On Memory

Memory is a funny thing.

 It shifts and changes with time, altering to fit mood and desire.  A person can absolutely hate an experience, but time and good cheer can work together to color the memory and make it happy and loved.  In my travels I have seen this happen more than once to an unhappy traveler—a city despised and disliked transforms with time into a much-loved haven of happiness.  Fickle memory, as inconstant as the moon.

But memory can be honest as well, and surprising.  A small occurrence or chance happening can trigger a memory so clear, so vivid that it be said to be truly relived.  Here the senses are our greatest ally.  Smell can activate a memory; the smell of leather and horses always takes me back to the summer I spent learning to ride in the foothills of Pocatello, while the smell of a certain cologne always reminds me of a long-ago love.  Sound, too, plays on the memory.  Van Morrison’s greatest hits will forever bring to mind my parents dancing in the living room of my childhood home, a happy feeling I turn to when I feel particularly homesick.  In my recent travels, songs have taken a place of importance in memory—Michel Teló’s “Ai Se Eu Te Pego” takes me immediately to Mexico and the fun and friends I found there, while the Dirty Dancing classic “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” brings to mind (and a smile to my lips) a night of dancing in Prague.  These memories brought forward by music are as precious as the souvenirs I have collected.

One of my many literary travel companions

Books, too, recall various memories.  Books read in my childhood bring back feelings of happiness and fond remembrance (except for Where the Red Fern Grows, which I read in a middle school class and remember vividly trying pathetically to hide my profuse tears and running nose from the kids around me.  I failed.)  Books read for school evoke a spectrum of feelings—Eureka Street always brings me the thrill of discovering a new favorite, while the mere mention of Foucault makes my brain groan involuntarily.  Here, too, travel has had an influence.  I have lived two years in a foreign country, so each book read has been in a foreign (if not eventually familiar) environment.  I read passages of Nostromo on a beach in Mexico and the two complemented each other beautifully, while I read Persuasion in a German airport on an eight-hour layover.  The drama of the love story and the anticipation of a happy ending saved me from absolute boredom that day. The Lord of the Rings brings back my spring of European travels while The Great Gatsby takes me to the 141 in Warsaw, and desperately trying to finish my chapter as I walked from bus stop to preschool.  The memory of each story—its characters and plot—is thus tied entirely to my own memories of travel and experience. 

After almost two years I finally left Europe.  I am spending a brief visit at home and then I will go to China, where I will encounter new smells, sounds, and memories.  Since becoming sort of an ex-pat, this blog has been less about the books I have read and more about the places I’ve seen and the experiences I’ve had.  So while I do not intend to entirely abandon my goal of reading my list of greatest novels, this will no longer be the focus of my blog.  Instead, as I continue to read and travel, the two will continue to intertwine in experience and memory and I will do my best to record both here. 

"A Postcard From...Mallorca"

My adorable imp writing a
postcard to mom
and dad

Over the last year the English teachers of my preschool were involved in a project we called the “Postcard Project.”  Essentially, it was a seven week course of lessons devoted to the study of seven countries, one week for each country.  Spread out throughout the school year, these Postcard weeks were a break from our standard lessons—a holiday of sorts, in which we “traveled” to a foreign country to learn about its language, culture, and peoples.  Each day of the week was dedicated to a particular element unique to the country, like art, history, music, etc.  At the end of each set of lessons, the children would create their own postcard to sum up their experience of the latest country.  The idea was a friend’s, and after she retired from the project, I took the reins.  To switch metaphors for one more accurate,

 I adopted the project and made it my own baby, choosing countries to study and searching for fun and innovative ways to learn about a foreign culture.  The project was overall a success.  My children loved the opportunity to learn about a new country, even requesting to return to popular subjects (like language and food) and eagerly anticipating the next installation of the project.  After a year of thinking in terms of preschool planning and “A Postcard From…” lessons, my brain can’t help but revert when thinking of how to describe my time in Mallorca.  So why fight it? 

