Leapin' Lizards

 The Lizard that was Too Afraid to Leap and Refused to Deviate from its Path didn't roll off the tongue quite as easily, despite it being a more accurate title for the following story, so I went with something catchier.

Yesterday, some friends invited me to a barbecue in nice, wooded area near Vitoria-Gasteiz.  While walking the trail from where we parked the car to the place where the barbecue was going to take place I was attacked by several butterflies. When I say attacked,  I mean that the butterflies crossed my path at a distance of less than 18 inches.  I had never seen so many wild butterflies in my life. Every single time it happened, I jumped, flinched, and squeaked, much to the amusement of the others, who then proceeded to tease me endlessly about the attacking butterflies. "Butterflies don't bite," they told me. "Maybe not," I replied, "but they are big and fly right at me and I don't like it."

As the afternoon went on, I grew more accustomed to the butterflies, and no longer flinched every time they fluttered by gracefully.  I even got to the point where I almost wished one would land near me so I could get a closer look at it.  Little did I know that it wouldn't be a butterfly that I would be getting up close and personal with.

After eating the deliciously barbecued lunch, in true Spanish fashion, we decided to take a siesta.  We took our positions in the shade of one of the nearby trees and prepared for a good nap. Unfortunately, the place I had chosen was the first to lose its shade. Not wanting to suffer a terrible sunburn, I decided to move and take my nap on a low wall a short distance from the others that had no chance of being in the sun.

We didn't end up taking real naps because there were a few of us and we decided that talking and trying to avoid the water being thrown on us by another friend were a better use of our time than taking a nap. Not wanting to lose my perfect perch in the shade atop the wall, I participated in the conversation from there.  During the conversation, I noticed a small (five to six inch long) lizard walking along the ledge towards me.  I wasn't afraid of or bothered by the lizard in any way. In fact, I was rather keen on watching the lizard.

Now, I know you're thinking "Rita, you're not afraid of a lizard walking towards you, but you flinch at a butterfly. These things don't make sense."  Actually, they do. You see, butterflies fearlessly fly at you with no regards for your feelings, but lizards, on the other hand, run away at the slightest movement, making them notoriously difficult to take pictures of.  I was afraid of the butterflies because they weren't afraid of me, but I wasn't afraid of the lizard because it was afraid of me. You can't be afraid of something if that thing is afraid of you, it's just that simple.

So there I was, watching the lizard inch closer to me, skittering back to its starting point on the ledge with each little movement of mine.  Eventually, the slight gestures and movements no longer bothered the lizard and it got closer than ever.  One of my friends said something, and I turned my head to respond, sending the lizard back once again to its starting point.  It was then that I realized that the lizard wanted to walk precisely where I was sitting.  The lizard could have gone behind me, or it could have climbed to the vertical part of the wall and gone around me, but no, it was determined to walk in a straight line without deviating from its path.  Being as accustomed as I am to getting lost, I completely understood the lizard's sentiment of not wanting to deviate, but it would have been easier for everyone involved if it had just gone around.

After a standoff with the lizard of more than 20 minutes, I decided to take the high road and let the lizard walk in the place where I was sitting.  Plus, I was curious to see if my theory was correct.  I jumped off the wall and joined the others, keeping an eye on my little friend to see what it would do.  Lo and behold, I was right. After just a few seconds, I watched, amused, as the lizard scurried directly over the place in which I had been sitting and continue on its merry way.  Why was it necessary that the lizard walk exactly where I was sitting? I'm sure I'll never know.

This is not the lizard in question, but it is the only picture I have of a lizard of the same species.

Do you Know the Muffin Man?

The muffin man? The muffin man! Do you know the muffin man, who lives in a small town in Spain?

I do not personally know the muffin man, but I have met him once.  For spring break, I went with my friend J to stay at his family's house in a small town in rural Zamora, Spain.  When  I say small town, I mean a town with a population  slightly larger than my graduating class in high school. Knowing I'm a city-slicker, J was concerned that I wouldn't enjoy my stay in a such tiny town surrounded by nature. I, on the other hand, was looking forward to relaxing in the country, taking walks and reading books.

The town

The first evening, we took a walk to the nearby train station and some of the surrounding countryside.  Looking at the fields and flowers was worth the freezing cold we had to deal with.

