Semana Santa in Murcia

Semana Santa – Holy Week, the week before Easter – is a very important time in Spain. It’s celebrated with ten days of processions, with (as I understand it) various local religious groups (known as Cofradías, or brotherhoods) dressing up as nazarenos (Nazarenes) and carrying pasos – statues mounted on litter-like platforms – through the streets. It’s meant to commemorate the final days of Jesus’s life and to be a form of penitence, the processions often lasting hours and the pasos – carried just meters at a time before being placed down – quite a burden.

I’d originally planned to experience more or less everything the week had to offer, but I quickly realized that not only would that be exhausting even to watch, it was also impossible; sometimes processions overlapped in different parts of the city, and there were often more than one per day.

Instead, I tried to see a sampling each day, consulting online schedules and googling the names of the churches which were the starting points of each procession. I always recognized their pictures but hadn’t had any idea what their names were. It turned out to be a perfect way to experience more of the city; diverted by the parades, I would wander down streets I’d never been on, discovering secluded corners and plazas. Once, expecting to hear a choir that had been listed on the (often inaccurate) schedule, I sat alone in a square in front of a church near the Gran Vía. The singers never arrived, but it was lovely just to be there on a spring afternoon in the shade of a large tree, soaking in a bit of the city I’d often passed on the way to somewhere but had never really appreciated.

I’m the sort of person who as a child celebrated Easter only with bunnies and candy-filled eggs and generally does nothing special as an adult. So all but the most obvious of the religious significance went over my head, but it was interesting as a cultural experience. The processions were fairly similar, generally involving nazarenos, dressed in one or two different colors each time; pasos, some quite ordinary and others lovely; and marching bands, the insistent drumbeats especially standing out. A small daily dose of each procession was quite enough, but I was glad I’d stayed to experience this very Spanish tradition. Here’s a bit of an overview of my experience that week.

Viernes de Dolores: March 27

Not realizing Semana Santa had officially started, I ran across a small procession on a street near mine. Two lines of small children dressed in blue robes wandered down the street, pulling candy from their large pockets and handing it to bystanders; by the end I had a generous handful of colorful hard candies and gummies. A marching band and a paso of Jesus on the cross followed them up.

Sábado de Pasión: March 28

I heard the solemn music before I caught sight of the figures clad in dark robes crossing the normally busy Plaza Circular. It was my first time seeing the nazarenos in person, and though I’d known ahead of time that their pointed cone mask-hats predate the KKK, seeing the undeniably similar figures was very unsettling. The traffic in the big roundabout had been stopped, and the street – normally alive with multiple lanes of cars – was quietly accepting this chilling passage. Some carried candles, some crosses, and some pasos, inching across the roundabout and down the tree-lined median of the Gran Vía Alfonso X. It was still light out, but the leafy trees provided enough shade for the candles to glow, as well as a fitting background for the ancient-looking procession, which seemed much less out-of-place among the trees than it had cutting through the modern roundabout.

The procession on the Gran Vía Alfonso X

Domingo de Ramos: March 29

I left the door to my balcony open as I slept in the hopes of hearing the citywide chorus of bells listed on the schedule for that morning. Half asleep, I may have heard some in the distance, but the only things that were definitely present once I’d finally woken up were the sunlight and heat of a (finally) full-fledged Murcian spring.

Lunes Santo: March 30

A typical procession, burgundy nazarenos paraded pasos through the streets at dusk. Their robes were outfitted with large, ring-like pockets that opened on both sides in the front and went all the way around their middles. These were filled with candy and pastries, making them look as though they were wearing fabric inner tubes. This added quite a bit to the weight they had to carry through the streets but gradually diminished as they bestowed handfuls of sweets upon people in the crowd.

Candy inner tubes

I couldn’t decide whether their handing candy out made them more or less creepy, but nobody else seemed to find them remotely frightening – there were even cutesy nazareno decorations around town.

Paper nazarenos in the window of an optometrist’s office

Martes Santo: March 31

Stationed in front of the cathedral this time, I was alarmed to see that the nazarenos’ robes were white that evening. It was surreal to watch; I imagined how crazy it would be to be an American oblivious to the traditions of Semana Santa and come across hooded and robed white figures parading through the streets. The pasos that night were beautiful, particularly the woman, who I assumed was Mary (assumed being key).

Possible Mary

Each time a paso reached the door in front of the Episcopal Palace, its bearers would turn towards a man standing in the bleachers and stop. The man would face the statue and sing an eerie, beautiful chant that reminded me strongly of a Muslim call to prayer.

Thinking the procession was over after a slight break in the flow, I cut across to the back of the cathedral and realized more was on its way. Stopping at the corner of the street behind the cathedral, I watched the ghostly figures approach in the glow of a stoplight alternately bleeding scarlet and emerald over the scene. It was a warm evening, and the air was thick with incense and hints of cigarette smoke.

Miércoles Santo: April 1

The procession that evening started from Nuestra Señora del Carmen in the barrio just south of the river. The Gran Vía to the north of the river was closed off, and you could walk down the middle of the wide boulevard. In the distance, a wave of bright red nazarenos could be seen carrying pasos past the temple of the Virgen de los Peligros – where a glass-encased statue of Mary is constantly looking out at the river – and over the Puente Viejo (old bridge).

I had quickly learned that the best way to see the processions was not to stand in one place and so made my way along the parade route to see as much as possible before I reached my limit for the day. Not only were the processions themselves long, some had the most ridiculously long names, and I’m calling this one out for having one of the worst: “Procesión de la Real, Muy Ilustre, Venerable y Antiquísima Archicofradía de la Preciosísima Sangre de Nuestro Señor Jesucristo,” or something like Procession of the True, Very Illustrious, Venerable and Ancient Brotherhood of the Very Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Paso on the Puente Viejo with the cathedral in the background

Jueves Santo: April 2

Thursday was the first true holiday of the week, recognized as the day of Jesus’s death. By far my favorite procession, I knew I was getting close when I reached the area of the city – around the university and Plaza Santo Domingo – where the streetlights had been extinguished. The nazarenos that night were dressed entirely in black, which gave them a very KKK-meets-Nazgûl look (i.e., pretty terrifying). A single, illuminated paso of Jesus on the cross was carried through the dark and silent streets as if by shadows.

I followed the procession, crossing Plaza Santo Domingo and rushing along through parallel streets in the heart of the old city to get a glimpse of the paso as it was carried down Calle Trapería towards the cathedral. Glancing up the narrow streets along the way to gauge the statue’s progress, I could tell it was arriving when its shadow – towering and distorted – preceded it, sliding across the buildings in its path. One of the buildings on Trapería was under construction, and its front had been covered with a blown-up picture of the cathedral. As the statue passed in front of this image, the shadow stretched skyward, splaying across the façade. I watched it move on until the last inch of its shadow had been dragged out of sight. Next, I cut around the cathedral square and rushed around to the back of the great church, where I stood in the darkness as candle-bearing nazarenos went by, flames bathing the stone walls in an orange glow. Overhead, Orion hung in the sky.

