The Spanish Flu

I woke up with a fever Friday morning. After trying to explain to the maid that she didn’t need to make my bed because I still wanted to sleep in it, I decided it was better to get up, shower, and watch three hours of The Office [side note: maids are as common as tapas and sangria in Madrid and the majority of them are immigrants from South America. Lina refuses to acknowledge that I am actually trying to speak Spanish with her]. Besides feeling rather terrible, I realized I was out of fresh episodes to enjoy. *Sigh* Life is rough.

I ended up going out that night anyways just to escape from the house. We found an amazing vegetarian restaurant and it turned out to be just what I needed. Though I have minimal complaints about the food here (on the contrary, I’ve found multiple amazing dishes), the one qualm I have is the amount of meat they eat, ham especially. Passing the jamonerias (how the hell does that translate? Ham shop?) on the street, their walls lined with hanging pig parts, makes me want to gag. So even though it seemed like a regular salad, my meal sin carne was one of the greatest things I’ve eaten thus far. Afterward we ended the night at a game bar, playing Taboo for two hours, and drinking chocolate milkshakes. I don’t think I could’ve asked for a better night to aid my recovery.

So even on my worst days here, I’ve felt amazing. And besides the first three days without sleep on this trip, I have yet to feel homesick. That isn’t to say that I don’t miss Seattle or Boston or all the people that come with them, but I feel absolutely comfortable living in this city. I’ll admit that it helps having a host mom who packs me a bocadillo for lunch during the week, does my laundry on the weekends, and prepares home-cooked Spanish food; in that sense, I’m a little more than pampered but none-the-less appreciative. I do, however, feel comfortably independent in my daily and nightly activities: commuting to and from work and school, navigating around the city (with or without a map), discovering my own favorite bars, restaurants and clubs, and above all else communicating with the people around me. I know it’s only been a month but I can imagine myself never leaving [or if that’s too harsh, I can see myself returning to Spain to work for another year after graduating]. I don’t think I can ever grow sick of Madrid.

This is also why I’m so grateful to have studied abroad in Peru last summer. “Uncomfortable” is definitely the adjective of choice to describe my stay in that country. Perhaps it was the pervasive poverty, accompanied by an inescapable guilt of being “wealthy” and American; perhaps it was simply because I was the “first blonde in this town in two centuries!” to have set foot there, as one old man eagerly pointed out in Ayacucho; then again, it could have been the physical discomfort of being without a hot shower, not being able to drink tap water or eat raw vegetables, and finding yourself scared to walk around by yourself after the sun sets. In fact, it was a strong combination of everything. But now that I’ve spent a sufficient amount of time here in the more “developed” of the Spanish-speaking countries, it’s difficult to think about the majority of the world’s population who live like the Peruvians do. And while the European stock market has been hit hard recently, and some people are losing 10% of their pensions, and the cost of living is rising at a ridiculous pace, people on the other side of the world who speak nearly the exact same dialect are struggling to find food and healthcare and shelter and the ability to survive. Two million children are working in the streets in Lima to help support their families and thousands of women in Ayacucho are still looking for their loved ones who were kidnapped or simply disappeared during the campaign of Sendero Luminoso in the 1980’s and 90’s. There’s so much that the Spanish and the Latin American populations share in common but they are literally worlds apart.

So tonight I’m going to hop on the oh-so-convenient Metro, head out to a bar, and go see some live music that will ultimately get reimbursed by BU. And I will probably pass the group of Peruvian street performers that hang out in La Puerta del Sol and I think I’ll give them an extra Euro tonight. I’ll try to remind myself that even in America the majority of the population will never experience something as life-changing as this, either because they don’t have the opportunity or they’re content in making comfortable decisions within the comfortable borders of the United States. At least for me, it took traveling to the other side of the world to finally become comfortable with taking risks in life. And I remain forever grateful for the ability to take them.