riding his bike too.

On Sunday I got up and got excited. Today was my big Christmas present. I almost didn't believe it until I actually saw Granddaddy striding through the glossy airport. They had made it! Something we, sadly, could not say for their luggage.
We took a taxi to their hotel and had a choice between rooms overlooking Cathedral La Seu or the Passeig Mallorca, the roads which escort the largest torrent on Mallorca into the Sea.
They quickly settled in and we took an afternoon walk down the road past where Dorothy seemed to have found herself rather far from Kansas. The next day we ran into a man in the U.S. army, stationed in Germany, from Joplin, Missouri but spending Christmas in Mallorca with his wife and their baby. We come from everyewhere. Even, sometimes, the same place.
The next day grandmother, granddaddy and I intended to take the old train to Soller but the rail was closed for repair so we took the bus instead. It was beautiful and fun. We were on a quest for Gelati but to no avail. We took the old wooden tram down from the town of Soller to the port of Soller.
There is an interesting story behind why the towns in Mallorca are set up at a distance from the ports. And that story is...PIRATES. Before tourism caught Mallorca up, the coastal lands were the most useless. Not fit for crops and succeptible to piracy. The towns would set up ports and the housing along the water was often that of poor fishermen. A few kilometers inland they would build their churches and stone houses and shops. The people here really just don't want trouble. I suppose that is the best perspective when embracing a history of conquests and reconquests.
We ate lunch on the dock in the Port de Soller and enjoyed the sun and the pan amb oli and sodas served in petite glass bottles. We then ambled down to the beach and picked up ocean smoothed rocks.
Another day we took a trip to Valldemossa where we walked throught the sleeping gardens of the church where Chopin had spent a winter. It may not be its most beautiful season, but it was this climate which had nurtured Chopin's music, and so we sat in the maze of shrubs and let it fill us as well.
We walked back into the cobblestone center of town and into a cafe where we ordered hot chocolates and an assortment of Mallorcan pastries. Something improtant to remember is that over here hot chocolate is made with milk and is truly more akin to melted chocolate than we Americans are used to. The pastries, from bottom to top are ensaimada, torta de pina, coca de patata. They really hit the spot and sent us off happily, back to Palma. To give me an opportunity to have a face-off with a certain pumpkin pie and to allow the grandparents to truly appreciate the Spanish culture by enjoying a siesta.
I am not going to go into the gruesome detials of my pie-scapade, but all in all, I would say it came out a success. It at least did not scare the Mallrocans off and the Americans who knew seemed impressed that it had come out so well considering the dimensions of the pan were much wider and shallower than at home.

On Christmas day we all gathered together over quite a spread of food. Jamon Serrano and melon, cheese and grapes, salmon, and then, a turkey, stuffed with pork and bacon and dates and apricots and hard boiled eggs and who knows what spices. The turkey had been completely emptied so we cut him in half, in large slices. It was delicious and unlike anything I have ever seen. We chatted and communicated, Granddaddy quite holding his own in conversation and Matt doing his mallorquin to french to english interpretation of the world. We passed around gifts and I looked around and fell in love with my impromptue family. After we had all eaten, grandmother and I were watching A Christmas Carol and I began to wonder where granddaddy had gotten to. I found him downstairs in the garage, sitting astride a rusty red 1970s Vespa scooter, talking with Marga's dad. I do have a picture, but I think I am going to hold on to it as potential black mail.
And so, that was my unconventional Chirstmas.

