remembering 5 years ago

Five years ago I was midway through my semester abroad in Madrid, when I woke up to hearing my Señora frantically talking to my roommate, Lisa, in her kitchen. All I could pick up on was the word "bombas." I figured I must have heard wrong, that surely I would have known if bombs had exploded. I figured wrong, I learned a few minutes later.

I just dug up my journal from that international time in life and below is what I wrote on that day. Although I sound disconnected from the events, the repercussions ended up being eerily similar to those of 9/11. I still seem to involuntarily shiver any time I enter a train or train station and my brain automatically assumes one or the other is going to explode. Comes with the territory, I suppose.

"March 11, 2004. Exactly 2.5 years, to the day, after experiencing the worst terrorist attack in the U.S., I just lived through the worst terrorist attack in Spain. It's remarkable how similar the two days started out...it was like de ja vu. Around 8 a.m. I woke up with a bad stomach ache and went to the bathroom. I was so mad that I was awake cause my alarm was set for 10, that when my Sñra knocked on my door soon after I reentered my room, I ignored her. Even when she frantically said, "Alyse?!" three times, I pretended to be asleep. At 10 my alarm rang and about 5 minutes later Lisa came home. I heard her talking to Sñra in the kitchen and then she came into our room.
"Bombs exploded in Atocha Station, most likely ETA terrorists."
I was going on day-5 of my constant headache and my stomach was still upset. I crumpled onto my bed, still holding the hot pink pills, and stared up at the ceiling.
"Why?" is all I could think of to say.
"Probably because elections are this week," Lisa said.

The flashbacks began. Brianna coming into our room freshman year--"A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center!" I decided to go to school despite the news, mostly because I needed a computer. Skipped my shower and breakfast, wore my glasses. When I went out to the bus stop, I took my phone out to text message Sheri since it was 3:30 a.m. back home. As I started my phone rang like I had a message. So I stopped typing and listened. My mom, as usual, woke up and read online about the bombs before I had a chance to call home. She was hysterical, telling me to call her asap even though it's the middle of night. So I called her back right away and she couldn't stop crying. I felt really bad.
When I got to school I sent out a mass e-mail letting people know I was okay, since most were still sleeping. Then, for part of Spanish class time, we had a "news briefing," but I don't remember most of what they said. Walking onto the patio I had lost my balance and scraped my elbow really hard against the rough wall. So that hurt and was bleeding and I was just in such a daze.
I felt bad for Raquel (Spanish teacher) because she said something like, "I don't even know if all my friends are alive. I don't want to teach grammar." So, for awhile, we talked and then, because NYU sucks and wouldn't let her end class, we learned the words for body parts...as grossly ironic as that is.

The rest of the day was very unlike 9/11. Yeah I saw some news coverage on TV, but it wasn't like NYC where I then ran to the window and watched it in person. And there was no suffocating smell. And the weirdest thing was the city seemed to function as normal.
On September 11, I walked down FIFTH AVENUE and nothing was going on. The whole day I had horrible flashbacks of 9/11 and selfishly that's what disturbed me most. I feel very detached from what happened here. I am just baffled that I've now lived through two terrorist attacks...unreal. When I got off the bus and walked to school, "Ooo child, things are gonna get easier..." came on my CD and I thought, I really don't think they are and was overwhelmed by survivor's guilt for the third time. I mean seriously, what is the point of life? Nothing makes sense. One could argue--love. But usually that's about as non-sensical as you can get and your lover just ends up dying too...

It's always been strange to think back at the things that happened the day or night before something like this happens. For instance, the night before in my cities class, my teacher passed around a special edition of "Time" magazine dedicated to why "SPAIN ROCKS," why it's become such an amazing and innovative country. Then, when I left, I was waiting at the bus stop and there was bad traffic because of the Real Madrid vs. Germany soccer game. There was a young girl watching two cars slowly roll by, decorated with politician faces and megaphones playing music and declaring the possible presidents' stances. And, I don't know why, but I thought--"If suddenly these cars were shot down, like JFK style, when I got around to finding words to describe what happened, I would write from that girl's perspective."
After dinner (on 3/10) I talked to both my mom and sister on the phone. My mom excitedly announced, "9 days!" and when I talked to Sheri I was like, "Are you so excited to come here?!" She was."

3/15/04
"...At dinner Maria told us the bombs were from Al Queda, not ETA. I almost threw up on the table...I wish I would have been here this weekend to join the protests [I was in Paris] and vigils and take pictures...yesterday were the elections, Zappatero won, the Socialist party...apparently public opinion changed overnight...this should be a slap in the face to Bush as far as supporting the war against Iraq...or so I hear..."


I remember going to view the memorials a week or so later and thinking, "Man, this is like 9/11 in Spanish." I remember seeing a drawing that a kid made with markers of a train on fire and dead stick people lying on the ground. I was so overwhelmed, that I penned a letter to Joey back home. I recently found out he never received any of the letters I sent him while I was there, which still blows my mind, but as I've been paging through my journal, I've found multiple excerpts from those letters that I transcribed as entries for myself.
So, in closing, here's another entry:

"excerpt from 3/19 letter to Joey:
...How do you possibly explain to a child the terrible things that happen in our world...that there are people who will ruthlessly blow up cities without an ounce of remorse. Last summer I worked with this guy Tim who was the most negative person I've ever met. He hated everything except cigarettes and soup. On more than one occasion he mentioned hating kids, but I distinctly remember him saying once why he would never have his own--because he wouldn't want to 'subject another human to this fucked up world.' At first I just rolled my eyes, but later I actually found myself thinking about what he said and that maybe had a valid point. I thought of that today when I was looking at that kid's picture. I guess it's just another one of those 'what ifs...' or 'why bother...' thoughts. What if I had a kid and he/she ended up a victim of senseless violence? Or what if I didn't have a kid because I was scared, but he/she would have been able to change the world? Why bother letting yourself fall in love when it might end in heartbreak? Because as cliche as it sounds, nothing is for certain and every day should be lived how you want it. I don't know why I'm still here after all that has happened around me--survivors guilt times two--but since I am, I hope I can someday die knowing that I've positively impacted at least one life...I think that is probably the purpose of life--to help others live and love."

i support H.R. 676

I finally rented Michael Moore's latest documentary, Sicko, something I've been wanting to see since it first hit theaters earlier this year.

In the remaining five minutes of the movie my phone rang. 8 pm on a Tuesday from an 847-number I didn't recognize. Usually I'd just let it go to voicemail, but I paused the movie and answered. The voice on the other end belonged to my overly-exuberant gynecologist informing me that she's "sick of scanning" me (I've had about 10 ultrasounds in the past year) and wants to just go ahead and perform laparoscopic surgery to remove the cysts on my right ovary (which have been there since I was 19) and plans to "spare the ovary."

"I can't even believe you're calling me right now," I said. Here I am watching a documentary about these poor people who either don't have health insurance or whose health insurance has screwed them over by denying them benefits, and she wants me to just jump into the O.R. like I'm a millionaire.