Learning about Indonesian spices
by engaging their senses

Trying to pick up felt food using
chopsticks as we study about China

Day One: “An Introduction”

One of the great tourist draws in Palma, the
Gothic Cathedral of Santa Maria of Palma is
a vast and dramatic cathedral that sits on a
hilltop in Palma, overlooking the city and
adding majesty to its skyline

Mallorca is an island set in the Mediterranean and Balearic seas.  Although it is a part of Spain, the common language is not Spanish but Catalan.  The residents can speak Spanish (or Castellano) but largely prefer Catalan, which, to my ears, is a blend of Spanish, French, and Italian.  The island itself is charming, dotted with hills and valleys, flat fields and hearty trees and an abundance of sheep.  The island is comprised primarily of villages and towns, with only one real city, the major city of Palma.  Although it is a small island (only --- square miles) and most of the villages are only a 10-15 minute drive from one another, each village exists as its own entity, even developing their own accents and manners of speaking.  A true Mallorcan local can  distinguish a speaker from Son Serverá or from Manacor based on accent in the way that an American can spot a New York or Boston accent.

I live in the Mallorcan countryside, surrounded by wooded hills and fields of sparse grass and many sheep.  Each sheep on the island has a collar with a bell, so that when it moves, the bell rings and tinkles.  During the daytime the sheep sleep under trees and are docile in the heat, but at night the air is full of the sound of bells and a chorus of bleating and bahhhhing.  The days are hot, but breezes move through the trees to cool the midday heat, and from our position on a hill, we can see the sea sparkling in the distance.  It's perfection.

The Cuevas del Drach, or the Dragon Caves, in Porto Cristo
are stunning and vast caves with stalactites, stalagmites,
and underground lakes galore.  The tour includes a classical
concert on this lake.  It is magical.

Coming in from the countryside, Mallorca hosts a multitude of summertime festivities to celebrate its many saints and patrons.  Each village has its own saint to celebrate, and the festivities include all-night parties and music and, in some cases, fire-wielding demons who dance to drums and scale lampposts to set off sparklers and small fireworks.   Many of the villages also host a weekly market where vendors come to sell their wares.  The market of Artá is quite vast and very popular with tourists.  By 11 a.m. one can hardly walk the streets, they are so packed with shoppers browsing the selections of jewelry, leather purses and wallets, and homemade Mallorcan soaps.  Even better are the smells from the freshly baked Mallorcan pizzas and pastries as they tempt shoppers and locals alike.

A glimpse of the sea from a countryside hilltop

The real draw for tourists, though, is the plethora of beaches Mallorca offers.  In the three weeks I have been here, I have been to more than ten beaches, and only returned to one more than once.  Some of the beaches are small, an inlet between two outcroppings of rock and land, while other beaches span large distances and offer spectacular views.  On all beaches, though, the water is warm and gentle and that impossibly clear blue-green color the Mediterranean is famous for.  There aren’t words for how beautiful and picturesque the beaches are, how majestic the sea, and how enchanting the views.  The muted tones of the houses—white, cream, and soft hues of pink and yellow—contrast beautifully with the blues and greens of the sea, enhancing and complementing both perfectly.  Every time we approach a new beach, my breath catches and I resolve anew to always live near the sea.  And I am not the only one with this thought; the island is teeming with tourists, primarily from Germany and from England, though my ear has caught snippets of French and Italian and once (I think) Russian.  Many of the restaurant signs I see in villages are trilingual—Spanish, German, and English.  A tour I took of the Cuevas del Drach (the Dragon Caves) included information in Spanish, German, English, French, and Italian.  And, to my absolute delight, I have even encountered some Polish—a farm building between the villages of Artá and Son Serverá has been tagged with “Dzisiaj też cię kocham” (Today I love you too). 

Well, random graffiti artist, you nailed it.  Dla ciebie też. 

Mallorca, ja bardzo bardzo BARDZO lubię cię!

...