Candles floating past the cathedral, its tower in darkness

After some time, the statue – once again eclipsed by its shadow – rounded the corner and floated slowly forwards, eventually reaching my corner of the cathedral and moving out of sight.

The shadow of the cross dwarfing the statue

Viernes Santo: April 3

Friday morning’s procession was one of Murcia’s most famous; the statues of Salzillo, a famous Murcian sculptor, were paraded through the streets. Just off of the Gran Vía, I watched many purple-clad nazarenos and bands pass. To the side, a mother stuffed her robed child with handfuls of candy.

Not seeing any pasos, I skipped ahead, cutting through various sections of the procession to get to the end, where the parade wasn’t scheduled to be for another hour or so. I got a good place by the door to the church – Iglesia de Jesús by the bus station – and watched the first three pasos – undoubtedly more elaborate than those that had appeared in past processions – go by.

On the first was a massive Last Supper scene that looked as though it would have caused serious back pain to carry through the streets for five hours. Next came another large paso including an angel directing Jesus’s attention heavenward and two life-sized trees. The third featured a man with a scythe standing over another, preparing to strike. Impressed but not interested in sticking around for the next four hours, I cut back through towards the Gran Vía, occasionally catching sight of the following pasos as they wound their way through the narrow streets.

Salzillo’s Last Supper

On my way back, I stepped into the Iglesia de San Bartolomé, where one of that evening’s processions would be starting. The pasos were tucked into the wings beside the pews, and a couple men were preparing them, one arranging fleshy white flowers around one of the statues and another putting the many candles surrounding a praying Mary out with the bloom of a red carnation.

Preparing a paso

That evening, I saw those same pasos carried out into the streets by black-robed nazarenos with blood-red insignia on their fronts. Then I cut across the Gran Vía to watch a bit of a second, simultaneous procession featuring a paso of Jesus bearing the cross.

One of the pasos from San Bartolomé passing through Plaza Santo Domingo

Friday was my last day in Murcia before heading to Madrid to meet my family, so I didn’t get to see the events of Saturday or Sunday. Though there were a couple things going on in Madrid, Semana Santa didn’t seem to be as important there. We experienced plenty of Spanish culture that weekend, but we celebrated Easter Sunday in typical secular American style – with the Reese’s Pieces carrots the Easter Bunny had imported in my Dad’s suitcase, the incense, pulsing drums, and legions of masked figures already delegated to memory.

Around Murcia: El Carnaval de Águilas

On Saturday February 21, I’d resolved to have a quiet morning, doing as little work and as much hydrating as possible before an all-night trip to Águilas with my friends Meg and Ale to see the most famous Carnival celebration in the region of Murcia.

As I was finishing up some yoga, music started blasting in the street. Assuming it was just some asshole in a car, I continued with my yoga, finally coming to sit with my palms pressed together against my chest. The booming music had transitioned from a Spanish song into “Uptown Funk;” it didn’t seem to be interested in finishing anytime soon, and I was starting to find the contrast between my activity and the musical disruption kind of hilarious. Done with the yoga, I got up and looked out the window, noticing many heads – mostly elderly – poking out windows along the street. At first I assumed that they were fixing their disapproving glares on the blaring offender, but they didn’t seem to be very glary at all, so I opened the door to my balcony to investigate, only to discover a parade coming down my street.

I was delighted, even more so when I recognized some of my colegio students, all dressed up and dancing. Some of them were pirates, some princesses, and a few of them cooks, with big white hats and aprons – one even had a rolling pin. I spent a good twenty minutes watching the small parade inch down my street. On the balcony just a few feet from mine, my neighbor, who I hadn’t seen once in five months of living here, had ventured out in her bathrobe and slippers, and all along the street people continued to watch from their own windows and balconies – it was odd to see the narrow, normally quiet street so alive, and I thought “this is perfect. This is why I’m here.”

As our departure time approached, I threw a costume together, dressing up as a fortune teller – or “adivina” – with a long black skirt, a flowery shirt, a red scarf wrapped around my waist, big gold earrings, and – for good measure at the last minute – a tea bag tied to my watch. Our group – led by Erasmus, the primary (and as far as I know only) study abroad group in Europe – met in Plaza Circular, and we headed out for Águilas by bus. Music blasted and drinking cups and straws were promptly handed out. Meg, who had decided to be Frida Kahlo, sat next to me inserting the plastic purple flowers she’d bought at the Chinese market into the braid arcing over her head, then using make-up to add the shadow of a unibrow. The group leaders, including a guy named Rafa we’d met at the Erasmus office the night before, came around pouring out Moscatel.

We knew we were getting close when we saw the sea, and soon we were pulling up in front of the Estación de Autobuses de Águilas. Rafa explained that we were going to the beach first, and that if we wanted to stick with the group we could follow the schedule on the map they’d given us. Otherwise we were to meet back at the bus station at 4 AM, and if we were late, well then – there would be trains going back to Murcia eventually. The bus would only wait, Rafa quipped, if he himself were late.

We marched to the beach, passing an elderly couple in their front yard. The woman asked a girl in front of us something I couldn’t hear, and the girl’s response told me that the woman had been wondering where we were all from. “De Murcia,” (from Murcia) she answered, “pues, del mundo entero” (well, from the whole world). A girl dressed as Vicks VapoRub ran across the street to pose in front of a pharmacy. On the beach, we admired the sea and took pictures.

La adivina y Frida Kahlo

The group leaders planted a (clean, I think) plastic red garbage can in the sand and started making cuerva, the typical Águilas Carnival drink. We grew increasingly wary as we watched them prepare the concoction, pouring in an impressive variety of ingredients – red wine, sodas, liquor of some sort, a stream of sugar, cinnamon. We dipped our cups in to try some, and it turned out not to be so bad. It was very cinnamony, but of all the things it could have tasted very strongly of, cinnamon wasn’t a bad option.

We took our sticky glasses into town, walking along the path beside the beach. The sun was setting, but the castle on a hill overlooking the sea was still clearly visible, as was the squat white windmill rotating amongst a row of houses on another hillside. We passed some of Meg’s students, who said “hola,” and dearly hoped that that would be the last we saw of any of our pupils.

We’d chosen the second weekend of Carnival because there was a parade, and boy did we ever get to see one. We found a spot along one side of the Plaza de España around 6:30, when it was meant to start, and the floats and dancers finally started coming by around seven. It was an impressive parade – elaborate costumes, floats with paper mache elephants and sparkly palaces and griffins. We watched happily, but after a while I started to wish I knew how long it was supposed to last. At some point that day, we’d looked over the program and noticed that the fireworks – which had been advertised as being after the parade – started at midnight. We’d wondered if that meant that the parade really went that long, but figured nah, no way, they just meant after as in “at some point after” rather than “directly after.”