Upon graduating college or maybe it was extended a few more months to when I turned 23, I was dropped from my mom's insurance. Despite her incessant warnings to me that I "need to get a job with benefits," I opted to not care. Of course that was the year my cysts decided to start attacking me once a month again. Now a few days away from turning 25, I am embarrassed to say that my parents have had to pay for virtually all of my medical bills. I admit, my mom was right; she usually is. But here's the problem. It's not my fault that what I want to do in life will probably never involve working for a large or rich enough company that provides insurance for their employees. So what am I supposed to do? Get a job doing something I hate so I have insurance in case I need surgery one day? Or just continue doing what I love to do and hope I never need to see a doctor?

When I lived in Madrid, Spain for almost five months, I had an embarrassing accident where I walked face-first into the solid glass door of a restaurant. (You can read the full story here: isla del tesoro) and subsequently had to take a painfully bumpy cab ride to the E.R....where I was seen in less than an hour, had my face x-rayed (and got to keep the x-ray), my nose bandaged, had one-on-one time with a doctor, and got a prescription for extra-strength Ibuprofin.

And I did not pay a single cent.

Here's the thing. I know Michael Moore's repertoire doesn't exactly have the best reputation. And I realize the international medical personnel who he interviews in this movie aren't going to say anything unappealing about their health care system vs. ours when the main audience is Americans and the U.S. government.
But, you can't really argue with the basic point of this documentary. Our health care system sucks. Insurance companies exist only to make money (and lots of it!) and don't give a shit about helping their clientele. This is exactly why Dr. Linda Peeno quit her job as a medical reviewer for Humana.
This is her statement when she testified before Congress in 1996:

DR. LINDA PEENO: I am here primarily today to make a public confession. In the spring of 1987, as a physician, I denied a man a necessary operation that would have saved his life and thus caused his death. No person and no group has held me accountable for this, because, in fact, what I did was I saved a company a half a million dollars for this.

Interestingly enough, Humana One is my current health care "provider," except all they've provided me with is an outrageously high ($5,000?!) deductible and months of panic that they were going to drop me altogether when they sent me a memo stating they were "investigating" my medical history for "pre-existing" conditions that I may have failed to mention.

With the primary elections right around the corner, I think this is an important issue to take into consideration. We are spending billions of dollars to kill both our own soldiers and innocent Iraqi civilians overseas, yet we can't seem to find the funds or decency to provide health care here at home.
As Tony Benn, the British, socialist diplomat says in the movie, "If we can find money to kill people, you can find money to help people."

Watching Moore take 9/11 rescue workers on a boat to Guantanamo Bay was one of the most depressing scenes I've ever witnessed in a movie. And this isn't just a movie, this is about real people, real people who volunteered their time to save others at Ground Zero and are now debilitated from their respiratory ailments.
I remember my dad calling me on September 12 when I was holed up in my dorm room on 5th Ave. and 10th St.
"Lyse, don't go outside. And if you do go outside, be sure to not breathe. But if you do have to breathe, please cover your nose and mouth! You wouldn't believe what they're saying is in the air there."

"Permission to enter," Michael Moore yells from a fishing boat across the Cuban water border as they approach Guantanamo Bay. "I have three 9/11 rescue workers. They need some medical attention."
Then he picks up a megaphone.
"These are 9/11 rescue workers," Moore repeats, amplified. "They just want some medical attention--the same kind that Al Queda is getting [i involuntarily shiver]. They don't want any more than they're giving the evil-doers. Just the same."

Now I'm all for treating human beings equally, but how is it that these terrorists, who helped plot and/or participated in the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, are the only people now on U.S. soil receiving "universal health care." I bet you won't see them complaining about waiting rooms or insufficient medical supplies.

Furthermore, watch this. Then be embarrassed to be an American. This clip was only in the "special features" portion of the DVD because supposedly Moore didn't think people would believe it.

At the end of the movie, this website appeared on the screen:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/sicko/what-can-i-do/

I know people would argue that Moore paints an idealistic picture of universal health care, but I'll tell you one thing....I'm thinking about looking up laparoscopy in Canada.

isla del tesoro

By mid-March studying abroad began to stress me out, as I never expected to have to actually study. So for the first weekend since I arrived in Madrid in January, I stayed put to get some work done. On that Saturday my roommate, Lisa, and I decided to go to Isla Del Tesoro, a vegetarian restaurant, for lunch. Around two in the afternoon we headed over there in anxious anticipation of a healthy meal. After two weeks of an unwelcome chill in the air, my face appreciatively soaked in the fickle sun. Inside, the restaurant’s blue ceiling had a hanging fishnet tangled with twinkling lights that made me feel like I was underwater. The food was excellent. All was peaceful. Then we went to leave.
BANG!
“Yeah, that was a door,” Lisa said to me after I ran face first into the clear glass. Within the 30 minutes it had taken us to eat lunch I had forgotten that there were two doors I needed to open before returning outside.
“Ow! I seriously think I just broke my nose,” I said as I stumbled out the second one. I put my hand up to my face and took it away. Red. “Shit!”
Lisa pointed out a farmacía across the street. I had both hands over my nose, every few seconds removing them to shake them dry. The beginnings of rain fell, and a polka-dotted mix of blood and water Jackson Polluck-ed my shirt. The look on the pharmacist’s face was enough to make me want to avoid seeing the damage, but she led me behind the counter to the employee bathroom and told me to wash myself in the sink. I saw my reflection in the mirror and, horrified, looked down and shoved my hands under the faucet before splashing my face several times. The nice lady handed me a paper towel and gave me a piece of gauze to press on the small cut on top of my nose. “Esta roto?” I asked her if she thought it was broken, and she said she didn’t know but that I needed to go to a hospital. We walked back to the front of the pharmacy. “Muchas gracias,” I said, embarrassed, as she bent down to wipe a ruby spot off the floor.
Lisa and I hopped in a cab that was parked right outside. I started laughing as I slouched against the car door, thinking about how I am, generally speaking, a klutzy individual, but this takes the cake. A few minutes later my whole face started throbbing, and I forgot what was funny. I closed my eyes, absorbing every bump in the road.

