In honor of the greatest baseball team of this millenium

I know I said no more posts, but the Sox won the Series. C´mon!
I actually got to see Game 3. As far as I know, I was at one of two bars in all of Madrid showing the game. It started at 2:30 AM, and I went to bed as my family was waking up. But nice game. Dice-K (Japanese import, starting pitcher) had two RBIs, which is one more than either ARod or Derek Jeter can boast.
But enough gloating.
Hector and Dario had me guilt-tripping all over myself tonight. "Quiero que no te vayas." "Por favor, quedate aquí." Hector drew me a picture, and Dario came into my room as I was packing to distract me with his airplanes.
Both had their own ways of saying goodbye. Hector played the "No I love you more" game, showing off his knowledge of outer space with, "Well, I love you from here to the galaxy!" Dario, on the other hand, tried to play with my heart. "No te quiero," he said. (I don´t love you.) "Pues, sí yo te quiero," he said, trying to get a rise out of me. (Well, I actually do love you.) He switched it back and forth a few more times. I assured them I´d only be gone two weeks.

"Dude, I think he´s doing the dice thing too much." "That´s all he´s got."

It´s been awhile. I´ll give the footnotes.
The night after I saw Toronto lose to Real Madrid, I went clubbing with Britney, a girl from Canada and Austria, Erica, a girl from the US and Venezuela, and the Madrileños who I had watched the game with. It was good to combine groups.
If I knew how to dance, I might understand the attraction of a nightclub. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to dance, and my usual itinerary in a nightclub can only reasonably be stretched so long. I get a drink and chat a little, if the grating techno isn´t too loud.
Usually, I come into a club with a just slightly unrealistic idea of how incredible my dancing is, so at first I dance seriously. Crip-walk. Michael Jackson spin move this girl once taught me. A casual moonwalk, somewhere in the song. Something dreidel-like with the hands. I think I´m pretty cool, but eventually (a minute into the second song), I don´t know any more moves. I improvise, but I look more like I´m spazzing out than doing anything intentional.
At this point, it´s time to reference the part in "Knocked up" when Seth Rogen repeatedly does a dice-throwing routine to cover up for his lack of dancing ability. (Amazing how closely art imitates real life.) The dice-throwing routine leads to the ever-useful sprinkler routine. If you´re with cool people, they get into the imitations, and this kind of thing can last for a while. The night with Britney, Erica, and the Madrileños saw the lawn-mower, the shopper, the race-car-driver, and countless other classics.
Eventually, I can get into the dancing a little bit, even the non-jokey dancing. But one of the two best parts of a club is the sitting down and chatting...In other words, something that could be done much more easily at a bar.
The club is a similar but less intense version of a semi-formal afterparty. Clubbing is a weekly event, at least, so kids aren´t trying to pack a whole school-year´s worth of partying into one night. There´s more dancing, and less, um, promiscuousness (I´ll leave it at that). The biggest difference, though, is that people don´t know each other. At the nightclub, the friends you come with are usually the friends you stay with. The people on the dance floor might as well be eating lunch with their group at a restaurant -- that´s how little interaction there is between groups. At an afterparty, you´ll say hello to almost everyone you see, and interact with almost everyone you say hello to. Then again, you probably won´t meet anyone new at an afterparty. At a club, you meet tons of people, which is the other really good part of a club.
But to me, bar-hopping is the most enjoyable way to spend a night out. The two best parts of clubbing, chatting and meeting new people, are easier, better, and more fun in a bar. So there, clubbing.

I used to doubt the idea that children learn languages more easily than adults. The evidence often given, that a five year old speaks better Spanish than someone who has taken five years of Spanish classes in school, is a totally unfair comparison. The five-year-old is immersed, a situation clearly better than classes.
After about two month´s worth of teaching, I still have those doubts, but children clearly have some advantages. Pronunciation is the biggest. Hector (five years old) and Dario (three) can, on the first try, repeat a word back to me with nearly 100% correct pronunciation. Oscar, a Madrileño to whom I give private lessons, cannot eliminate his accent when pronouncing words even on the third or fourth try. And he often lapses back into his Castilian-tinted pronunciation if I ask for the word later in the lesson.
But my adult students seem to learn more quickly than the children I teach. They know how to concentrate on memorizing, which is a big part of learning a language. Adults have the same kind of advantage over children that they would if they were studying law, or biology, or history -- they know how to deal with lots of information, prioritize it, and memorize it.
That said, I am sometimes amazed with what Dario and Hector have internalized, such as Dario knowing a word I´ve taught only once or Hector picking up on the difference between "here" and "there." It could just be a matter of expectations -- I expect more of the adults I teach, so I am less blown away when they make these same kinds of leaps. But I feel a difference. The adults memorize words and concepts. The children internalize them. The adults will have to actively transform the memorization into second-nature, possibly in an immersion, as I am doing now. The children already operate as if the second language is second nature. Steffen, a German I know, learned English as a child, and now, after never being immersed in an English-speaking country, speaks perfect English. He learned it and internalized it at the same time. You can see that same-time learning happening in Dario and Hector. They use English words in otherwise Spanish sentences. "Quiero mi red car, por favor." It´s fascinating, and also really cute.