A particularly lovely one of many

Around 8:15 my feet started to hurt, and I began to hope it would end soon. But the attractions just kept coming, and for some reason they were extremely repetitive, girls dressed in similar but different colored costumes dancing to the same songs over and over (they were cycling through the songs “Bailando” and “Madre Tierra,” wearing them out in a way that would have put the average American radio station to shame). This was punctuated by the occasional float – or the occasional chain of the exact same float, like the towering Aladdin Genies that just kept coming one after the other after the other.

Finally, at 10:50, more than four hours after the parade had been scheduled to start, the last act danced by, a group of guys in drag singing “I Love It” in Spanish (“Me Encanta”). This reminded me of my friend Shane (it’s one of his favorite songs), which in turn made me think of the Carnival parade we saw together in Madrid last year. When my teacher had my class explain Carnival to me a couple weeks ago, I told them that I’d seen the Madrid Carnival parade, and she told me that Madrid’s really wasn’t much to see compared to Spain’s more famous ones and encouraged me to go to Águilas. But I’d been much more captivated by the fantastical menagerie that slid by us last year in Retiro Park – larger-than-life insect robots and dancers wearing luminous fabric horse balloons – than by the repetitive kaleidoscope in Águilas. It would have been great if it had been about three hours shorter. When I took my first steps after the parade, my legs felt as I imagine it would feel for those astronauts-in-training who stay still for weeks to walk again for the first time.

After the parade, we managed to find a section of bench by the fountain in the middle of the square and cracked out our drinks. Meg and I had bought juice boxes of red wine at the supermarket Mercadona the night before, which turned out (unsurprisingly) to be perfect. There were many people carrying bottles in plastic bags and mixing their own drinks whenever they needed a new one, but the convenience of the juice box was unrivaled; I’d thought that we Americans were the masters of the juice box, but Spain definitely knows how to use one to its highest potential.

As we were sitting there, a small girl and a woman came up to us; the woman said something like “that girl looks like she could use one,” and the little girl raised her fist and brought it smashing down, cracking an egg on Ale’s knee. We stared in horror at the mess only to realize the egg had been full of shreds of paper. Without explanation, they continued on, and we laughed, unharmed but bewildered.

Even apart from that, it was an odd scene. The fountain – still happily splashing away – was surrounded by tiled paths, bowing palm trees, and old-fashioned street lamps, and the buildings around the square looked old and beautiful, including a bare-faced stone church and a Moroccan-style edifice with colorful curved windows. But the magical-looking place had been overlain with noise and half-empty bottles and costumed revelers, elements so different from the setting that I felt as though I should have been able to treat them like one of those children’s books, pulling back the plastic page that they’d been painted on to reveal the tranquil background environment.

We stopped for crepes and waffles (if you have spent enough time in northern France/Belgium for a waffle – or ten – to find its way to your stomach, avoid buying Spanish waffles unless you like yours topped with disappointment). Then we set out to find the fireworks.

We knew that they were supposed to be at the port at midnight, but we didn’t know where the port was and it wasn’t labeled on our map, so we started wandering the garbage-strewn streets hoping we were headed in the right direction. Miraculously, a large map painted onto the tiles of a retaining wall materialized on our right and showed us that the port in question was on the other side of the castle, so we set off in what we hoped was the right direction. As we reached the end of a very unpromising-looking residential street, we saw the first fireworks whistling up into the darkness and streaming down over the palm trees.

Fireworks over the port

Closer to the beach, a crowd gathered around a bonfire that we knew from the program was supposed to be “La Quema de Don Carnal,” or the Burning of Don Carnal, but we never really figured out exactly what this was supposed to mean. After the last fireworks had faded, we approached the bonfire. It roared through a wire frame, which presumably had supported one of the paper mache figures that had paraded before us. Off in the darkness, a group of firefighters clustered underneath the palm trees.

La Quema de Don Carnal

We headed back downtown to rejoin the party, meeting up with Marina – Ale’s roommate – and her friends. We hung out in the Plaza de España for a while, admiring the costumes. There were lots of American football players and Rosie the Riveters. A group of guys in light-colored suits, one with a ponytail, had badges with creative variations of the Podemos (we can) political party’s logo pinned to their chests, including “Jodemos” and “Follamos,” both of which essentially mean “we fuck.”

The inspiration

There were quite a few impressive group costumes like this – Marina and her friends had all dressed up as Batman in costumes that they had clearly (and skillfully) constructed on their own, and beside us was a group of about ten twenty-something girls with fairly ridiculous matching hot frog costumes – fuzzy green bodies and extensive face makeup that looked as though it could have come out of a Sephora ad if it weren’t inexplicably attached to a frog.

I was surprised by the range of ages out on the streets. It was after midnight and the streets were definitely dominated by drunk young people, but there were also babies in strollers and people who could have been grandparents. It was a very different Carnival from the first one I’d experienced in Bellinzona, Switzerland, which had essentially been a complex of outdoor tent clubs. The Águilas Carnival certainly had a clubishness about it what with the music and the dancing and the abundance of young people drinking, but it was completely open to the air and was not entirely family un-friendly either (or at least some parents had chosen to believe so).

We left the Plaza to find a good spot in front of a bar blasting music and stuck there for a while – and I don’t mean just figuratively; the sidewalk felt as though someone had painted it with glue. I imagined the scene the next morning once the streets had been abandoned by all but trash and residue and pictured someone trying to walk their poor dog, whose paws would undoubtedly stick to the ground. But Carnival is an annual event in Águilas, so I’m sure they’ve figured out how to deal with the aftermath by now.

Through the stickiness and the people jostling us to reach the bottle-filled plastic bags they’d stored on the sidewalk, we danced the night away – pausing only to hold our breaths as a second group of Meg’s students passed – until it was time to find a port-a-potty.

Walking back along the beachside road, we giggled about an advertisement showing a fox and saying “Me miras a mi? Este es tu espacio.” (Are you looking at me? This is your space.). I’d thought for months that this was asking me to call the fox catchers if I saw one so they could take it away and protect the city, “my space.” It was only when I saw the same ad with a flamingo in place of a fox and asked Meg if there were really flamingos here that Meg burst out laughing and explained that it was a Your Ad Here type thing, not a Death To Cute Animals type thing. Clearly Spanish advertisements and my brain don’t go together so well.

We counted down the minutes until we’d be able to sleep on the bus, briefly wondering if they would play music on the way back too, but dismissing the thought as ludicrous – surely they would honor the sanctity of sleep. Rafa was, in fact, the only person late for the bus, and they did, of course, blast music the whole way back. But really, after the garbage can of alcohol, the parade to end all parades, and the babies whose bedtime is later than mine, we shouldn’t have expected anything less from Spain.

My Work as an Auxiliar

Though I’d had a very similar position the year before (on paper, at least), I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect from my job here in Spain. Even within a single country’s teaching assistant program there can be a great deal of variation in the people one works with and the job – whether contractually permitted or not – that they expect from you. So I was careful not to build my expectations too high before meeting my teachers and starting work.