At the hospital I sat in a chair, while Lisa went into a different room to register my name with the receptionist. A man came in with his wife, and I watched through the window as he tried to reason with the same woman Lisa was talking to behind the Plexiglas. The receptionist repeatedly told him to wait in the other room. The couple pushed through the swinging doors and the woman sat in the chair next to mine, while her husband’s concerned face looked from his wife to a security guard.
“Feel her heart beat!” I guessed he said. Reluctantly, the other man did, but told him he was not a doctor.
I hoped I didn’t have priority over her just because I arrived two minutes prior. Our names were called at the same time and we parted ways at a fork in the hallway. I sat down, still holding the bloody gauze on and the paper towel under my nose. Lisa contemplated the English translation of the sign next to the large entranceway: OTORRINOLARINGOLOGIA.
“Can you smell that?” she asked me.
“Smell what?”
“Oh you’re lucky you can’t. It smells like shit.”
Only briefly did I panic that I might have lost one of my senses because it was then a man in blue scrubs called my name and saved me from my paranoia. I followed him through the entranceway and into an examining room. With a practiced mix of sign language, Spanish, and English I explained to the doctor at the desk that I ran into a door and made myself laugh a little, avoiding eye contact. A sympathetic smile crept across his face as he jotted some notes and two minutes later sent me back into the hall. He walked close behind me and told Lisa, who was acting as my translator, that I needed to go to Radiology to get my face X-rayed.
Lisa and I rounded a few corners and came to the third waiting area. A family stood somber around a bed on wheels, a man in the bed covered with tubes looked from person to person. Once we made eye contact. I couldn’t stand still and got really fidgety. I hate hospitals. I opted to sit down with my back to the family. I’ve been in their position too many times and know that it doesn’t help to have people with fewer problems watching you. From the other direction, a young man rolled in a wheelchair in which an ancient, shriveled woman sat uncomfortably. She looked like a skeleton trapped in a thin layer of brown skin. Her frail hands trembled beneath multi-colored gloves.
“Alyse?”
I jumped up and went into the X-ray room with the girl who called my name. She tried to tell me to do something, but in Spanish, and I looked back at her, confused. She pointed to where I should stand, then physically turned me to the side, put a magnetic board in my hand, and pushed my elbow up until the board was next to the side of my face. She took the picture then told me to wait outside. A few minutes later she brought out the developed image.
Back in the previous waiting area I got to examine the X-ray of my skull for a minute or two. “I can’t decide if this is neat or creepy,” I said to Lisa. “But it’s funny how far my lip sticks out past my teeth…Oh and there are two of my fingers where I was holding the board!...I hope I get to keep this. Best souvenir ever… ” A female nurse came and took the picture from me—it served as my golden ticket in to see the doctor.
Now what was I supposed to look at? Every two minutes a man with a bandaged nose and a protruding potbelly hobbled to the garbage can in the corner, made a nauseating hacking sound in his throat, and proceeded to spit up a downpour of blood into the neon green plastic bag.
“Look at that guy’s hair,” Lisa whispered and directed me with her eyes.
An older man stood beside the row of chairs across from us. The only hair he had grew like folded gray wings on the sides of his head, while some sprouted out his ears. The remaining bald top reflected the florescent lighting, and his worried eyes watched his seated wife; her nose was busy ruining a pink hand towel. The man next to her sat with his head back, holding an ice pack to his bloody nose. There was so much blood flowing in that one small hallway, I imagined all of us paddling out of the hospital in a red river on a voyage to find the world’s biggest Band-Aid.
I need to get out of here, I muttered under my breath.
And like an answered prayer, my name was called. I trotted into the same room with the doctor from earlier. He had me sit in a large examining chair, then stuck his head out the door to call down the hall for Lisa to resume her job as a Spanish-English dictionary. With gentle fingers he squeezed the sides of my nose. This made the wound reopen, but that aside, he repeated “Buena nariz” to me several times. I never considered my nose to be “good,” but I hoped that meant it wasn’t broken.
“Tranquila,” he said in response to my flinching, as he came towards my face with a miniature metal speculum. He stuck it up each nostril for one final check, then looked over the X-ray briefly.
While the doctor walked across the room to retrieve an array of bandages, the man with the winged hair appeared in the doorway and stuttered that his wife was waiting to be seen with the same problem. I looked at him and tried to apologize with my eyes when the doctor told him he had to wait his turn. Sometimes I don’t want to endure getting old, I thought.
I drew my attention back to the medic as he approached me with his handful of goodies. First he put a piece of medical tape horizontal over my cut, then a white thin spongy strip running vertical, making a cross. Then the best part—a huge contraption that doubled as a nose brace and a bandage. No need to go on a search for the world’s biggest Band-Aid anymore—it was on my face!
He sat down at the desk and explained everything to Lisa. My nose was not broken. Amazing. I was to keep the bandages on for four or five days and take 400 mg of Ibuprofen every eight hours. No problem. That I understood. My mom’s a pharmacist, but with all the drugs she deals with, her cure-all has always been Ibuprofen, He handed Lisa the prescription, a sheet explaining the signs of a possible concussion, and the X-ray of my skull.
“The X-ray,” Lisa began, pointing to the three items. “How do you say ‘keep’?” she turned to me and asked. I shrugged. “Guardar!” she declared. She asked if I could keep the X-ray. He said everything was mine. “You get to keep it!” she said excitedly.
As we gave the receptionist my release form to be stamped, I glanced down at the little information Lisa had given her an hour prior. My name, my birthday, the address we were currently living at…
“Sexo: Male?!” I exclaimed.
“The ‘M’ stands for ‘Mujer’ dumbass!” Lisa scolded.
“Or Moron,” I added.

We took a cab back to our apartment and tried to sneak me past Maria, our Señora, so she wouldn’t freak out and start speaking speedy Spanish. We successfully got me into our room and shut the door.
And then the inevitable: Knock, knock.
Lisa had already climbed out the window to smoke a cigarette on the balcony, so I opened the door a crack.
“Don’t look at my face,” I told Maria, attempting to hide the monstrosity with my hand, and let her into the room.
Her concern lasted only momentarily before she went on to rant about how every Tuesday she is going to clean our room and it doesn’t matter that we’re students, we still need to live in an orderly fashion. Then she looked at my face and laughed. I rolled my eyes. Nice to know what she takes seriously.

Jackie, our other roommate, and I joined Lisa on the balcony. They lit a joint to share.
“Man, if I was going to smoke pot any time, it should probably be now.” But I didn’t. Instead I gave Lisa a thank-you hug and left the apartment to call home and tell my parents another tale about their clumsy older daughter.
“Were you drunk?” my mom asked.
“No!” I said, offended at first. “Actually…I wish I had been. At least that’s an excuse! But hey the good news is, apparently all urgent care in this country is free. So we don’t have to worry about insurance or anything like that.”

That night I reached to turn off the lamp next to my bed and realized my X-ray was still on top of it. I had put it there to protect it from clumsy feet, but forgot about it when I turned the light on to read an hour earlier. I grabbed for it only to find a large brown circle where the heat had almost burnt a hole through the film. I managed to destroy the only thing worth showing from the whole adventure. A perfect ending to an imperfect day.

Epilogue:

A week later Lisa returned to Isla Del Tesoro.
“You are never going to believe what they did,” she said to me when she returned from lunch.
I had no guesses.
“They put a fucking Bull’s-eye on the door!”
And sure enough, next time I walked past there I saw the large red, white, and blue circle, and it was exactly even with the tip of my nose.

madrid--day 3

March 18, 2007

Last night I couldn't sleep, so I laid in bed reading out of two different books and completing the crossword puzzles in the back of two People magazines until 3 in the morning. I told my mom to wake me up at 8:30 because Sheri was supposed to be at our hotel at 9:30. She didn't show up until 11, so I took advantage of her procrastination and got an extra 90 minutes of rest.

