by Hayleigh Stewart

Hello everyone! My name’s Hayleigh, and I just graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (go Tar Heels!). Instead of joining my cubicle-loving colleagues in the “real world,” I’ve decided to escape to the alternate universe that is Spain. This blog will be about my adventures, mishaps, and findings along the way. Hope you enjoy!

While life abroad may seem glamorous when you’re dreaming about eating tapas at outdoor cafes and strolling along cobblestone streets with a handsome Spanish lover, once you get here it seems like the whole country is designed to make you look like a fumbling, bumbling female version of Mr. Bean. Which is exactly what I feel like. All the time.
My roommates and I refer to this feeling as the ”mirk cloud” which follows you around wherever you go. The mirk cloud’s job is to make you feel as dumb as possible, which is not hard in my case, as I am both illiterate and mute in the country where I’m living.

Last Monday, in particular, the mirk cloud was so apparent that all I could do was laugh. Every Monday I teach a class from 8-9 and then I babysit a 14-month old from 11:30 – 2:00. His mother wants him to learn English, which is, in my opinion, quite impossible when he knows a total of about 30 Spanish words, and is still working on growing teeth. Nonetheless, I get paid; so it’s fine with me. So I’m wearing my pink polo button-down and jeans (feeling very unfashionable as every woman I pass ranging from ages 14 to 94 are in heels and fishnets) but at least I look presentable according to US standards.

I arrive at my babysitting job on time and begin the weekly game that I like to call ”pretending to teach English to a baby while also trying to keep him from crying and running to his grandma every 10 seconds”. This game mostly consists of me making funny faces and sticking my tongue out. When the baby laughs, I consider it my responsibility to point to my tongue and say ”tongue”. This is the moment when he goes to run for his grandma, and also when I panic and resort to playing peek-a-boo (if this baby learns nothing from me, he should be very good at pronouncing the phrase ”there you are!”, when he can finally talk).

One word he knows in Spanish, and loves to scream over and over again is ”hola”. His obsession with the word “hola” usually sparks a game that some might call, ”Hayleigh argues with a baby”. Usually this game goes something like this:

Baby: Hola!
Me: Hello!
Baby: Holaaaa!
Me: Hello!
Baby: (Screaming) Hola Hola Hola HOLA!
Me: (While making a funny face and sticking out my tongue) Tongue.

While I babysit the baby, his grandma is around the house taking care of baby’s younger cousin. She’s a very kind lady, and we’ve developed a bond that comes from taking care of kids while not being able to speak to each other. She speaks no English, and even though I try, she refuses to believe I can speak any Spanish. Despite this, we smile and have at least a warm (albeit silent) rapport. One result of our sessions is that she can now say numbers, colors, the parts of the face, and the alphabet in English. Meanwhile, the baby can now say ”apple”. (And he also says ”eyes”, if I’m lucky).

So, after a typical game of ”Hayleigh argues with a baby”, the baby is apparently sick of my antics and decides to run across the room to the toy chest. In front of the toy chest happens to be a ball. Since the baby is not especially skilled at walking just yet, it only takes him a few seconds to slip on the ball, fall face-first onto the toy chest and cut his lip on the corner of the chest. I run over, scoop the screaming baby up, and get about two steps down the hall to the kitchen when his grandma comes to take over. She’s very nice and forgiving, but I feel awful and try to explain the situation as best I can (by acting out what happened to the baby while she was out of the room). In the middle of my charades game, the grandma points to my shirt, and I realize there is a huge blood stain on my shirt from the baby’s cut lip.
I go to the sink to try to wash it off and succeed in smearing the stain so it now covers the entire top-right corner of my shirt. On top of this, the baby does not speak to me for the rest of the day.

I leave the house defeated, with a little cash and a funny stain on my shirt. I have no time to go home, and my next class is a one-to-one with one of the heads of an insurance company. This woman is always very posh, and really cool. We just talk most of the time about clothes and celebrity gossip. So I figure I can just explain to her that I did look presentable before I went to teach English to a baby.
I ride the metro for an hour over to her office, and by this time I really have to go to the bathroom. Once I get there, I literally run into the building, head straight to the bathroom, and slam the door and lock it behind me. This bathroom is unisex and is straight off the hallway, so it has a full door and a regular lock. I once again try to remove the stain and end up making it worse. And then I unlock the door to go out.

Or at least I try.

But the lock doesn’t work. So here I am, stuck in the bathroom of an insurance agency, where my very successful, important student is waiting for me upstairs. I also have no money on my Spanish pay-as-you-go phone.

MIRK. After about a minute of banging on the door and trying the handle again and again, I panic. I imagine the fire department having to saw the door off. I imagine me spending the night in the cold, hard bathroom after everyone else has left the building. My student will call the company I work for. They’ll ask, ”Why did you miss your class, Hayleigh?” and I’ll have to answer meekly, ”I was stuck in the bathroom”.

After taking out my hair and futilely trying to break open the lock with my bobby pins, I decide it’s time to take desperate action. I begin pounding as hard as I can on the door and yelling, “HOLA! HOLA! HOLAAAA!”. Just as I begin to ponder exacltly how much I sound like the baby I just left, I hear a man’s voice.

Man: “Hola?” (his tone says: ”what the hell?”)
Me: Hola! La puerta! No abierto! Ayudar! (roughly translated: Hello! The door! Not open! To help!)
Man: says some words in Spanish, which I can’t understand, but which I take to mean ‘’stand back”.

As I imagine him taking a sledge-hammer to the door, I hear a slight ”click” come from the doorknob. I twist open the handle, and it works!

Me: ”Muchas muchas gracias!”
Man: says some words in Spanish, which I take to mean: How long have you been in there? If I hadn’t have come along, you would’ve been screwed!
Me: Si! Si! Muchas, muchas gracias! (Big smile, head nod, head nod, smile).

At which point, I go to my lesson to explain to this man’s boss why I’m ten minutes late, have a huge stain on my shirt, and my hair looks like I just survived a tornado.

by Peter Moore

Number Six – Monty Python: Knights of the Round Table

This one doesn’t require much by way of an introduction. It’s taken from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where the fearless troupe of coconut clapping knights provide us with a brief musical snapshot of life inside the fortified walls of Camelot.

Once you’ve properly digested the silliness of this song, you might just about be ready to listen to Terry Jones’ didactic solo performance: Never Be Rude to an Arab