I met with my contact teachers at both of my schools before starting classes, and we set up my schedule, which – five months later – I’ve determined is quite literally the best schedule possible. I work from 9-2 on Mondays, have a mini-weekend on Tuesdays, work from 12:25-3:20 on Wednesdays and from 9-2 on Thursdays, then have a three-day weekend. On Mondays and Thursdays I work at my colegio (primary school), and on Wednesdays I have classes at my instituto (middle-high school).

My first couple of weeks went very smoothly – and that smoothness, thankfully, continues – but they were almost laughable in the range of work I did. In one of my first classes – primero in my colegio, essentially first grade – the teacher said something that suggested she would ask me to help her with some “problem children” later, then had me sit down in a tiny-person chair next to a small human. It was only as she asked me to help the chair-sized one beside me turn to page such-and-such in his book for the second time that I realized my only task during this class hour was being the page-turner for a couple of five-year-olds. My English skills were really being put to the test.

The next week, I received an email from the science teacher I would be working with at my instituto. She had written about half a page about what she wanted me to do that week in which she essentially asked me to explain the beginning of the universe, the origin of life on Earth, and how the universe might end. I had never met this teacher and had no idea how serious she was being about this, so I buckled down and researched the topics like crazy, thanking the expanding heavens that I’d at least been a science major. She turned out to be very sweet and to not have insanely high expectations as to what her new English language assistant would be doing, but it certainly shocked me out of page-turning mode.

My classes at my instituto are on an A/B week schedule, so I have each one every two weeks. Of those classes I have a few different subjects – three English, one technology, and one science. In the English classes I almost always present a powerpoint, often on holidays for which I already have presentations prepared from last year (although occasionally I prepare new ones, like when they asked me to present something about Guy Fawkes Day – many thanks to V for Vendetta and Google).

Some of my students’ Guy Fawkes creations

In the technology class I usually end up either reading out vocabulary words (software, iron, angle, etc.) so they can hear a native speaker say them or explaining the vocab in my own words and having the students guess what I’m defining. A few times I’ve had to ask the teacher what something is, for example a set square (I did end up defining it, but I’m still not totally sure what one is). In the science class we’ve mostly been working on evolution and diseases. The teacher has been on maternity leave since the fall, so I’ve been working with a long-term substitute, who is also very nice.

I’ve really lucked out on my colleagues; I work with eight different teachers between the two schools and have only had very minor problems with a few of them. One teacher insists on having the students (five to seven year-olds) “colour perfectly!” and apologized to me when they weren’t able to copy my Valentine card example exactly because the glitter-outlined hearts I’d made were too precise for the young students. I find this insistence on perfection at best pointless and at worst harmful to their creativity. Aside from this, the most frustrating thing that’s happened was one of my teachers asking me to prepare a powerpoint on the animals of California and then having me skip over all the interesting ones because she’d never heard of them. But as far as issues go it’s pretty low on the list (at least the list that the chipmunks and sea otters aren’t in charge of), and otherwise my teachers have been extremely supportive and caring. They regularly ask me how I’m doing here in Murcia and are very accommodating whenever I need to take a day off, one teacher even insisting that I take a day to go to the recent carnival in Aguilas if I wasn’t able to do so on a weekend.

My primary school classes usually start with the teacher asking “what’s the date today Pablo?” Pablo responds with “the nine,” and the teacher corrects him to “the ninth.” Then come the songs. There’s the days of the week song:

There are seven days, there are seven days, there are seven days in. a. week. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sun*clap*day.

The weather song:

The weather today, the weather today, what’s the weather like today? Is it windy, windy windy, is it windy? Not today. Is it cloudy, cloudy cloudy, is it cloudy? Not today. Is it rainy, rainy rainy, is it rainy? Not today. Is it sunny, sunny sunny, is it sunny? Yes it’s sunny today.

Murcia is probably one of the only places where this song is accurate almost every day. It’s pretty adorable to watch them sing; there’s even choreography, their hands forming big fluffy clouds and their fingers miming rain.

In my cuarto and sexto level classes (4^th and 6^th grades), I often do speaking activities with the kids in small groups (practicing questions, vocab, etc.), and in the primero, segundo tercero, and quinto levels (1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd and 5^th grades) I usually do one-on-one oral tests. These can be surprisingly exhausting; repeating the instructions over and over saps my energy like crazy, especially when one of the students doesn’t understand and I have to explain in different ways until they (hopefully) get it. Some of that energy, though, goes into not letting my frustration show – it’s not their fault that I’ve had to explain the same thing twelve times already.

And then there’s the problem of not being given an answer key and discovering I don’t actually know the answers to a second grade test; that’s always fun. A possible excerpt from my day:

Me: “Alvaro, is a duck a carnivore, an omnivore, or an herbivore?”
Alvaro: “Omnivore.”
Me: “Mmm…”
Me to Myself: Do ducks eat insects? Or just plants? Do they eat fish?
Me: “Yeah…yeah probably, ok.”

It’s only when you have an expectant seven-year-old in front of you that you realize you’re not actually sure what ducks eat. I ended up giving them points if it sounded plausible and no points if they told me lions were herbivores.

A typical colegio day (except for the clouds – that part’s odd)

Sometimes I do presentations, and it’s fun to share non-stereotypical American culture with them. My favorite presentation was one on food around the U.S., which I divided by region and concluded with a slide of my favorite foods, one of which is burritos. This presentation resulted in one of my most exasperating moments, trying to explain burritos to a classroom of Spanish children. “It’s a tortilla – a Mexican tortilla, not a Spanish tortilla, it’s like a flat bread thing – with stuff like rice and beans and cheese in it.” “Ah,” says Mr. Smart Aleck Child, “una fajita.” “No, no no no, that’s something else. Fajitas and burritos are not the same.” They did not seem convinced. At the time it upset me, but now I can only shrug and pity the large burrito-shaped hole in their lives.

One of my favorite parts of sharing my own culture is getting the Spanish and Murcian cultures explained to me in return. After my food presentation, my teacher asked the students to share typical Murcian dishes with me, and as they shouted out their favorites she pulled up pictures and even youtube videos of various plates – Murcian paella, which is made with rabbit; paparajotes, breaded, sugar-coated, and fried lemon leaves; migas, a crumbly breaded dish that they thought might be similar to stuffing. After my Valentine’s Day presentation, they told me about their own February celebration, Carnival, explaining that the most famous ones were in Tenerife and Cadiz (and in the Murcian region, in Aguilas) and that many of the students dressed up and danced in the parades.

Paparajotes – my mom and I got to try them when we went to dinner with my couchsurfing hosts in October

Being in Europe, my schools teach British English, which is for the most part a non-issue for Harry Potter-obsessed, British-TV-devouring me. But there is a great difference between understanding British English and using it – it grates on my word-soul to say “at the weekend” and “zed,” and let’s not even get into asking a five-year-old “have you got a rubber?”