Don't worry. This section of track was no longer in use.

The next morning, as I was trying to force myself out of the warmth of the pile of blankets on my bed and into the cold air to start the day, I heard a long, low whistle. Knowing that we were relatively close to the train station I assumed that it was the morning train alerting us of its presence.  When my friend awoke, I excitedly told him that I could hear the train whistle.

"No, you didn't," he replied.

"Yes. Listen, there it is again."

"That's not the train," he said. "That's the baker."

"The baker?" I asked, unsure if he was telling the truth or just pulling my leg. "What, does the baker have an alarm that goes off that tells the town when there is fresh bread or something?"

"Not exactly. That's the sound of the car horn telling you that the baker has arrived in town with his van full of bread. If you want bread, you just go outside and buy it from him. Or, you can go to his house and buy the bread from there."

Now, the concept of buying bread from the van of a roving baker was completely foreign to me, but is an everyday occurrence in small Spanish towns, so you can imagine the look of both disbelief and enthusiasm that crossed my face at that point.  Excitedly, I asked if we could buy bread from the van at least once during our stay.  J smiled and said that if I wanted some, all I had to do was go outside and buy it.

For breakfast that morning, and for the next several mornings, we had some of the most delicious muffins I had ever eaten. With only one muffin remaining, I asked J where we could get more. He told me that if I wanted more, I could either go to the baker's house or wait for the van to come around the following day.  Despite the town having only two main streets, I knew that with my sense of direction I probably wouldn't be able to find the baker's house and make my way back to his house without losing a couple of hours, so I decided that waiting for the van was the best option.  Nervous about taking on this endeavor, I asked J where the van would be and at approximately what time it would arrive so I would be ready and we wouldn't have to go a day without the muffins.  He told me that the baker usually arrived before 11am and that I should first go left upon exiting the house and if he wasn't there, to go to the right.

The following morning, I woke up early to make sure that I didn't miss the arrival of the muffin man.  As I was getting dressed, I heard the sound of the car horn. I hastily threw on the rest of my clothes, grabbed my wallet and ran out the door. I looked to the left and there was no van. Then I looked to the right. Still no van. Worried that I may have missed the van and therefore my chance to eat more delicious muffins, I decided to walk a little further up the street to see if I could find it. When I reached the intersection at the end of the street and still didn't see the van, I felt a bit discouraged, so I decided to return home, grab my camera and take a walk around town.  Not wanting to go back down the same street because I didn't want the old man sitting outside to think I was stupid, I took a different route.  I just had to keep telling myself that if I turned left three more times, I would make it.

Upon arriving at the house, my friend asked where I had gone. I told him that I had gone to get muffins, but that I couldn't find the van. He laughed and told me that the baker was probably still a ways away and that I would know it when he arrived. I decided to chance it and go on with my walk as planned and hoped that I would find the muffin man while out exploring. As I left the house, I saw a white van parked up the street and suddenly heard a long, loud blast of a car horn.  One by one, the residents of the town began leaving their houses and walking towards the van. I joined the procession nervously. As the people were congregating around the van, I felt uncomfortable as I  could feel all of their eyes looking at the giant foreigner. Not only was I not from there, but I was dressed as a tourist with my university sweatshirt, backpack, and camera and I was at least a full head taller than everyone else.  Then, I asked for two bags of muffins, which seemed to surprise everyone, but especially the baker.  I quickly left and took my treasure to the house so I could get on with my exploration of the town.

Could I be more of a tourist?

If You'd Have Seen it, I Betcha You Would Have Done the Same

Being an adult definitely has some perks, but it also has some significant drawbacks. One of those being the need to rid my house of any uninvited six or eight-legged visitors who have no intention of leaving on their own accord. If there is anyone around who I deem to be "more adult" than I am, it automatically becomes their job to take care of the problem.  One of the downsides to being a teacher is the fact that, despite some of my students being older than I am, I am the "most adult" person in the room and I am responsible for removing the threat.

At home, on the other hand, the intruders will only be taken care of if I am alone and know that nobody else will be there for at least a couple of days. Unfortunately for all parties involved, this is usually the case, and I am forced to take matters into my own hands and instead of cowardly hiding and yelling for assistance, I must attack the problem head on.

