The Tipping Point

It is no small thing to move to a new city and to get your head around it.  I have tried a few times to write about Barcelona, but I couldn't quite find my voice.  I know have written plenty about the places I've visited since I've started this blog, but this isn't a place I am visiting; I have moved my life here.

La Sagrada Famlia!  I have seen this once now, accidentally,
on my way to and from a bar (Photo Credit).

The problem of having a job in a new city...is that you have a job in a new city.  You are always fucking working.  You are in a totally different mindset, and unlike traveling, you cannot always find the time to experience the fullness of the city right away.  It is frustrating that in many ways, people who have visited Barcelona for a week (hell, a long weekend) know the city better than I do, even though I have lived here for months.  This is why I still struggle to answer when people from home ask me some pretty basic things, like:

"What do you normally do there?" 

or 

"What is Barcelona like?"  

The answer to the first question is probably a disappointment, because the expectation is that living in a foreign place, I will also be doing very foreign things.  But really, what I do is go to work and come home, tired, wanting to relax, and thinking about dinner.  Sometimes I go to the gym.  Glamorous, I know.  The answer to the 2nd question is usually a generic "It's cool!" because, well, it does seem to be a cool city.  But I lack in specifics because when I do get free time, it is very much still an exploratory process.  Far more often than finding or doing something cool in the city, I am confused about where exactly I am and the curmudgeon that lives inside me speaks up to wonder why I am in this new and distant restaurant or bar when there are plenty of other good ones that I already know about and are closer to where I live.

This was my metro stop when I first arrived to the city.  It is a
testament to Barcelona that the mundane aspects of my day
can look like this.

But there is a tipping point.  The longer you stay in a place, the more that place bleeds into your routines, and the more it will begin to populate your thoughts with its features and landscape.  I no longer look forward to going for a run.  I look forward to going for a run with my girlfriend, Jess, along the boardwalk in Barceloneta at sunset.  I don't ask for a Durum Kebap and a beer at the Doner place by my apartment anymore, but rather the waiter will ask me, "So, a chicken Durum and an Estrella?" when I sit down.  And when I stick my nose into my book on the bus/metro ride home, it is a new series of stops, starts, dings, and announcements that provide the cadence for whatever adventures, tales, ideas, or histories I am reading.

There is a deeper understanding of a city, country, or culture that comes with more time spent there, and it will begin to change you.  Slowly at first, and then all at once.  "How has this happened?" you will ask, "Was it the place?"  Yes, it was the place.  You have come to know this place in ways that a tourist cannot, and this broadening of your world cannot be undone. It has changed the way you see things.  "Was it the people?" you will extend.  Yes, it has most certainly also been the people.  The people are the best part, and will stay with you forever.  It has already become, in fact, impossible to separate the people and the place.  They reside in the same parts of your mind.  "Was it me?" you will lastly inquire.  Yes, it was above all else you.  Because in order for this to have occurred, you must have let it.  This is the hard part, because some places can be pretty weird.  And scary.  This doesn't mean you have become weird and scary (though it's a distinct possibility), just that you have come to accept a place for what it is, without your own expectations distorting it.

And then a funny thing happens: you will hear the same questions about the city as before, and you will still have a hard time answering.  "What is it like there?" people will ask.  "Where do I begin?" you will say.

I can feel it happening.

How to Get a Spanish Visa, or, A Practical Lesson in Bilingual Cursing

1) Go to a Hong Kong job fair to find a job in Hong Kong.

2) Return to your home in Quito three weeks later with a job in Barcelona, Spain.  Naturally.  Consult Pocket Spanish Dictionary for the phrase "Life-Plan Whiplash"

3) Make an appointment with the Spanish Consulate in Quito in order to submit documentation of your new job and apply for your visa.  

4) Discover from the consulate website that you have a giant checklist of additional documents to provide, including some kind of medical certificate.

5) Ask where you can get this vaguely defined medical certificate you apparently lack, and realize that you are weeks away from completion.  

a) Get a form from your school doctor that outlines the tests you need, and learn that you must give blood, urine, and stool samples to ensure that we savages from the New World will not bring our pestilence to Spain.  (Ha!)

b) Take the form to the clinic by your apartment after work, only to be told that the lab is only open from 8 - 10 in the morning.  You definitely recall visiting in the afternoon earlier in the year, but you decide mentioning this would not be constructive.  

c) Return the following day, a Saturday at 9 am, feeling safely buffered on both sides of the time frame.

d) After taking a number and waiting for 30 minutes, be told that the lab is only open from 7 - 9 in the morning (by the same person you spoke to the day before).

e) Consult Pocket Spanish Dictionary for the phrase "fuck nugget" hoping it is equally lyrical and expressive in both languages.

f) Attempt to return on Sunday, only to find that somewhere between turning off your lights and grabbing your keys, the electricity went out in your apartment.  Further, discover this means that the new magnetic/electric locks will not let you out of your building.

g) When the power comes back on at 9:12 am, allow an ironic laugh to escape and perform a google keyword search for "fatalities fires quito" and find a strange security in the fact that you have a rope, harness, and belay device in case you one day need to repel off of your roof.  

