Seville Adentro

I felt like my head was underwater for most of the day today because I was speaking only mostly in Spanish. I made it until 7:30, just about the time I thought my English personality might come exploding out. It’s not that I’m different when I speak Spanish; but I tend to speak less, because avoiding the headache of not knowing half the vocabulary I want to know is usually worth being silent. I suppose I’ll learn.

Perhaps my Spanish personality is more resilient. (I’m talking as if I have two personalities. I don’t really. My life is not a telenovella.) Today I survived lunch with my señora and her daughter. I survived a five-block walk with the two of them talking a mile a minute. I survived a phone conversation. I survived a visit to the hotel where I now reside. Perhaps I should start at the beginning?

This afternoon I sat down to a brilliant homemade paella and my señora stood over me looking torn, “Tengo algo para decirte.” (I have something to tell you) The bathroom isn’t going to be finished for at least 20 days. I’ll spare you the drama that ensued, but basically she told me she’d go along with whatever I decided, and I decided the hotel paid for by the landlord sounded good. When we looked at the room this afternoon, my señora gawked at the microwave and electric burners in the mini kitchen and the two beds in the same room and decided it would be better if I slept in the hotel alone, made my own breakfast, and returned to the house for lunch and dinner. She, in turn, would sleep at the house and use the bathroom at the hotel when she so desires.

I now have a bathroom. As far as hotels go, it’s not the greatest, but it’s not the worst either. The lamps and the TV don’t work, and the hallways smell like Raid, but the shower was powerful enough to turn the bathroom into a lake this afternoon. I don’t know about staying here for 20+ days, but I suppose if I get too lonely I always have the option of returning to my pail.

As of this morning I am registered in all the classes I want to be registered in, excluding, most notably, the grammar class I was stuck in because I didn’t do so well on the placement test. As it turns out, talking to the right people made all the right things happen. So instead of learning grammar this morning, I lounged on a couch in Café de Indias and read more twentieth century Spanish prose at one time than I’ve ever read in my life.

Yo siempre había esperado en la resurrección de nuestros amores. Era una esperanza indecisa y nostálgica que llenaba mi vida con un aroma de fe: Era la quimera del porvenir, la dulce quimera dormida en el fondo de los lagos azules, donde se reflejan las estrellas del destino. ¡Triste destino el de los dos! Sonata de Otoño Ramón del Valle-Inclán

When I learn something in my translation class I’ll translate it for you.