Tag Archives: God

Spain/Morocco Trip Part III – Salamanca

So I realize that my posts from Spain are more like a journal detailing what we did than actually being my usual brilliant and captivating posts, so feel free to skip to the photos on this one if you like.  You have my blessing.

Day One in Salamanca:

Convent of San Esteban.  Old and new cathedrals – old means 1200s, new means plans began in the mid-1500s.  Amazing.  Took audiotour, also did tour of bell tower, etc.  Great views of Salamanca, saw the river and Roman bridge from the top, etc.  Found out the Casa de Lis was closed.  Then stumbled upon the Cuerva de Salamanca which ended up being a tower that you climb…not sure where the cave part comes in.  Amazing lunch at Vino Diario – tuna on bread, meat selection, potatoes in garlic sauce and some kind of shoulder steak that was just incredible, especially with the potatoes.  Eric also ran into what may have been the first IPA he ever liked, called Black and made in Salamanca.  I had a two dollar glass of the house red wine and loved it.
Walked up to train station to see if we could change our tickets to a later train on the 26th b/c everything is closed from now until about when we leave, but no luck.  Luckily we got in the main things we wanted to do today between 10-2 when everything closed for Nochebuena (Christmas Eve).  Apparently tonight is the main night when everyone is home with their families, so no restaurants or anything are open tonight.  The hotel doesn’t have a restaurant, so they are kindly having a very nice dinner catered for us.  Eric has ordered lamb.  I’m sticking with chicken.
Walked through the Plaza Mayor on the way home and it’s gorgeous, just like everyone says.  Instead of a Christmas tree they have a giant red ball ornament, which is pretty cool.  Came back to the hotel for a siesta and working on deciding whether we’ll brave the cold for midnight mass (from midnight to 2 am in a huge drafty 13th century cathedral or whether we’ll wait until noon tomorrow.  I’m hoping we can get up the motivation to go tonight because really, when else would we have this chance?
Looking forward to our peaceful little Christmas celebration.  Just the two of us and a city filled with amazing architecture from the literal Dark Ages.  Plus a comfortable hotel with a cushy bed, beers chilling on the window sill, and netflix at our disposal.
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Christmas Eve was lovely.  The hotel we were in in Salamanca did not have a restaurant, but they were kind enough to email us the week before we arrived to ask if we would like for them to order dinner for us from a nice restaurant and have it for us that night.  All the restaurants and tourist attractions closed around 2 pm that day (Thursday), so the hotel manager knew we wouldn’t have any other options.  Very sweet.  So Eric ordered lamb and I ordered chicken.

We wandered downstairs to the dining room around 8:30 and found that we were the only people who had taken the hotel up on their offer!  It was sweet though.  They had set up one table in the corner with a candle on it and insisted we have some wine.  The meal was fine…nothing amazing and not so much worth the price, but we were grateful to have a big warm(ish) meal on Christmas Eve.  We started with bread and jamón serrano (shocker!), then had some kind of crab soup with another kind of bread.  Because I had been sick in Tangier and my stomach was still not quite right, I didn’t want to risk any gluten or dairy, so I’m sure that’s most of my feeling that the dinner wasn’t fabulous.  The crab soup was really good, but creamy, so Eric did me a favor and ate mine too.

My chicken was good, but not as interesting as Eric’s lamb.  They brought out the entire leg, including the hoof.  I couldn’t even stand to look at it, but Eric seemed to enjoy it, particularly when he decided it was appropriate to take it down like a turkey leg at the State Fair.  Hilarious.  Dessert was nice, but again, lots of dairy, so I left most of mine on the plate.

After dinner, we had the pleasure of Facetiming with Eric’s brother and sister-in-law’s family, his extended family up in Maryland and with my parents, sister, brother-in-law, and niece (just one of them, the other had already gone to bed).  And actually the Facetiming started because when we came back upstairs after dinner, we saw that Eric’s sister-in-law Jennifer had posted this year’s Christmas video of our niece, Rylee, and our nephew, Tyler.  Each year, Jennifer takes pictures and videos of the kids making Christmas cookies, then does a gorgeous job of setting it all to beautiful tear-jerking music.  This year, they made cinnamon ornaments instead, but the effect was just the same.  Stronger, perhaps, than in years past because of the awesome interaction between Rylee and Tyler.  Big smiles, hugs, teamwork…it was beautiful.  Between the touching video and the feeling of being so far away from family at Christmas time, Eric teared up and we immediately called Ray and Jennifer and the kids.

