"Are you know about sex"

On my last day in Barcelona an Indian man who looked like a tourist came up to me and asked for directions. I gave him the directions and waited politely for a few seconds because it looked like he had another question.

"Are you alone?"

He was twice my age. I nodded, expecting a lecture about traveling alone. His next question took me completely by surprise.

"Are you know about sex?"

I ended the conversation and walked away. I didn't feel immediately threatened by him. Kenpo has given me some confidence in my ability to deal with out-of-shape middle-aged creepers, and the neighborhood was not completely deserted.

Not feeling immediately threatened is not the same as not feeling threatened at all. I'm twenty-one years old, healthy, and generally capable of taking care of myself. I was spending my last day in Barcelona walking in the Park de Montjuïc so I could see places from Carlos Ruiz Zafón's books. I was wearing converses, jeans, a t-shirt, and my black jacket. I had my blue backpack on my back, full of books, and the only thing on my mind was whether I wanted to stop for a croissant and a cup of coffee.

In other words, I was having a normal day. I had started to talk to this man because he needed help (directions) and I could help him. Somehow the conversation turned into him asking me about sex. Somehow, in his mind, it was okay to come up to me on the street and ask me, "Are you know about sex?"

I chose to travel alone in Europe rather than in India or Nepal because I knew that it would be safer for a young woman alone. That is, I let reasonable concerns about my safety stop me from traveling somewhere completely new. I wasn't happy about it when I made the choice, but I knew that it was a rational one to make.

Don't get me wrong: I've enjoyed Spain immensely. I just don't enjoy being here for the wrong reasons. It makes me angry and uncomfortable to have those reasons confirmed.

I also don't have a lot of things I can do about this. I could swear at him--escalating the situation without accomplishing anything. I could punch him--tempting, but also a terrible idea if he hasn't laid anything more than his eyes on me. Or I could walk away and spend the next two blocks looking over my shoulder to make sure that he isn't following me, because I am not sure what to do if he is. I could walk away and make sure that there are other people around, and know that it is the correct thing to do, and hate feeling like my best option is to rely on other people for my safety because if I rely on myself alone and I'm wrong the consequences could be so bad.

Nobody touched me. I wasn't harmed. But the utter lack of logic to what happened still makes me feel less safe. The only way to make it logical is to say that it was a result of being alone and talking to a stranger. The only way to make it so that I could have done something to avoid this is to say that it was my fault to be who I was, where I was, and that I should have changed one of those.

You could tell me that I shouldn't have told him I was alone. You could tell me I shouldn't have engaged in a conversation with him. You could tell me that I should not have been alone.

I don't believe any of that. The fault lies with him, not me. If the only way for me to avoid such conversations is for me to always travel in a group and to not go places that aren't full of tourists, I'll take the weird conversations. Better would be for a question like "Do you know about sex?" to be just as unthinkable for a stranger to ask me as it would be for me to ask it of him.

Home!

I have lots of homes.  I'm lucky that way.  I get to be at home at Slav, in Bellevue, and at 776.  I'm excited whenever I get back to any of my homes, I call them all home, and everybody gets confused.  Sometimes I call Bellevue "home home" to make it clearer, and then people become even more confused.

With that disclaimer out of the way: I'm home!  I'm back at 776 University Avenue, where there's an espresso machine and the best couch ever and my Nathan.  I got back last night at 8 pm and had udon that Nathan made for dinner.

From my journal, here was a partial (and not actually ordered) list of things I wanted to do when I got back:

• Hug Nathan
• Fall asleep on couch
• Fall asleep on couch while watching How It's Made with Nathan
• Go to Whiskey Friday
• Eat awesome food at 776
• Cook awesome food at 776
• Make bread
• Make cookies
• Go to kenpo
• Fall asleep in my own bed
• Eat pie

So far I've managed the first, the fifth, and the second to last.  Could I make that sentence easier to understand?  Probably, but I prefer to leave it as a puzzle.

The only bad thing about coming home was finding out that there is no flour and no milk (and now no more eggs) and the kitchen needs cleaning.  This is not actually a surprise when I consider that finals week here just ended.