Although it wouldn't feel right without a wet suit.

h) On your fourth attempt, finally succeed.

i) Pick up the results, discover that you have actually been taking pretty good care of yourself, thank Mom and Dad for good genes, and bring them to your school doctor (the results, not your Mom and Dad, unless you want to).  

j) Wait another 2 days, as the doctor is always in meetings whenever you are not teaching class.  There is an algorithm to describe this process, and it will always be true no matter when you start trying.  

k) Have the doctor look at the results, nod approvingly, and write you a letter stating that you carry no contagions nor conditions that will result in the social deterioration of a nation.  This, mind you, is still not the medical certificate.

l) Take the letter and the results to the Centro Medico near your apartment.

m) Be told that you actually need to visit a Centro de Salud (Health Center) for the certificate, not a Centro Medico (Medical Center).  Don't you have a Pocket Spanish Dictionary?

n) Find a Centro de Salud, consult with the doctor, and then wait with a hoard of screaming children, all likely ill, for 30 minutes for god knows why until someone clicks "print" on the computer.  

o) Congratulations!  You finally have your medical certificate.  And possibly TB from that waiting room.  

p) Take the medical certificate to the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores (Ministry of Foreign Relations) to get an apostille for the document. 

q) Be told that before you can get an apostille from the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, you must get a stamp or a seal or a Dementor Kiss or an elaborate ritual using bloodstones or SOME fucking thing from the Ministerio de Salud (Ministry of Health).  

r) Arrive, and be told that the person who has the special stamping/sealing/kissing/bloodstone powers has left for the day, and you must leave your medical form with them and pick it up tomorrow.

s) On your smart phone, perform google keyword search "death penalty ecuador?"  You will get no results, as the 3G service is more or less as reliable as prayer, but it will occupy your hands with non-violent pursuits.  

t) Return the following morning to pick up your consecrated medical form.  Be sure to wear sheepskin gloves and hold only the edges and corners, or else the residue from the alchemic bath in which it has been soaking overnight may induce delusions of grandeur, limb reversal, and/or a minor rash.  Sunglasses are also recommended. 

While rare, face-melting is also a risk, especially for rational creatures over the age of 11.
Talk to your doctor to see if bureaucracy is right for you.
Photo Credit

u) Return to the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores for the apostille, and see that the place is obscenely packed.  Seriously, it looks like a public swimming pool in July in there.

v) Take a number and look for a seat, wondering how long the incantation on the medical form will last before the fragile document is ripped from existence by its own growing frenzy of blindingly purple light and shrieks of disembodied children and...oh hey, that's your number on the screen already being called.  

w) Go to the window indicated and slowly, CAREFULLY, relinquish ownership of the medical form.  Do not forget the ancient Finnish chant that must be spoken in monotone at the exact moment of exchange.  

x) Go to the cash register and pay $10. 

y) Retrieve the medical form with the attached apostille, which has apparently banished the pan-dimensional being that had temporarily possessed it, as it has ceased vibrating and whispering your own inner monologue on a two-second delay.  

z) Unsure of what just happened or why it was so easy, leave, and never return.  As best as you can, ignore the ancient Finnish that now seems to be spoken by all those around you, as well as the fact that you can understand it.  

6) Take this and all of your other documents, both those from your own blood and sweat as well as those sent to you from Barcelona, to your next appointment with the Spanish Consulate.

7) Approach the man at the window, whose head is already shaking back and forth, presumably an anticipatory tick from denying so many supplicants.  Applicants.  I meant applicants.

8) This man, emotionless aside from a skillfully leveled air of self-importance, will tell you that the visa process cannot begin without previous authorization from the Ministerio de Extranjeros (Foreigners) in Barcelona.  You do not have this document.  It was not in the packet your school sent you.

9) Consult Pocket Spanish Dictionary so you can tell him what a cheap, lying, no-good, rotten, four-flushing, lowlife, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-kissing, brainless, dickless, hopeless, heartless, fat-assed, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spotty-lipped, worm-headed sack of monkey shit he is!!!  Hallelujah!!  Holy Shit!!  Where's the Tylenol??  (Thank you, Chevy Chase)

10) With a herculean effort, you suppress this rant, but this man still does not even look at your visa application.  He has never seen you before, so he cannot tell from your eyes how much of your soul has wilted and fallen off in large, pungent chunks due to the sinister magic that was necessary to obtain, and activate, your documents.  He just stops talking to you, until the awkward silence that follows your protestations, indignation, and groveling becomes palpable, and you and your maimed psyche slink back into the late Quito morning.

11) Inform your school via email that you need this document, but that really you wouldn't mind just getting the damn thing when you arrive in Barcelona, so as to only deal with one country's mindless, infuriating bureaucratic labyrinth at a time.  You are sick and tired of these institutions, these new, ruthless gods who demand from us tribute and sacrifice not through animal slaughter and adherence to dogma, but through our days and weeks and our very youth!  You may want to phrase it differently before sending this to HR.

12) Perform google keyword search "bars quito 11 am"

This may not technically solve your problems.

print ('hello world')

To be an expat is often to be a divided soul.  On the one hand, I love what I am doing, and plan to continue doing it.  I have been teaching in Quito, Ecuador for the last four years, and I have just signed a new two-year contract that will take me to Barcelona, Spain beginning this August.  To explain the excitement I feel about moving to a new city on the Mediterranean or the staggering impact of the people I have met along the way thus far would be way beyond the parameters of this particular blog post.  On the other hand, I also have strong ties to family and friends in Maryland.   I miss them.  I am compiling nieces and nephews that know me mostly as a floating head on a laptop.  The lives of my childhood friends go on, and I become the oddball they think of less and less as these years go by and they see me only a few times each summer.  And because I identify so strongly with both of these aspects, I can be defined by neither.  That truly becomes the lot of the expat: one who does not fit into either of their worlds very neatly anymore.  I suspect that many of us felt like misfits from the start, which is why this strangely appealing lifestyle suits us so well, and why we don't readily leave it.

This blog may be a way to bridge the gap; we will see.  At the very least it will provide a way to better share my experiences with those back home, to dislodge festering thoughts from my mind, and to hopefully give helpful information to any fellow travelers or expats who may want to poke around South America (and soon, Europe).  See you around.