I had imagined that we would be too sleepy or just plain exhausted for midnight mass, but after the uplifting visits with our families, we decided to go for it.  The service was from midnight to 1:30 am in a cathedral that was built in the 1200’s on a 35 degree night.  And it was beautiful.  The cathedral itself inspires a certain degree of awe, as you might imagine, with its 53 painted panels of scenes from the Bible behind the altar, gothic arches, and lofty dome.  But add that to the families that gathered in their winter attire – many with shiny gold, sparkly, or fur coats – the incredible voices of the choir, and the fact that the bishop was there (hat and all!!!), and it was almost overwhelming at points.  Poor Eric I know was sleepy and bored since the service was lengthy and all in Spanish, but I was so grateful that he was there with me.  It’s a shame; I really wish he could have understood the sermon.  The bishop had a sore throat and had lost his voice, so back-up priest gave it.  It was beautiful.  I wish I could remember enough of it to do it justice in a summary, but suffice it to say that a hopeful Christmas sermon in a beautiful Spanish accent by a sweet sounding old man fit the setting perfectly.  The service ended with the choir singing Noche de Paz (Silent Night), which always gets me.

Christmas (Friday, 12/25) in Salamanca:

Christmas was, in a word, peaceful.  We went downstairs for a late breakfast, then decided to exchange presents after returning to the room.  Well, actually, I was prepared to just give presents (aside from the ones that my parents had sent – thanks Mom and Dad!), as Eric had already given me an awesome bluetooth speaker as an early gift when a party we were having required its use.  We had only packed a few sheets of tissue paper, so I folded his gifts inside it (sans tape).  He insisted on giving me a tissue paper hat after each of his four presents.  After he had unwrapped three shirts and a new PS4 game from me, he gave me a new UNC shirt from my parents.  He then brought me another package, which I thought was going to be the scarf that we had bought in Tangier and kept wrapped as a Christmas present for me.  But he surprised me!  He had custom designed (on cafepress.com) a shirt with several silhouetted figures playing capoeira.  Evidently, he had found the images online and then spent several hours photoshopping each one to his satisfaction and positioning them on the shirt so that it looked like they were interacting with one another.  I was really surprised and touched.  A very sweet gift.

After gifts, we watched movies and napped for most of the day!  It was lovely.  Poor Eric was starting to feel sick, so it was good timing for a down day.  We Facetimed with my family for a while around 4:30 our time (10:30 am their time) and got to see Laine, the 5 year old, open her Star Wars movie from us.  She’s hilarious….she was so excited.  The girl is all Ninja Turtles and Star Wars.  Not surprisingly, she also loved my capoeira shirt!

We also got to see baby Summer eating some brunch and watch the rest of the family open a special surprise gift from us.   When Laine was probably four months old, I took pictures of her while I was babysitting, then surprised Jennifer (my sister) and Mom with collages on Mother’s Day.  Eric thinks it’s creepy the way I did it, but I saw the idea at a friend’s house and loved it.  I cropped nine pictures down into squares and each is a close-up of a particular feature – an eye, a nose, a foot, etc.  I love it.

So this year when we were in NC in October, I found the same dress that Laine was wearing in her pictures and dressed Summer in it while Jennifer and Drew were out.  Eric and Laine helped me take pictures, and luckily Laine didn’t mention the photo shoot to her parents.  I made a matching collage of Summer’s photos and gave a copy to Jennifer and Drew and a copy to my parents for Christmas.

So back to Christmas Day activities.  We finally got showered and headed out in search of food around 5:30 pm.  A lot more people were out than had been out on Christmas Eve.  Apparently it’s custom to have Christmas Eve dinner at home and then to go out to eat on Christmas Day…at least for a lot of families in Salamanca.  We made a quick stop at the University of Salamanca, founded in 1218 and still open to students today, on the way.  The façade of the main building on campus is extremely intricate.  There is a tiny frog sculpture hidden in it, and legend has it that if students could find it, they would pass their exams.  Other stories say that the frog represents sexuality and its location atop a skull stands as a reminder that distractions of a sexual nature can lead to death.  So there’s that.  Anyway, I knew where it was because I looked it up ahead of time.  And it’s a good thing because Eric couldn’t find it.

Plaza Mayor, Salamanca
Christmas dinner!
Found the frog on the façade at Universidad de Salamanca

We had tapas for dinner…again, shocking…then headed back to the hotel for a few episodes of Aziz Ansari’s new show and an episode of Homeland (our current favorite) to close out the day.  Poor Eric was feeling pretty puny by this time.