This was the case a couple of months ago, when I was awakened by a loud buzzing sound in my bedroom.  To fully comprehend the situation, there are a few things you need to know about my house. I live on the top floor of the building in an apartment with sloping ceilings. Because of this, the main windows are at floor level, so to let in more light, the apartment is equipped with several skylights that can be opened as to allow fresh air in.  Each skylight also has a sun shade that can be rolled up or extended.  The biggest drawback to the skylights is that, despite being closed, flying insects tend to think that they are an escape route and are not intelligent enough to determine that continuously smashing themselves against the glass will accomplish nothing except for an untimely death.  Being that the skylights are just high enough that I have to stand on a chair to open them fully, if the animal in question is a fly, I leave it to its own devices because trying to coax a small  flying animal out of the relatively narrow opening without falling off the chair is a difficult feat.  In fact, my first and only attempt at this resulted in my accidentally throwing a piece of cardboard on my roof and being unable to retrieve it. If it is a bee, I will usually open one of the lower windows in the hopes that it will fly downwards and exit my house, mostly as an act of self preservation because I don't want to get stung.

Now, back to the day in question.  It was a Sunday morning and my roommate was out of town.  I slept in that day and woke up with the sun shining through the skylight at about 10:00am. Before fully opening my eyes, I heard a loud buzzing coming from the area near the skylight. Not yet being fully conscious, I was relatively unconcerned, assuming, due to the sound, that it was just a large fly. Upon opening my eyes, I discovered that it was not a fly, but the largest wasp I had ever seen.  I am not exaggerating when I say that. It was about an inch and a half long and about the same size around as my little finger.  Doing what any sane person would do in this situation, I jumped out of bed, grabbed my phone, and locked myself in the bathroom to protect myself from the beast and plan my next move. 

I spent over an hour locked in the bathroom researching what the beast was and the best methods for dealing with it while it flew back and forth outside, surely waiting for the perfect moment to launch its attack.  In this hour, I discovered that my foe was an Asian wasp. While researching, one site told me that the best method for getting rid of this type of creature was to run away screaming and wait for it to leave or die on its own or for someone to kill it and rescue me. I had that method down pat. Other, slightly more useful, methods included using shoes, newspapers, or hairspray to take care of it.  Unfortunately for me, all three of these methods would force me to be in very close contact with the animal, which was not something I wanted to risk.  Finally I came upon a tactic that  I felt would be the best, given the situation and my abilities. Window cleaner would allow me to attack from a relatively safe distance without putting myself into harm's way.

Armed with this knowledge, I opened the bathroom door, and ran as fast as I could to the kitchen to get my weapon.  Knowing what the effects of the window cleaner were, I grabbed the bottle and a glass, which would be used to trap the intruder as it fell to the floor.  Hesitantly, I walked back to my bedroom, hoping that I would be able to accomplish this difficult feat without causing too much to damage to either myself or my house.  I quietly opened the bedroom door and walked slowly towards the skylight, hoping to sneak up on the intruder and catch it by surprise.  As I approached the skylight, the intruder appeared out of nowhere and flew at me, like a lightning bolt. I screamed, turned around, and high-tailed it out of the room and shut the door.  After spending several minutes in the hallway regaining my composure, I decided to try again. With the bottle of window cleaner in one hand and the glass in the other I re-entered the room.  The beast was ready this time and, again, as I approached its lair, it charged at me and I ran screaming to the safety of the hallway.  This process continued for a total of 40 minutes.

Finally, after wasting almost two hours of my life, I know it was time to take care of the beast once and for all.  This time as I closed in on the skylight, nothing happened. Surprised by the lack of charging on the part of my enemy, I inched closer to the skylight.  When I was directly under it, I looked for signs of the wasp, but there was no trace of it. Praying that it hadn't escaped to some other part of the house, I decided to give a quick spray with the bottle of window cleaner to see if I could find it. I directed the bottle at the skylight and sprayed and heard the familiar terrifying buzzing.  The beast had crawled inside of the rolled up window shade and I was going to force it out, whether it wanted wanted to come out or not.  After quite a few sprays, the wasp poked its head out and I continued with my attack. It fully emerged and quickly fell to the ground where I trapped it with the glass.  Not wanting it to escape from its prison, I set a grammar book on top of the glass, so that if it were strong enough to knock the glass over, it would be crushed by the weight of the Basque language.  I didn't want to see it suffer, so I was happy to see that it perished in only a matter of minutes. However, knowing that wasps have good eyesight and can identify their attackers, I left it in its glass prison for a few days to make sure that it was really dead before disposing of the body.

