3.) For the first time in weeks (i.e. the first time since my wart was frozen and I grew exponetially ugly in a matter of hours), I actually put a little thought into my look for the day. Wart finally completely off my face, I decided to celebrate by leaving my hair down to show off my new cut/color, wear my black and grey Desigual skirt with some black and grey high heels and wear contacts and a little bit of eyeliner. I should have guessed this would be a shock to all the young people´s system. In each class I was greeted by at least one child who gasped and exclaimed, ¨Chelsea! You look BEAUTIFUL today!¨ I got hugs. I got kids asking where my glasses had gone. I got big smiles. Kids here are very observant and happily they mostly keep their negative thoughts to themselves but are very forthcoming about their positive ones! Everytime I walk through a packed hallway or across the lawn to/from the cafeteria, I can hear little whispers of, ¨Look! It´s Chelsea!¨ This must be what it feels like to be a celebrity - on a much smaller scale, but still. It´s fun, but there´s an amount of pressure associated with it. I can´t just pick my nose when I feel like it, because I know someone´s watching. I can´t just pick my wedgie when it gets to severe, because I know someone will see it happen. I can´t look like complete crap because I know I´ll get a million children asking what happened. I can´t imagine what it´d be like with adults instead of kids and cameras instead of quizzical faces!
2.) We´re working on this project called ¨Junior Acheivement¨with 5th - 8th grades. Each class has to become a company and decide what their product will be, who will be in which department and organize the whole thing. The culmination of the project will be in the Spring, when the school has a big race and parents come and there´s a big party. That will be they day they actually sell their products and make money. I´m pretty sure the money is put toward a class trip they all take to another country (omg so cool), but I´m not sure about that part. Anyway, the girls in this school are obsessed with bracelets. Obsessed. So naturally one of the groups decided they wanted to sell the bracelets they make each day during lunch. They´d brought a shoe box full of samples to show to the class, but after the class´ behavior infuriated the teacher, she told them they couldn´t do bracelets and it was all over. So now they´re doing balloon animals. How lame. Hopefully she goes back on her decision - haha. Anyway, while they broke into their departments to discuss their project, some of the girls came up to the teacher and myself to show us their bracelets. The teacher said she wanted one and proceeded to pick one out and they tied it around her wrist. Seeing all the colorful happiness, I said I, too, wanted one, and promptly picked the rainbow bracelet. ;) Awesome. They tied it to my ankle and now I have a sweet hand made rainbow ankle bracelet made for me by a group of 6th grade Spanish girls who adore me. Kinda totally awesome! :-P
1.) The best moment of the day - and possibly the week or even the month - was in my 4th grade class. This class single handedly has all of the adorable boys in the school. The kinda chubby ones with little block heads and glasses. The ones who get a little excited and crazy but as soon as the teacher says anything calm right down and get extremely serious. The kind of boys who seem like little old men rather than little 8 year olds. The kind of boys who are so excited to learn they can hardly stand it. Those boys. Anyway, right before the end of class the teacher handed out new books to each student. It was some Sherlock Holmes book in English wrapped in plastic to protect it. When the teacher handed the book to the most adorable boy in the class (he looks like Ralphie from ¨A Christmas Story,¨ only cuter),
After school it was time for my tutoring session and the boy was sick so he wanted nothing to do with me. Superb. He mostly just drew and then decided to baracade me in the kitchen because he just wanted to snuggle with his mom. I feel like I´m seriously cheating these parents out of their money, but I´m sure not going to say anything. I kinda wish I felt like I was actually helping them with English, though. Hmm...
By the time it was 7:00, I was on the bus to Madrid but a lot less excited about my adventure than I had thought I´d be. I got to Cupcake Madrid to discover they only had two cupcakes left. Happily, they were the two flavors I had planned on getting, but I wanted to get more than two so that I could take them back home and eat them throughout the remaineder of my work week (we have Friday off - National holiday, YAY!). I went to get back on the metro to go get my favorite, cheap pizza before dance class, but on my way a) I realized my new 3 inch heels were starting to hurt like crap and I could barely hobble to the metro stop, much less walk the distance to my pizza place and back again to catch another metro to dance class. b) I passed a sushi restaurant. My weakness. I figured, I´d hardly eaten out at all since I got to Spain, and certainly had not had any ethnic food in over a month - so I decided to try it out. Eff it, I thought, I deserve it after a crappy past few days.
