Dondeques

The generosity of Galician people

The other day I got out of school early, and on the 50 minute ride down the mountain, I asked the special education teacher what she was going to eat for lunch that day, just to make conversation. (We are close enough for that question not to be totally stupid). Her response was:

“I’m going out for lunch with a friend. Do you want to come?”

I was so flabbergasted that I stammered something (true) about having leftovers from last night for lunch because I didn’t want to be an annoying foreigner on their friend get-together. Because in my world, if I go out to lunch with a friend and she brings some stranger I’m like “uh, what the fuck, I wanted to talk to you, who is this?”

Spanish people are more generous than the people I’m used to/the person I am, although sometimes the generosity comes with weird psychological conditions. For example: one English teacher has invited me over his house for lunch one day, but we haven’t set a date for it, he just told me to let him know at some point when I wanted to come over. I know for a fact that he is totally serious and wants me to come over, but I cannot call someone and invite myself over their house for them to feed me. So I haven’t asked him at all, and he probably thinks it’s because I don’t want to go, but I do! This is an issue that can be pretty easily resolved through communication.

Another English teacher was showing me pictures of her furry-ass Persian cat yesterday and said something like “you have never seen my cat because you have never been to my house”. And I was like what the hell! You have never invited me to your house!But apparently she was nevertheless offended that I had never been there.

And the family that I tutor for has already invited me over to have lunch, after having worked there only a few weeks. They are being much more methodical about setting dates, though, which I appreciate.

I think it might be because Galician people tend to be kind of timid, not wanting to invite you over in case you say no. This is a problem because I am the same way. I don’t want to invite myself somewhere and have someone say no. I’ve been told that Galician people in general have a kind of inferiority complex. Everyone in Spain looks down on them for being hillbillies, and people in South America use the term “Galician person”, or “Gallego” as a slur for anyone from Spain. (I was told that this is because many Galician people immigrated to South America, made a bunch of money, then went back home to Galicia, pissing the South Americans off).

Obviously those statements about Galician people and the way others react to them are generalizations, but I’ve spent a whole lot of time around Galicians lately, and the generalization holds for many of them.

More on my presentation about US high schools

A little bit more about the presentation on U.S. high schools that I did: (it is taking two class periods with the older kids and upwards of three with the babies, so I have more reactions to report)

When talking about the college application process, I tried to explain affirmative action, and why colleges make a concerted effort to accept minorities. This doesn’t really make sense to them, because they have very few minorities here, mostly recent immigrants who are struggling to get by and aren’t applying to college in droves. And the repression that Spain enacted was overseas in the Americas, not right in front of their faces, as it was in the US.

So to explain affirmative action, I had to first explain the oppressive racial segregation that is a part of US history and present. That was a tall order, and I was nowhere near prepared enough with historical facts and pictures to accommodate the amount of explaining I would have to do to convey what happened and still happens in the US.

I think my whole speech about the Jim Crow South was lost on them, because they didn’t believe the things I was telling them (when I said that blacks and whites had separate water fountains, several jaws dropped) and I didn’t connect it well to affirmative action. Maybe I’ll revisit the topic in a history presentation.

Another thing that probably flew over their heads was my mention of Gay/Straight Alliances. I mentioned it as an after-school activity without even thinking how much explaining I would have to do. Some classes thought it was a club for gay people to have sex. Some classes thought it was a club meant to turn gay people straight. Some classes thought it was a club for gay people to have sex with straight people. I hope, hope, hope none of them still think those things, but I doubt any of the classes are clear on the concept in the end.

Basically, many of the things I mentioned are so clear in my mind that I didn’t realize they needed explanation. So when the inevitable “gwhat ees dees” question arose, I had to improvise descriptions of complicated topics in simple English. Which I am not good at doing. And yes, I am allowed to make fun of their accents. You should hear how much they make fun of mine.

They were amazed by the range of elective classes and after-school activities and enjoyed imagining which classes they would take. They liked seeing a sample high school schedule. They liked when I talked about flour babies, thought prom and graduation were awesome ideas, and that superlatives in yearbooks were funny. Maybe I could do superlatives as a sort of end-of-the-year activity.

An over-all assessment of the presentation is that it was a hit. While some things confused the students, nearly every kid was listening for the entirety of every class. They asked questions, had mini-debates about whether the Spanish or US systems were better, and now they know that some of the things they see in the movies are real, and some aren’t.

Tuesday the 13th

Here, in Galicia, at least, Tuesday the 13th is the day of bad luck. When someone told me that yesterday morning, I was like whatever, my day will be fine.

It was fine, but it did start with a stroke of bad luck. As I entered the cafe where the teachers have coffee every morning, I glanced at a group of people in our usual spot, but my eyes didn’t focus on any of them until one separated from the group and came towards me.

It was Javier, the nearly-forty-year-old man with grey hair who I nearly lived with at the beginning of this year, back when I planned to live in Fonsagrada. In fact, I had gone as far as to move in to his apartment, being pretty certain that he was an awkward gay man. The morning I moved in, he told me about an ex-girlfriend of his who he had gone to England with. My blood froze in my bones. And then those bones froze in my skin. And then my skin exploded, making a huge mess.

After that, I moved down the mountain to Lugo. He basically begged me not to go and told me how nice Fonsagrada is and how ugly Lugo is. I assured him that we could get coffee sometime so that he could practice his English. I never called him, so we never did.

So that is who was coming towards me. As he talked to me, asking how I was and how I was doing and how things are going (each of those questions), I was keenly aware of the teachers watching me and wondering what the hell I was doing talking to this older man and how the hell I knew him. I made myself as boring and stupid as I could, so as to finish the conversation quickly and to subtly reassure him that he hadn’t missed anything by not living with me. Then after he returned to his group of people, I awkwardly and purposefully did not look that way again. 