Fast forward a few months to another lazy  morning. On that day, when I was home alone, I was again awakened by a loud buzzing coming from the skylight.  This time, I knew just what to do and walked to the kitchen to arm myself.  This time, I was able to vanquish the beast in only a matter of minutes.  I sent a picture to my roommate to show him that I had been able to take care of an intruder without any help.  When he returned from work, I made him dispose of the body, because I didn't want to have to do it and, upon seeing the animal up close and personal he said, "It looked much smaller in the picture."  "I know," I replied, "And this one was even smaller than the last one."

WORD OF THE DAY

English: wasp
Spanish: la avispa
Basque: liztorra

P.D.  Bonus points if you get the musical reference I used for the title.

And the Refigerators Fell from the Sky

Being both a language learner and teacher, I am accustomed to mispronunciations and interesting uses of common words. I have committed quite a few of these linguistic mishaps myself, but this one takes the cake.

On Tuesday, I was talking to one of my students before class about Hurricane Sandy.  Because the class had yet to start, we were talking in Spanish because it was more comfortable for her.  Earlier that morning, I had read an article about a heavy snowfall in West Virgina and thought it would be interesting to tell her about that. Unfortunately for me, what came out of my mouth had nothing to do with a snowfall, resulting in an incredibly interesting mental picture for the both of us. The conversation went a little like this:

Me: "Y también han caído unas neveras tremendas."
Student: "Nevadas."
Me: "Sí, eso es lo que quería decir."
Student: "¿Sabes qué son neveras, verdad?"
Me: "Sí, pero como son palabras tan paracidas, me he confundido."

(Translation)
Me: "And some tremendous refrigerators have fallen."
Student: "Snowfalls."
Me: "That is what I wanted to say."
Student: "You know what refrigerators are, right?"
Me: "I do, but because the words are so similar that I got them confused."

The two of us had a really good laugh at my expense. It shows that everyone is susceptible to linguistic mishaps and that it's okay to make mistakes.

Word of the Day
English: refridgerator / Spanish: nevera
English: snowfall / Spanish: nevada

When Waves Attack

Yesterday was a perfect day of blue skies and warm temperatures, so I decided to take a trip to the beach.  I decided not to go to my local beach (an hour away by train) and double my travel time to go to San Sebastian, where I knew the water would be perfect for swimming.  When I got there I went first to a beach I had never been to, Zurriola, to see what it was like.  It was pretty but not ideal for swimming as there were decent-sized waves and a lot of surfers. Since I didn't feel like dealing with either one of those things, I went to the more well-known beach, La Concha.  Although it was mid-day and many people had left the beach to eat lunch, it was still relatively crowed. I stood on the boardwalk above the beach for several minutes looking for the perfect place of sand on which to lay my towel.  I was looking for a place relatively close to the water and and in line with one of the many floating platforms in bay so I would have the shortest distance to swim should I choose to swim to the center of the bay.

When I finally located my ideal location, I set my towel down and headed to the water, determined to swim to the floating platform.  I am a fairly decent swimmer, but the majority of my swimming experience has come from the pool, not the sea.  This combined with the fact that I hadn't done any swimming of any kind for at least several years made me rethink my decision and stay in the shallower water where I could, for the most part, keep my feet on the ground. Had I been with someone else, I may have swum out there, but as I was alone, I didn't want to have any problems and not be able to get back. I was happily content to play around in the water just deeper than where the majority of the waves were breaking.  I liked that place because I could still touch the bottom, but deep enough that I could float freely and didn't have to worry about being smacked upside the head by the breaking waves . Or so I thought.

The tide was coming in and there was a strong current in the shallow water.  I learned as a small child never to turn my back to the ocean, so I turned sideways in the water so I could see both the shore and the bay. Although, because of the current, I could usually feel before I could see that a larger wave was headed towards the shore. When I could tell that it was a big wave, I would prepare myself by to be ready to jump and let the wave carry me a short distance towards the shore so I wouldn't get pushed under.