Social Observations, You are Not Alone

Living in a foreign country is an interesting experiment in the process of realization. When I first got here, I collected bits of data about the place from everything from billboards and adverts, to the architecture, to people’s attitudes and so on and so forth. With time that picture accrues depth, people open up and talk to me and I begin to notice repeating trends and patterns around me. What can be jarring is when exploration into these depths reveals that the face of the picture is not what you interpreted it to be.
Today I was giving a lecture to a high school class about Protestantism in the United States. When I opened the class I asked for a show of hands of who was Catholic. About as I expected, some 7/8ths of the class responded in the affirmative. I went on with my talk and it seemed to be received well. At the end of the class I had a few minutes left over and I decided to indulge in my curiosity. I began to ask the class questions at large.
My first question, “how many of you go to Church once a week?” They sat there and looked at me, and looked around. Not a single hand went up.
“How many go to Church once a month?” Again, no one. As it came out, most do go to Church on Christmas and Easter but that is about it.
I was a bit taken aback by this. I mean, this IS a Catholic school and these kids did just open the class by telling me they were Catholic.
The question which came from my surprise and protestant mentality was, “well, how do you consider yourselves Catholics if you do not practice?”
“Our parents had us baptized when we were babies.”
Here, Catholicism is not a choice made by the individual, it is made by their parents. It is a condition for life. Having just spoken about fluctuations in Church membership (specifically the declining percentage of Protestants in America versus the increasing number of Catholics) I felt there was something unfair about the whole thing.
Catholics are so just because of something their parents did to them when they were babies and they accept it as a condition for life (and will answer any statistician who asks that they are Catholic), whether they practice or not. On the other hand, Protestants are so because they practice Protestantism. The mentalities behind the answers are so different that it is almost like asking different questions. This makes me even more dubious about statistics and polls.
My picture of Spain was painted by soaring, monolithic cathedrals and from hearing everyone call themselves Catholics. I put these things together and interpreted them through my Protestant lens as meaning that every Sunday these cathedrals and churches were filled with Spaniards. It seems this is only true on religious holidays. Lesson learned.

As a result of my college thesis I brought a curiosity and interest in the immigrant culture here. From the articles and studies I read in the library in Liberty Missouri, I had put together an academic understanding of what immigration from Africa to Europe looked like. In my studies though, I focused primarily on detention facilities and those held in legal limbo there. It is interesting to reconcile my narrow theoretical picture to this grander physical one.
I always explained African immigration to the EU as having the same dynamic as Mexican immigration to the US. And in doing so, I was more correct than I knew. However, my focus on African immigration caused me to miss the fact that South Americans also comprise a massive number of immigrants in the EU. But, as I said, the picture is strikingly similar. Construction sites are predominantly manned by African workers, house cleaning ladies are from South America; small businesses and city jobs are for the Spaniards.
This dynamic bleeds into another notable similarity between here and the US. In the 1960s Mallorca began to become popular amoung tourists. There was a sudden and huge demand for large scale construction projects and, therefore, cheap labour to man these projects. Thus restrictions against immigration were lax. Today, Spain is facing similar housing issues as we are in America and attitude towards the immigrants is turning as well. As people become afraid for their own jobs in the face of something so huge, complicated, and difficult to understand, the reaction is the same. Interesting.
The word CRISIS (pronounced creesees [say it out loud. It sound funny]) is everywhere. I hear it at least 10 times a day on the news. People mention it in conversation. I even saw a store sale add the other day which, in giant letters, announced that they offered prices so low they would turn the crisis around.

So, I suppose what we can draw from this is…
Don’t feel bad America, Europe is gagging too.
And
Sometimes, statistics and numbers can make us think things are happening a certain way but you should take a real pulse yourself to be sure before you go burying anything.

Okay, so, I know this is nothing more than an internet blog and you are probably just reading this out of casual interest, but I would like it very much if you would do something this week. When you are out and about in your world, look around and watch, see if you can’t blow some assumption you have been carrying around out of the water. I know you will probably want to think this will be harder for you than it is for me because you have been living where you are much longer but I suspect that your situation actually may very well have just lulled you into complacence and there are plenty of assumptions just waiting to be questioned.
I am very interested in hearing about what you notice.

Post-script- A few days ago the bakery lady said something about being constipada. I thought this a highly innapropriate thing to inform me of, especially over my loaf of bread; but I let it slide. Then I was talking to some people at the school and someone mentioned that one of their students was constipada and wouldn´t be surprised if everyone was within the week. I was more than a little horrified by this idea. Contagious constipation really is a frightening thought.
Today I succumbed to a raspy throat and sniffles, and after several comments aimed at me involved the word constipada, with a general gesture at the nose and sinus region, I have realized the error in my thinking.

