This month I have been residing in a small basque town called Zarautz. It lies a half hour train journey from San Sebastian. I have been living with a family, the Etxabe Uria family, who have taken me under their euskeran wing. There is nationalism here, but not particularly within my family. They are happy enough to speak in Spanish despite it being the language that was forced upon them during the dictatorship, squeezing out their native Basque. The father of the other monitor's family is less apathetic.
I am currently sitting in a bar on the Musika Plaza, the same square where the flat is. It is called Txikipolit. From my few words of Basque, I believe this means something like "A little bit wonderful". I have just finished a Zurito, which is a small measure of beer which takes its name from a bullfighter who was once in the area. Zurito loved beer, but could never drink a whole glass before fighting, so he asked for a smaller amount. Henceforth, you can order the same quantity with his name. I learned this from the father of my family, Aitor.
It is been an incredible month. The coordinator at the school, Mireia, is incredibly hard working and always prepared; the other monitor, Kirsty, is lovely too. She studies medicine at Birmingham university. We all get along well and on Sunday (tomorrow) we are going to Mireia's home town, Azpeitia, to meet her friends and enjoy the festival there.
Kirsty and I are currently trying to arrange what to do next week. We finish everything on Tuesday and afterwards she wants to travel around Spain. Having been living out of a suitcase for 9 months more or less, I want to go home. We will likely go to Bilbao and Barcelona together, but that is where the adventure will end for me. I am ready to settle for a while. 9 months is a long time to be away.
So here you have my final post from my time living in Europe. I have been a student of a German university, I have been an English language assistant in a Galician high school and I have been an Enjoy English monitor in the Basque Country. These are most certainly things I am proud to have been and will type into my CV with memories. There is no such thing as a perfect memory, but there are certainly perfect experiences, and my year abroad has been a perfect experience. I will tell you why...
An experience ought to be something you complete, that you can equally love or hate at the time, but when you look back on it, you know it was useful to you. It's a given that living in the country helped my language develop, but what you perhaps expect less is the character change. As a linguist, you are designed to copy how someone who knows the language speaks; as it turns out, you copy the mentality a bit too. Some mentalities are more enjoyable than others. I mean, it's not that the people of Freiburg have the wrong type of mentality, it is simply that they have one my body/mind agrees with less. "Vices" are expensive, paperwork is life and if it doesn't have an official stamp on it, it doesn't exist. This doesn't fly with me so well. So Spain was a relief... 'Let's not work, let's eat for an hour. Ah, that was nice. I'm a bit tired now. Let's have a nap! Ok, we'll go back to work now. What's that? Your back garden is a vineyard? How wonderful. Do you know this person? No, ah well, go on, give them two kisses!'
And today, I went to the allotment owned by my family. They grow their own potatoes, green beans, tomatoes, lettuce, spring onions, courgettes etc. It's so relaxing. The patch is by the mountains, all calm and lush. It wasn't cold, but it wasn't too warm, and with the guidance of Marta, the mother, I plucked my own two courgettes. I was about to describe it as empowering, but that's the wrong word. It's quite the wrong word. What I need is a word that will decidedly say there was a stronger sense of symbiosis with nature, rather than a powering over it. I was thankful, appreciative, impressed at what nature can do. It's so simple. That seems to be the key. Keeping things simple.
Sure, it is probably mostly a good thing for scientists to understand certain things about what makes up the world, and it is interesting for psychologists to study certain humannesses now and again, but really most of the time life is a simple thing. The best we can do is keep it going, and be happy as we do it. Let yourself eat chocolate, let yourself feel happy, let yourself be calm. I mean, why would you ever want to feel stressed or upset? why would you put yourself in that situation? Do the things that help you to feel content. Be around people that you like. It's much easier that way!!
Now go and pluck some courgettes and eat some chocolate, for your sake!
