Our last week in Cadiz has absolutely flown by. Besides having three exams in the last two days, it has been relatively uneventful. I spent the week doing homework for my favorite professor, including a four page essay as well as tens of thousands of baby notecards. My brain is a mixture of mush and assorted Spanish words. During the week, however, I did receive some exciting news. During a visit to the Red Cross station located near the Old Town for our culture class one day, Dr. Labarca absentmindedly asked, “Alexi, would you like to come back to la Cruz Roja?” I had spent the visit thinking of similar things I would try and find when I got back to Atlanta, and trying to think of what name she would come up with to call me next, so of course I answered with an affirmative, thinking nothing of it. “İYa está! Ok, I will talk to the people at Mundo Lengua.” I was completely baffled for a moment, before realizing that I quite possibly may have just wheedled my way out of my immigrant mosque research. So that is the latest developing story, as the saga of the loca doctora continues.
As the week drew to a close, things started to pick back up. On Thursday, June 23rd (the night before our tests), the festival of San Juan came into full swing, as the four days of festivities progress with the burning of los Juanillos, homemade dolls that resemble political figures. We were also told that everyone dresses in white, eats, drinks, and watches fireworks, and then run into the waves at midnight. Having done a project on the subject, I was particularly interested to learn how the actual celebration differed from our research. Our teacher from the school, Marta, was baffled when no one said they were planning on going out. She said it was definitely something to see, even though “es solamente una excusa de los jóvenes para beber en la playa”, and we had two tests the next day. So, after school, we went home, studied until 11 p.m., and headed out to the beach, equipped with notecards and 1€ bottles of tinto verano. I believe I speak for all when I say it is probably the only time that our little group of about five or six Tech students would ever in our lives be caught dead out the night before a test. Nevertheless, we plopped in the sands near the new city to watch the fireworks and to see if anyone actually ran in (apparently that only happened at a particular beach in the old city). At around 1:30, we returned to our houses, and armed with the knowledge that “tinto makes everything better”, I rallied to study some more. I have to say, it was definitely worth the groggy morning that followed to have experienced the fiesta with the Spaniards.
Friday, our friends from Mundo Lengua threw us a going away party, complete with homemade paella and sangria. My fellow native Floridian, Emily, and I were in charge of anally cutting the squid and speed-peeling the shrimp. After about an hour of chopping, cutting, and stealing fruit, Marta started the enormous, simmering batch of paella, and threw fruit, wine, and lemonade into a huge basin for the sangria. We had quite a feast. All twenty-two of us headed straight to the beach afterwards, to finish out our last hours of sunlight in Cádiz, dragging ourselves away only to get ready to go out for the night.
We met Marta in the Plaza Victoria to head to the old town. Of course, the rest of the group left right as one girl went to the bathroom, and knowing how bad it is to get left with no cell phone in a foreign country, and being the kind soul that I am, I waited for her with Lisa. Naturally, we all three were lost then. So we wandered along the walk for about 40 minutes before realizing we were already on the other side of the little peninsula and still had not found anyone. Deciding to make the most of our last night, however, we were resolved to do something on one of the few nights that we were actually out after dark. Lights loomed ahead of us on the bay, and crowds of people were headed towards them, so we joined the throng. We came to a gate that the crowd bottlenecked into which was guarded by policemen. After establishing that there was free entry, we slipped in to discover the continuation of the festival of San Juan.
There were booths everywhere, and the delicious smell of fried seafood was thick in the air. Silver jewelry, bright colored clothes, and an enormous assortment of gummies laced the atmosphere with every color. On stage, a band was playing “flamenco rock”, a genre that penetrates the body and makes it impossible to stand still without swaying or bouncing. Behind the hullabaloo, the source of the lights that had drawn us in became clear: boats. My sailor heart skipped a beat, as I bee-lined through the crowd with eyes wide open and frantic companions in tow, towards the illuminated skeletons bobbing in the harbor. Of all the things we had seen while being in Spain, the grand old enormous, flickering schooners had to have been one of my favorite sights. They somehow seemed to embody the Gaditano culture, both old and new, and were the perfect touch to the festival. For some reason, even though the scene was a sight that was no stranger to me, I finally seemed to register where exactly I was. Cádiz: the quaint old city where Christopher Columbus had set sail at one point, where Romans, Arabs, and the famous Catholic Kings of Spain had resided, where the beach is the most influential part of daily life, where dark-haired children run, play, and befriend the blatant Americans who are borrowing there school, where the black night is interrupted only by twinkling stars, and the nighttime sea melds seamlessly into the wide open sky. The realization struck me hard of just how much I was going to miss this place.
We walked a little more, looking at all of the things laid out on tables, when suddenly, “Alejandra!” I looked up, confounded as to who in this city knew my name, to see Marta’s beaming face, and the rest of our group congregating behind her. Our reunion seemed to lift everyone’s spirits, as we got our second wind and began to fight through the multitude of lively bodies to get closer to the stage. My friend Anna, who introduces herself as Anna Alta to the petite Hispanics, and I laughed when we could both see clear over the dark heads of everyone in the crowd straight to the stage. We danced and sang what few words we could pick out of the songs, surrounded by the whole class, teacher, and T.A. Study abroad, what an experience. With an early morning ahead of everyone, however, we finally started to prepare to head out. We lined up to bid adieu to Marta: Marta, who had kept us sane for the month, relieved us from our psychotic professor, taught us so much about the locals, and now had tears in her eyes as we were about to part ways. Goodbyes aren’t easy in any language.
A somber group filed down the Paseo Marítimo one last time, on our way back to our little apartments for the final night. It was a very brief night. Before I knew it, Lisa and I were gathering up the room, tossing and shoving things into bags as quietly as we could. I finally lay across my bag, fought the zipper to the close, and plopped down, staring at the room that seemed none the wiser as to our stay. We said goodbye and thanked our family, who reluctantly delivered as many words as they had all week, and left the 6th floor apartment on Calle Goya. An uneventful plane and bus ride later, here we are in Madrid, at the Hostel Nuria (real high quality, check it out). Madrid is no Cádiz, but we have already located a 5€ paella café, so it doesn’t look like life will be too difficult. We will be off to explore the city momentarily, in the balmy, 100°, afternoon weather. Thus, the Great Spain Adventure continues. Location: Madrid.
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