When I looked towards the shore, I noticed there was a girl about my age that seemed to be watching me.  She eventually ventured into the deeper water and said hello.  I responded and she was pleasantly surprised to find that I spoke English.  We got to talking and I found out that she and her friend were on vacation from the States. I asked where she was from and she told me she was from Seattle as well. What a coincidence! She also told me that she was watching me because it seemed like I knew what I was doing with respect to not being pushed under by the waves.  As soon as she said this, I could feel the current pulling me towards the bay and turned to see one of the largest waves I had seen all day heading our way.  "What do I do?" she asked me. "Just jump and let it take you," I replied, having previously tried this strategy successfully and knowing that we neither had time to get closer to shore nor into deeper water to avoid the hit.

I jumped at what I thought was the right moment. Either the wave didn't break where I expected it to, or I mistimed my jump, or both, because the next thing I knew I was hit and pushed under by the wall of water.  My face smashed hard into the sand and my only thought was to stand up as quickly as possible. I stood up with pain in my nose, mouth and chin, only to hear my new acquaintance say, "Here comes another one!"  I turned and saw another wave coming at me. Though it wasn't as tall as the previous one, it had enough force to knock me down to my knees.  When I stood up again, I said I was done and headed back to my towel to survey the damage.  I had no idea what my face looked like, nor was I conscious of the fact that I was completely covered in sand; I just laid down on my towel and began to blow immense quantities of sand from my nose.  I must have looked like a complete mess because the woman on the next towel over kept looking at me strangely. Since there was no blood as far as I could tell,  I laid there for probably about 20 minutes trying to use the sun try to dry off a little and decide whether I should go try and find an ice pack.  As the tide was still rising and the high tide line was fewer than 10 feet away, I decided to pack up my things and leave.

I left and wandered about the city for an hour, killing time until the next train.  It wasn't until I got to the train station that I saw the damage.  I had a dime-sized red lump on my chin and a slight red circle around my mouth and nose as well as marks where I had bitten the inside of my lip, not to mention the copious amounts of sand in my ears and hair.  I am sure I brought about half of the beach home with me in just my hair. When I got home I tried to explain to my roommate what had happened and she kind of laughed at me.  It wasn't until later, when she noticed the bump on my chin that she gave me the you-really-are-a-dumb-American look and proceeded to tell my adventure to her friend. We all had a good laugh at the expense of the dumb American.

Word of the Day:
English - wave
Spanish - ola
Basque - olatu

Who is Mr. Bean?

Now that the beginning of the school year is upon us again, I am going to share a few of my stories and observations from the previous course.

If you have ever spent any length of time learning English in a classroom setting, you most likely are familiar with Mr. Bean.  However, if you are like me in that you have spent the majority of your life in the United States, you probably have no idea who I'm talking about.  The truth is, despite the fact that Mr. Bean is extremely well know in the world of second language teaching, I did not know who he was until a couple of months ago.  In case you, like I was, are unaware of who Mr. Bean is, he is a character played by Rowan Atkinson that stars in a series of short, nearly wordless episodes that are extremely useful in language teaching.

Several months ago some of my students, not terribly excited about what we had to do in class, asked if I would put on a film for them.  When I refused, they began to beg.  When I continued to refuse, one of the students suggested that we watch Mr. Bean, as it was something they had watched with other teachers in previous classes.  I stuck to my guns and continued to refuse to let them watch a film. "Besides," I told them, "I don't know who Mr. Bean is." The entire class fell silent, as if they were in a state of shock, until one girl said something to the effect of  "How can you not know who Mr. Bean is? You speak English!"  I then tried to explain that in the U.S. Mr. Bean wasn't as common as in England.  They still couldn't believe that I had never heard of him before.  The argument to watch an episode of Mr. Bean changed from "We want to watch it" to "You have to watch this to know who he is, and what better place to watch it than with us".  I told them I would look into it when I got home later that afternoon.  I was rather busy at the time and I forgot spend the few minutes looking him up on the internet. In fact, I didn't expect to ever think of Mr. Bean again.  That all changed when I went to Basque class a couple of months later.

