Week two of school, and almost a full month since I arrived in Spain… the excitement is still strong, but I am also starting to run into frustrations and roadblocks that are typical of living abroad. Why are the banks never open? Why am I still so bad at Spanish after over a decade of studying the language? Why do I keep signing up for loosely-structured teaching programs when I know I don’t want to be a teacher in the long term? (Well, that last one might be a little more specific to me.)
Don’t get me wrong– the island is beautiful, my students are great and I’m able to enjoy them much more as an assistant than I was as a lead teacher. However, that doesn’t diminish the things about this experience that are challenging and lonely and unfamiliar. I had hoped to make instant connections with other teachers, but instead find myself in the teachers lounge smiling quietly while straining to keep up with fast-paced Spanish conversations. I had hoped to somehow immediately have dozens of Spanish friends who would keep me constantly entertained and help hone my language skills, but instead find myself spending time alone or with the small group of Americans who are here as auxiliares de conversación like me (granted they are all very cool). I had hoped to find an engaging side project that will help me get a better sense of what sort of career I want to build after this, but instead I am finding that the organizations most likely to take me as a volunteer are after-school programs for students.
As I seek to ground myself in the moment and remind myself that feeling comfortable in a new place takes time, I have been thinking a lot about my grandfather who died two years ago this week. My grandfather, Mike Reardon, was an enigma to me when I was growing up– so much so that he earned the nickname Grandpa Grump, and it sticks to this day. My grandpa was eccentric to say the least, and it felt hard to connect to him as a little kid. However, despite his oddball nature I always loved visits to his apartment in DC because it was full to the brim with artifacts from all around the world. After a career in the State Department and in a few other private companies that brought him all over the world, he continued to spend his retirement traveling. I think I’m not exaggerating when I say that my grandfather had been to over 100 countries, but I’ll have to fact check that with my dad. I remember seeing instruments from Russia and Jamaica, masks from various African and South Asian countries, small carved statues from who even knows where. He brought me dresses from China and Ghana. One year, to my horror, he gave my younger brother a hand-carved blowdart from Brazil. Most of all, I remember the curiosity and sense of adventure I felt when I looked at the huge map in his hallway with pins in all the places he’d been and the places he still wanted to go. Without knowing it, he showed me that the world is a big place– and I wanted to see all of it.
As I grew older and expressed an interest in studying international relations, I began to develop a real relationship with Grandpa Grump. The man who had seen so many interesting things was finally interested in me, and he loved to hear about my classes and my interest in Latin America. He would forward me emails that he got from the State Department retiree network with news and information about events around the city. He was a YouTube documentary enthusiast, and he was always sharing the weird and random things he learned and thought about. He was even excited for me when I decided to accept my offer to join Teach for America in Indianapolis– for a man born and raised on the West Coast who spent much of his adulthood on the East Coast, the Midwest was just as much of a foreign territory as any he’d been to.
I felt like my relationship with my grandpa was cut unfairly short when he died two years ago. There is so much about his life and career and travels that I never asked him about. There is so much about my life and career and travels that I will never get to tell him about. But I know that I will always have him to thank for who I am today– I am a person who says yes to adventure, even when it’s hard. I am a person who is open to new experiences and new cultures. I am a person that my grandfather would be proud of.
Claire y Canaries 