Teruel existe

One of the wonderful things about Spain is the concept of the puente. Now, by puente I don't mean "bridge" in the typical sense of the word. I mean, the Spanish puente: the long weekend, mini-break, what have you. I'm talking about several days of vacation thanks to a Tuesday or Thursday holiday "bridged" to a weekend by calling Monday or Friday off as well. In the States they've avoided those midweek holidays by moving many major holidays to a Monday. In Spain, they aprovechar (take advantage) of any excuse not to work.

The month of December was very kind to us working people of Spain. In addition to the Christmas holiday, the 6th and the 8th of Spain are national holidays: Constitution Day and then Immaculate Conception. This year those dates were a Wednesday and a Friday, and we got a lovely five-day break stretching from Wednesday through Sunday.

Knowing that we'd be traveling to the United States during Christmas and running around seeing dozens of people, Alex and I decided to use the puente de diciembre to get lost, literally, where we would know no one and where, in fact, there would be few people at all.

We decided to go to Teruel, a province northeast of Madrid, in the southern part of Aragón, a region that stretches all the way north to the Pyrenees and the French border. There's a joke about Teruel that says, "Teruel no existe" (Teruel doesn't exist). The provincial capital, also called Teruel, is the only one in Spain without a direct train connection to Madrid. The whole province suffers from depopulation and is generally considered one of the more remote and isolated places in Spain--it also normally registers the lowest temperatures.

But we were intrigued. There must be something there, we thought. For the first part of the trip, we weren't too convinced. We had rather blindly picked to stay in a town that, as we soon discovered, had very little merit. It wasn't pretty, it was tiny, and the whole area was not very picturesque. At least our lodging was decent and we did manage to do some hiking.

Our impression changed completely when we continued to our next destination--deep in the heart of El Maestrazgo, a beautifully wild and inaccessible part of Teruel. The scenery suddenly became stunning: hills and valleys, deep gorges, rock spires reaching to the sky. This area, especially, has decreased dramatically in population in the last century. It was common for us to drive through towns with half the houses abandoned.

Our destination was the Hostal de la Trucha -- the Trout Hostel. The approach was fantastic. We headed through a gorge, hugging the cliff walls in Alex's Clio and then arrived at the closest town to our hotel--Villarluengo. Perched on a rocky outcrop where the gorge opened, it was a truly spectacular sight. We had to wait an hour to eat at one of the town's two completely packed restaurants before descending a wildly curvy road to first a piscifactoría (fish farm) nestled among the trees and then to the eagerly anticipated Hostal.

The place is styled like an old-fashioned hunting lodge. You enter into a huge wooden-beamed room with a small bar on your right, the reception desk straight ahead, several couches, and lots of tables and chairs. On each side of the great room are enormous fireplaces. Each iron chimney hangs from the ceiling over a wood-burning platform. Taxidermist's stuffed animals are perched and mounted throughout the hotel. Our room had antique-looking furniture and red- and black-patterned wool curtains and bedspreads.

I was extremely curious about the history of the place--seen from the road above we thought it was a bunch of abandoned buildings. The weekend receptionist happened to be from the neighboring and tiny village of Pitarque and told us quite a bit. She explained that what is now the hotel had first opened in 1789 as the first banknote paper factory in Spain. Later it was a successful textile factory, among whose buildings included a church and a school for employee's children. In the post-Spanish Civil War era, the factory ceased production as bands of robbers roamed the countryside and robbed the factory's goods. This was accompanied by a general flight of people from the mountains of the Maestrazgo to the cities. The towns in the area became shadows of what they once were.

In those years, some entrepreneur took interest in those abandoned factory buildings and the clean waters of the Río Pitarque to establish the Hostal de la Trucha there around 1970. Together with the Pitarque-fed fish farm that sends kilos and kilos of trout to Zaragoza daily, I imagine the hotel owners don't do too badly for themselves.