This post will be the last for two weeks, as I am taking a two-week trip to the states! I won a journalism award for an article I wrote last year, and the original reason I´m coming is for the journalism conference and awards ceremony (Harvard-Westlake is being unbelievably generous, helping me to get to Philadelphia, where the journalism conference is being held). As this trip will probably be my only time in the US this year, I decided to extend the time a little bit. The Vasquez´s, the family I´m staying with and teaching the kids in, said two weeks off would be fine. I´ll see friends, my grandparents, and my mom and her boyfriend Bill, who were coincidentally already coming to New York the weekend before the journalism conference. In two weeks, I´ll be back in Madrid, hopefully without missing a beat. But for now, the gap year´s on a two-week hiatus, and so is the blog.

The NBA gets worldly

A Madrileño who I met on the town´s basketball court a few days ago invited me to watch the big game tonight with him and a few friends. The big game pitted the NBA´s own Toronto Raptors against the Spanish league´s Real Madrid.
Three guesses who won?
Go with the logical answer and you´ll be wrong every time.
Real Madrid beat the Raptors.
The final score was 104-103, but the numbers were a little closer than reality, as Toronto hit a meaningless three at the last second.
To be fair, the Raptors were missing their biggest star, Chris Bosh. Still, an NBA team losing to a Spanish league team?
Gut instinct says that´s unprecedented.
It´s not so unprecedented. Just this month the Memphis Grizzlies lost a close one to Unicaja 102-99. (Both Memphis and Toronto have two players each from Spain. Like Yao Ming´s Rockets, huge in China, these teams are big draws here.) And last year, the Philadelphia 76ers lost 104-99 to Sant Jordi (see Memphis link).
It´s not all bad news for the NBA, though. After their loss at Unicaja, Memphis dismantled the Spanish League team Estudiantes later in the month.
Also, these are pre-season games, so even when the NBA teams do field full line-ups, the players aren´t going full-bore.
But Spain has proven something basic -- its teams are competitive with at least the middle of the NBA pack.
Tonight, three Spanish boys crowded around a TV where national pride hung in the balance. And all across Madrid, all across Spain, similar scenes played out around other TVs.
Imagine the market for the NBA if it that N for "National" became an "I." Imagine the excitement that kind of expansion would create back here in the states, and all around the world.
Why not?

What´s up? What´s up? We don´t have houses

Housing is a big issue in Madrid. Half of "kids" under 35 still live with their parents, and the average age of "emancipation" is even higher in Madrid. Part of the reason is culture, but another part is the ridiculously high price of reasonable living in Spain (say the Madrileños I met at the protest).
The President is trying to encourage citizens to rent more. That wasn´t enough for the protesters.
They waved Cuban flags (in an exercise of stupidity that reminded me of the immigrants rights marchers waving Mexican flags) and Republic of Spain flags (the Republic that existed before Franco was moderate-left, not Communist, but Republicans allied with Communist to fight Franco´s Nationalists in the Civil War, so the flag has become a symbol of Communism).
The protesters wanted the government to build low-cost housing. That well-intentioned idea would probably do harm, in my opinion. The US government has undertaken such projects -- they usually become the worst areas of any neighborhood (ever heard Dr. Dre rap about living in "The Projects"?). No one really owns the homes, and, without real ownership, the buildings are neglected.
The protesters also talked about government fixing of rent rates. Pretty short-sighted. That kind of move would discourage home-owners from renting their homes, so those that did benefit from lower prices would be a lucky few. Most people would be worse off.
The protesters best idea was embodied in a sign that read "Casas sin gente y tú sin casa - acaba €speculación." (In English: "Houses without people and you without a house - end speculation.") The protesters´ suggestion was to impose high taxes on owners of houses without people living in them. Seems interesting. If you think that maximizing living space serves more good for society than speculation, even if to maximize the space you need to interfere with market forces, this tax is for you. It encourages owners to use their houses as homes.
The protest itself was fun. Protesters met at la Puerta de Sol (imagine the Santa Monica Promenade in downtown LA). I estimate about 3,000 people were there, and another few thousand watched. I chanted along with everyone else. "¿Qué pasa, qué pasa? ¡No tenemos casa!" (English: "What´s up, what´s up? We don´t have houses!")