We went to el Rastro, the huge Sunday morning flea market. When I lived there three years ago I bought myself peacock feather earrings, a giant poster of flamenco dancers, and a suitcase to bring all my accumulated European treasures back home. This time around all I could think about was leaving. It was unbearably crowded, and this older man with a giant lens on his camera kept turning around and taking pictures of my face. I think he thought he was being sneaky, but it's hard not to notice something like that. My sister got mad when I pointed him out, took my camera out of my hands, made sure the man was looking at us and took pictures of his face, the whole time with a defiant look in her eye.
Here he is:
And here is one of my favorite photos from the trip. I'm not sure if all pictures are worth 1,000 words, but I am sure that this one could provoke quite a conversation:

No one bought anything at this time. I think we were all anxious to get away from there. We hopped on the Metro and got off at the Bilbao to go to lunch. We went to Isla Del Tesoro, my favorite restaurant when I lived in Madrid. I approached the huge glass door cautiously this time, careful to not smack my face into it like I did almost exactly three years ago to the day. The bulls eye they put up a week after my accident was still there, although the red, white and blue cocentric circles had faded, and the thing as a whole looked rather weathered. It was still at the height of my nose. I guess I haven't grown.

[if you want to read the story of the mis-hap and see the original bulls eye, click here]
The food was just as good as I remembered, especially the bowl of chickpeas drenched in a thick, creamy garlic sauce. While we awaited our main courses, I borrowed Sheri's phone and went out on the street to call Maria Luisa, my Señora I used to live with. I had to psych myself up as the phone rang, preparing myself to not fully understand everything she was going to say to me in Spanish. At first she kept saying, "Quien??" I wasn't sure what else to answer besides my name, and my use of Spanish in the past tense isn't great, but eventually she figured it out when I explained that I used to live with her. "Oh bonita!" she exclaimed. She continued to tell me that she had a really busy week coming up and to call her in a few days to make a definite plan. "Bueno. Hasta luego."

Post-lunch activity: trip to the Thyssen museum. One of my collarbones itched, right on the bone that juts out. "Ew!" my sister exclaimed. "There's a big white spot right where you're itching! That's so gross!" As I sat on a bench outside of the museum's entrance debating whether I wanted to go in, I took digital snapshots of my collarbone and then in playback mode zoomed into the white spot so that it took up the whole screen. That was a bad idea. Then I got paranoid that I was housing bugs inside me and had unbearable flashbacks of when I contracted Chiggers and my Señora thought her house was infested with fleas because of me.
I tried to ignore the bite and decided to join my family in the Thyssen, even though it didn't rate as one of my favorite places when I was here last. We saw the special exhibit: "The mirror & the mask: Portraiture in the age of Picasso," then we all went to the third floor to start checking out the permanent exhibits. Ok, I understand that religious art was pretty much the beginning of art, but I can only look at so many bloody Jesus-es before I start rolling my eyes completely uninterested and just plow through rooms like there's nothing on the walls. Which is exactly what I did. I saw all of this three years ago, and I still didn't like it. Second floor, impressionism and cubism...getting better. The ground floor, though, made the re-visit worthwhile. 20th century contemporary art. Still some of my favorite pieces to date.
My family couldn't believe how quickly I plowed through the entire museum, when they found me sitting on a bench in the lobby writing in my notebook. I told them I was exhausted, plus I'd been there before, so it was nothing new.

As we walked back to the hotel, I thought, This just isn't as exciting...maybe because I feel like I've seen everything already so it just seems as though I'm in any urban setting..and people just happen to speak Spanish.
We all took a nap before dinner. Then we met Sheri's best friend and roommate abroad, Stevie, as well as their new friend, Ashley, at an Italian restaurant. I ordered "vegetarian mash" pizza, which came with a runny egg oozing on top. Mmmm....not. Their version of sangria, which I got both my parents hooked on, was disappointing. All oranges, no other exciting fruits.

On our retreat back to the hotel, I tried calling Lindsay back home to wish her a happy 24th birthday, but the stupid pay phone cut me out right as I was about to leave a message. One Euro down the drain. "It's the thought that counts," my mom told me as I slammed down the receiver. But I'm usually not satisfied with just thoughts.

madrid--day 2

March 17, 2007
My dreams were intricate and realistic--being introduced repeatedly to someone with same name as our waitress at the flamenco restaurant--interrupted several times throughout the night by incredibly loud sirens four stories down on Gran Via.
In the morning, or what I thought was the morning but was actually afternoon, my mom woke my dad and I up, informing us that it was after 12:00. I sat up, startled. With no alarm clock and electric window shades that make it impossible to determine whether it's anything but the middle of the night, I assumed that we were still within the normal sleeping hours. Good ol' jet lag, it'll get you every time.

We didn't leave the hotel room until after 1:00. Our first stop, Zara, a popular Spanish clothing store that sells cheap designer trend knock-offs. Now, I am not a shopper, nor did I feel like I came all the way to Europe to shop, but at the same time, I haven't--in fashion-conscious people's terms--"updated my wardrobe" in quite awhile. I'm not naming years here because I honestly couldn't tell you how long it's been. . My sister huffed and puffed her way out of los probadores to send in my mom after I requested a second opinion. One shirt--zero votes. Other shirt--one (mom) vote. (Votes only received from mom and sister....dad waited outside, but when I later, in the hotel room tried them on for him, his response was as follows: "Well they're not my favorite clothes you own...")Regardless, I bought them both. Correction, my mom bought them both for me. She's been insisting I get new clothes for years, and was so excited that I found something, that she also insisted on paying for it.

Sheri met us at Zara, and from there we headed to her place, stopping first for lunch at a little side-street restaurant called La Tortilla de Mamá, which was true to its name. Ever since I lived with Maria Luisa, I've bragged about how her tortilla was the best in all of Madrid...and I had my fair share of tortilla, seeing as I avoided all things jámon or del mar. But this place was comparable--still not quite up to Maria's standards--but definitely a notch above anywhere else I tried the dish outside of Maria's kitchen. In fact, the whole menu consisted of different kinds of tortillas. My mom and I shared one with cheese and tomato sauce, while my dad and sister shared one with chorizo. My dad marveled at how expensive a miniature bottle of Coke cost. Over 2 Euros for about 30cL.


After my parents had a tour of Sheri's host family's apartment, we decided to go to the Reina Sofia art museum, which is free on Saturdays. When we got out of the Metro at the Atocha stop, we saw a huge crowd of people taking over a main intersection. It was some sort of peace demonstration. A bunch of people had "PAZ" signs rubberbanded to their foreheads. There was a stage set up, with speakers on either side blasting the sorrowful song, "Mad World" (in English). The stage itself had a handful of photographers taking pictures of the crowd. Seeing the signs posted at bus stops about ending the war in Iraq and posters on sticking poking out of garbage cans that read, "U$A GO HOME" made me consider becoming an ex-patriot.

I'm glad I got to go back to the Reina Sofia, even if we only had an hour and a half to explore before the establishment closed. That place was one of my three favorite art museums I visited while living in Europe--the other two being the Tate Modern in London and the Musée D'Orsay in Paris. The Reina Sofia is famous for housing Picasso's Guernica, a painting found in every Spanish textbook back in the States. My dad approached me as we milled around the masterpiece, "I'll ask you this, since you're the most artistic in the family...How does someone come up with something like this?" I regurgitated the little bit of history I could remember about the destruction of a town in northern Spain by the same name. "I understand that. But how does he [Picasso] decide to paint people looking like that?" I looked over at the balloon-headed, yelping people portrayed in the painting. The only person who could really answer that question is Picasso himself. "It's just how he sees them in his mind," was all I could muster up.
In the temporary exhibition, "First Generation: Art and the Moving Image, 1963-1986," each room had various T.V. installations by several different artists. One room had a bunch of T.V.'s atop pillars, with black & white videos of transportation scenes around New York City filmed in the early 1970's. The installation was called Manhattan As An Island (1974) by Ira Schneider. A few of the videos revolved around the World Trade Center (as viewed from a boat), which at the time, must have been a brand-new, revolutionary addition to the city. I stood and stared at them for a few minutes. I saw those fall, I thought. I am standing in a building right across the street from where Al Qaeda blew up in 2004 the trains at Atocha, while standing here watching 30-some-year-old footage of the towers the same terrorist group demolished in 2001. And I have such strong ties to both cities.
You can read more about the exhibit here.