In addition to getting some nice hikes in (the area is full of beautiful, well-marked trails and breathtaking scenery, like the Organos de Montoro, seen below), Alex and I visited a tiny town that the woman in Pitarque's tourist office had recommended. The town, Montoro de la Mezquita, has ten inhabitants. We got out of the car to look around and encountered virtually complete silence. A boy played with a ball in the street; we could see two men tending to their fields below town. On the way out, however, we noticed that a municipal bus stop.

We asked Inma, the receptionist at la Trucha, about Montoro and she explained that the population has gotten so low that Villarluengo had to adopt the town. The public bus stops in Montoro twice weekly. Oddly enough, but perhaps because it has such a tranquil and removed setting high at the head of a valley, it is home to two casas rurales (similar to country bed-and-breakfasts), which probably more than double the town's population when they're busy.

Inma herself went to school in Pitarque until secondary school, when she had to go to Teruel capital. Of the school in Pitarque, she told me, "It won't last even five more years. It will disappear."

The schools and inhabitants may continue to disappear, but the tourism infrastructure appears to be alive and well.

The return

I was struck by the dull dark grayness of the Madrid sky when we emerged from the metro midday on January 8. It was a gray unlike anything I'd seen before: oppressive, thick. All the cars and buildings looked like they'd been covered in a layer of dust, dirt, and soot. The air reeked of a mixture of diesel fumes and cigarette smoke that seemed to hang in the intersections where pedestrians waited for the light to change and tried to keep warm.

Maybe it was that I was exhausted from the overnight flight and attempting to sleep in the few hours between dinner and the inedible breakfast. Maybe it was that I was coming from the smoke-free paradise known as the United States. Maybe it's that Madrid needs a good rain to clean the soot off the façades of the buildings and the dog crap from the sidewalks.

The flight

December 21st was a day that will live in infamy. My boyfriend and I got to Terminal 4 of Madrid-Barajas Airport two hours before our flight, waited in a long line to check in, and then were informed that our flight--purchased more than two months earlier--was overbooked.

"I'm sorry," the man at the counter said. "It's something the Americans do."

He worked for Iberia, which handles American Airlines' Spanish flights.

He sent us to another counter where a different attendant spent over half an hour looking for other flight options for us. Our original tickets would have sent us through Chicago and then to the nation's capital--something I wasn't too thrilled about, but had accepted for the incredibly cheap price of the ticket. But this gray-haired airline-passenger-anger veteran worked some magic and got us on a flight to New York five hours later, and then booked us two flights to D.C.: one with a short connection and a second one standby, but with a longer connection time.

He then sent us to the Iberia information counter where, he said, they would give us our money. Money? Oooh. And, yes, within ten minutes a bespectacled woman was handing us each 300 euros for the inconvenience and a voucher for a free meal in the airport during our wait.

Dang right.

Of course, in New York we missed the first flight because it took our bags so long to come off the plane. And we almost didn't get on the second (and last) flight to D.C. because we were on standby. But we did, and by the end of the night we were hugging my parents at National Airport.

Apparently, giving out money for your wait is part of some European Union legislation. I suppose it's a way to avoid getting hammered by hundreds of furious airline passengers.

I'm baaaack

Now that took a while. Updating the ol' blog has been on my to-do list since I returned from the States nearly two weeks ago. Looks like it took spraining my ankle to change the tone of my weekend from skiing (indoors), parties, cleaning, and organizing to sitting at my computer with a bag of frozen green beans strapped to my ankle.

As for the lottery, we didn't win. We did, however, get reimbursed for the second number that several of us bought because it shared the same last digit as the winning number. Better than nothing.

La lotería

But perhaps the biggest deal about Christmas in Spain is el gordo. The national Christmas lottery. Last year I couldn't wrap my mind around people's obsession with this dang lotería. I'm understanding more and more.

