The only living girl in Madrid
Guess who's back??? 😎
Hi ponies,
First off, sorry for leaving you hanging for over a month. Honestly, I can’t believe it’s been that long. It feels like I’ve been here for maybe two weeks, which makes sense if you think about it like this: week one was a blur because I was jet lagged, doing an insane amount of immigration paperwork, plagued with anxiety, searching for housing, etc. Then, I went to orientation, which consisted of non-stop icebreakers, information sessions, and never enough time to sleep. Then, I arrived at my apartment, met my amazing roommates, and started school… or so I thought. I was mistakenly assigned to a school that did not have the Global Classrooms (Madrid’s version of Model United Nations) program I am required to run. So, week three was spent attempting to convince the government that they needed to assign me to a new school. Week four, I finally arrived at my amazing new school, met my fellow teachers, my wonderful supervisor, and my students. That’s when my life here in Madrid truly began.
On my first day at my new school, I had to wait for bus number 38 to pass before crossing the street. If you know me, you know that 3 and 8 are my lucky numbers, and I know it sounds crazy, but they guide me. Country Highway 308 ran through Kenyon, and now, bus line 38 runs past my school. The other night over a brownie and tea, my roommate, Mahshid, pointed out that 3+8=11 and 3*8=24. 11/24. My birth date. This blew my mind because it had never occurred to me that the numbers my six-year-old self arbitrarily selected were cosmically related to the day I entered this planet. I chose 3 and 8 because I liked how my pencil looped when I wrote them. I had no idea that they were connected to my birthdate. Or that my great great uncle Park wore number 38 on his football uniform…
Everything that has happened to me in Madrid feels cosmically meant to be. From my apartment to my school, I have no complaints. Even the incorrect old school brought me my new friend Hannah, the other teaching assistant at that school. The first time I met her, I told her that it was my dream to go to Bilbao, and yesterday, we booked our flights for November (or rather, she booked them and I paid her back because she’s awesome like that).
Everything is so meant to be, that most of the time it feels like I am the main character of a sitcom about being a young 20-something living in a foreign country. I’m always meeting people who know people I’ve already met (we are all a part of the same ensemble cast) or running into people I know on the street (we are all characters on the same set). For example, this morning, I went to the famous street market–El Rastro–with my roommates and some Fulbright friends. At the market, I got separated from my roommate Danny only to run into him in the same metro car hours later. Every day, I’m like okay, universe very funny. Where are the cameras?
If I were to name my sitcom, I would call it The only living girl in Madrid after my walking around Madrid with headphones on playlist. Last week, I lived the perfect 25 minute episode. It went like this…
On my commute home, I decided to get off at a different metro stop, which meant that I would pass the café below our apartment (our third location similar to the coffee shop in Friends or the bar in How I Met Your Mother) on the way home where I ran into my roommate Max eating lunch. All of a sudden, our crazy landlord shows up on the street ready to install a chandelier in my room (the episode’s comedic plot). He tells me that the chandelier is over 1,000 euros, from his grandparents in New York City, and so beautiful that I will fall in love with it and it will become my new boyfriend. You can’t make this shit up. Pauline and Mylène (my French roomies) joined us at the café to avoid the chaos of the chandelier installation. While we’re at the cafe, our landlord keeps showing up on the street to buy new lightbulbs or to make a call. This makes him our TV show’s running gag.
The thing is everyone I talk to in Madrid seems to be starring in a TV show of their own. Maybe the media was right, and this is just what it’s like to live with roommates in a city in your 20s. Maybe our experiences are pure luck. Maybe we’re all romanticizing the shit out of our crazy landlords and embarrassing moments because we’re all ex-pats living in a foreign country and nothing can really be that bad when you’re a 20-something living in Spain.
But the thing is, it can. Because immigration is scary. Going through the process has taught me immense empathy for those who immigrate because they have to, who don’t have a choice because they are met with impossible bureaucratic systems and endless paperwork. And it’s all in their second language. Everything is scary when you’re communicating in your second language. Even ordering at Starbucks can be scary. And I’m lucky enough to have graduated with a college degree in Spanish!
In the one where I went to my scary immigration appointment, the police officer tried to prank me, and that police station was not the place for pranks. As I stood in line, I watched a screaming man in handcuffs get escorted out of the building. Three officers had to drag him out because he refused to walk. So let’s just say that when it was finally my turn to have my fingerprints scanned and my paperwork processed, I was feeling a little tense. When I sat down, the officer said that he was going to take care of me, and I was like great, he can tell I’m nervous, but he’s a nice guy. He started to go through my paperwork, and suddenly, he looked up and asked me why I entered the country before my visa started. I remained calm and explained that I had tourist days before the start of my visa. He stood up and left, taking my passport with him. Now, I’m nervous. Am I going to have to call the consulate? Am I getting detained? He sat back down and told me that every day I was here illegally, I had to pay a 50 euro fine. I didn’t want to lose that money, but I also did not want to go to jail, so I looked at him and said, “Really?” And if he’d said yes, then I was fully ready to ask him if he had a card reader or knew where I could find the nearest ATM. Instead, he looked at me with a totally straight face and said, “Es una broma.” It was a JOKE! Very funny after the fact. Not funny at the moment. Great fodder for the TV show, though. So thanks I guess to the Spanish police officer/budding comedian practicing his crowd work at the immigration facility. All I could say to him at the moment was, “Soy una chica de la ley. No quiero hacer algo mal,” because I had no idea how to explain to him in Spanish that as a straight-A student, the oldest daughter, and a law-abiding citizen, the idea of doing anything wrong makes me want to throw up.
Here are my top five songs to listen to as I walk around Madrid:
“The Only Living Boy in New York” by Simon and Garfunkel. Obviously. I have robbed this song's title for my TV show. The first time I listened to it in Madrid, I was walking to watch the sunset in a park with my program, and I looked up and saw the moon for the first time since moving here. Now, every time I see the moon, it is very important to me. It was normal to see the moon at Kenyon because I was in the country. Here, you can only catch it at special moments when it is high enough in the sky to poke above the buildings.
“Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want” by the Smiths. I think with a fresh start as fresh as moving halfway across the globe, one may wonder what would happen if this time everything worked out. What if this version of myself, is the lucky one?
“Dark Red” by Steve Lacy. You play this song as you walk around, and you’re immediately the main character. You’re cool as hell with your sunglasses and your new black boots. You’re invincible. When I listen to this song, I understand how Snoopy feels when he’s Cool Joe.
“Old Friends” by Pinegrove. This song also makes me feel like Cool Joe. I am the main character. I am coming of age. I am the only living girl in Madrid.
“Appaloosa Bones” by Gregory Alan Isakov. I’ve finally had a second to listen to my man’s newest album, and this is currently my favorite track. I listen to it on the metro at least once a day and pretend to be emo.
Find the pony,
Maddie
I've given up on trying to embed the Apple Music version
Note: Views are my own and do not reflect those of The Fulbright Program or La Comisión Fulbright de España.