The awesome part of the experience was having a female sushi chef for the first time in my life. The awful part was the food and the price. Ugh. Spain has this awful habit of making things sweet when they´re supposed to be savory (soy sauce) and makes things savory when they´re supposed to be sweet (eel sauce, baked goods, etc.). Wtf?? Man how I miss good food cooked by anybody other than myself. Going from a city with more restaurants per capita than almost anywhere else in the USA (and delicious ones, too!!) to a place where macaroni and cheese with tiny shellfish and shrimp staring at you is considered a seriously delicious and special meal, was a culture shock I had not properly prepared myself for. At all. But it has definitely made me lose weight. Even my Spanish mom told me I looked much skinnier from the first day I´d arrived a little over a month ago!
After dinner I decided to take the metro straight to class, even though leaving an hour to get there was certainly way too much and I´d most likely get there way early, but all I wanted to do was sit so I figured it was the best plan. Three seemingly interminable metro rides later and I somehow ended up at class 20 minutes LATE. HOW?? How did that happen!?!? I was so upset I almsot started crying and thought about just going home. I would look like a disrespectful fool. But I had worn those stupid shoes all day just for the class. I had spent good money on trasportation to get there. It had been all I´d been looking forward to for the past week. So I made myself go. I momentarily thought I was totally turned around and had no idea where I was going, but after taking a deep breath, I regained my bearings and walked to class. (I gotta say, I really do love that about myself. I can go somewhere in a foreign country one time and I will forever be able to get back to the same place and figure out where I´m situated in relation to other things. That´s a talent.)
As soon as I walked in the studio the teachers came over to say hi to me. They were very welcoming, despite my tardiness, and remembered my name and everything! They paired me with a new guy and we started dancing the basic. I switched between two guys who were taking the class as their first dance class ever. One guy was just awful and it was a true test of patience to dance with him. I thought it was the universe´s punishment for me arriving so late. But the other guy was funny. He was there with his girlfriend (who was completely and utterly adorable - she looked a lot like my friend Lauren and had the same gorgeous, humble, dirty blonde glow about her!) and looked like a total Portlander himself with his glasses, beard and plaid. I fumbled through my Spanish again, and he tried English for awhile, but eventually I sarcastically told him in Spanish that this was just SO MUCH FUN that I could hardly stand it. We had been doing the same eight steps for a half hour and were both clearly completely proficient in them. He looked at me confused and asked, ¨Seriously?¨I rolled my eyes and laughed and he said,¨Oh. Irony. I get it. I agree.¨So we started trying the next step with the ochito step. We actually did pretty well considering nobody had explicitly taught it to us. He told me how his girlfriend had dragged him there and how he really didn´t want to come back. I laughed.
After class was over, the teachers continued to play music so that people who wanted could stay a little later and practice. I ran to the other side of the room from the awful newbie and hoped somebody - anybody - would volunteer to dance with the new American girl. The teacher saw my enthusiasm and asked one of the intermediate dancers to dance with me. She told him I´d only had two classes and he nodded, ignoring her. It was the first time I´d been lead in Tango by somebody who clearly knew what they were doing and it was beyond delightful. He stuck to the basic for the first thirty seconds, but after he could tell I had that down, he started doing other steps. I followed each one near perfectly and only really messed up when he went to dip me and I put my foot behind instead of in front and almost made us both fall to the floor - oopsies! Haha. When he would lead things he deemed to be difficult and I would correctly follow them (stylistically I´m sure they weren´t correct at all, but the steps certainly were), he would say, ¨Only two classes! Ha!¨ At one point we got the teacher´s attention and when she saw him lead me into forwards and backwards ochitos and a few gauchos, she was impressed. He said again, ¨Only two classes! Incredible!¨and she replied, ¨Chelsea! I had no idea!¨
HELL.
YES.
Only took me two classes and one very good lead to catch the teacher´s eye and make her realize I´m serious about this and I could be really really good at it, too. Serious success. ^_^ Yay!!!
Afterwards I asked what I could practice for the next week. The teacher seemed to think that was cute and had the helper teach me the stylistic elements of the ochito. We went to the barre and he showed me each tiny part of the ochito so that I knew exactly what to do. Then I practiced and he gave me corrections. So. Awesome.
I rode the train home (figured out how to just take the train - and last night for free! - rather than deal with a bunch of metro stops) and was home going over the day with Abby in no time. :) I love being able to end my days talking with her. We can complain about whatever went wrong and cheer each other up and listen. :)
XOXO
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