The way it works is that there are lots and lots of numbers to be sold. And schools, companies, bars, stores, et cetera, have numbers--the same number every year. My association with the lottery, of course, is through my school. Number 41975 is ours and all the teachers buy a part of it. Last year, under pressure from my colleagues, I bought a décimo (a tenth) for 20 euros and played. We didn't win. But we did get our 20 euros back because the big winner shared the same final digit as ours.

The idea of the lottery is nice, I've decided. You play as a group and it's a whole camaraderie thing. People's favorite words to utter this season are, "¿Y si nos toca?" ("And if we win?") And they are also the words you think when you find out that the school's number is agotado (sold out) and you don't have your décimo.

That's what happened this year. They ran out of our number! Oh, the scandal! If we win and a quarter of the staff didn't get a chance to buy their part? The principal, herself, was left without a lottery ticket for our number.

It was the talk of coffee break.

Knowing that surely our number would win this year, the year in which a number of us don't have it, the assistant principal took action. She asked those who already had their décimo to sell half of it to we poor souls and bought us décimos in another number to sell half to the people who'd shared with us. So now six of us have 10 euros in the school's number and 10 in another number, which we're hoping will be lucky.

The drawing is December 22nd. ¿Y si nos toca?

La cesta

Christmas has hit Madrid in a big way. Lights are everywhere (Madrid apparently has spent several times the money on lights as any other Spanish city), the belén (nativity) has been constructed in the entrance of my school, stores are open on Sundays, Papa Noel climbs store fronts and dangles from apartment windows. (The other day I witnessed a three-year old boy yelling up to a stuffed Santa perched above a store awning. He was telling him what he wanted for Christmas. His mother looked on patiently.)

Even in workplaces the joys are many. Yesterday I lugged home my cesta de navidad ("Christmas basket") from the security company where I teach classes three hours a week. For my three hours, I get the same cesta as the full-time employees. Not a bad deal.

It was so heavy, however, that I almost expired carrying it through the metro and the four blocks to my apartment. Thankfully one of my students gave me a ride to a metro station just a couple stops (and the same line) from where I live (normally it's a 45-minute trip with a long walk between two different lines). But Oh. My. God. Said basket contains six bottles of various libations: 3 wines (two red, one white), 2 bottles of cava (Catalán champagne), and one of whiskey. Then you've got four tablets of turrón--a typical Spanish Christmas sweet made out of almonds--, cookies, chocolate covered almonds, and cans of olives, hearts of palm, pineapple, and peaches.

The cesta is tradition here in almost every company. My roommate got one too: with a jamón (that is, a cured pig's leg) and cheese, among other things. My students at the security company, though, were complaining about the one we received. One of them said, "Well, the wine is drinkable."

I don't care. I'm thrilled.

Vergüenza

This afternoon we, the auxiliares de conversación of Madrid, had a so-called "briefing" with officials from the U.S. Embassy. Last year they didn't bother to make contact with the nearly 100 of us working in Madrid.

The meeting was largely unhelpful, and quite disheartening. The director of regional security presented first because one of the higher-ups at the Embassy was late. He spoke to us about safety in Madrid--mostly things that were complete common sense. And then, noting terrorism, he said, "Al Qaeda is a presence in Spain. They were behind the attacks of March 11th. ... After all, Morocco is just south."

I didn't know that Moroccans were particularly important members of Al Qaeda.

When a girl mentioned that she'd been to Morocco several years ago and had an experience where she was lucky not to have her passport stolen, the security director responded, "We are talking about the Middle East here."

Oh, really? I thought Morocco was in Africa.

An organic buffet and some carrot cake

The other day a friend and I were searching for a place to eat. (In Spanish the way you talk about the midday meal (la comida--"the meal") is not "to have lunch," but rather just "to eat" (comer)). So if I say we were looking for a place to eat, in my Spanish-ized way of thinking I mean we were looking for a place to eat lunch.