I´ve been meeting a lot of people, most through the Spanish school. About half are Germans, a country that has the best combination of high population, proximity to Spain, and tradition of learning languages other their own (unlike, say, France). The other half are Dutch, Austrian, Canadian, and French. And I meet locals, too, mostly on the bus or the metro.
Nightlife is often bar-hopping. This Saturday, though, I persuaded the people I was with that we needed to hang out in the forest near my house. Exploring the forest - that´s nightlife.

Special deals and Harry Potter

The waitress asked what we wanted to drink.
"Agua," I said, and two of the girls followed suit. The third girl wanted a Thai cocktail.
"Might as well go big if you´re gonna pay for water anyway," she explained.
My internal Jiminy Cricket discusses some issues of morality with me, but his passion is making sure I´m cheap. When he heard the quip about water, he went so crazy I thought he´d had a run-in with my internal woodpecker, who tries to eat him from time to time.
"What? We´re paying for water?" I asked.
"Yeah, you have to," another girl said. "I mean, I guess it´s reasonable, ´cuz it comes in bottles."
"We´re getting bottled water?" I asked.
"Yeah, that´s, like, what you get," she said.
I turned to the waitress.
"¿Venga, podemos tener agua del grifo?" I asked.
"¿Como en una jarra?" she asked.
I asked my Canadian and Austrian friends, all of whom were just starting to learn Spanish, whether they wanted bottled water or regular water. They wanted regular water, if it was available.
"Sí, en una jarra," I said to the waitress. (Yes, a jug of water.)
I tried not to look smug as the waiter left the table.
But c´mon. I´m getting special deals in restaurants!
And I just finished my first full book in Spanish -- Harry Potter 1!
So I´m feeling like this whole bilingual thing´s coming along!
---
At a small English as a Foreign Lanuage school today, the director offered me a job paying 22€ per hour, three hours a week. I nearly started singing in her office. Then she told me the hours. They wanted me from 5:00 to 6:30 on Tuesday and Thursday, and I´m already tutoring Hector and Dario then.
Aaaahhhhhhhhh!!! I could have been up 66€ for just three hours of work, weekly!
---
Another Spanish weekend. Today, I went to bed at 7am, the exact same time that I woke up yesterday.

A religious experience at the Templo de Debod

On Fridays, my Spanish school takes a "cultural tour." The director of the school majored in art history, he told me when I signed up for courses, so he knows his Spanish stuff. He gives a stand-up comedy act in Spanish around every sight we see.

This Friday, we saw the royal gardens. Each one is the same story, of kings trying to one-up the kings before them, usually their own fathers, by building bigger and grander gardens.
The most interesting sight was a statue outside the front gardens of Felipe IV riding his horse. His father had commissioned a similar statue in which he rode a horse "a pasello" (trotting along). That statue now sits in a plaza I stumbled across just last night.

Like father, like son, but flashier. Felipe IV wanted a statue of himself riding "a caballo" (galloping), and he wanted it at the front of the main palace´s royal gardens.

The artist he commissioned didn´t know how to build a statue of a galloping horse. The two legs in the back would be the only legs touching the ground, and the front of the statue would fall forward. He called on Galileo Galilee and Diego Velázquez to help him, and the all-star cast came up with a design that stands to this day, filling the back with solid iron and making the front hollow.

---

Later that Friday, I made my first money in Spain, giving a two-hour English lesson. Oscar, the student, was 10 years older than me. He ordered us Chinese food, and we spoke in English and Spanish.

He works in food distribution, so he often goes to China, mostly to buy canned mushrooms. The reason he wants to learn English? To speak to the Chinese!

I laughed. No, he was serious.

A testament to the importance of English in business around the world.

When I came home, Dario and Hector were driving Margie mad. Margie opened the door for me, said a quick hola, and ran after Hector, who had chocolate smeared all around his mouth for reasons I still don´t know. I could tell I was in for a hard lesson.

I started off with a picture book, and the lesson was began smoothly. They named the words they knew. I gave them the words they didn´t, and they repeated them.

After about five minutes, though, Hector started saying "sufey" after every word. It´s a common joke. Hector thinks it´s hilarious, as does Dario, who idolizes him.

I usually pretend that they´re making an honest mistake. "No, that´s not right," I said. "What is it?" As long as they know the word, I´m okay with them adding "sufey."

Then Dario inexplicably spit in the book. "No, Dario, that´s not okay," I said. He spit again, and then Hector spit in the book. "What are you guys doing?" I asked, taken aback. "Go to the bathroom, get towels, and clean this up." I led them to the bathroom, and we cleaned up the book.