So here's a list of things I'm going to do today to enjoy being home:

• Listen to streaming music
• Enjoy 4G speeds on my phone
• Use a real keyboard to write emails--suddenly words are actually coming out the way I wanted them to
• Clean entire kitchen while making a list of all of the things I want to cook this week
• Steal car from Nathan and go on large grocery run
• Read books on the couch until I fall asleep, optionally while listening to streaming music
• Use the last can of garbanzo beans to make hummus, just for the heck of it
• Consider making cookies.  Defer the making of cookies until tomorrow.  Eat christmas cookies that I found in the kitchen instead.
• Go out to dinner with Nathan
• Smile a lot

:)

Working on my Spanish

One of my goals in Spain was to force myself to use my Spanish until it got better-the only reason I am not fluent is that I've been very shy about talking in Spanish because my accent is very strong.

In Madrid I made a sign that said (in Spanish) "I want to practice my Spanish. Do you want to talk to me?" I sat down in a Starbucks, put the sign on the table, and pulled out a book. Within half an hour I was approached by a Venezuelan girl who was in Spain visiting family. We talked for half an hour. As long as the other person is also trying to help, I can understand what's going on. It was really good to realize that, because up until that point I had been feeling like I couldn't communicate at all.

By the time I left Madrid I was able to hold conversations in Spanish with people at my hostel (it helped that many had American accents), ask for train schedules, and buy a train ticket entirely in Spanish.

People said that in Madrid most people don't know English, so I would have to speak Spanish. That wasn't my experience, at least in cafes and restaurants. Almost every waiter or waitress spoke English.

In Barcelona most people don't switch to English when I talk, so either I'm getting better at this or people here have enough going on with Spanish and Catalan, and don't need to add English on top. My accent has softened by being able to listen to so many other accents, and my confidence in my use of the language has gone up.

I've also been reading more in Spanish while I've been here, and even that has gotten easier.

Overall report on mission USE MY SPANISH: success.

One day in Madrid

This morning I went to the Museo del Prado and spent four or five hours wandering. There was enough to see there that I may go back in a few days, but I left when my feet got sore.

After that I walked around Madrid searching for a bookstore, bought a book in Spanish, and settled down to read in the Puerto del Sol. My resolve to stay there for the rest of the day was slowly eroded by the realization that everyone around me was smoking, so I gave up and went back to the hostel to read. The smoking here and in London bothers me a lot. I'm accustomed to very strict laws that essentially restrict smoking to designated areas. Here, everybody smokes.

After a quick siesta I headed out to look for a movie in Spanish. This was easier said than done: all of the movies I found were American movies that had been voiced over, and the only one that was starting any time soon was the Hunger Games. I elected to save my cash and keep walking. This was really lucky, because around the next corner I found a flamenco theater!

The show was excellent and on my way back I found a fruit stand and bought a pomegranate, then saw someone dressed as a minion and got a picture with him. It's been a good day so far!

I really like Madrid. I enjoy being able to walk around without standing out as a tourist-unlike Thailand-and it's warm enough that walking around is actually pleasant. The sun has been shining and churros are a reasonable substitute for breakfast here. There are a lot of parks. There are benches in all of the parks and open spaces where people are just chilling. It's a great city for people-watching.

Madrid has a lot of history and that is obvious in everything from the buildings to the layouts of the streets to the names of the streets. What it doesn't have is a fear of breaking that history by changing anything in the city. It feels modern and lively, even as I walk down cobblestoned streets. The buildings are beautiful, and I'm starting to get my sense of direction back-not being on a grid was a bit of a struggle for me yesterday when I was trying to find my hostel.

I'm excited about the museums. I'm definitely going to the Reina Sophia and the Naval Museum. I would also like to go back to the Prado if I have time. I haven't planned beyond tonight's dinner, but a definite advantage of traveling alone is that I don't need to have a plan or even a specific destination when I start walking.

Being alone also means that it is not immediately obvious that I'm an American. I am not walking around with a group chatting in English. This means that people always speak to me in Spanish. So far I have discovered that my spoken Spanish is often unintelligible due to my accent and my habit of mumbling when I am not sure if I am using the right word. That I can fix. The much harder problem is that it is very difficult for me to understand spoken Spanish. I can do pretty well if I have a good idea of what the person will be saying from context, but if I lose those clues I can only catch scattered words. I am not sure what to do about that, other than continue my habit of trying to follow conversations in the streets. It also doesn't help that my brain can't filter out background noise and keep only Spanish, the way it can with English. It makes me wish I could spend a few months living here and working to force that sort of practice. But I'll save that idea for after I graduate.