[reina sofia elevator shaft]

Unfortunately, we only saw a very small portion of the museum before we got ushered out by the museum staff 15 minutes before closing time. I suggested getting dinner at Isla Del Tesoro, a vegetarian restaurant near where I used to live. The hostess told us that unless we had a reservation, we couldn't get a table. So we went next door to some Asian place, where I couldn't really find anything on the menu that I wanted...this being after I attempted to order the vegetable dumplings only to find out they didn't have anymore. I had some sort of mixed vegetable plate instead, but it was of appetizer proportions and not nearly enough to fill me up.
So being the stereotypical fat American, I requested we stop at McDonald's before retreating back to the hotel. All three of us (we parted ways with Sheri underground at the Bilboa station) got chococlate fudge sundaes, and on top of that I also ordered a large patatas deluxe (like potato wedges), something I used to munch on because they're surprisingly tasty and only cost a Euro. Despite being the fast food instigator, I still felt embarrassed as we walked the block back to the hotel holding a McD's bag chock full of junk. I scarfed both foods down and went to sleep not just acting like a fat American, but feeling like one too.

[all of our sundaes]

madrid--day 1

March 16, 2007

Ah, el aeropuerto Barajas. Basically my second home when I lived here three years ago. Customs (which only involved getting our passports stamped) took no time at all, retrieving our bags only about 10 minutes. Then we waited outside about 45 minutes for the Hotel Atlantico bus. I put on a blindfold and posed like the pedestrian-crossing sign to humor myself. My dad made friends with a different bus driver while we were waiting for ours to show up. The man apparently said he hates our president, and I recalled my trip to Interlaken--the most peaceful place on Earth--and even there someone had spraypainted "KILL BUSH" on the wall of a building. If there's anything to look forward to politically-speaking, it's that Bush can no longer be re-elected, which is a blessing, seeing as he wasn't even elected in the first place. What a joke.

The ride into the city wasn't familiar because the only time I didn't take the Metro to/from the airport was the first day I arrived. And I was so jet lagged and overwhelmed at the time, I didn't take visual note of my surroundings.
Once we got into the city limits, though, and drove past el Parque Retiro and the Cibeles fountain and then down Gran Via, I felt like I had never left. My dad turned to me and asked in a mocking tone, "Did you learn any Spanish while you were here?" after I temporarily couldn't remember how to say "good morning" (buenos dias). I immediately became defensive and declared it preposterous that he would even ask that. In fact, I feel like as soon as I was once again immersed in the language, everything came rushing back to me.
Our room needed 40 minutes, so the concierge took our bags and directed us to the first floors (all ground floors in Spain are "0" not "1") to use the teléfono. We took the elevator one flight one flight up to call Sheri but got distracted by the complimentary breakfast. Desayuno ----> this way. When my mom and sister visited me they stayed in this same hotel, and I met them here every morning to take advantage of the free food.

My first cup of café con leche on 3 years! Amazing. The yogurt is better here. Freshly-squeezed orange juice doesn't cost extra. God, I love Spain. We filled our bellies (once again) until our room was ready. #414, right across the street from the same cine as the last time. It's a charming little room. We each have our own twin-sized bed, mine is up a step and in an alcove-type area. Love it.
I took about a three-hour nap, dozing in and out of real sleep. I woke up when I heard my parents talking about leaving to go to the tourist office at Plaza Mayor. They left. I took a long shower, and what a powerful one! I was just about to leave to walk around for a little bit when there was a knock at the door--Sheri! She said she had to go back to her place to call the restaurant to confirm our dinner reservation, so I went with her.
We passed la Plaza de España, where I used to sit by myself and read and once wrote a poem about pigeons on the back of a postcard...

2/28/04
For no reason an army of pigeons landed on Plaza de España
In rows they faced the fickle sun in a sleeping position--
heads held back, bodies inflated
When a gust of February wind intruded upon their siesta
They rotated in unison, a quarter turn
Resumed resting
Then one by one,
As though voices called them home
They took flight over the fountain

...and a travel agency I swore I'd been in before. She lives cerca del Parque del Oeste, though, which I'm pretty sure I never saw in the four months I lived here. The setup of her building's lobby--c/ Urquijo, 43--was similar to what mine had been. An old-time cage-looking elevator and an old doorman, named Juan, to match.
I understood most of what he said to my sister in his native tongue, except I thought he said "luna" (moon), when he actually said "lunes" (Monday). I kind of wish I hadn't so confidently replied because it ruined how poetic I thought he'd been. I thought he said, "The weather is going to change with the change of the moon (cambia a la luna), but in actuality he said "cambia a lunes" (change on Monday)...so when I said , "más frío mañana," they both looked at me strangely--
Sheri: No, Monday.
Juan: No, el lunes.

The elevator buttons lit up neon in a circular ring around the floor numbers. I commented how that was way more advanced, if not futuristic, than Maria's elevator buttons. The "apartment" she lives in is HUGE! I mean I guess it makes sense--2 parents, 4 kids, 1 dog. I met the 21-year-old sister, Fatima, and the 23-year-old brother, Yago. I had a hard time understanding both of them but did notice they were "atractivos" (I may have made up that word). I wanted the older brother, Eugenio (29), to be there, as he's all I ever hear about. No such luck. But of course their small black dog, Capri, took an instant liking to me and my lap. I succumbed to checking my e-mail--so much for giving up cell phones and computers for 10 days. Well, at least my phone doesn't work here.
Sheri gathered her change of clothes and we walked back to the hotel. Ran into one of her friends from her internship (at Club de Madrid) and her boyfriend on the street. I don't remember her name, but she seemed like a very happy person. Back at the hotel Sheri and the parents reunited, and we had about 15 minutes to get ready for dinner. Sheri wore a new dress, a silky thing that was probably meant to be a shirt. And no underwear. Ok, a thong doesn't count. This comes into play later.

We met Jordi, Alex, and Vicki beside the statue in front of the Palacio Real and walked from there to the flamenco place--Corral de la Moreria. We sat at a table for 8 (for the 7 of us) perpendicularly touching the front of the stage. We shared a pitcher of Sangria--ah, it's good to be back in Spain--and treated ourselves to fat American amounts of food. This confused our waitress (who's name, by the way, was Alina. Dad: Alyse meet Alina, Alina, Alyse.") because she kept telling us we were ordering too much.