Marta

So how did it go with the…uh…do I call her a maid?  Housekeeper?  I used empleada through the whole last post and I was comfortable with that.  Maid makes me feel like I’m calling her something derogatory and like I’m living in an episode of Downton Abbey (which I just started watching b/c of this whole experience).  Housekeeper makes me think of Alice on The Brady Bunch.  Empleada will have to do, but it’s tedious to write, so I’ll just call her by her name, Marta.

I could not focus on work while she was here.  I was so nervous.  I hate confrontation.  I hate having to be authoritative.  I hate everything about what I was supposed to be and how I was told I was supposed to act towards this woman in order to get her to do the job we are paying her to do.  I hate this whole system.

I don’t like the idea of someone else being in my house and touching my things.  We don’t do this in the States.  Our homes are very private places.  We close our bedroom doors when we have parties.  People ask which restroom they should use.  They ask before they go looking for a glass if they want water.  For someone to come into my home and for it to be her job to touch everything I own…I just couldn’t take it.

Since I’ve known Eric, he’s had someone come clean his house once every two weeks.  This, somehow, is very different for me.  I still preferred to be at work or out of the house with this person would come, but I was much more comfortable with the situation.  For one, I think, it was because Eric handled it.  For most of the time before we came to Panama, it was Eric’s house.  We weren’t married yet.  He gave instructions, and I feel that he is very good at doing this with authority, yet being very nice about it at the same time.  He commands respect, but people still love him.  He has a wonderful personality for it.

I have to wonder, does it also have something to do with his gender – at least in these situations?

At any rate, by 10 am, I was horribly nauseous.  I told my co-worker that I was utterly useless.  I couldn’t think about anything other than where Marta was or what I was going to say to her next.  What if she did something I didn’t like?  What if she went ahead and ate the food that we had set aside for us rather than for her?  What if she…fill in the blank?  Finally, I was so nauseous that I dry heaved, then went to lie down in Eric’s office, telling him I just didn’t know what to do.

I fell asleep, and the rest of the afternoon, not surprisingly, passed without incident.  She did a great job cleaning, told me what supplies we are lacking, and even cooked the corvina (local fish) that I asked her to cook for us.  She made a sandwich for Eric, as I requested, and one for herself.  She then served herself a portion of the fish, after we agreed that this was a one-time special meal since we were not prepared with the appropriate food for her.  She made a list of foods she would like for lunch, and hopefully next week we will be ready for that.

I did note that, while no one was eating at the dining room table, she still took a chair from the table and ate her lunch at the kitchen counter instead.

I did get taken on a few parts of our deal.  Generally in Panama, empleadas work an 8 hour day, and the $25/day we pay pays for the full 8 hours.  Marta insisted that it doesn’t work like that, but that she leaves when the job is done.  This week, she left around 2:30 or 3, I was ready for her to go, and the place was very clean, considering that we were lacking a squeegee for the windows.

Eric and I had also made a very detailed list of what we wanted to be done around the house.  When Marta came in, she scoffed at the list saying that she had experience, that this was her work, and that she didn’t need the list.  However, there were several things on the list that were not completed.  Common things, such as washing our clothes.  I’ll have to address this with her, which of course, causes me additional anxiety.  I hate this stuff.  She’s used to facing off against employers.  I’m not used to putting my foot down and being forceful.  I don’t like to do it.

This is exactly the part that I don’t like about being a lawyer.  I don’t like that you walk into the courtroom and the atmosphere is antagonistic.  I would much rather we all work together to find out the truth of what happened.  Did the DOC guard actually beat my client and cause his fractured jaw?  If it happened, can’t we all agree that that is wrong?  Okay.  Let’s work from there.  Let’s all open up the information that we have and figure out what happened.  Eric said today, and I have often thought the same thing:  I should’ve been a British barrister.

One thing I did start thinking about last night though, was a possible project.  I’m interested in this whole system.  It’s got it all.  Human rights, women’s rights, politics, interpersonal communication, language barriers, culture clashes, class hierarchies, family issues…the list goes on.  What if I started purposefully talking (in Spanish) to people about their experiences with empleadas?  What if I turn into Emma Stone from The Help (or the woman who actually wrote the book…my apologies to the purists, I only saw the movie) and interview folks, get the stories, learn about the politics, the reasons why people act as they do?