Well, it was a little late for lunch (though Spanish lunches are relatively late there's a short window: 2-4 p.m.), so we'd already gotten turned down at one place. But lo and behold, across from the failed attempt on Calle Huertas, we discovered a fabulous organic market and buffet where we salivated and debated over how best to ration the chickpeas, seitan, and veggie lasagna to keep our plates down to a reasonable price (it was 1.80 euros per 100 grams). The food was delicious--flavorful and filling without being meat or fried--and a welcome change from typical Spanish restaurant fare. One of the best things about the place was that there was also a tiny dessert buffet with some yummy-looking carrot cake--not exactly the most popular dessert in España. We shared a piece and were completely inspired to make our own.

So we spent Sunday afternoon grating carrots, chopping walnuts, beating the cream cheese icing by hand, and trying to fit two layers of cake into my tiny oven. At the end of it all we had assembled a beautiful (and really tasty) carrot cake. The recipe is from the Frog Commissary and loved by my mother. We found it online and modified it slightly.

Two, of many, great things about Madrid

1. El Tigre is a bar in the center of Madrid (C/ Infantas), just off of Gran Vía, and in the über-trendy and gay barrio, Chueca. But this bar is neither trendy nor gay. It's always bustling -- and with good reason. With a 1.50 euro caña (small beer) you get a plate full of whatever's on the grill and more: patatas bravas, croquetas, jamón, egg, fried peppers, cheese. The guys behind the bar yell orders constantly, while pouring beers, and move as if bartending were a choreographed art. You have to fight your way to the bar and perch your plate wherever you can, but a tasty and filling meal for under 5 euros (that's three cañas) and great ambiente are worth it.

2. Casa Granada is a rooftop terrace restaurant hidden atop an ordinary and totally unassuming apartment building. You have to be in the know to find the place, just north of metro Tirso de Molina, and once you've buzzed up, ride in the elevator plastered with signs begging riders to adhere to the four-person limit. It's within spitting distance of the Rastro, La Latina's gigantic Sunday flea market, which makes it the perfect place for a meal after navigating the crowds and t-shirt stands. You might have to wait a while for a table, but you'll be glad you did. What else is there to do on Sunday but eat and drink? And meanwhile, you can order a beer and wander out to the terrace for amazingly grand views of Madrid and her suburbs. The raciones are delicious and inexpensive. For two, a plate of pimientos de padrón (tiny peppers fried in oil and sprinkled with sea salt) and one of calamares were more than enough, and cost 11 euros.

Coal

And the Christmas season officially begins.

This morning I awoke to the sound of something heavy being dropped down a hole. When I got downstairs for my run the building entrance was a mess. The floor was covered in sawdust and a metal track, along which two men were wheeling enormous wheelbarrows heaped with coal. Of course: we'd been without heat all weekend, and these guys were delivering coal to get our smelly heating system started again. In and out they went, carefully monitored by our diminutive doorman, dressed in the blue coverall he dons every morning to mop the entrance.

I'm now showered and breakfasted, and I think they're finally getting ready to leave. We should have enough coal to last the month.

Lunchtime politics

Today, school lunch got a little heated.

One of the great perks of my job is that I eat in the school dining room every day for free. We're a small group of teachers that stick around in the middle of the day for lunch (there's a two-hour break). It's convenient and relatively cheap for the other teachers, and it's a full Spanish lunch. That is, the size of (or bigger than) an American dinner. First course, second course, salad, fruit, and yogurt. The kids eat this too. It's really a far cry from school lunches in the States. There's actually a woman cooking everything at my school. That's not to say the food is out of this world, but it's good enough, and it's a huge meal that saves me a lot of money. But this is just background.