Time to move on to songs, I thought. But before the first song finished, Hector kicked Dario in the mouth. Utterly shocked, I scolded Hector. I decided to take the lessons outside to release some energy.

Hector and I threw a ball around. At one point, though, the ball fell onto the second-floor balcony.

"Oh, we´ll have to go get it," I said.

As I unlocked the door to the balcony, I saw a ladder leading up to the third story. As the door swung open, Hector bolted to the ladder, not even feigning interest in getting the ball. I caught him, barely, grabbing him by the ankle.

Meanwhile, Dario ambled out and chilled. I concentrated on Hector, but out of the corner of my eye I saw Dario trying to turn a giant water faucet.

"Lucky it´s rusted over," I thought.

I turned my attention back to Hector. He was almost bawling. "¡Quiero, quiero, quiero ver la calle!" he screamed in an absurdly high-pitched voice. ("I want to see the street!")

Suddenly, water burst out of the faucet, drenching Dario. In twenty minutes, they were going to a birthday party for their dad´s colleague´s son.

"Dario, no!" I yelled. I turned off the faucet as Hector raced up the ladder to ver la calle.

Margie changed Dario´s clothes, I retrieved Hector kicking and screaming from the porch, and Hector and Dario proved once and for all how ridiculous, hilarious, and crazy Spanish kids can be.

---

Last night, (Saturday), Madrid hosted "La noche en blanco."

Riga (Latvia) and Rome have already hosted the festival and Paris and Brussels are set to host it as well, but it felt especially Madrid.

Almost the whole city stayed open through the night, which meant business as usual for many businesses. Also, museums stayed open, and small art exhibitions and music shows lined the streets.

I strolled the streets with Carol, a friend from Germany who I met at the Spanish school. Two hour lines at the museums drove Carrrrroh (the correct pronunciation of her name) and I away from the big stuff and towards three music shows and two art exhibitions.

At the Templo de Debod, I had a religious experience. I was watching Fátima Miranda, which the program said would make you ask, "¿Dondé estoy?" ("Where am I?").

Rain was falling as hard as hail, and the wind shook the trees and churned up the water around the temple. At first, I didn´t realize that the music was a human voice. I saw a woman onstage, carrying a clay pot on her head. I soon realized she was singing, something between an Indian spiritual and a wolf howling at the moon. We arrived at a calmer part of the song. Soon, she was almost shrieking, and then something between Bjork and Sigur Ros, and then, she fell silent, and the blue lights dimmed. The audience went crazy.

Private concert

The world has voted, and it has voted for the Red Sox. (I define the world as the readers of this blog who voted. You guys mean the world to me.) The poll answered the vague question, Red Sox or Yankees? Whether the question meant coolness, likelihood of reaching playoffs, or, um something else -- that was up to the reader! The Red Sox handily beat the Yankees, who garnered less votes than those who resent baseball´s affect on our youth. The Yankees supporters can at least brag that they are as numerous as those who voted "C´mon, Tamba Bay, all the way," and "I´m all abute Toronto."
So, to the beloved Red Sox -- congratulations. Now please, please, don´t collapse.

Spanish classes started today. The school is tiny, 80 students, and with that smallness comes quite personal attention. Yesterday, when I signed up, the director of the school personally drove me to the sister school at which I´d be taking my classes.
I´m in the high-level group. The class has seven students, and three were absent today. In addition to my amiable Chilean teacher, my classmates are Bulgarian, German, Dutch, and French. Not one comes from an English-speaking country, which is great. Claudia, the teacher, conducts the class in Spanish from start to finish.

While I was on the way to classes, my train car got a private concert. In England, they called it busking. People play for money in the underground halls or on the metro trains themselves. Something like the Promenade, but no freakshows, and better quality. The violinists, singers, and guitarists almost always play beautifully.
Today, on the train, two men entered, mumbled something in Spanish, and took out their microphone, speaker system, and flute. They had a CD playing behind them, drums and backup vocals.
They sounded CD-quality, playing without missing a note. I wondered whether they were lip-syncing and lip-fluting. But then, the flautist put away his flute, and I could hear the whoosh of air as he took it from his mouth. He started shaking maracas, and the shakes lined up with the sounds. Then, after the maraca chorus, he took out a wooden harmonica, and I could again hear that whoosh that proved the playing was real. They were moving, really getting into their music.
I wondered how they made money, thinking that perhaps they sang for fun, out of the kindness of their hearts. The rest of the train car seemed unaffected, as if they were used to the good show. I must have stood out, with my wide stupid joyful grin. But then they finished their second song, mumbled something in Spanish again, and went around the train car. Half the car, maybe more, gave change. I left at the next stop, and saw them in the next car.