That day in class, we were informed that we were going to watch an episode of Mr. Bean and then, later, recount the story.  "You all know who Mr. Bean is, right," the teacher asked us.   "Ez dakit nor den," I replied. "I don't know who that is."  Once again I had an entire class stare at me in disbelief that I didn't know who he was. The class couldn't believe it and the teacher gave a "really, you're an English speaker who teaches conversation classes and still don't know who he is" look. "But you're American, you have to know who he is," said one of the other students. "That's precisely why I don't have any clue as to who you're talking about," I wanted to say.  You see, I was at a great disadvantage as I hadn't had any exposure to Mr. Bean. For starters, I'm American, I have never studied English as a foreign language in a classroom, and I was the youngest person in the class. We watched the video and the teacher asked, which was in English with Chinese subtitles, and afterwards, the teacher asked if I knew who he was. I replied, "I do now."  So much for being an authority on all things English-related.

Tolosako Ihauteriak

Despite having been in Europe for Carnival twice before, I had not previously celebrated it.  Although I had vacations during this time, I never actually thought to plan anything to celebrate Carnival.  This year, upon finding out that I had no plans except choir rehearsal during our week-long vacation, one of the English teachers at the high school decided that I needed something to do and proceeded to start making day trips for me within the Basque Country.  She told me that I had to experience Carnival in Tolosa.  I really had no idea where Tolosa was, having only heard of it once before in Basque class when our teacher told us that going to Carnival in Tolosa "merezi du", that it's worth it.  Now having been told twice that it was something I needed to experience, I began to consider it.  When several other teachers, upon hearing our discussion of my lack of plans, told me that Carnival in Tolosa was "legendary", I knew I had to go.

At this point, there were several of us in the English department room discussing my new plan of action.  Another of the English teachers told me that Sunday was the best day to go and she gladly looked up the bus schedule for me.  The trip was only about two hours in each direction, giving me plenty of time to enjoy the sights and sounds of the day.

Now, I was not about to walk into a city of fully-costumed people without having a costume myself, so, after class that day I ran around the entire city in search of the necessary items to make the perfect costume, a transparent umbrella and bubble wrap.  You may be thinking that I didn't know what I was going to do with these items, but, never fear, I had a plan.  I was determined to be a jellyfish.  When I told some of my students of my plan some seemed wowed, others confused, others laughed at me.  They did not understand the awesomeness that would be my costume.

After spending the better part of four hours constructing my masterpiece, I was eager to show my costume to the world and couldn't wait for Sunday morning.  Having gone out with my friends on Saturday night, I had a difficult time forcing myself out of bed on Sunday morning, resulting in my getting up an hour later than expected.  At least I was awake enough to think to check the weather report for Tolosa, which resulted in a change to my costume.  The forecast said to expect rain for much of the day.  Armed with an umbrella, I wasn't too worried, but I decided that wearing an all-white ensemble was probably not the best idea.

Black was definitely the better choice, as the water that clung to the tentacles resulted in my getting completely soaked.

I'm not the biggest fan of long bus trips, but seeing how there was seemingly no other way to get there, I left my house bright and early to catch the bus, umbrella in hand.  The bus wasn't nearly as crowded as I thought it would be, and the trip wasn't as bad as I expected. For the first 10 minutes.  What the teachers neglected to tell me was that the bus had to pass over many narrow, winding roads through the mountains.  As soon as we began our ascent up the mountain, I knew it was going to be a long two hours.  The two hours felt much longer as I tried to settle into a position that would help me keep the contents of my stomach on the inside.  I closed my eyes and checked the time every time the bus stopped in hopes that we had arrived at my destination.  When we got there I gladly jumped into the rain to begin my exploring. Not having any idea where I was going, I decided the best approach would be to follow the people dressed as clowns, zombies, Egyptians, and the like.  Normally, I try to fly under the radar when I visit new cities, but as I was the only jellyfish for miles, it wasn't possible.  I was definitely one of the most original costumes there, and received many compliments on my unique outfit. Several people even asked to take my picture.  I wasn't as brave as they were about asking strangers if I could take their pictures, so all of mine were of the sneak-attack variety.  I do have to admit, though, that being stealthy is not easy when dressed as a jellyfish in the pouring rain.

How I saw the world.

the decorated balconies

I loved how they made the baby stroller into the pirate ship.

This astronaut with a baby as a jet pack was one of my favorite costumes.

Tolosa isn't close enough to the ocean to even consider having a surf school.

Word of the Day:
English - jellyfish
Spanish - la medusa
Basque - marmoka