The point is that today at lunch we were seven teachers in the cozy room where we always eat. Somehow the conversation turned to Francisco Franco, the Spanish dictator, and the principal began to lament the fact that statues and monuments to Franco have been (or are being) torn down. And that Spain's current president, the socialist Zapatero, should be blamed for it. The religion teacher then chimed in to say that it was a crying shame, and that people don't give Franco enough respect. (Yes, Catholic religion is still taught in Spanish public schools. It's not obligatory. The few kids who don't go in my school are Muslim.) He added that Spaniards lived very very well under Franco. And then two of the younger teachers commented that Franco shouldn't be maligned as much as he is, that the monuments are a part of history. The conversation moved very quickly, like all of these teachers were excited to have discovered that their colleagues shared their views.

I was sitting there feeling my face get hot and that the room was just way too small for the seven of us. Then the school's youngest teacher spoke up in response to the religion teacher, saying that come on, not everyone lived well under Franco. The other assistant (who's also American) and I fidgeted in our seats. I said I certainly had heard Spaniards say some not very nice things about life under Franco. The bell rang and the conversation continued until the youngest teacher said, "Wasn't that the bell?" I sighed inwardly. The other assistant and I walked out of the room shaking our heads in disbelief.

I've been thinking about lunch all evening. It is a known fact among teachers at my school that there are plenty of conservatives among our ranks. The principal and the religion teacher are extremely devout Catholics and they're also some of the oldest in the school. The three of us who kept our mouths shut mostly during the conversation are the youngest working at school. And we are not at all Catholic.

But the point is that Franco was a dictator. He killed people. He isolated Spain from the rest of the world (both politically and econimically). He disallowed political parties, the country's other languages (Galician, Catalán, and Basque), and most press. He imposed strict Catholic mores on all aspects of Spanish life and above all, in the public schools.

Yo flipo.

Oddly enough, tonight I encountered another interesting, but not quite as uncomfortable conversation. After yoga, I stopped by a little market to pick up a few things. The owner, ringing up a customer, was commenting, "Everyone says people in the United States live better than we do. But it's not true. We live well here." The customer nodded his head in agreement, as the owner turned to me and explained that he likes to engage this guy in conversation, sorry for the hold up. I offered that I was American. The owner continued, saying that, yes the Spaniards live well. They shouldn't complain so much. For example, the laws are much stricter in the United States. Here in Spain, we get away with a lot.

I had to agree. Despite my daily complaints or all the Franco lovers out there, life in Spain nowadays is not too shabby.

Clementine postscript

On Sunday, I lugged 5 kilos of clementines on the bus from Valencia to Madrid. They came straight from the trees in Castellón, the province north of Valencia. If only I had a way to get them back into the States...

Oh my darling clementine

Clementine season has begun. I couldn't be happier to be spending it in España for the second time 'round. The lovely specimen of a fruit in the photo came from a market in Valencia. It was delicious. I mean, really, what could be better? Totally portable, peelable, seedless fruit. Clementines are like candy with vitamins.

My mom always used to buy crates and crates of "Clementines from Spain" in the winter because we would go through them so quickly. And they're not that cheap in the States. In Madrid, I can get a kilo for under 2 euros and they are a staple in my diet from November until early February.

Infiltrados

Ever since I arrived in Spain I've been fascinated and disturbed by the culture of movies here. The market is widely saturated by films from the U.S., but in their dubbed and title-changed versions. And the Spaniards wonder why their level of English is so far behind the rest of Europe? American movies and television dubbed into Spanish are certainly a culprit.

This weekend I saw the excellent film The Departed. Spanish title? Infiltrados. That is, "the infiltrators." Can we possibly lack any more creativity? As I refuse to pay to see a dubbed movie, I saw it in its original version with subtitles at my favorite theater, Cine Ideal. I can't stand when the lips moving and what I'm hearing don't match. Also, I value the actors and the nuances of the way they speak. I don't want to hear some Spanish man or woman whose voice sounds curiously the same as every other dubber but not like anyone I actually know or hear on the street.

The Spaniards I know who balk at seeing a movie in versión original argue that they don't like reading subtitles and that dubbing is necessary here because so much is imported from the States. I never thought twice about seeing a subtitled movie in the U.S.--it always felt so exotic. Hearing the actors' voices, even if I didn't understand a word of what they were saying, seemed an important element of their characters. I encourage my English students to go see movies in versión original. Even if they are reading the whole time, their ears are taking in some English.

