Journal from Spain #3 - Da School

The transition from transit to travel - that is, from getting here to being here - occurred along Calle Mayor, at about 8:15 in the morning. Stepping off the Metro, dragging behind me my sole surviving piece of luggage, I declared in a tone of inside my head victory: I am here.

Unfortunately, here is a difficult place to locate. For two hours I paced back and forth across downtown Madrid, searching for the actual location of the Lingua School of Language. Their website never actually listed the address, a fact realized the morning before my flight, when it was too late to call. Nonetheless, I took with me three clues: the school's name, its street, and the distance in meters from Plaza de Sol. In this bustling city center that narrowed my search down to only several hundred storefronts and whenever I found a shopkeep that spoke English (about one out of every five attempts), the answer was invariably disappointing: they had never even heard of Lingua.

Then again, the School had also never heard that name. Paying close attention to foreign-looking, notebook-toting young people, I tracked down the school, which apparently also goes by "Academia Contacto". An academy without an address, with several pseudonyms: it's a surprisingly shady enterprise. I stumbled into the office unsure and somewhat suspicious and - to complete the shady picture - I was greeted with the words, "Hola, Ben. We've been waiting for you."

It's a small place, occupying the top floor of what was nodoubt a cramped apartment building. The beginner's class is four members strong, but each week brings a fresh load of goodbyes and new faces. (As a month-long student, I'm here for a relatively long stay.) The teacher: as a teacher, she's good, but not wonderful; as a personality, she's not good, she's wonderful! Mercedes is the name - not pronounced in that drawled out American way (mur-SAY-dees), but in full Mediterranean splendor: mer-thé-des. Her dress and expressions speak of a rather intriguing grunge-fem mix. It's like her parents owned two mom and pop stores, one selling indie rock records and the other adorable puppies. It's just the cutest thing when she smokes.

On a typical morning, I arrive at Academia Contacto at 9:30 and take class until 1:30. It's tough: I have the least Spanish background in this class of "beginners" and I struggle. Mercedes speaks particularly slowly to me, with a subtle sigh that makes me believe it annoys her. At the Hebrew U. Ulpan two summers ago I had more than enough of an Ivrit base to successfully build upon; in other words, I could learn. Here, however - to reference that oft-quoted goal of Shana Alef - I'm learning how to learn. I'm working on simple questions, basic concepts (like possession, pronouns, past tense), before attempting such baffling statements as: "Mercedes, what page were we just on?" The list strategy (writing column after column of vocab words in my notebook) that prevailed in Jerusalem is still some weeks off. Of all the difficulties, the most frustrating part of Week One was the inability to make jokes. A particularly humorous idea would float around in my Anglophone head, suffocating and dying a silent death while I watched. If only Mercedes read minds . . . (Then again, maybe she does.) Worse yet, Madrid presents so many distractions. How can I stay inside and study when adventure lurks behind every picturesque alley? It's a difficult balance, and my studies suffer, but its a tension I'm thrilled to be faced with.

My fellow students are a motley crew, gleaned from across the globe: Italy, France, the US, Korea, Germany, etc. I love the mix of tongues resounding about during a much needed break - it's like a session of the mini-United Nations. (And back in class, different nationalities tend to sit together, creating little delegations.) Everyone I've spoken with (or attempted to) comes with an interesting story, which makes sense for a population as self-selective as those that spend summers abroad, immersed in a foreign language. Most fall between seventeen and twenty four years old, and about two-thirds are female: just the way they'd set it up in an ad. To my great luck (or bad luck, depending on the circumstance) students here come in two categories: strikingly beautiful and girl-next-door beautiful. As a general rule, the worse the English, the more good looking the individual: once they begin to approach fluency, they get married or male. All in all: I feel like I'm living in an MTV Production.