In my role as "Ciocia," or "Auntie"

For the past two years my job has been to talk.  During my formal lessons I had to teach my children the day’s vocabulary and phrase structures, to give them instructions, guidance, and (often) reprimand.  After my lessons finished, though, the talking did not cease.  I maintained a constant flow of words around my children: narrating my activities, asking them questions about their day, talking to them about their work, their toys, etc., and answering their constant little questions of, “Ciocia, what you are doing?” and “Ciocia, what this is? What this is for?” Formally I was an English teacher, but my English lessons lasted for only 45 minutes; the rest of the time I was a preschool teacher, teaching the children how to eat properly, how to play nicely, and how to go about their daily activities.  In essence, my job was to teach my children how to be functioning human beings, all the while speaking to them/with them/at them in English.  And every day was filled with, “Don’t touch that!” “Chairs stay on the floor.” “Who hit you?” “We don’t say that word!” and “It’s okay, mama will be here later.”

It’s not surprising, really, that after eight hours of words each day with my children, I lost my voice.  Not literally, of course, my actual voice remained somewhat intact (if not a bit hoarse after a particularly grueling day), but my writer’s voice.  I spent all my words in forming and shaping my children, and at the end of the day, I would sit down to write, to update my adventures, but the words would not come. 

I tried more than once to remedy this situation.  I read travel writing blogs for inspiration and came away impressed and with a renewed sense of purpose.  I would write, I would become a writer…tomorrow.  Most days found me too tired to try to write, and on the days where I had the energy, I still couldn’t find the words.  I couldn’t find the right start.  So I read tips for “Finding Your Voice,” and experimented with the various suggestions—write in a crowded café, free write, write it in a letter to a friend, etc.  But I just couldn’t start.  Or I would start, write a few paragraphs, and hate everything I came up with.  The words just weren’t right.

So I gave up.  I stopped trying to be a writer to focus on the present.  I refocused my energy on my children, my work, and my friends.  The result is that, while this blog suffered from neglect, my life did not.  I left Warsaw a very different person than the one who arrived; indeed, I am much different from the girl who wrote this last post almost a year ago.  My Polish is better (I can order food without the server making the “pity switch” to English and I can almost carry on a conversation about certain topics), my photo album is fuller, and my heart is full to bursting with love for the city and the people I found in Warsaw.  And my children, oh my children!  They now say “yes, please” and “no thank you” and most of them speak English with much more confidence and ease than when I began.  And (best of all) they stopped viewing me as the English teacher and (I think) came to regard me with real affection and warmth.  And for my part, I showered them with attention, love, and far too many hugs.

When I wasn't "Ciocia" or "Miss Jerica," I was just Jerica, relaxing
in the park with my friends, or drinking too much piwo, and
probably laughing way too hard

I regret that I wasn’t able to update this blog with stories of my adventures—my parents’ visit this autumn, my second Christmas in Worcester, Easter in Prague, spring in the park with new and old friends—but in retrospect, I would not have sacrificed a moment of it to struggle over the right words.  I am on holiday now, where much of my day is spent in quiet thought and memory; I have my voice again, and I will try to recount some of what has passed.

Europe Year

When I was 18 I spent ten days traveling around Italy with my mother.  I saw famous works of art, spoke in snippets of Italian, and ate a lot of gelato.  I chased chickens in a tiny village outside of Rome and got a fashionable haircut at a salon in Florence.  I loved every minute of my trip.  From that time I have had the urge to travel again--to see, to do, to taste.  In college I would scour the Internet for affordable flights to someplace new.  Sometimes I found amazing deals and would spend hours daydreaming of an Irish holiday or a beach-bound getaway until I remembered reality.  I had school or work or a dwindling bank account.  This was not the right time for travel, but someday.... 

My last night in Mexico I promised these two we'd
see each other again in Europe.
We reunited for Christmas in Worcestershire.

Two years ago, bored with my dead-end job and the dull routine of commute/work/commute/Netflix, I decided it was finally time to make "someday" happen.  

Outside the Blue Church in Bratislava

I can say with absolute sincerity that in all my daydreams of travel, I never dreamed of Mexico or of Poland.  When I imagined myself living and teaching abroad, I pictured Italy or Costa Rica--somewhere glamorous, sexy, desirable.  I dreamed of a destination that others would secretly envy, and rural Mexico and Poland just didn't seem to fit that bill.  The name Poland always seemed to conjure up images of a grim, formerly Soviet state with harsh lines in its environment and its people.  This is the bias of those who have only traveled in Western Europe.  When people asked me if I would consider staying in Warsaw longer than my one-year contract, I didn't say no, but I secretly doubted that I would.  Now my year here has expired and as I prepare for the next year here, I cannot even think about leaving.  Not yet.