I do like to read the Spanish subtitles here because I'm interested in how they translate things. In The Departed it was a lesson in translations of vulgarities. Watching that particular film, however, made me realize that no matter how much I bash dubbing, there are great shortcomings to subtitles as well. The Spanish I was reading at the bottom of the screen seemed so formal in comparison to the foul-mouthed Boston accents coming in my ears. There is no way the translator could ever capture all the slang spit out by Mark Wahlberg or Leonardo DiCaprio. But, at least we could hear what their accents were like.

Today I had another adventure in the world of dubbing. We took about 100 kids from school to see a free movie at an international children's film festival here in Madrid. We arrived slightly late and I was surprised when I entered the theater to to hear that the movie was in English. I do work at a bilingual school, but my kids have a long way to go. But no, there was a voice coming from the back of the theater--in its dull monotone I thought it was someone directing us to our seats. No no. It was a guy reading a translation of the film into Spanish, just slightly behind the English dialogue. You know, like an interpreter at a meeting between politicians from different countries. They'd turned down the volume of the original so we could hear this guy's completely boring voice and it just about put me to sleep.

The second graders seemed entertained enough by the pretty inane and poorly animated version of the nutcracker story. The fifth graders were definitely fidgety for most of the time. And no one laughed at any of the jokes.

I voted

The Spanish mail system came through just in time. I'd been anxiously awaiting my absentee ballot for weeks and had virtually given up on its arriving today in time for me to both fill it out and postmark it before the end of business.

But I ran home in the middle of the school day to check the mail, and there it was. The doorman, to whom I'd explained the situation earlier, was exhilarated.

Who knows if my vote will count, but it's on its way back to the States.

La calle es de todos

The street is for everyone. I saw these words stenciled on a building in the center of Madrid while wandering around with a friend last week. It seems an appropriate thing to say about Madrid, where so much life is concentrated on the streets. I'm not just talking about the homeless people here, who sleep on benches, building entrances, and in parks, or the crippled beggars who sit in the middle of the sidewalk on Gran Via and ask for change. Or even the groups of teenagers who congregate in the alleyway under my window late at night. I'm talking about all Madrileños, old and young, Spanish and foreign, pijo and alternativo. I'm talking about the West Africans selling pirated DVDs on the streets and in the Metro entrances, the gay couple embracing outside the Palacio Real, the Pakistani man smoking a cigarette outside his non-smoking locutorio, the Ecuadorans picnicking in Parque del Oeste every Sunday, the Peruvian musicians playing in Sol.

I'm talking about Lavapiés, probably the most ethnically diverse neighborhood in the center of Madrid. I was there three times in the last week--one night for a kebab, one night for Indian food, and today as we looked for a less crowded alternative to La Latina to eat outside on this cloudy, chilly, but not rainy day. It was just our luck to come across a terraza with an empty table just north of an enormous drum circle congregated in the plaza. Now, Lavapiés has become semi-trendy among Madrileños who dig the ethnic food and the alternative Spanish tabernas, the art and music scene, and the wonderful old architecture. But whenever I go there I can't forget what one of my female Spanish friends told me once: that she had been really interested in taking a flamenco class at El Horno, a dance center in the neighborhood, but had ultimately decided against it based on the fact that the class would end around 7 p.m. and the streets would be full of immigrants just standing around and looking at her. I couldn't help thinking that it was a terrible shame to give up the class for that reason. La calle es de todos, ¿no?

Washing

These municipal workers are busy washing the street right outside my apartment. This was during a sunny interlude between two rainy weeks in Madrid. What is most amazing to me is that they wash the streets even on the rainy days. But they're worried about the lack of water in Spain?