What if I also talk to some of the women who work in these homes to hear their experiences with their employers?  To hear their backgrounds, where they come from, what it was like when Martinelli (the ex-president of Panama) changed the immigration laws and allowed nearly everyone to get legal status to work here?  How do the Panamanian empleadas feel about the influx of Colombians and Nicaraguenses?  How does that affect the job market and how did they have to change their tactics?  What is it like to be ignored at work all day, to be expected to work in silence?  How do you feel about the “man of the house”?  How do the kids treat you?  What is the worst experience you’ve ever had?  Do you feel that you have the freedom to seek other work?  Have you ever gone into a job knowing you just want to work for long enough to afford a particular pair of jeans and then quit as soon as you have that certain amount of money (this was another story I heard)?

I don’t know what I would do with the information…I’m not looking for a book deal.  But I do think it would get me out, get me practicing my Spanish, and that it would be interesting.  We’ll see if I’m still interested in the idea tomorrow.  But for now…it’s a thought.

If you have a second, please say a quick prayer that God would help me with this anxiety surrounding my relationship with this woman.  I don’t know why it’s such a big deal to me, but I’ve still be struggling with it all day today.  Even just writing about it now, my stomach is tight and I’m dreading seeing her on Wednesday.  I know, I know, 1st world woman in a 3rd world country problems.  But anxiety sucks.  It’s crippling.  And it doesn’t make sense.  You can’t tell it to be practical and think through things.  It doesn’t listen to that.  So instead of talking to it, I’m trying to talk to God about it instead.  And, gracias a Dios, sometimes I’m doing that in Spanish b/c that’s what is starting to come to my head more and more!

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)

So…while we work on figuring out where we’re going to live, I’ll update you on the job situation.  Or rather, the volunteer position situation.

I will be working at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Regional Office for Central America and the Caribbean in Panama (ROPAN) in their Criminal Justice and Crime Prevention Group on the Criminal Justice and Prison Reform team.  I hope that explains why it takes me a minute to decide how to explain it when you ask me where I’ll be working down there.  I have no idea which of those phrases are the most useful.  I think UN and prison reform are the most descriptive.

I began to bother this poor woman on the Criminal Justice and Prison Reform team via email in January of this year.  I was pretty surprised to find that she was so easy to get in touch with.  I haven’t tried, but I can’t imagine that it’s that easy to access folks in the UN office in NYC.  She was amazingly responsive and kind, but told me over and over again throughout the year that there were no positions available.

I finally told her in September that I was willing to volunteer my time.  Surprisingly, those were the magic words!  I skyped with her the following week – in embarrassingly horrible Spanish.  I mean, uncharacteristically horrible.  I’m no expert in the language – hence this whole trip – but this was really awful.  She actually asked me to switch to English.  I expected her to switch too, since the academic papers of hers that I had read had been in English.  Turns out her English is as bad, if not worse than, my Spanish, but I was just so off my game that she was desperate to help me out.  We compromised by each speaking out native language.

There’s just something about talking on the phone in another language that is so terrifying!  Had I been able to see her face – it was not a video chat as I had expected – I think it would have been easier somehow.  There’s some bit of comfort that is lost when you aren’t able to see someone’s face.  Silences are more painful too…maybe because the other person is unable to see your struggle with words, so you imagine that they have no idea what you are doing?  I think that’s what happens to me.  I assume they think that I have disappeared or just decided I was finished talking mid-sentence.  Oh, it’s just so horribly awkward.  I don’t do awkward.  Eric can handle awkward.  I can’t stand it.  It may be a really long year for me.

Anyway, I still need to review all the resources that UNODC ROPAN has on their fantastic website, but through the efforts of the team with which I’ll be working, the prison population has decreased in Panama, staff is (at least marginally) better trained, and human rights violations are beginning to be addressed.  The implementation of the program began in 2010, so it’s exciting for me to be able to see all of the progress that has already been made before I get my hands in it.

On another note, Eric and I spent some time out with the Young Adults group from my church – yes, I finally officially joined, so I can call it my church – last night, and it was ridiculously encouraging to talk to them about our plans for next year.  Not only did they ask questions about where we would be, why we are going, and what we would be doing, but several folks even encouraged me to keep up with the blog and said they were interested in keeping up with us next year.  After years of floating around – sure, spending six years at one church, three at another, but never joining one – it’s refreshing to be reminded of why it is so important to do more than just sneak in right at 11 on Sundays and rush out right after the benediction.  I’m very comfortable with that routine.  It’s easy.  It’s risk-free.  It doesn’t take much time.  It still lets me get in my time with God each week.  But gosh, there’s just plain more to it than that.