And now that I've officially reached August 10, the day a year ago I landed in Warsaw, I feel bound by sentimentality to make some sort of post.  I have survived a year of Polish weather and its vindictive volatility  (seriously, it was boiling hot yesterday afternoon and pouring torrential rain last night) and I have survived the equally vindictive Polish wódka.  I've survived Polish travel and Polish grocery stores.  Most importantly, I have survived interactions in Polish.  It has been trying, frustrating, humiliating, and humbling, and I've loved it all.  

Looking down from Buda Hill in Budapest, Easter 2013

My last night in Tehuacan, between shots of tequila and goodbye hugs, I promised my friends that we would meet again within a year.  Next year, I swore, next year would be Europe Year, the year I went to Europe to travel, teach, and live a glamorous ex-pat life.  I like to think that since coming to Warsaw, I've done well living up to that goal.

Midnight in Logrono: giggling with my best friend as we
discovered this musical park outside the town's science museum

Sunset on the beach in Sopot, just after I dipped my toes in the Baltic Sea

Riding the Flåmsbana from Myrdal to Flåm in Norway.  Not 

a bad view, eh?

Reverting to my natural state of "little kid excitement" as
we approach the carriage house and see the carriage and
horses at Łańcut Castle outside of Rzeszow

Overlooking Lake Hancza in the Suwalszczyzna, or the
Suwalki region in Northeastern Poland

Happy Toes!  Sunbathing on the Black Sea in Burgas, Bulgaria

...On Reading

I haven’t written much about my reading list since coming to Warsaw.  I’ve been so preoccupied with life in this foreign city that my project has become rather secondary to the business of life and survival.  But I have been reading—

My first book was Roald Dahl’s Going Solo.  I read Dahl’s first memoir, Boy, when I was nine (also, interestingly, while living abroad) and I was eager to reacquaint myself with Dahl’s adventures.  Going Solo details Dahl’s life after school, his early adventures in Africa, and his experiences flying with the RAF.  It is a wonderful, exciting and surprisingly touching account, full of the English schoolboy spirit that I have heretofore expressed a love for (perhaps I got some of that from Boy?).

I actually read King Solomon's Mines as an ebook off of
my smartphone, which made it both convenient (for bus
travel) and inconvenient (for obvious reasons).

After finishing Going Solo, I turned to King Solomon’s Mines by Henry Rider Haggard.  Like Going Solo, King Solomon’s Mines is an entertaining adventure of British spirit and derring-do.  Having previously encountered Allan Quartermain, the novel’s narrator, I was curious to read his tales of Africa, and few things appeal to me like a hunt for buried treasure (thank you Indiana Jones).  Set in Africa and peppered with all sorts of characters ranging from British aristocracy and military to African tribal nobility, I’m sure that it would make a fascinating study of British colonialist attitude and racism (though, as I write this, it occurs to me that as there are studies abound of gender, race, sociology, etc. on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Star Wars, someone or many someones have made their extensive studies of King Solomon’s Mines, so I’ll move on).

After my flirtation with the British schoolboy mentality, I moved into a haze of novels by Michael Crichton and John Grisham—a two to three month indulgence in paperback fiction that was thrilling and entertaining, but not necessarily enriching of mind or soul. 

• Rising Sun, Michael Crichton: A sort of business corporate thriller involving Japanese businesses in California and a couple of disillusioned detectives.  Brief, but decent.
• Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton.  JP, dude, JP.  ‘Nuff said.
• The Andromeda Strain, Michael Crichton: Gripping and fascinating.  It’s a short novel that almost made me miss my bus stop more than once.
• The Broker, John Grisham: I’ve actually read this several times, but when I saw it on sale at my favorite bookstore, I had to buy it.  The main character, a former broker in the Washington, D.C. political game, is secretly relocated to Bologna, Italy, where he indulges in amazing Italian food and forces his brain to adopt a new language.  While my own situation is far, far from similar to the Broker’s, it was fun to read about an adventure in a foreign land and someone’s struggles with a foreign tongue.  Although, I must say, I’d take learning Italian over learning Polish any day.  As I’ve said so so so many times before, Polish is effing hard!

