One week in..

I begin the virtual record of my life in Madrid 9 days after its beginning. I have been recording thoughts and impressions in a notebook I carry from time to time but much of this first week has been reception and assimilation of all the elements in which I have immersed myself. Like a strange new food, I had no immediate reaction but to feel and attempt to recognize. Now that it's become clear there is little here for me to recongnize, I've moved on to simply doing all that I can and taking the time to reflect when it's available. My first few days were spent in a hostel near the barrio Huertas, where I learned that while Hostel's may be temples for the travelers who care more for experience than a quiet night, they are no good for the people who actually require sleep. Within two days, however, I'd found myself an apartment right between the Sol and La Latina barrios - where anyone will tell you is basically ground zero for nocturnal activity of all sorts. Lavapies and Huertas are minutes away and the weekend nights don't ever die down until after 6 am. After 5 days of education training I have already taught 2 classes and I'm amid preparations for a third and fourth, though there's always time to go find a new taberna on a new calle in which to sit and take it all in over a cerveza and tapa. By the way, they come free with drinks - my favorite is probably the spanish olives and anchovies, but the chorizo a la sidra is equally exceptional. I take two metros to and from the training center every day, passing through stations ranging in size from a mere platform to a network of platforms and escalators so large that every station in the city of boston could fit snugly inside. 9-5 is spent in Northern Madrid where they teach me how to teach those with whom I can barely communicate to speak English. The nights range from drinks all over the city with friends from Rome, Barcelona, England and Scotland to all-night hedonistic pilgrimages from calle to calle, barrio to barrio. Sundays in Retiro park provide more entertainment than I could have ever predicted, with drum circles numbering 15-25 large and a pulsing dancefloor on the edge of a great pond. It's strange, this life of hedonism and work combined, but I have a feeling it's the way of the world here within the border's of Europe's highest capitol. At 2pm one is hard pressed to find a bar that's empty, as the entire city exhales from the morning grind and relaxes over a cerveza or two and a few tostas. At 930p it's the same story. Enthusiastic speech everywhere while the city buzzes with an energy that is calm enough to be sustainable but intense enough to spill over into the streets of a city where the fear of old age is washed away like no where else. It is something altogether different and not always elating to come to a city alone and I often find myself thinking of the people and things I have left, but I have yet to believe that things from the past must remain there and rather than look either forward or behind I spend the minutes looking all around me now - my new home in Spain.