The food was delicious--my favorite parts: my goat cheese salad and Sheri's dessert, which consisted of honey ice cream with chocolate dribbled on top. The flamenco dancers and singers danced and sang with an intensity you can't find in most performances. They leave you wanting to know what caused the pain behind their eyes and stomp the ground like the wooden floorboards killed their children. I remembered my señora, Maria Luisa, telling me that I would look "preciosa" in a flamenco dress. A giant bobby pin landed on my sister's empty dinner plate. Must have flown off one of the female dancers' heads. Then there was the one male dancer. He sweat so much that when he spun in circles the perspiration spiraled across our entire table, landing both on our desserts and our faces. Yummy.

We left during an intermission, as we were all getting pretty sleepy, the clock approaching midnight. As soon as we stepped outside the wind blew up Sheri's shirt/dress, causing her to inadvertently flash the sleazy Spanish men lingering around the front of the restaurant. I flew at her, my coat held open, and threw it over her shoulders, hugging her to me. "Next time, wear underwear," I advised.

We said goodbye to our dinner buddies, laughing about how it took coming to Madrid to meet up with our neighbors from back home. My family got in a cab, first dropping Sheri off at her apartment and then to the Hotel Atlantico for me and my parents.
I took some photos in the hotel bathroom because my dress looked like it was supposed to be part of the decor. Then I got ready for bed.

"Dad, can I use your floss?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Well cause it starts and ends with my vitamins. 100 of each."
"Alyse," mom interjected, "just use it without asking him."

I decided against flossing, despite how gross my teeth felt. Before I fell asleep I thought about how there was no phone to set an alarm on and no last-minute e-mails to check...I could get used to this, I thought.

en route to spain

March 15, 2007

The two headlines on the front page of this morning's paper:

1) Sept. 11 Suspect said to confess: Sears Tower a target, too, Pentagon says

2) Flying toward disaster? Near collision shows hazard in skies around O'Hare

This only seemed appropriate seeing as my last awake thought last night included falling out the tail end of an exploded plane. Out of superstition I wore a sold blue t-shirt I've owned since 7th grade, chosen because it's the same shirt I wore on my first ever solo flight, just three weeks after September 11 (2001), when I flew from NYC home to Chicago to surprise my dad for his 50th birthday. At the time I decided that if I made it to my destination sans terrorist action, I would always wear this shirt on future flights.

When we got to O'Hare a swipe of my dad's credit card wasn't enough to bring up our itinerary on the do-it-yourself computer screen. Of course he knew the record locator number by heart: Q...4...LBJ? And my parents already argued about something dumb, to which the Delta employee responded, "She's always right--haven't you learned that by now?" To which my dad responded, "A billion seconds."
"Sorry?"
"We've been married a billion seconds."
"And what does that translate to?" he asked.
"31 years and 8 months."
"Well congratulations!"
"Thanks!"
As the man weighed each suitcase individually, my dad bent over and peered under the counter, announcing, "and this one should be...." The man remarked how groups of retired men will turn this into a betting game--who can guess the closest to the actual weight.
"Times have changed," my dad said with a chuckle as he attached identity tags to each suitcase handle. "Cell phone and e-mail it asks for!"

Just past security my mom spotted the book she left at home with only 15 remaining pages to read. So she stood beside the kiosk and quickly skimmed the final chapter. The woman selling the books directed us to the Starbucks a few feet away and said they were giving away free cups of coffee. I had vowed I wouldn't drink anything, especially coffee, but I couldn't resist "free" (I've subsequently peed, I think, 6 times since then). In line we overheard the woman in front of us say she had both triplets and twins (actually 2 sets of triplets, but she "lost one"). So we started talking to her and we had to play the age-guessing game. She guessed "high" with 18, and her mouth dropped when I said 24. Before this, she had walked past and brushed her hand along my hair and said in passing, "Love the curls!" She, herself, had tightly-wound light brown ringlets.

We took a small plane to NYC's JFK airport and sat in 3 consecutive window seats. 9-11. Those numbers. Again. There are those brief moments where I hold my breath and assume we'll suddenly plummet or crash into a building. Instead the flight was fast and uneventful. The girl next to me read a thick book that I assumed was written in Polish. I might be the only person in the world who simultaneously reads The New Yorker followed by the fourth book of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series. I started with a fascinating article about spiders and reminisced about my former aspirations of "When I grow up, I want to be a/an.....ENTOMOLOGIST." And the Pants book obviously reminds me of my friends--the "Septembers" standing in for the Unit.


[my dad watching us ascend]

I waited to eat anything until we arrived at JFK. We went to a place called the Sam Adams Restaurant, and I ordered quesadillas. Safe bet, right? Wrong. I hardly ever have complaints about food, but that was one of the worst meals I've ever eaten. But I didn't want to be wasteful, so I at it all anyway. Afterwards we sat at gate 8 for about an hour. My dad sat next to me reading about Madrid. "I can't find anything about Franco, but he died November, '75...five months after we got married. Ha! So he's almost been dead a billion seconds."

Boarded the flight to Madrid. My parents shared row 36 A&B. I had been assigned 37A, a window seat, which was already being occupied.
"Do you want the window?" the man asked, tilting the cell phone away from his mouth.
"I don't care," I replied, as I carefully lifted my backpack into the overhead compartment.
"To the girl sitting down," the man said into the phone. "I don't know. She's a young girl."..."My girlfriend," he mouthed to me and pointed at "her" in the phone. I half-smiled politely.
"HOW OLD DO YOU THINK SHE IS?" my dad dared him in a loud voice.
"18."
"Ha! Just like the woman at O'Hare!" my dad laughed. "She's 40."
"This is a really fun game," my input dripping with sarcasm. "I'm 24," I said to the man.
"No way."
"Way."
"No you're not. Are you serious?"
"I'm serious." Why is this always a topic of conversation?
My mom turned around in her seat then and looked over the headrest--"And how old do you think I am?" she asked, her voice gleeful.
People always tell me I'll appreciate the young guesses when I'm older. Apparently my mom has reached that age. People usually express doubt that she's old enough to have not one, but two daughters in their 20's. She loves every second of it.

Another disappointing meal. I don't know what I was expecting being airplane food. Plus, the quesadillas are still taking up occupancy in my stomach. Now the salty pasta, wilted salad and two cans of Coke are piled on top of the gross lunch.

I was reading a good amount of the Pants book (there are at least 2 other girls reading the same one on this flight), and this baby has been persistently WAILING for almost an hour. Her dad keeps pacing up and down the two aisles trying to gently console her. I finally couldn't take it anymore--hence the journal continuation and the Amelie soundtrack blasting in my ears. I think I might attempt sleeping a little...they're showing Rocky Balboa, even though before take-off they announced it'd be Dreamgirls, which I actually would have watched. My dad is sitting in front of me whistling the Rocky theme for the third time, my mom just scolded him for the second time. At one point he punched both arms into the air in a forceful "V for Victory" motion.

NOTE TO SELF: IF YOU EVER HAVE KIDS, AND THAT'S A BIG IF, DO NOT TAKE THEM ON AN OVERSEAS FLIGHT UNTIL THEY'RE OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW NOT TO CRY UNRELENTLESSLY IN A PLANE FULL OF EXHAUSTED TRAVELERS!

Sleeping was virtually impossible. I had to incessantly crack my toes, and there was just no comfortable way to position myself. I maybe dozed off for an hour.

