Snail Season

For me, the turn of late spring into summer heralds the arrival of my favorite fruits: raspberries, blueberries, nectarines, cherries. Meanwhile, Andalucians get excited about the advent of a different seasonal food: snails. Come late May, the little creatures can be seen scaling walls, burrowed in the folded leaves of every plant, and hiding in the produce section of any grocery store. Their prevalence begs the question of why anyone would bother buying them instead of blindly sticking a fist into nearby greenery and drawing out a meal's-worth. But there they are, the snail-sellers, standing at street corners with plastic tubs of their captives millimetering toward freedom. Broken shells and the flattened grayish goo of snail bodies on the sidewalk stand as a testament to the doomed future that awaits crawlaways.

To be honest, the sight of few hundred ugly brown shells with their corresponding oozy gray inhabitants does not especially whet my appetite. Perhaps to combat this rather unappealing reality, restaurants frequently advertise the availability of snails with a hand-drawn picture of a smiling snail frolicking among flowers, or just happily surrounded by snail-friends (ooze, translucency, and amorphousness are all down-played).

Though I have remained unpersuaded by the drawings, the enthusiasm of my Spanish friends convinced me I needed to try this seasonal delicacy. When ordered, snails come in little glasses, submerged in a brownish liquid which is to be sipped first before slurping the small bodies out of their shells. I have not yet gained the courage to slurp any bodies (which have been described to me as "gooey" and "fishy," adjectives that fail to entice me) but I agreed to try the liquid. After the briefest of sips, I nodded in approval: it failed to make me nauseous, and that was success enough for me. The Spaniards continued to coax me into trying a snail itself.

"Well, you know, I'm more or less a vegetarian," I told them, desperate for any excuse.

"But you eat plants," one friend argued. "And plants are animals, too!"

I stared in disbelief, and started to say, "But, no, that's the whole point of the distinction, plants AREN'T animals..." Unfortunately, the beauty of specious reasoning is that its ridiculousness often negates the possibility of logical counter-argument. So I shrugged and sipped down another mouthful of herbed snail-brine. Yum.

Turning 23, I think I'm turning 23

23 has been my lucky number since I was five years old when it was the number on the mat assigned to me for nap time. We've been close ever since. Perhaps it's most significant appearance in my life occurred in a place ripe for superstitions and lucky numbers: a casino in Montreal. It was my first--and thus far last--trip to a casino and, big spender that I am, I placed aside $20 with which to gamble. I converted my precious cash into four 5-dollar chips (I would have done twenty 1-dollar chips if they'd let me) and headed to roulette. First chip on black and the number turned up red. Second chip on odds, the number came up even. Third chip on some random area of the board, and lost that one, too. With my last chip clutched in my hand, I eyed 23. Why not? I would most definitely lose, but all more "surer" bets had lost. But I lost heart. I selected another random area of the board, one that didn't include 23. And the number that came up? 23, of course. I took that as a direct sign that I was not meant for the gambling life, and haven't done so since. Who knows what kind of a person 23 saved me from becoming?

In any case, my affinity for 23 has long made me believe good things would happen when I finally reached the age. Many months ago I became nervous when I realized it would occur during my year in Spain. I wondered if anyone would know it was my birthday, if there would be any special celebration at all, if I would be surrounded by friends like I was last year at the end of my time at Dartmouth. Turns out I had nothing to fear.

The day itself was a study in Reasons I Love My Life in Arcos: I was with my kids in the morning, some of whom had bought presents for me (a silver coin purse, silver sandals that were somehow exactly the right size, and the first item of clothing with Minnie Mouse on it that I've owned since I was 5). There was also cake and a belly-dance performance by my 10-year olds which was just a little awkward. In the afternoon I went to yoga (Patra, to our yoga teacher: "Jenna's having a special day!" Yoga teacher, looking aghast, "You didn't get married, did you?" Me: "No, I just turned 23." Yoga teacher: "Thank God. Your mother would have killed me.") Patra and I had dinner on the terrace and went to flamenco in the evening (the class sang "Cumpleanos Feliz" and one of my fellow dancers with delightfully bowed legs chided me for not bringing a cake). All in all, it was not so different from any other Wednesday in Arcos, which is to say it was perfect. The kind of day that makes me think 23 is indeed my lucky number.

