Sí, que ella baila el flamenco

With just a few days left in Spain (and most of my work done) I´ve started thinking about what this whole study abroad thing has done to me, if anything. You always here about people going way to some foriegn place their junior year and coming back a completely different person or having made some great revelation about life. I guess I´ve been wondering what that´s been for me. I don´t feel a whole lot different. I may dress better, and I have a new haircut. oh, and I can speak spanish now. All of which count for something, I guess. But really? I´m still Niki.

There is one thing I´ve learned here, or at least had reinforced. Funny enough, she meant it as a joke.

In early November I was still taking flamenco classes (I´ve stopped now because I ran out of money and time). Pretty standard stuff - warmup, learn some technique, add some more on to the choreography we were learning. Our teacher (I never did learn her name - horrible, I know) was this tiny little spanish woman with jet-black hair, tattoos, and piercings all over the place. Intimidating, but friendly once you got to know her. Wonderful dancer.

She had this eye, though. This bulging right eye that always made her look a little crazy when she would glance around the room. Nothing grotesque, nothing to write home to the medical journals about. Just that her right eye opened further than her left, giving her a lopsided appearence. But watching her dance, you never noticed it. That eye would be bulging and glaring all over the place, and then someone would put some music on, the woman would start dancing, and the eye would magically disappear. She´d lose the crazy look and gain this sexy, dramatic aura that gave you the impression that she could clap and stomp her way through anything you threw at her.

Early November, she told us her secret. Someone in class had been complaining about how, at home, she felt confident and could put on that flamenco look and dance around like a pro, but that in class she felt awkward and stupid and lost it every time. Laughing, la maestra looked in the mirror and said "yea, well I´ve got this funny eye that always stays open weirdly, but every time I dance I just arch my eyebrow and close my left eye a bit more, so it looks like I´m doing it on purpose. I even do it when I´m walking down the street, so when I pass people look at me and say 'oh yes, she dances flamenco.' Works great."

Sí, que ella baila el flamenco. I could see it working, because I sure as hell had been fooled until then. And even though she ment it as a lesson on having confidence, I also saw something else: work with what you've got. Rock it, play with it, until it becomes your best feature, your best trait. Then suddenly you don´t have to worry about whether or not your eye bulges, if you can speak spanish well enough, what kind of walk you have, whatever.

Seems doable. Even if I don´t come back with anything more than some nice shoes from Spain, I think I´ll hang on to that.

It's beginning to look a lot like christmas...

It's officially Christmas in Malaga. Once you get out of the city center it's not as obvious, but for about a square mile section every available surface is covered with lights, wreaths, and poinsettias. The streets are littered with gigantic figurines...tree ornaments bigger than people, a bell I could stand under if I wanted, a five story high Christmas tree. Anyone who says that America is the only country of excess has clearly never been to southern Spain during the Christmas season.

Having no Thanksgiving to act as a buffer between this holiday and Halloween, the decorations go up quite a bit earlier. That's not to say that they do anything tacky, like stick the trees up the 1st of November. No, they wait at least two weeks into the month, to give a little breathing room between decorating sprees, and then jump back armed to the teeth with holly and fake snow. Even the palm trees get some attention. The stuff also stays up later here, since the traditional day to exchange gifts is actually Three Kings Day, which I believe falls on the 6th of January (I could be wrong about this of course - there are heaps of religious festivals, and I haven't quite gotten them all straightened out as of yet).

Seeing all these lights reminds me that my time here is running out. I now have 13 days left in Spain, 14 before I'm back in DC. It's gonna be a packed 13 days, but in a good way. My field research is underway, and Keon is coming on Monday. I turn 21 on Tuesday - a bit of an anticlimax, since I've been legal here since I was 18. I still need to do my Christmas shopping, and I'm applying for jobs so I'm not poor when I get back to MN.

on that note, if anyone wants to hire me, I make a great coffee-runner :)

Spain has been amazing and enlightening. I don't know how much I've grown or changed as a person (I hear you're supposed to do that on study abroad) but I'm happy I came here. It's given me opportunities that I wouldn't necessarily have had in other places. Like this research project. Or easy access to the boyfriend. Or amazing, cheap flamenco lessons and a host mom who's a semi-professional chef.

I hope I get to come back here someday.

But for now, school isn't over. I still have 8 pages on the society of Al-Andalus left to write by tomorrow night. so let's go, shall we?