In January, motivated primarily by the delightful experience of watching The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, I bought myself a copy of The Hobbit and set about devouring it.  Although I’d listened to it years ago as a book-on-tape, I remembered very little, so it was like experiencing the story for the first time and I loved every minute of it.

My beautiful and much traveled books--The Fellowship was
purchased in England, The Two Towers came with me to
Slovakia and Hungary, while The Return of the King
accompanied me to Spain.  

After finishing The Hobbit I finally made my return to my reading project, turning (appropriately enough) to The Lord of the Rings.  While Warsaw does not have every book I’ve wanted (and my local Empik seems to have more soft-core vampire porn lit than anything else) I was able to find copies of The Two Towers and The Return of the King.  I wasn’t, however, able to locate a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring until I went to Worcestershire for Christmas (Worcestershire, incidentally, was Tolkein's own Shire, and I kept my eyes peeled constantly, hoping for a glimpse of a hobbit!) .  Fortunately for my own pretty-book loving self, all three books are from the same publisher, so their jacket covers are all similar in style and design—elvish runes set upon a stark, black background.  I think Tolkein would approve.  While I do want to write more about LOTR, this is not the post for that, so I will save that for another day.  I do, however, want to finish with this one last note.

I love my copies of The Lord of the Rings and it delights me that I was able to find editions from the same publisher.  They have one small quirk, though.  In keeping with the fact that the Lord of the Rings is not a trilogy, but one continuous story broken into six books and three volumes, The Two Towers and The Return of the King do not start at page 1, but (I think) both pick up where the last book ended.  I have to qualify this statement with “I think” because the page numbers in each of my books do not match up.  My copy of The Fellowship of the Ring ends on page 407 while my copy of The Two Towers starts on page 537 and ends on 971, and my copy of The Return of the King starts on 977.

My copy of The Fellowship of the Ring, published in 2011, is the newest of the trio, and is the biggest in page size, which I think accounts for the discrepancy in page numbers between it and The Two Towers.  Since it has absolutely zero effect on the story, I find this little quirk charming and I like to pretend that these missing pages exist somewhere, containing lost text—some heretofore unknown story in the epic quest of hobbits, elves, and men.  It makes me happy.

Snippets

Elevated Lit on My Lunch Break

I've taken to reading clippings from the New York Review of Books during my lunch break and during my daily bus commute. The former scholar in me stirs to life as I read reviews and responses to new books, films, and the occasional TV show. My heart positively swells whenever I read a review of a familiar history and I find passages or statements upon which I, too, can comment with confidence.

There are many, many ways to my heart, and one of those ways is through my undiminished love for my country and its forefathers.  True story: in grad school a friend kept a board of quotes made by fellow students. My favorite quote, besides the classic “You can read Foucault in hell,” which perfectly sums up my thoughts on that subject, was from a fellow student of American history. I forget the context, but the quote read something like, “(My) greatest obstacle: I just can't stop loving America.” So true. Despite her failings, shortcomings, and disappointments, I just can't stop loving her too.

Another way is to present a sentence that rings with clarity, passion, truth, or beauty. Today's clipping, a review of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln from January, managed to weave together both. After praising playwright Tony Kushner's script, Daniel Day-Lewis' delivery, and (most of) Spielberg’s decisions, the review considered the film’s anachronisms and all-out departures from historical accuracy. In the end, the reviewer seemed to decide that while peppered with inaccuracies, the film and its message are “honorable” (a beautiful verdict if I ever read one). The reviewer then closes with this perfect observation of both film and history:

“Democracy, as Lincoln points out with sufficient plainness, discovers its justification not in emergency actions but in the ordinary and difficult work of passing laws, and the daily dedication of people who agree to live by laws.”*

This, paired with the fact that my children ate their lunch with relative speed and silence and minimal complaints, made for an almost perfect lunch break.

*David Bromwich, "How Close to Lincoln? Lincoln a film directed by Steven Spielberg," New York Review of Books, January 10, 2013, 10.