[photo taken by Mom]

We began our descent just as the sun began rising over Madrid. Topographical vocabulary started permeating my brain. That is a plateau boys and girls. As we touched down and pulled up to the jetway, music began playing overhead. Gipsy Kings? David Bisbal? Mána? Nope. A rousing sax-filled rendition of the theme song from Cheers. We landed over four hours ago, and I'm still whistling, "Where everybody knows your name...."

my new year's resolution is to try and post an entry every day

(3 reasons why I haven’t posted in over two weeks:
1) amy’s home from CA for winter break, and being that she’s one of my only known daily readers, I don’t have her motivating me to make sure I post something for her to read every morning while she's teaching
2) the holidays
3) parents gave me the Lost DVDS (seasons 1 and 2), and I’ve become addicted)

so i started writing the following post several weeks ago....here it goes:

"You would kill me if you knew what I'm doing right now in order to talk to you," Amy said to me over the phone.

"Oh no. What?" I ask. Amy has been one of my best friends since first grade. She lives in Sunnyvale, CA now as a Teach For America teacher in East Palo Alto. Despite the time difference, we find time to talk early in the morning. By the time I get home from driving Max to school, she's getting ready to head to school herself.

"I'm using my bluetooth earpiece," she says with an embarrassed giggle. Well, probably not embarrassed because after 17 years of friendship, we are way beyond embarrassment.

"Well I guess it gets the job done...less strain on your neck."

She called just as I was on my way out the door. I'm walking to Filter, the coffeeshop a few blocks from where I live, to spend a few hours caffeinating myself, while editing a friend's manuscript and staring out a window. The weatherman on the radio said that "the wind-chill brings the temperature down to a chilly zero degrees."

"Well you'll be happy to know, that despite the fact that this is the coldest day of winter so far, I've decided to downsize my coat and therefore am not wearing the huge, purple, puffy-sleeved 80's number that everyone hates," I tell her. Ok, so maybe there is still room for embarrassment...our friend Abbi would jokingly (?) refuse to be seen with me senior year of high school after I bought the coat for $5 at a thrift store and thought it was really cool.

Then it's back to the earpiece. "You know I remember the first time I ever saw someone using one of those earpiece devices...” I begin to tell Amy the story of when I was living in New York City. It was my first year there, I think within my first week there, which would mean I, myself, didn’t even own a cell phone yet. I was in one of those corner delis, where you can get anything “for the road.” I was standing in line behind a woman who appeared to be talking to herself. Not just talking to herself, but literally talking about how she left a psych ward. I found this quite humorous (yet slightly strange…and wondered if there was some sort of padded vehicle waiting for her outside), noting it as one of those “only in New York” moments. Then she turned to leave. There was some sort of black device in her ear connected to a phone--which was clipped to her pants--by some sort of cord. I remember thinking, “What the heck is that??” and found that stranger than my original assumption that she was just a regular old psycho.

That took place in 2001. “Only in New York” took on a whole new meaning about a week later. I won’t go into all my personal recollections of September 11 (at least not now…someday maybe I’ll write a post about it...but for now I need to keep focused), but that day is worth mentioning because I did not yet own a cell phone. When I ran downstairs with my camera to stand in front of my dorm (on 5th ave. and 10th street) and stare at what happened, there was no one way for me to immediately contact anyone. I went to New York to start over, and seeing as this all happened on what was supposed to be only my 4th day of classes, I knew no one. There were people standing around me. I remember one man holding his cell phone and swearing at it because he couldn’t get a signal. And there was a girl standing behind me on a cell phone hysterically crying to someone on the other end, screaming, “DAD IS IN THERE AND PEOPLE ARE STANDING AROUND TAKING PICTURES!” I lowered my camera. From my vantage point I thought it was just a little Cessna that had caused the flaming hole and honestly wasn’t that concerned. But out of respect (and guilt) for the crying girl, I stopped taking pictures. I turned to go back inside. At that moment the second plane flew into the second tower. Then I was concerned—to put it mildly. I ran to my room and used a calling card to call home on the landline. My mom thankfully answered, and while she hung up to call my dad at work, I tried to call all of my best friends (we dispersed across the country after high school), only getting a hold of one. None of us had cell phones. In fact, the most popular gifts to give for high school graduation were calling cards. I had thrown my stack of them into a desk drawer when I moved into my new home, assuming they’d last me at least first semester, if not all of freshmen year. Within that month of September I talked my way through thousands of pre-paid minutes. When I went home for Thanksgiving that year, my parents gave me a cell phone for my 19th birthday (which always falls on or around Turkey Day). They knew I had emptied all my calling cards and feared that I’d never call home unless they sucked it up and bought me one.

Five years later it’s hard to imagine life without a cell phone. Everyone has one. Well, everyone except my friend Andrew, who said to me the other night when we were planning to meet up somewhere at a certain time—“You know,” he said, not masking his annoyance, “this is what people did before cell phones.” I felt guilty and embarrassed because I am usually the one who gets defensive about the past, and here I found myself doubting that if we said we’d meet at 8:00 in front of Starbucks, that’d actually pan out as planned without one of us calling the other to say we’re running a few minutes late. He’s right. The world worked, and possibly better, before these little phones.
Growing up, the only people I knew who had anything close were Zack Morris from the famed Saved By the Bell and George, my friend’s dad, who had a “car phone”—named so because it rested between the driver and passenger seats, hence only for car use. Even that still had a cord.
Now, as I already mentioned above, everyone has one. Even 8-year-olds. I am officially a "soccer mom"...oh excuse me, a fencing mom. On Thursdays I pick up not only Max from school but his friend Maddie as well, a fellow seventh-grader, and drive them both to fencing lessons. Maddie hardly smiles, gives off the impression that she’s an apathetic hardass, and answers everything with a bite of sarcasm. She reminds me a lot of myself when I was twelve. So the other day she was sitting in the back of my car and she gets a phone call. Yes, you’re thinking: what does a 12-year-old need with a cell phone? But it gets worse.
“I told you five times—I’m twelve,” Maddie seethes. Followed by a deadpan series of, “No….no….yessss….no. I gotta go now.”
“Who was that?” I ask with a laugh.
“These little girls who ride my school bus.”
“How old are they?”
“Eight.”
“What?! Are you serious??”
She was.

Later on Max is telling Maddie something when, all of a sudden, mid-sentence he goes, "Woah! Is that a PS2??"
I look in the rearview mirror to see Maddie holding some kind of handheld device.
"Yeah," Maddy responds coolly, as though it’s the dumbest question ever asked. Max, clearly impressed, proceeds to discuss the high costs of the brand spankin’ new PS3 and Nintendo’s Wii vs. his brand new XBox 360. I continue heading north on Lake Shore Drive, smiling to myself thinking about Mario, Luigi and DuckHunt.
“You know, I’d much prefer old-school Nintendo.” I am dating myself and they put me in my place.
“Ugh! Those graphics suck!”
Here’s where I’m going to insert a huge thanks directed to my parents who never let my sister and me have any sort of gaming system growing up. Even though I went to Sara’s and Shelley’s just so I could play Nintendo for a few hours once in awhile, and even though I may have been jealous when you bought Sheri a first-generation GameBoy, I think my life hugely benefited from not becoming a video game addict.