Just to be clear, I don’t change my natural English except for when practicing specific phrases with them or doing oral tests – Spain hired me as a native speaker, and I’m not a native speaker of British English. While some of the Britishisms felt odd at first, especially “have you got?” instead of “do you have?,” I’ve come to pay greater attention to how I speak because of my exposure to them. While I rarely say “have you got?” – the question form – I have noticed myself saying “I/you/they’ve got” and “he/she/it’s got” pretty often, something I wasn’t aware of before. I find the insistent teaching of “have you got?” kind of strange, as it’s equally important (I think) for them to know – or at least be able to recognize – “do you have?,” but “have” on its own appears very rarely in my classrooms when it’s not coming out of my mouth.

The only real British v. American English problem was when I marked down a significant portion of the class for pronouncing “zebra” as “zehbra” instead of “zeebra” on an oral test. A couple days later in one of my private classes with students from my school, one of them said “zehbra,” and when I corrected him he said “but that’s how [our teacher] says it.” Oops. I went home and looked it up, and “zehbra” is indeed the British pronunciation. The next day in class I explained what I’d done and made sure the students’ grades were adjusted.

Can I borrow your rubber please?

My teachers’ English is not perfect, but I wouldn’t expect it to be, and we understand each other 99% of the time. The funniest mistake one of them made happened just a few weeks ago when I called a student up for an oral test and the teacher said “Ah, she’s not here, she’s got smallpox.” I think my jaw literally dropped. I pushed this a bit further to make sure I wouldn’t have to flee the country and determined that she’d mixed it up with chicken pox. In retrospect, I think the main reason this shocked me so much is that this teacher’s English is normally impeccable, so her claim that the girl had smallpox was a lot more alarming than it probably would have been coming from someone else.

In addition to my knowledge of avian diets, I’ve started questioning my own command of the English language, which up until I started teaching it I felt quite secure in. Recently, María, one of the teachers from my primary school (yeah, and then there’s that, I call it primary school now), asked me to proofread a very simple sheet with some numbers written out. After about five minutes she asked me how it was, and I couldn’t tell her because I was still trying to decide if 1,520 had an “and” in it, and if it did, was it obligatory? I ended up just telling her that I thought it was fine either way; as I said them over and over in my head, both versions – with and without the “and” – started to sound wrong. It can be deeply disturbing to realize that something simple you thought you learned as a child in a subject you both liked and were good at is not actually in your brain.

I’ve gotten the chance to go on a couple of field trips, both with my primary school. One in October to the Museo de la Ciudad (Museum of the City) and one in January to the Museo de la Ciencia y el Agua (Science and Water Museum). The first was a great introduction to the city, as the guide covered things like its Muslim history; Arrixaca and Fuensanta, the saintly protectors of the city; and the history behind various statues and buildings around Murcia. But the second visit was my favorite, as it involved a planetarium. Our class completely filled the tiny domed room, and the guide showed us a view of the Murcian sky as it was that morning (January 28), as it would be that night, and as it will be for a solar eclipse on March 20. It was fun to be there with my students, sharing something both Murcian and universal, wondering at the cosmos over our heads.

Speaking of the enigmas of the universe, sometimes I think I’m something of a mystery to my students. A couple of weeks ago we had a very rainy day, and one of my students announced (clearly to inform me) that it doesn’t usually rain here. I laughed and said “I know, I live here.” I think they think I commute from California twice a week. This probably is related to the phenomenon of kids thinking their teachers live at school (or just cease to exist after every school day), but I think my foreignness heightens it and gives it a confusing twist.

In the end, my job is exceptionally low-stress and often enjoyable, and I’m lucky to have the time and energy to focus on things like learning Spanish. And I’ve become much more comfortable working with children – especially young ones, who for a long time made me uncomfortable; I think they’re kind of like horses in that they can sense when you’re nervous around them. Beyond reacting to them less as if they were hooved creatures, I’ve honestly come to love the kids, particularly in my primary school, where I see them more often and sometimes even work with them in private classes. It’s a very small school – probably about 150 students total – and I work with every single class, so I know all of the students at least by face and often by name. Sometimes they come up to me to hug me or kiss me on the cheeks, and they’re unfailingly happy to see me. While it can certainly be exhausting to spend lots of time around children, I’m lucky to be shielded from much of the storm – I’m not responsible for discipline, and thanks to that and being the interesting foreign teacher, I get the benefits of being around their simple joy and honesty without having to do much charming or any yelling. Being aware of the patchwork of experiences that a teaching assistant program can bring, I was wary of starting as an auxiliar, but now I know that even if I’d built a tower of my expectations, it wouldn’t have toppled.

Around Murcia: Archena, a Spring of Warm Water and Cats

In late October, during a rare business trip to London, my mom came to visit for a weekend in Murcia thanks to the joys of Ryanair. The less joyous bit of Murcian air travel was the actual Murcia Airport (San Javier) having no direct connection with the city of Murcia – in fact, you have to take a taxi to the next town, then catch a very infrequent city bus. (So Alicante is actually the less expensive, more convenient option and is a much more important airport – go there!) Fortunately, I was able to figure out how to not strand my mom at the airport thanks to help from other auxiliares on Facebook (and no thanks to the airport’s website), and my mom arrived safely just as I was getting out of school.

We went to dinner with an auxiliar friend and Isa and Dani, my couchsurfing hosts. When we told them we were planning on going to Alicante the next day, Isa screwed up her face, saying Alicante was ugly and asking why we would want to go there. I frowned, not having heard this before, and asked for other suggestions for what to do. Archena, a nearby pueblo (small town), was the answer – it had a famous natural hot spring. My mom and I love swimming and geology, and my mom had been interested in getting a massage, so we quickly decided to change our travel plans and head to El Balneario de Archena (the spa of Archena) the next day.

At the bus station, we ran into one of my roommates, who also happened to be going to Archena – it’s actually her hometown. She told us a bit about the Balneario, where she often goes for parties, and helped us figure out when to get off the bus. We bid her goodbye and stepped off beside a large gate framing a quaint, solitary street tiled in white and coral stone. We passed through the gate, following a sign that led us down an asphalt path behind some handsome, colorful buildings which we would later discover were hotels. Trees leaned over the path, and we found ourselves in a complex of pretty buildings and gardens.

When I saw the first cat – petite and off-white with orange-tipped ears and icy blue eyes – I knew we’d come to the right place. She wandered out of the plants and let me pet her, and was soon joined by two orange friends.

The first Archena cat

After a few minutes we reluctantly left them, continuing along the path until we spotted a modern building that looked as though it could house a pool. It was on the other side of a rocky pit, so we cut through the garden to bypass it and headed up some stairs to admire the view of the jagged hills behind the baths.

The hills and the baths

On our way back down the stairs, I stopped abruptly and waved for my mom to come see – in a hay-covered trough outside one of the hotel windows, a trio of cats – a mom and two kittens – cuddled together.

Inside the spa, we spent a few minutes deciding which combination of activities to do, as there were many. In the end, we went for access to the main baths and a 25-minute massage each. My mom and I are both very low-maintenance people, but my mom had been set on getting the second massage of her life since the first one – gotten after many days outside doing intensive field work – had been so relaxing. She wanted me to join her, so I decided to get one too.

