Spain

I've been avoiding this topic for awhile, but it's been a full year, and I think I'm ready to let it go. Well, as much as traumatic experiences really leave us....

I spent last July (2010) in Granada, Spain. I had high hopes for this trip; it had been three years since I'd been to Europe, I was really looking forward to improving my Spanish in its country of origin, and I was getting away from Florida.  Everything was set: I had my euros, an open mind and had even managed to begin friendships with some of the other UCF kids I was to be traveling with.

My Orlando flight went smoothly, and I made it easily into NYC.  Here I encountered a hitch with my luggage that I was to learn about later that day.  Instead of spending my nine hour layover in an airport, I wandered Manhattan's Midtown and Financial District, and fell in love with the City.  I caught an aerporter to JFK, barely  making it 45 minutes before my international flight departs.  I'm panicked, and after figuring out JFK's befuddling signage system I made my way to a ticket counter, because for some odd reason, I didn't have a ticket! I talked to the rep, got my ticket and it was there that I found out I was supposed to have transported my luggage from LaGuardia to JFK.  The barely concealed panic bubbled over and I almost had a breakdown in the middle of the Delta wing of the airport. 

Luckily, there was this older Black gentleman associate who saw my distress and, cool as a cucumber, walked me (yes, New York City and I still managed to get Southern-style customer service) to my gate, even getting me around the security line. This lovely gentleman also assured me that I my luggage would be sent to me, free of charge, if I talked with a Delta rep once I arrived in Spain. He left me at the gate, with my tearful thank yous, and I discovered my flight has been delayed some two hours.  ... -___- It turned out a handful of UCF kids, including my roommate, were also on that same flight, so we made small talk and wandered the cramped, stuffy gates while we waited.

Two hours later we were all on our way to Spain, and it went off without event.  We landed in Malaga, a beautiful coastal city, and met up with our faculty. It's there that I made arrangements for my luggage to be sent to my homestay. Fast forward to Granada, where we were unceremoniously dropped off at a centro comercial with the address of our homestay, a lame map, and told to find our own way to our residences.  Add to that it's 100 degrees outside, most of the shops that could have given us directions are closed for siesta, and that most of the group were beginner/intermediary Spanish speakers.  Truly, a warm welcome to Granada.

Eventually my roommate and I (I forgot her name so we'll call her Marie) found our homestay.  We are beyond fatigued, what with jet-lag and hunger, and I without my luggage and not knowing when it will arrive. Mary and I caught our breaths, and then ask if we might have a late lunch.  No, we can't. In fact, our host-mother informed us we won't be having anything to eat until dinner... at 2130 Spanish time, which is roughly 0200 Florida time.  Uh....  

Luckily for us there was a supermercado not a quarter-mile away, and it actually has siesta hours so it isn't closed!It's then that I learned my wallet is not in my carry-on.... No cash, no card, and my passport was in my luggage.  It was like something out of a bad travel adventure story. What a glorious ending to my day.  Little did I know it was just the beginning.

Throughout the rest of the Summer, I encountered barely concealed racism, from my first host-mother who constantly complained about how 'messy' I was, how much I ate (what was I paying her for?), and poor my Spanish was (why was I studying Spanish in Spain?) and even verbally accosting me when I was able to move out of that homestay; by the society in, being profiled in stores, ignored service in shoppes, being eyeballed and sneered at on the street, etc.; and even thrown into the xenophobia mix due to my African ancestry and the hostility Southern Spain was (is) experiencing at the time.  Add to that my American accent, and we have perfect recipe for alienation, isolation, and depression.

My only respite was school, where there was a nice mix of kids in the class and the profesoras were awesome.  I wish I could have had class for more than five hours a day.

My groupmates. Now there should have been some camaraderie between us, but their classism won out. Not to mention that they could all pass for white or Spanish and could not begin to perceive the difficulties I faced.  Not that I tried overmuch, after seeing some of the xenophobic ideals they held. And my faculty wasn't very sympathetic when I told him how my host-mother was treating me and the other hardships I experienced: hostility, no luggage, no cash.

All of these experiences, combined to make a very jaded Monique, even moreso than I was before I began my trip.  There's something about facing such Othering in another country that made me lose a bit of respect I had for Spainards and definitely dissuaded me from returning to Europe any time soon. But this trip also amped up my sympathies toward immigrants and others who weren't born into a particular culture and experience that same alienation.

Disembarking the plane upon landing in New York was one of the happiest moments of my life.  I cannot express with words how at home I felt when I looked around me and saw a mix of skin-tones and heard not only English, but a variety of other languages.  It's something my mother told me about, how when she returned to the US from South Korea and Germany she felt this settling in being surrounded again by United States' culture.

The US is by no means a perfect society; the same xenophobia I experienced in Granada occurs on a daily basis within our borders. But there's something to be said for the familiarity of this chaos that I live in, and knowing the history and the language and something of the culture and politics, that makes it a bit more bearable.

Three cheers for American racism! (bad joke, sorry)