My parents bought their first computer in 1988. It was an Apple IIGS. I was entering kindergarten, yet reading at a sixth grade level. So to keep me occupied they bought Math Rabbit and Reader Rabbit and a program where I could write stories and create pictures to go along with those stories.
In second grade I remember going to meet-the-teacher day the day before school started, and my teacher, Mrs. Drucker, came over to me and said, “You’re going to be part of an exciting new classroom starting tomorrow. Do you know what WTW stands for?” I shyly shook my head. “It means ‘writing to write’ and you’ll be part of the only class in the school that has computers in the classroom.”
[Thus began my “total nerd and hated by most of the rest of the school” standing, as I was bounced around from one guinea-pig “smart kid” program after another…but much like 9.11, that could be a whole novel as well. So I’ll spare you…for now.]
I stayed with the same kids 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades as part of this computer-integrated class. We learned adjectives and verbs by watching simple animations on the computers and then we’d use the new words to form opinions and write stories about dinosaurs and windy cities. In the later grades we learned survival skills from Oregon Trail and increased our math knowledge playing Number Munchers.

“But,” I say to Amy. I’m standing outside of Filter now, my fingers and nose almost numb.
“Nothing compares to that day in your house when we watched Bill Clinton speak on your computer.”
She laughs. “Yeah, on Encarta.”

Good ol’ Encarta—one of the first multimedia encyclopedias. I remember sitting beside Amy in her parent’s bedroom watching the computer screen. We were in fifth grade, and instead of looking through card catalogs at the library, we were doing our research using a digital version of an encyclopedia on her computer. She clicked the Play button, and suddenly there was our president speaking to us. I remember thinking this is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen; this is a technological milestone.
(I wonder now if they still teach kids how to do real research or how to properly utilize a library’s resources. Or has education become too reliant on the World Wide Web?)

Then came Prodigy, followed by America Online, and suddenly I was “chatting” with people around the world. I didn’t become temporarily addicted to AIM (AOL instant messenger), though, until college. Unlike kids today who come home from school and head straight to the computer to chat online, I actually had things to do…like hang out with my friends IN PERSON.
(I know I sound like my parents when they talk about the invention of TV because the same things could be said…”we used to go outside, not sit in front of a box…”)

Kids don’t know life before all of this advanced technology. Even people my sister’s age, who are only three years younger than me, seem to be on the brink of having major face-to-face communication issues. She went to college already owning a cell phone, Ipod and laptop computer. And facebook.com hit the social networking fiends full force the year she began her first year of college.

Yes, I have a laptop now, but I didn’t get one until I graduated college. And yes, I have an Ipod, but I’ve been degraded by a 12-year-old asking me, “What?? You can’t watch TV on yours??” Um, no. That’s what a TV’s for. I don’t even waste that much time watching TV on an actual TV, so why would I carry a tiny one around with me?

A few months ago I was at a dinner party, and there was this kid there talking about his life at college (I believe he attended NIU) and how he takes all his courses online. This blew my mind. I mean especially with the amount of time spent on online social networking sites (whether it be facebook, myspace, friendster, probably 50 others I don’t even know about…) that goes on these days, I wondered if this guy ever left his computer. How do you take the classroom out of the educational experience? At least half of what I learned in college came from listening to my classmates or impromptu lessons that my teachers taught. How can a computer possibly replace this?

But I am conflicted. I can’t completely criticize these impersonal methods of communication. On September 11 I was talking to Jenny on the phone as I sat on my bed watching CNN updates on TV of what was happening a mile away. I screamed into the phone as they showed a plane crash into the Pentagon. “THE WORLD IS ENDING!” I feared that when I hung up the phone with her, the line would thenceforth be dead. But I had to hang up in order to find out what was going on. My fear was not unfounded. Right after I hung up, I immediately picked the receiver back up. Dead silence. I ran to my computer. There were three solid rows of blinking Instant Messages lining the bottom of the screen. Somehow, through all of this, the internet stayed connected and because of that I remained relatively calm.

You wouldn’t think one would have to repeat this experience, but I was one of the few who did. On March 11, 2004, exactly two and half years (almost to the hour) after the worst attack on U.S. soil, I experienced the worst attack on Spanish soil, as I was living in Madrid at the time of the Atocha train bombings. Again, the internet stayed connected. I had the chance to e-mail almost everyone back in the States that I was okay before most even woke up to read the front page news. And thanks to AIM, once again, I talked with my friends studying abroad in London, Maastricht, Ireland and Paris while everything was going on in Madrid.

I've been having trouble thinking of how to end this post because it could potentially go on and on. Then last night I got a text message from a friend—the one whose manuscript I was editing when I began writing this post three weeks ago—that said, “You’re a good friend Alyse.” This came out of nowhere but brought a smile to my face. Maybe [some] technology isn’t so bad…

[photo of a photo: i took this picture of a photography i liked at the Rhona Hoffman Gallery. It was taken by Brian Ulrich and was party of his Thrift series.]

dreaming of madrid

Every day I make several round trips down Wabansia Street to avoid the North/Damen/Milwaukee intersection. To do this, though, I have to stop at a stop sign every block for about 8 blocks (although i've never counted...). This stop-and-go can be annoying, and there's always the risk of some idiot, who doesn't think the law applies to them, plowing through without even yielding.
I have a total double standard when it comes to pedestrian crossing. When I'm driving, I urge the pedestrians to hurry across the street, and yet, when I, myself, am a pedestrian, I will not hesitate to glare at a driver who is over-eagerly awaiting me to cross. Today I came to one such stop sign and saw an old lady to my left about to step into the crosswalk. There would have been ample time--even with a complete stop--for me to continue on past the stop sign. But I've always had a soft spot for people over 75, so I waited for her to make it to the other side. When she got about halfway across she turned her face partway towards my car and gave me a little smile with a small wave of her hand. I waved back. And it was at that moment that I noticed an old man with a cane crossing the cross street. I turned to my friend Amy in the passenger seat and let out a squeal. "Do you think they're meeting each other??" And sure enough, the old woman changed directions and took the hypotenuse route to the old man. They exchanged words which I could not hear inside my car. As I drove past I looked back in my rearview mirror, and they were already parting ways. I wondered if maybe it was a chance meeting, even though the sudden path change of the old woman seemed pretty deliberate to just be chance.

The above encounter made me think of this picture that I took while living in Madrid (Spain) almost three years ago. It was mid-March, and I had had a rough day. To make a (somewhat hilarious) story short...I managed to walk forcefully into a glass door upon exiting a restaurant and smashed my nose so hard that I had to go to the hospital and get my face x-rayed/bandaged. Anyway, I finally returned home, and all I wanted to do was relax on our balcony. So I climbed out the window and reveled in the sunshine. It was around 5:00, and the sun shone directly down Calle Eloy Gonzalo, making huge, elongated shadows follow directly behind passersby like silhouetted giants. I climbed back through my window to grab my camera, and that's when I got this shot, looking directly below my building (the top of the photo is actually the side with the street). To this day it remains one of my favorite captured moments, and every time I look at it I long to be back in the Spanish sun perched above the city, watching love shadows wander.