We had lunch at the Balneario’s restaurant, which was – to our surprise – not horrifically (if at all) overpriced. We sat beside a glass wall separating the restaurant from a covered pool. A couple people floated about as we ate.

After lunch, we got in the main indoor pool, which was very large and outfitted with all manner of spraying pipes and bubble massage beds. I was surprised to discover the water was only a little bit warmer than a normal swimming pool. Having geologist parents, I’ve visited a lot of hot springs – in Idaho, Peru, Iceland, Colorado – and in my experience they’re usually either too hot to be pleasant or slightly cooler than that (i.e., just cool enough to feel as though you’re not being cooked). The pools at the Balneario really weren’t hot at all, not even the hot tubs (which I call hot tubs only because they looked like hot tubs usually look). This was, however, not a problem; though it was late October, it was still around 80 °F every day.

In the middle of the large pool, two small tiled staircases curved up to a raised set of these hot tubs. On the far side of the pool, two square holes in the glass wall led outside, where a section of the pool arced from one door to the other, leading out and back in.

We explored the different stations, trying and failing to figure out how to turn the bubbles on as they had the unfortunate habit of winding down whenever we reached a new area. We floated outside through the gap in the wall, swimming around and back in.  Next, we went outside by foot to investigate the pool we’d seen from the restaurant. People tanned in reclining chairs and children played in the sun. The second pool was more normal and tranquil, with one section outside and another under a transparent canopy.

When it was time for our massage appointment, we went into the back to sign in. The receptionist pointed us down a hallway, which led to a circular, adobe-colored room, the tops of its walls lined in windows to let the natural light filter in. A few doors led to different massage rooms. We waited on a bench for our masseurs to arrive. After a few minutes, a woman and a man in wetsuit-like attire arrived, and the woman called one of us up. To my relief, my mom sent me with her.

The walls in the smaller room were covered in sand-colored tiles. To the left was a massage bed with a contraption of pipes and shower heads hanging above it.

The woman, young and ponytailed, said something about “la parte arriba” (the part on top). I was pretty sure she was asking me to take off the top piece of my bathing suit, but I hesitated just in case I’d misunderstood her (I’d been learning Spanish for a month at that point and didn’t want to whip out my boobs uncalled for). In response to my questioning look, she said “the top,” pointed at my bathing suit, and pointed at a hook on the wall. I took this as confirmation that I’d understood correctly.

The massage was a special “Archena” massage, meaning it involved mud from the springs, hence the shower-like thing hanging above me. She turned the full shower on, then began turning off different sections at a time to muddy up various bits of me, front and back. I’d never had a professional massage before (aside from the free ten-minute arm massage at my high school Grad Night – so like I said, never). It was nice except for the part where the water from the shower pooled in the dip where my face went, meaning I had to take shallow breaths to avoid inhaling a bunch of muddy water.

Afterwards, my mom and I met back in the circular room. On our way back to the main pool, we came upon a dimmer area with a collection of small pools, each with special characteristics. This area wasn’t technically included in the package we’d bought, but we were already on the inside so we decided to check it out. First we got into a bubbling oblong pool. Lemons and oranges covered a good portion of the surface, bobbing around like pool toys. After a few minutes we moved on to the next station, which we immediately decided not to go in when we realized the thing that made it special was its extreme chilliness. Next up was the floating pool – shallow, square, and filled with salty water. The salt made it very easy to float on one’s back, and it was meant to be a place to lie in silent meditation. It was in a dim, beige room with a small window, and as I floated, eyes closed, I felt as though I were drifting about in a secret grotto in the back of some quiet, sacred place, like a monastery.

We spent a little longer in the main pool, trying out the standing pipes along the edge, which pummeled anyone beneath them with water. We swam towards the outside section again; this time there was a swift current charging through it, and we laughed along with some other swimmers as we all got caught up in it and rushed along back inside.

Then we decided to head into the town itself. Dry and dressed, we wandered back through the hotels, this time on the main, tiled street. The most prominent species in this area was the white-bathrobed hotel guest, dozens of them roaming about between the hotels, restaurants, and spa. We still managed to find a fair share of cats though. Beside a fancily gated patio restaurant dotted with shady trees and a giant chessboard, another trio of multicolored cats sat in contentment. On our way out, we admired the hills to the right and even passed a small church.

Back through the entrance gate, we headed towards Archena itself. The Balneario is set apart from the main town, up a hilly road. The road followed an opaque, sea-green river, and the scene across the river – willowy trees, tall grass, the occasional hut-like building, sun painting the distant burnt-orange hills – looked as though Disney had constructed it for The Animal Kingdom. And to be sure, we met many animals along the way, though they were all – aside from a huge, borderline-tarantula spider (dead) – the smaller relatives of lions and tigers.

As we approached the town, we passed a gorgeous park. Our side of it was lined in vine-wrapped trellises, through which we could discern its tiered ground, a tiny man-made stream cutting the length of it. We ascended a steep, curving sidewalk, the top of which afforded a full view of the park; just below us we could see the source of the stream, a huge, dry fountain bed lined with worn but beautiful tiles in jagged shapes of white and bright primary colors. In the distance, the late afternoon sun gave the hills a warm, peaceful look. Unsure of exactly where we were, we wandered the residential streets of the town for a bit; they had an air of languid summer about them, empty of people but not in an unfriendly way. We spotted a few dogs on balconies and in side yards, and on one balcony, no fewer than five cats eyed us lazily, basking in the light.

Eventually finding our way downtown, we planned on going to a restaurant, but as we spotted one of our buses – which we knew came infrequently and whose schedule we weren’t sure about – we dropped that plan and hopped on to head back to Murcia.

On the bus, my damp suit hanging from the hook on the chair in front of me, a Madrid-Barça game blared on the radio, our fellow passengers occasionally adding their enthusiasm and disappointment to the noise. My mom snapped pictures of the landscape outside, the words “Región de Murcia” printed backwards on the window beside her. My personal map of my new home region was gradually expanding, and it had been fun to be able to discover more of it with my mom, who – usually nine hours and thousands of miles away – seemed to be enjoying the adventuring life just as much as I was.

Adventures in La Región de Murcia

Around Spain: Venturing into Winter in Valencia

The first weekend in December was a long one in Spain, so two of my friends and I went to nearby Valencia for a three-day trip in the country’s third-largest city. We spent most of our time in the smallish, historical city center, home to myriad churches and towers, but also wandered afield on the windy currents of the city’s drained river to visit the City of the Arts and Sciences, a combination aquarium, museum, and theater.

We stayed at Quart Youth Hostel on the outskirts of the center and had a cheap private room to ourselves; we were delighted with the heating and the fuzzy blankets and often spent much of the day looking forward to returning to its warmth. But despite the chilly weather, the city was lovely; a seaside metropolis with its own language (Valencian, a variant of Catalan), it reminded me more of Barcelona than Madrid.