Reflections on Weaving, Turkey, and Americanism

The analogies of life to weaving and thread have been going around for centuries; from the Bible to philosophers to normal people walking down the street, trying to understand why they are there. The latter was me this past Wednesday.
I was walking to school from my house, I passed our street´s dumpster and the old lady who leaves mushed rice out for the wild cats was at her post, setting out styrofoam trays of the ucky looking stuff, right across the sidewalk from the street dumpsters and recycling bins. We smile at each other because one of my first encounters with the various giant, differently colored and differently shaped recycling bins was not a simple one and she helped me through it.
Another block along and I pass the portly little mechanic, always standing at the door of his garage, watching life go by and fixing cars in between. We, also, have established a "hello"ing relationship which has now grown into small comments and laughs about what groceries or books I may be carrying. It was right here that the realization hit. These people have been woven, in small ways, into my life and I into theirs. It made sense and my mind´s eye could see us each as a thread.
I thought of all the other threads of life with which I come into contact. There are my friends and loved ones. Who, although we may not be physically interwoven right now, I can feel, running parallel to me, reinforcing me, and hopefully I am doing the same. There is the nest of amazing women who have so graciously welcomed me into their lives and homes. There is the bakery lady who always responds to my inquiry as to her health with "bien, gracias a Dios" and who knows that I prefer my barra de pan a little on the white side, rather than too toasted. These people, who make up the living waypoints of my day, who pass through my life in this regular and rhythmic pattern. Creating for some grander design for all of us.
It was a stabilizing realization for me. For as strange as I may feel being in such a different place, it is impossible for me to fall off the grid, because I have these connections and they have me.

This past week was Thanksgiving. I know, SURPRISE! I got to talk some about the holiday to a few of the classes and my mention of pumpkin pie was generally greeted with looks of incredulity and disgust. The kids didn´t even know about home-made chocolate chip cookies (they sell neither chocolate chips or canned pumpkin over here), all they had ever heard of were Chips Ahoy!
Thanksgiving was a rainy day which I spent thinking of my family and sending as much love as I could to them. Trying to imagine what they were all doing at certain times, as well as thinking of all that I have to be grateful for. The list is a long one. On that day the closest I came to a Thanksgiving meal was a turkey sandwich.
On Saturday an American mother from one of the schools I work at invited me to the "American women in Mallorca" club´s Thanksgiving meal at some schnazzy restaurant on a cliff over the sea. On our way there I realized this was to be my second encounter in two months with other Americans.
We certainly were an ecclectic collection. There were embassy people, international business people, Burberry clad children and their matching parents. Most were international couples
"I was a shipping merchant from the US to Mallorca and I met my Italian wife here."
"I am in international shipping and I met my Sweedish wife in Germany and we keep our summer house here."
"I just graduated from college. I am here because I want to grow up to do everything in the world."
"I studied Spanish in University, I came over here on holiday and fell in love and have lived here 20 years now."
We each had a story and they were all interesting and I enjoyed the exchange. The political debates, the funny things we miss, why they dub movies over in Spanish with annoying voices, where do you land a personal jet on Mallorca, etc.
It took quite some effort, I learned, to get the cooks at the restuarant to understand what we wanted to eat. The women who had coordinated the meal had come in a week earlier to show them recipes and ideas as to what we eat on Thanksgiving (again, they were appalled by the idea of pumpkin pie so we had some kind of berry pie instead).
Over here, one of the major points about a meal is its presentation. Small portions arranged in such an elaborate way as to make one unsure how to approach desecrating it. Thinking about this brought another interesting obeservation to mind. The simplicity of the foods we eat on Thanksgiving (please don´t hate me all you folks who worked so hard to prepare the meal, hear me out). The foods are simple. Meat, potatoes; no colorful displays, no exotic ingredients. A turkey and mashed potatoes, as a founding feature of a national holiday. These are the same foods that people armed with muskets and ploughs ate. Something like that could not have come from European people. The truths of America are best seen and easiest understood in these subtilties. But they are difficult to explain. Especially in Spanish. So mostly these observations are just for me. And now you.

Happy December everyone!