The True Confessions of a Bad Teacher

I should preface this with the fact that I love my children. After nine months with them, I love them as if they were my own. They comprise as much of my world here as my friends do, and they are one of the major reasons for my decision to remain in Warsaw a second year.

That being said, sometimes they push me to my very limits.

My youngest child turned four in December; my oldest child will turn seven sometime this spring. At this age they each have distinct personalities with strong attitudes and opinions. They are as volatile as I am--one minute they love me, they listen with rapt attention, and they are excited for English, and the next they hate English and everything to do with it (including me).

To deal with this, I have learned that one must laugh whenever possible. It's not the greatest strategy--sometimes it encourages bad behavior--but for the most part it works to get me through the day.

Here are some of the things I've found humor in:

When I asked why the dollies were
hanging out naked, I was
informed that they (the dolls) wished it,
and that settled that.

1. My kids like to contort their Barbies into inappropriate or physically impossible positions. I am compiling an album of these for family and friends to laugh at. I am aware of the wrongness of it all.

2. In the same vein, my kids tend to leave their Tinkerbell and Friends dolls laying around naked and in...er...compromising positions. I also document these incidents for future laughs. This is not limited to just fairy dolls, however. For example, at the moment our classroom teddy bear is engaged in a rather aerobic three way with Mickey Mouse and a one-armed baby doll. I can't even make this shit up.

My children have excellent
table manners...

3. I catch myself uttering inane or absurd or just plain insane sentences like:

• “Honey, don't smell your shoes, that's icky.”
• “Honey, don't lick your socks.”
• "Oh my God, did you just lick your shoe?"
• “Honey, you have ham in your hair! How did you get ham in your hair?!”
• "Honey, we don't use our toothbrush to clean the bathroom."

4. I have had equally ridiculous conversations, like:

Me: “What are you doing, kiddo?”

Child: “Me? I am doing what you see me doing.”

Me: “How did this tea get all over the table? Were we playing with the cup?”

Child: “No!”

Me: “So it jumped out of the cup and onto the table?”

Child: “YES!”

5. My children are obsessed with Star Wars and love to hum the main Star Wars theme and the Imperial March. Sometimes I like to play the Indiana Jones theme just to fuck with them.  It amuses me every time.
6. Sometimes the more annoying toys that my children love manage to...disappear conveniently on days when my nerves are wearing thin.

7. I am aware that this makes me a bad teacher and something of a terrible human being. I am okay of this knowledge.

It would seem that I am not alone in all of this. I have a friend who works as an au pair for two children in Germany. As I was writing my “Confessions,” I saw her Facebook status: "When the comeback I've concocted in my head lacks sufficient zing to suck the wind out of my 11 year old's sails, i resort to correcting his grammar. He in turn gets more pissed while i in turn find some sort of warped joy. It's a vicious but enjoyable circle. Try it."

As I told her, it's good to know I'm not alone.

Viva la Vida

A glass of Rioja red, my Ex-Pat Diaries, and
Jerica Mercado, sitting in El Plaza del Mercado.
This is as close to awesome as it gets.

Sitting in a café/bar called Café del Mercado sipping my (second) Rioja wine, writing and letting the sounds of conversations in English and Spanish flow over me. The day has been relaxed and casual--un café con leche here, un helado there as my much-abused brain struggles to string together sentences in Spanish after eight months of learning Polish. Already I have said "tak" when I should have said "sí" and "dzień dobry" when I ought to have said "buenos tardes," but the people are gracious and patient with my fumbling self, and I trust that in time my vocabulary will return.

As I sit here though, I cannot help but feel like the luckiest girl. Just over a year ago I was sitting in sunny, beautiful, most-loved Mexico; just over a month ago I was drinking wine in Budapest, the most beautiful city I've ever seen; and just days ago I was drinking wine with my good friend on her balcony in Warsaw, the city I now call home. At the end of the month I will visit Gdansk (Poland) and Bergen (Norway). And at the moment I am getting pleasantly tipsy in Logroño, Spain. I don't mean to brag, but I'm pretty sure that it doesn't get much better than this.