Kind of Azul

Hola todos,

I write to you from the staff room of Alfonso Septimo, the little collegio beside the quaint graveyard, in Caldas de Reis, Pontevedra, Galicia, Spain, the earth, our galaxy, the universe . .

Two weeks, a new moon and a sizeable wad of euros have come and gone. My spanish improves poco a poco, and the children in my school, besides being intelligent and kind, are just so doggone cute!  They come to the english language with total abandon, wriggling, moaning or shouting, desperate to communicate their thoughts and dreams in the dulce idiom of their beloved professor. 

And it seems the Inquisitors of the Tribunal of the Holy Office left residues in the soil of the Rias Baixas; for the children probe relentlessly into the depths of my soul with the poleaxe of their lesson books.  Such questions as "What is your favorite food?" (pizza, of course) "Does your sister have a dog, and, if so, how big is it?" and "What is your absolute favorite day of the week?" have forced me time and time again to bear my nervous system to these insatiable surveyors. 

But if I really get going about all my interactions with the children thus far I´ll never stop.  Can´t give it all away at once - I mean, this blog isn´t the modern American movie preview.  So more at another time.  For now I digress with an observation about time in Spain:

Taking lunch this afternoon with the professors, I found myself distracted by a gameshow playing on the television above the bar.  The contestants had to answer word puzzles, and were given a certain amount of time in which to do it.  Nothing unusual about this format, except that they seemed to have all the time in the world.  The couple up to bat scratched their heads for more than a few minutes.  The gameshow host left the stage, presumably to go down the street for a cup of coffee spiked with 1000 Pipers scotch whisky.  The Spanish lunch likewise happens at a geological pace, with entire epochs elapsing from bit to bite.  When we finally payed the tab, the couple was still staring blankly at their jumble of letters, in no hurry at all to find an answer.  In Spain, neither am I.