Cambridge

Cambridge is old.  Anyone who lives here will tell you how old it was.  Then they will tell you how old each building is, which colleges were built first, which monarchs were responsible for each chapel, and which scientific discoveries were announced at the pub that you are walking by.  The place has so much history that you would be forgiven for thinking that it is no longer an active university, but of course it is.  The students live and eat and work and sleep in rooms that are centuries old, but they are still university students and they do the things that all students do.  In the case of Cambridge this includes biking like madmen--they rival Stanford in this regard--and, oddly, punting along the river.

 

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

They also have a strange obsession with keeping people off the lawns.  Apparently only the Master of the College is allowed to walk on the lawn, and only in his College.

I commented that at my university we would be playing Frisbee on the lawns and was rewarded with a rather frosty "And which university would that be?"  When I said Stanford the response was "Oh, I suppose that is a rather good school."

Incidentally, every time I hear someone with a strong accent speaking I tack a little something special onto their sentences in my head: "Quite."

In my time in Cambridge I went to the Fitzwilliam Museum (art and history) and the Sedgwick Museum (natural history and stories about Darwin's travels).  I went to both museums twice because they were very enjoyable.  The Sedgwick Museum has skeletons of Irish Elk and Wooly Rhinoceroses, as well as a very comprehensive collection of rocks (okay, fossils) and a small exhibit, tucked away into the back, that explains some of the chemical and physical characteristics of gemstones, including why opals contain so many colors and why diamonds are so hard.

Science!

I spent a lot of the rest of my time in Cambridge in bookstores and libraries, including both the public library and the Wren Library.  The Wren has the first edition of Winnie The Pooh and a handwritten draft of it; unfortunately I was not allowed to take any photos or take books off the shelves.

Is there any other kind?

I also went to the King's College Chapel, once for a tour and once for Evensong.  Each college has a chapel, but the King's College one is beautiful both inside and out.  It also reminded me that I have not seen a single menorah while I've been in England, which is rather strange considering that there have to be at least a few Jews around here.  I'm hoping for better luck in Spain.

The King's College Chapel

British things, museums, and the British Museum

I spent two days in London hanging around, going to museums, and drinking beer.  I spent most of my first day at the British Museum with a brief trip to the Cartoon Museum at the end of the day to clear my head.

Explanatory note at the Cartoon Museum

 The outside of the British Museum

 

 

The first thing I went to see at the museum

 

One of the most exciting parts of going to British Museum was definitely getting to see the Rosetta Stone.  The script on it is much smaller than I expected--small enough that I'm very impressed with the people who carved it.  Speaking of which, hieroglyphics do not look like they would be easy to carve, especially repeatedly.   Check out how elegant the curves are on the birds on this stela:

Carved in stone

This bird is also elegant, but rather wall-eyed

Next I went upstairs to check out the mummies.

Unwrapped mummy

Well-wrapped mummy

Small crocodile mummies (?!)

By the time I had gone back downstairs to look at the Elgin Marbles and gone through several centuries of British history, I was rather footsore and all of the coins were starting to look the same.  Fortunately for me I found the "Clocks and Watches" exhibit, and I proceeded to lose track of time in those rooms.

My favorite clock by far was the one which used a ball rolling down a zigzag course to set the interval between ticks.  Every 30 seconds the ball reaches the end of the track and flips a switch, and the track tilts to make the ball roll the other way.

 



Tick.........tock.........

On my way back to King's Cross I found this place and spent a very pleasant hour drinking down a pint of very dark beer and reading.

I was tempted to try it

My second day in London I spent much more time outside, wandering around.  I went to a winter carnival at Hyde Park, watched the Guardsmen walking crisply to and fro at Buckingham Palace, went to Westminster Cathedral and looked at the outside of Westminster Abbey, and listened to Big Ben chime the quarter hours.  I kicked autumn leaves in the park and looked up at the London Eye then hurried on to the Tate Modern, where I was baffled by the exhibit that included a mirror on one wall and a very large black square on the other.

I also found the Kirkaldy Testing Works.

FACTS NOT OPINIONS

And finally, I got a picture at Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross!

I was stunned and disappointed to learn that train lines 9 and 10 don't actually have a platform between them, but I'm glad they have something there to commemorate Harry Potter.

Tomorrow I'm going to Spain!  I'll be leaving bright and early for Stanstead and I'll be in Madrid in time for lunch.  Can't wait!

Blogger is broken

I apologize for not posting about Cambridge or London yet. I updated to KitKat and now almost every app crashes regularly with null pointer exceptions. In the case of Blogger attempting to add photos or publish posts causes crashes. I'm waiting for an update to fix this bug.