The first day we explored the Ciutat Vella (old city), checking out the Mercat Central (central market), which with its bright stone walls, tinted glass panels, intricate colored tiles, and kaleidoscopic dome looked something like a grocery church. Rows upon rows of produce and meat lined the nave, and in the middle a detailed circular nativity scene sat on a plinth. Outside, too, was a market. At one stand they were advertising “aguacates sin huesos” (avocados without pits). I thought I must be misunderstanding, because the fruits looked like mini zucchinis, but there was no doubt about it; normal-looking avocados, marked “aguacates,” sat in a basket just above them.

Next up was the cathedral, whose octagonal, flat-topped towers fitted with pearly white windows were a refreshing change from the norm. A small Christmas market selling pottery, jewelry, and leather goods was set up outside.

The cathedral

Connected to the back of the cathedral via a bridge-of-sighs-like arch was the peachy basilica, which faced a large, busy square featuring a fountain. In the middle of the fountain, there was a statue of a reclining man surrounded by small women with their hair done up in the typical Valencian Princess Leia-esque buns.

After lunch at the chain Panaria (which included a delicious glass of fresh-squeezed Valencian orange juice) we walked down to the ayuntamiento (city hall), in front of which were a towering Christmas tree and an ice skating rink. We decided to come back when it was dark to see the lights.

Down a few blocks was the Nord train station, which turned out to be one of my favorite stops on the trip. The façade was a light butterscotch color and was covered in painted garlands of leaves dotted with oranges. In the dusk, it looked as though it was decorated for Christmas, with bands of leafy green and ornament-like oranges. The lobby was a mosaic of shimmering tiles – cozy greens and yellows – with strips of rich wood interjecting. Every few feet, the message “Pleasant journey” had been placed into the tiles in different languages – Italian, Chinese, Russian. A Christmas tree stood beside each of the two entrances.

In the open atrium with the tracks, trains sat on their haunches waiting to whisk travelers to faraway cities, and wire globes dotted with golden ornaments and small, warm yellow lights hung overhead. I love train stations, (relatively) stress-free hubs of people going places and seeing things, and this one was particularly lovely.

Inside the Estació del Nord

We made our way back to the hostel, going into some stores along the way. The streets had become cold wind tunnels, which made me thankful we hadn’t decided to go to Norway (one of our other destination options) for the long weekend.

We checked in and started scouring the internet for a place to eat. When it was time to head back out, I briefly considered taking my bed’s fuzzy gray blanket with me. We had pizza at Al Pomodoro, a popular Italian restaurant on a street off the cathedral square, then retreated hastily.

After breakfast (the typical European hostel fare of cornflakes, chocolate rice krispies, toast, and packaged muffins), we set out for the Oceanogràfic, Europe’s largest aquarium. We cut across the Ciutat Vella and descended into the Rio Seco, a former-river-turned-park that starts in the west, snakes its way around the north of the city center, and curves down to the Oceanogràfic complex on its way to the sea. It’s a wide, sunken park striped with paths and bike lanes and dotted with joggers and dogs. The occasional bridge spans overhead, and fountains and columns often run down the middle.

La Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencas (City of the Arts and Sciences) is a network of concrete and glass leviathans, each building housing a different component – the aquarium in the Oceanogràfic, the IMAX theater in the Hemisfèric, and the Museo de las Ciencias (Science Museum) in between the two. Shallow pools of light blue water spread out around the buildings, making them look even more like sea creatures, their structures rising up, spines grazing the blue sky.

We started at the aquarium, wandering through glass-walled rooms packed with visitors, marveling at fish large and small, fast and slow, colorful and camouflaged. In one massive tank, a creature the color of the Hulk that looked something like a cross between one of Ursula’s eels and the Mucinex monster spread its great maw from atop a miniature cliff. The descriptive sign below explained that it was a moray; a drawing showed its length – not obvious as it was partially hidden in the rocks – to be greater than that of a person by comparing its huge, snake-like body to the puny-looking one of a scuba diver. I was impressed.

The rooms were often connected by enchanting tunnels of water – in one, schools of silvery fish swept by in a metallic rush; in another, sharks coasted overhead, mouths slightly open, utterly unimpressed by the hoards of land-dwellers ogling them from below.

We passed through a variety of “environments” – tiny jellyfish-like creatures glimmered with a rainbow of colors, their miniscule “combs” scattering light; penguins surged through frigid water like torpedoes; belugas keened so loudly I thought I might lose some of my hearing.

The main attraction was the dolphin show, which took place at an outdoor arena with a stage made up of large pools. It was impressive but also made me unexpectedly sad. I’m not a dolphin expert, and it’s entirely possible that I’m just a crazy animal sympathizer and the dolphins actually do enjoy flinging themselves in the air and being ridden by humans – I honestly have no idea. But something about it felt oddly degrading (if degrading is a word you’re allowed to use with dolphins), and it made me wonder if I should actually enjoy watching them perform, if they were happy.

We had a quick lunch at 100 Montaditos, a chain that sells a hundred different kinds of mini-sandwiches. When I gave my name for the order, I got a bewildered look in response, so I repeated it but pronounced it as if it were in Spanish (“Clyray”). The man responded with “Clara?,” and I decided once and for all to just use the Spanish version of Claire from then on. My name, perfectly understood in my former home country of France, is a mystery to most Spanish people.

We moved on to the Hemisfèric IMAX theater to see El último arrecife (The Last Reef), which as I’m sure you’ve already guessed was pretty depressing. The theater – with its dome-like screen and its reclined seats – was certainly cool, as were the pick-your-own-language headphones, but given the (unsurprising) message that the last reefs are likely to be destroyed by the end of the century, I wished I was watching past IMAX favorites, like The Dark Knight or literally anything about space.

L’Hemisfèric

Finally, we visited the museum, whose seemingly random array of interactive exhibits overrun by children reminded me a lot of the Exploratorium in San Francisco. Some things were interesting, like light-up maps of global migratory patterns and a station where you could communicate with a friend using ship flags. Others were just perplexing, and some even infuriating.

One station explained what a book was (essentially: a thing with two covers and words inside). At another, capped tubes contained scents that you had to identify; a couple of the scents seemed accurate (peat, for example), but two of them supposedly evoked the ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, respectively, and quite literally contained perfume. Perfume. In a science museum. Like the sort of scent that Febreze claims smells like “fresh mountain stream” or “day at the beach” when it’s actually just chemicals that have nothing to do with the thing they allege to represent and don’t smell remotely like it either. I couldn’t believe it.

A few minutes later we came upon sealed glass cases containing hatching eggs, some with the newborn chicks already free and sprawled in the hay. This was very cool at first – I’d never seen a bird hatching. But at least one of them looked quite distressed (to the point where it looked like it might be dying), and there was no one around to ask if this was normal or not. Signs telling people not to tap on the glass abounded, and yet many of the children crowding around the cases were doing so anyway. I wanted to yell at them. I know a lot of children treat animals like toys because they don’t know any better, but their parents weren’t stopping them.