Don't know much about geography

I told one of my private classes that the following week would be our last class together.

"And then you're going home?" Alvaro asked.

"Yes, that's right, to my country."

They looked puzzled.

"Which country are you from?" Juan Manuel asked, which disappointed me since he's also in my regular classes at school and it's the kind of thing I'd think he'd know by now.

"I'm from the United States. Do you guys know where that is?"

"Oh yeah! Right next to France!" Alvaro looked gleeful in his knowledge.

"Ummm, not next to France, no. You know how there's an ocean near Arcos? The Atlantic? I'm on the other side of the Atlantic."

The kids still looked confused. Then Alvaro spoke up again, "Okay, so not next to France but above France?"

I shook my head. Juan Manuel jumped out of his seat. "I know!" He picked up a marker and began to draw a crude outline of Spain and France on the whiteboard. "Okay, here's where we are, and here's where you live," he said, indicating approximately where the UK is.

"No, I'm not from England, I swear," I said, but Alvaro was already agreeing with Juan Manuel.

"Yep, yep, that's where teacher lives."

Finally I found a book on Christopher Columbus and showed them an egregiously out-dated map. I pointed at southern Spain, showed them England, and then showed them where Minnesota would be, relative to them. Their eyes widened.

"You live all the way over THERE? That's so far!"

"That's right," I said. "Nowhere near France."

Wouldn't it be lovering

I've often rolled my eyes at the poor English blazoned on Spaniards' t-shirts. Then recently I noticed one t-shirt that I thought was an inadvertently clever mistake. The t-shirt says, "Think Green," in large letters and underneath it has an alternate 3 R's: reduce, refuse, recycle. I've seen the t-shirt enough times now, though, to think that "refuse" was intentional. Either way, I approve.

But I saw one sweatshirt that takes the cake in that it's so absolutely bizarre you can't even imagine what message someone was trying to get across. I wrote it down because it was impossible to remember the sequence of words. Here, I give it to you verbatim: "Ever body lovering her so we all love."

Happy April Fish Day!

While all you Americans are tricking each other with short-sheeted beds, saran-wrap on toilets, and telling your trusting children that it's a snow day (I'm looking at you, Dad), the French are busy with another equally exciting tradition today: fishing each other. Although I myself have never been fished, I hear it requires the utmost skill and the result is utterly hilarious: children (and perhaps adults?) attempt to stick cut-outs of fish on each others' backs. And they're completely confused why anyone would go further than that when it comes to mischief-making on the first of April.

Ghetto Blaster

Speaking of carrying a radio through town, I came across a surprising translation in my pocket English-Spanish dictionary: on the English side, I found the term "Ghetto Blaster." I'm not sure how that's necessary enough in the English language to beat out other missing words (HarperCollins considers it more important than seahorse, gargoyle, and woodchuck, for instance). So never fear, when you want to quickly reference the outdated and perhaps offensive term "ghetto blaster," just turn to page 386 and find its Spanish translation, "un cassette portatil de gran tamano."

Getting ready for Semana Santa: Part 3

Since our apartment is on the parade route, Patra and I have had the pleasure (?) of witnessing parade rehearsals. These occur on Thursday nights around 11 pm, due to the fact that a parade rehearsal means closing down the street entirely so that dozens of burly men can haul a gigantic unadorned platform downhill at the pace of snails. Perhaps this wouldn't be such a problem if the one-way street in front of our apartment wasn't the ONLY way to exit the town. Recently, we heard the approaching semana santa music emanating from a tinny little radio (which, actually, doesn't change the overall quality of the music) and rushed to the window to watch. Rushing, of course, was unnecessary as it took the men ten minutes just to turn a corner. We watched their slow progress, their feet moving a few centimeters with each step. They passed our window and we went back to what we were doing. A few minutes later we heard a car rumble downhill, apparently unaware of the street blockage. And then, a few minutes later: the same car backing uphill on our narrow street, moving about as quickly as the men had been going downhill. Traffic jams come in all varieties in this town.