Here’s to me hopefully never seeing him again. Happy Tuesday the 13th!

This is the view I had when I lived briefly in his apartment. Pretty, but not worth it.

I guess I should show you where I am…

Are you ready for beautiful photos? You should be. They were taken by our friend Xose Casas (pronounced like Jose but with an “sh” sound replacing the J). At least I got them from his facebook, maybe he got them from somewhere else. He lives in Sarria, which is nearby Fonsagrada, and the scenery is basically the same.

We’ll start with the plain beautiful photos and move up to the stunning ones.

A cutie-pie little town:

Don’t think this next one is the same town…

This is an horreo, where they store corn and other crops to dry and so that the rats can’t get at them. I think they’re mostly a thing of the past, but some people still use theirs.

These are similar views to those I see on my 50-minute ride to school everyday. I try to always remember what a lucky duck I am for it, but sometimes I forget.

I’m convinced that Galicia is a fairytale place.

Entroido/Carnaval

I’m way behind on events, here. About two weeks ago (at the same time as Mardi Gras) we had Carnaval (Entroido in Gallego) here in Lugo and Fonsagrada. It was a big freaking deal at school.

I was told it was absolutely mandatory to wear a costume to school, so I scrounged around the clothes I have here and found enough for this costume:

The rest of the teachers were pirates. Classes ended at noon, and everyone went off to prepare their costumes. All the teachers were in the staff room getting dressed and goofing off, and all of a sudden the vice-principal said “wait, who is out in the hall with the kids?” About four teachers ran out. Spain.

They love me.

This is one of the history teachers, by far the best pirate:

And I’m not allowed at all to post pictures of students, but I don’t think this nightmarish image counts as a photo of students:

They made those Simpson heads in art class. The Simpsons is very popular show here, and I just recently found out that America’s Funniest Home Videos is on tv here too. They dub the voices. I need to find it and watch it.

At school, the kids had a costume contest where they each did little skits or dances in their costumes and were judged. The 12-year-olds dressed up as a “really badly behaved class” and did a skit as such. They had to dig really deeply into their wells of creativity to summon the ability to act like a class that threw stuff, screamed all the time, and jumped out of their seats to hit each other. (Did you not the dripping sarcasm? Ok, good.)

The winners were the oldest kids who dressed up as cookies. The Simpsons masks were really well-done, but totally uncharismatic and I think everyone was mildly horrified by them, so they didn´t win.

It was all cute fun at school, but then when we went out dancing that night, there were some extremely horrible and stupid costumes. I would say one of the most popular costumes was a Native American (braids, leather-looking little dress) and one that followed close behind was ¨Black Person¨. I didn’t get any pictures of the Black People out dancing, but here is a picture from the parade of an example of someone in their Black Person costume:

There you go. The worst Black Person costumes I saw were a bunch of girls with that Afro wig, blackface, black long sleeve shirts, and long colorful sleeve-less dresses. I’m pretty sure they had something under their dresses to make their butts look big too. So that was a downside of Carnaval, completely politically-incorrect Spanish people.

But there were some super-great costumes, too! These are from the newspaper article about the parade:

Yay!

And there was some sort of evil carnaval bear or something in one of the nearby villages:

I don’t get it, but there he is. Killing…people…

Also, side note, carnaval is even more popular in the villages of Ourense, which is south of Lugo, and at some celebrations, people take burlap sacks, fill them with ants, sprinkle vinegar on them to get them enraged, and then hit people with the bags. Ants fall out the holes and into people’s clothes and bite them.

I am not making this up. I had people repeat this fact to me about five times because I didn’t believe it. I can’t even be upset about the animal cruelty there, I’m just so flabbergasted as to why anyone would even think to do this as a celebration activity.

Presentation on United States High Schools

I did a powerpoint presentation about high schools in the United States for my six classes this week. Everyone loved it. I had every single student paying attention, and the majority of the classes were full of questions. Most of them in Gallego. Luckily I’m starting to understand Gallego well enough to give the correct answer to the question in English.

Some of the things that blew their minds were how early high school starts and how early it ends. They were amazed by the examples of elective classes from my (suburban, wealthy) high school.

When I showed them the slide that talked about gay/straight alliances in high schools, many students laughed just to see the word gay. They sobered up when I explained that the club was designed to raise tolerance for homosexuality though. Maybe they thought it was a good idea. Maybe they didn’t understand me. I think they did.

I couldn’t bring myself to explicitly explain what we talk about in health classes, because I can’t make myself say the word “sex” in front of a bunch of kids who might not be understanding the bulk of what I’m saying, but would definitely understand that one word. Today the twelve-year-olds laughed at me because the word “tongue” sounds like “tanga” which means “thong” in Spanish. But they are twelve and I’m an adult, so who wins that battle, eh?

(They do no have health classes in Fontem Albei, my school. I don’t know how these children learn about sex. One of the first things I thought on my first day in this town was “oh my God, I hope they have good sex education here, this town is so boring.” Although I think the town in general is their chaperone—you can’t really do anything here without everyone knowing about it.)

One of the things that interested them the most was this picture I included of a typical school lunch:

Almost every class clamored to know what fruit that was. They were convinced it was a lemon. I thought it was really weird that that’s one of the things they latched onto out of the whole presentation, but two days later I realize that they were disturbed because they thought children in the United States were being served plain lemons for lunch. I now totally understand their frantic concern over this picture.

I’m wondering if I should organize debates over which school system is better/which they would prefer to attend. My instinct is to coast on successful lesson plans, but in the past I’ve found that students get sort of bored with topics when we do them for more than one class in a row. We’ll see.