While I was critical of much of what I saw during my day at the science city, overall I enjoyed it, and I was especially impressed by the architecture. From the outside, the buildings resembled sea creatures without being too obvious about it, and the pools of water caught the sun in a really lovely way, mirroring the sky. The museum’s walls were giant windows crossed with ribs of concrete that made it seem as though we were inside the skeleton of a massive creature, and the sunset was beautiful from within.

We wandered back through the sunken river park, now filled to the brim with darkness. Caving to the cold and homesickness (at least for the two Americans), we took refuge in the Starbucks we’d passed that morning.

Starbucks is the only American chain I actually go to every once in a while in Europe (I even did it once or twice while living in Switzerland, and let me tell you, the first time I walked in and saw that I would have to pay $9 for a drink I literally could not believe my eyes). Aside from just plain liking it, I’m a fan of the European differences. Usually when in the US, I get drinks to go. Here, Starbucks is usually set up to be more of a stay-in place. I get a drink in a nice big ceramic mug and sit, often for at least a few hours (and in Switzerland, in order to avoid feeling as though I’d been outright robbed, I would stay all day). Staying is made easier by there often being a comfy chair/couch selection, and by Starbucks often being much larger, sometimes even two story. Finally, they have at least a few drinks that I’ve never seen in the US, including the Toffee Nut Latte, which is delicious. We spent an hour or so at the window table talking and warming our hands on our giant mugs, spooning whipped cream and toffee crystals from inside.

Next, seeing as it was before nine and thus far too early to eat dinner, we decided to try to find the Christmas market. According to our research, Valencia had a few Christmas markets, but one of them was much larger than the others – this was the one we wanted to see. The problem was that the websites we’d found were not able to come to a consensus on where it actually was. Some said on the outskirts of the city, and some said by the Mercat Central. Since the Mercat Central was central, we decided to hope it was in fact there and went hunting for it. Unable to find it on our own, we asked a server in a café if there was a Christmas market nearby. She assured us that there was, that it was just a few blocks down, and so we headed south. And south. And south. Finally, having gone way beyond what could reasonably be considered a few blocks, we gave up and went for dinner in a small, cozy restaurant by the Mercat.

After seating us, the server asked, “English? Italiano? Français?,” and Alexandra cut him off with an insistent “español!” He looked surprised, but complied, and I felt very lucky (for the sake of my Spanish learning, which was progressing nicely) to have found friends among whom English was not a common language.

Determined to have paella, a Valencian specialty, we each ordered a serving, Alexandra and I getting the vegetable one and Meg the paella of the day, which was packed with tiny, curious-looking sea creatures and looked hard to eat. After dinner, we debated between going to a bar where we could get agua de Valencia – a cocktail that Meg had had while studying abroad in Salamanca – and going back to the warm hostel. We’d decided on the latter, but on our way passed a pub-café (“London Café”) and decided to see if they had the local drink.

The server announced that she made the best agua de Valencia around and ushered us into a booth, where we waited for our pitcher. It was indeed delicious, a mix of vodka, gin, cava (Spanish champagne), and fresh-squeezed orange juice. We drank and laughed and ended up very glad we’d stopped in to try it.

The next day was our last, and was pretty relaxed. We went up the towers (Les Torres de Quart) a few blocks away from our hostel, taking in the sunny morning view of the city dotted with church domes and spreading away much farther than we’d managed to travel on foot.

Next up was the Lonja de la Seda (Silk Exchange), across the street from the Mercat Central. Once used in the silk trade, it is now empty, but the building alone was worth the visit. A tree-filled patio led to a few different entrances. Down a set of stairs, there was a dungeon-like – but not unpleasant – basement. Up a set of stairs, a gilded hall with a floor of geometric tiles, a dark, ornate ceiling, and – at the very end of the room – a set of chairs on a small stage that was unexplained yet looked set-up for some sort of stern judgment. Back down the stairs, through the patio, and in through another, ground-level door was a wide set of corridor-like chambers that led to my favorite of the rooms. High-ceilinged and stone-walled, it had swirly columns, a dark tiled floor inset with stars, and frosted windows that gave the world outside a blurry, pearly patina, somehow making the views from each one – though they contained modern realities like cars and people on phones – fit in with the medieval atmosphere.

Back outside, a young woman in traditional Valencian dress was being photographed on the steps. Her hair was twisted into those same side buns we’d seen on the statues in the fountain, and a crest of gold peeked over the back of her head. Her white, flowered dress bloomed out around her in a bustle.

A woman in traditional Valencian dress

Having plenty of free time, we headed north through charming, narrow streets, many decorated in street art, to climb a second tower. This one afforded us a similar look at the city center to the south, and a view along a curve of the Rio Seco park to the north. On our way down through one of the cramped stairwells, we flattened ourselves against the wall to let the traditionally dressed woman and her photographer pass, on their way to a new shooting location.

One of the few things we’d been advised to do in Valencia was to try the traditional drink horchata, so we went to the recommended Horchatería de Santa Catalina for a glass. Horchata, like tortillas, is not at all the same in Spain as it is in Mexico, a sad fact I discovered on one of my first days here. Mexican horchata – a sweet, milk-like, rice-based drink – is one of my favorite drinks, and I was thrilled to find it – or so I thought – at a café in Murcia during my first week here. But the Elmer’s-Glue-white, slightly thick concoction that arrived was not at all what I’d expected. There was something about the taste that was familiar but in a very off-putting way, and I disliked it so much I couldn’t even finish it, a thing that happens almost never with me and food.

After this unpleasant run-in with the drink, I looked it up and discovered that Spanish horchata can be made from one of two things – almonds and, more traditionally, tiger nuts (in Spanish, chufa). This sounded alarming but wasn’t very illuminating, so I looked up tiger nuts. Apparently most countries consider the grass a weed, but in Spain they cultivate the tubers it produces to make horchata. I still wasn’t really clear on what it was, but the words “tiger nuts,” “weeds,” and “tubers” made me unsurprised that I hadn’t liked it.

So in the horchatería, figuring that if I didn’t like it there I wouldn’t like it anywhere, we ordered three glasses and three fartones, doughy pastry sticks topped with powdered sugar and traditionally served with horchata. The horchata that arrived looked quite different from the one I’d had – off-white instead of chalky – and to my surprise I really liked it. It was quite sweet, but there was no unidentifiable, nauseating taste, and I was able to finish it with no problem.

We spent the rest of the day wandering, first back down to the ayuntamiento, then to a calm outdoor lunch, then to El Corte Inglés – the only grocery store open on a holiday – for bus food. Too chilly in the shade, we sat in the sun on a bench in front of the cathedral, then bought some pumpkin buñelos (similar to beignets) to share on the edge of the statue-filled fountain.

Finally, as dusk fell, we dropped back by the hostel to grab our things, then made our way to the bus station, traversing the night-black Rio Seco our way back to our home city, hoping its characteristic Murcian warmth would be waiting for us even as winter rolled over Spain.