Same room, different feel

That tiny sardine-can-of-a-room looks a lot different than it did when I first arrived. The walls are covered with maps, photos and Spanish advertisements, the bed has sheets and a pillow, my desk is littered with artifacts from my travels and a tiny zen garden is sitting on my windowsill. I cleaned the water stains months ago and despite its size, its proximity to the freeway and the dramatic changes in temperature at night, this dilapidated prison cell has come to feel a lot like home.

The changes to the room pale in comparison to the changes of the occupant. I've grown up a lot since I got here. My Spanish is better, my teaching is better, I've made Spanish friends, started drawing again and have come to know the city and culture extremely well. On top of it all, this is truly the most independent I've been in my whole life. When I went to college I had eight of my best friends come with me along with 60 others from my high school. When I went to Granada I had Aarika and two other high school friends; one of whom had been my Homecoming date a few years before and the other had sat next to me for two years of Spanish class. When I came to Badajoz I was alone.

It's interesting how that first day I would have given anything to go home and now I would give almost anything to stay. My fellow auxiliares, co-workers and Spanish friends have become like family to me and I've come to love my students (even though sometimes they make me want to take a power drill to my forehead). My apartment is a joke, but Juan, Carlos and Dani have been incredible. Juan has become one of my best friends and has showed me things I never thought I'd experience. It's strange considering I didn't understand a word he said on the first day I met him.

There's only a month left, but I want to record some of my last adventures. This blog will include present posts and flashbacks, photos and thoughts in general. I'm at a critical juncture in my life and hope that these memories will help clarify some things for me on a personal level. One thing is for certain; this has been the most amazing trip of my life.

The Road to Badajoz

I originally signed up to be an Auxiliar de Conversación (English Language Assistant) as a potential plan B to some other career plans I had made months earlier. I knew I missed Spain after having studied in Granada during my Senior year of college and had been thinking about returning ever since I'd left. One day a co-worker had mentioned that he had some friends who were doing similar programs around the world and it sounded like a really cool opportunity. After poking around a bit I'd found that some of my friends from the Granada program had given this a shot and loved it, so my girlfriend, Aarika, and I decided to give it a shot.

The economy was awful. My plan A had fallen apart and I felt a little lost. I'd all but forgotten about having signed up for this when I got a phone call from Aarika saying that we'd finally been bumped up from the waiting list to the go-list. We only had about 6 weeks to prepare, but were incredibly excited to have been given the opportunity.

She was placed in Jaen, Andalucia and I in Badajoz, Extremadura. Although we were basically on opposite sides of the country, we were thrilled that it was less of a hike than crossing the Atlantic to visit each other. Neither of us knew much about where we were going but we agreed that Spain was Spain and it would be a great experience.

Aarika is the reason I'm here. We went to school together and one night she told me she was planning to study abroad in Granada (she was a Spanish major). We were a little tipsy at the time and I immediately said I was interested. This was strange because I had not taken a Spanish course in nearly two years and had impressively failed the Spanish AP exam (A whopping "1") and had never really excelled at it. I had loved my Spanish teacher of two years, who was from Granada, so I suppose that his stories had something to do with it. Although my motivation to go through with the program dwindled at times, she always pushed me. She made sure I had my paperwork in on time and that I'd done everything possible to prepare for the trip. She even helped me pass the Spanish grammar course I had to complete in order to go.

Our three and a half months there ended up changing both of our lives. In that time we'd made incredible friends, experienced places and things we'd never imagined and my Spanish skills went from being some of the lousiest in the program to some of the best. We both fell in love with the country and it broke our hearts to go home. We were never the same after that. We'd caught the fever.

The Beginning

I CRIED THE FIRST DAY. There I was, standing in an empty 8x8 room with windows on the bars in a foreign country without any way to contact anyone. Although it felt like it at first, I wasn't in a jail cell, I was standing in the room that was to be my bedroom for the next 8 months. The questions that I couldn't get out of my head were "how could I have done this to myself? and how did I ever think that it was a good idea to fly across an ocean to teach English?"

I had been driven straight from orientation in Caceres to an apartment that my advisor had found for me in Badajoz. The ride was awkward. After going two years without using it regularly, my Spanish skills had become a distant memory and my advisor didn't seem to keen on using his English. Small talk is a little difficult when you don't speak each other's language.

When we arrived, the landlord, Mauricio, a sleezy looking old Spanish man who was in a serious hurry, was waiting for us outside. They took me into an apartment on the first floor of an enormous building that sat next to the highway and immediately sat me down to sign the contract. I wasn't given any options, I was just told that I needed to sign and pay my first month's rent right there and then. My advisor was kind enough to lend me some extra cash, but they both departed unceremoniously as soon as I signed the paperwork.

I walked through the apartment and was shaken by how old everything was. I estimated based on the cracked still life painting in our living room, the fake felt flowers and the ceramic cherubs on the doors that this building was at least 60 years old and that the decor was probably left behind after one of the previous owners who had died in their sleep.

There was water damage on the stucco walls of almost every room and one of the toilets looked like it hadn't worked in at least a few years. Since the apartment was on the first floor, there were bars on every window and even with the shutters down you could hear the whoosh of each passing car. My bed was too short and I didn't have a pillow. My wardrobe was literally suspended over that bed to save space and I had to shift things around so I would have more than 6 inches of space above me. The television had clearly been dropped a few times and was discolored with age. Everything was dirty and I was left totally alone.

I don't think I've ever felt more alone than I did that first day. I was exhausted from the more than 30 hours of traveling it took to get there, was discouraged by my language abilities and missed my family, friends and girlfriend more than I could bear. I didn't have internet access or a cell phone and was completely cut off from every comfort source I had relied on since birth. I sat down on my springy, musty mattress and cried.