Halloween en español

Easy like Sunday morning

The deluge is over. Madrid is back to its normal sunny self, at least for the time being. The weekend has been gorgeous and the Madrileños are out in full force, doing what they love best: getting dressed and having a drink at one of the hundreds of terrazas in the city. Families with hordes of children dressed in the cutest Spanish kids' clothes, couples young and old, singles with a dog or a book or a paper. They're having a beer or a clara or a café con leche, accompanied by the ubquitous plate of patatas fritas. It's Sunday--what else is there to do?

On Sundays, Spain virtually shuts down. Generally the only businesses open are bars and restaurants, bakeries, and pharmacies. You can find convenience stores open in the big cities. So, what to do? Eat and drink, of course. Sit in a bar or a terraza, people watching, being social. Pasear with your new baby in his 800-euro stroller, stopping every hundred meters or so when someone wants to ogle your adorable addition to the world. Play tennis, go running, clean the house, do laundry. More or less typical weekend things, with a Spanish flair.

I spent Sunday morning running a race--the second annual Retiro District 10K. I did it last year, too, but under notably different circumstances. I'd been unable to sign-up because they'd capped it at 2,000 runners. But out in a bar the night before the race a friend suggested that what the hell? We'd run it anyway, just without numbers. And we did, after sleeping about four hours. Well, this year I made sure to sign up early and go to bed at a reasonable hour. No biggie that I signed up, though. I arrived to pick up my timing chip on race day, and they apologetically informed us that the chips for race numbers 1300 and up had been stolen. Huh? Yes, it's true. So we ran without chips and lined up after finishing to report our times to a woman with pen and paper. No problem.

My main problem with races here is post-race. Maybe I got spoiled running all those New York Road Runner races in Central Park, which run like clockwork and dependably feature huge tables of water and some sort of food just after crossing the finish line. Lamentably, at none of the four races I've run here has food played a role for we poor hungry runners. But on several occasions you could cross the finish and drink a Coke right away! You had to wait in a long line for your goodie bag with one puny bottle of water. When I cross the finish, I want to gulp down several cups of water in quick sucession. I don't want a Coke, or a Nestea, or whatever sugary drink is sponsoring the race. And I definitely don't want to wait fifteen minutes in line to get the tiny bit of water that's in my race bag. Why does Coca-Cola sponsor the races I've run in Madrid? Where are the bananas, apples, and bagels for chrissake!?

Concrete schoolyard

Recess is a whirling chaos. On the "patio," the concrete schoolyard ubiquitous in Madrid, children are throwing themselves at each other, down the slide in the tiny playset, or on the ground, as is the case with the majority of the three-year olds who waddle around like tiny penguins with snotty noses and pint-size clothing. Dramas are acted out daily on the school playground, complete with accusations, tears, and denials.

I never went to school in the center of a city (well, until college in New York), so I spent elementary school on expansive playgrounds with fields, lots of play equipment, and serious amounts of space to chase boys.

Here in Madrid, everything is confined to a smaller space, and tensions run high on the concrete schoolyard. The seven-year old second graders are the big kids, towering over the likes of the pre-school children, concerned with scoring a goal at all cost and hardly noticing if they knock over one of the waddlers or send a ball flying at the head of one the teachers who has recess duty. The first graders were five-year olds last year, and still waver between pre-school immaturity and joining the big kids' game. So they dangle from the tiny, overcrowded playset, waiting for the right moment to go for the ball.

The three-year olds still don't know they actually go to school, and stare with mucus-filled faces at the more experienced kids whizzing around them. Or they fall over and entertain each other on the concrete. The four-year olds are too cool for the three-year olds. They know how this playground thing goes, and have the guts to run around with some of the bigger kids and tattle on those who commit offenses. The five-year olds play among themselves--confident in their position as oldest of the infantil classes. They only call the teachers' attention when one of them gets knocked over and all of her friends make sure that she's properly attended.

At 11:30 the bell rings and it's all over. Until tomorrow.