Hola, mi querida Barcelona, ¿cómo estás?: Teaching, Seasons & Cafe con Leche

It’s been nearly 4 months of living in a new city and I feel like it’s all unfolded in the most beautiful way, and I have had so much fun. I completed an intensive teaching and developing course, we were a group of fifteen from all over and were truly thrown into the deep end with practice teaching - but that is the best way to learn, after all.

I still now remember back to the morning I arrived, no, even before that, before the long flights, at Sydney airport. The airport was empty, and outside there were these huge tents set up with COVID testing booths. It looked dystopian. I slept in an overnight airport hotel, and the previous afternoon my dad had dropped me off as we drove from Mullalone.

My dad was also the last person I saw at the airport when I left for Paris, 5 years ago. I was crying and couldn’t form words and we had hugged and he had said “we are so proud of you”

We got to the little check in desk, and he was wheeling my suitcases for me to the elevator. My heart was pounding in my ears. I asked him if he was going to come up to the room as he pressed the ‘up’ button, and he let out a little laugh and said “No.. no” shaking his head. It was then that I realised he was just keeping it together. We hugged, and I think we had just quietly said “Okay” to each other as if in confirmation. As if to say, thank you, I love you. As if to say, there you go again. As if to say, here I go, I’m going to go, but I still feel like a little girl having to say bye at the school gates and the knot in my throat is agonising.

Like I said, the airport was empty. The departures neon sign glowed bright, but the atmosphere was absent. I don’t really remember the flights, now. But I remember getting out of the taxi on the corner of Provenca, and all the way from the airport I had instructions from my room mate on how to get to the building’s entrance. Look for a restaurant called El Manaba, the doors are in between that and a cafe. El Manaba, El Manaba, El Manaba, I kept repeating.

The taxi driver was so kind and helped me all the way to the elevator. The very small elevator. There was a foggy mirror inside, and me, squished with my bags. I caught my gaze in the mirror, but I felt very far from myself. That’s normal, I know. You dissociate a little. Traveling from Australia, after all, is basically time travel.

Well, it’s June, now. El Manaba has great food, by the way. I finally tried it after a couple months, and they do a great pescatarian plate.

I finished the course, and right on my 27th birthday I started a job teaching at a language academy. My first class I remember waiting standing in front of the whiteboard. the sides of my hands had black marks on them from rubbing off and rewriting my name over and over until it looked foreign. I was so nervous. The classroom I was in was toward the back of the school, and where I stood I looked out to windows and a back door with a green “exit” sign glowing on top. Is this flight or fight? I stood there and kept waiting for myself to run out that door. To where? Who knows. All I knew was I couldn’t do this. I can’t. I’m too nervous. I’m too nervous. I’m too ner—

“Hello! What’s your name?”

In a week it’ll be summer break, and this last week, I spent every evening after classes writing report cards and marking exams for about 67 students. I know them all by face and name. They pronounce my name perfectly. They’re kind, and funny, and I know how to work around the trouble makers so they get to be class clowns and entertaining and productive. It’s a science.

One class I have are all girls. 13 - 15 years old. Last week before class ended I went to get a glass of water from the kitchen, and when I came back they had left folded pieces of papers on my desk in the shape of butterflies. They had written on the white board “Anya we love you”.

“Will you be back next semester? Please don’t leave” “Girls the semester isn’t even over yet, don’t worry” “Yes, yes, but how will we know you’ll be back?” “Yeah Anya do you want us to be in worry all summer?” “I won’t come back if you don’t, c’mon Anya”

I walked to the metro that evening, sending a voice note to my parents. “They hugged me!”

I felt so fulfilled. I felt like a grown up, but still like a kid. It was a Thursday evening and on the metro on the way back to my beloved Verdageur station I had received a text from some of the girls from the course, “Come meet us in Gothico!”. I had Friday off and I felt like I was in a movie. Harry Styles’ ‘As it was’ had just come out and I was playing it on repeat through my headphones.

I remember thinking this song was written just for me. I thought about a year ago, working at the shelter. I thought about my room, my window view. How I sat there journaling. I’d journal about what I might want to do, what I should do. No, I’ll stay. No, I’ll go. But where?

As I got dressed to go meet my friends, I sang along to Harry Styles. I had to fan my face because the tears were welling up. It’s not the same as it was, and in this world, it’s just us. Us, I thought. Me, myself and I. All versions of her.

I think what has been happening the last near handful of months is my heart expanding. My world expanding. What you keep realising though, is that expanding doesn’t just happen on the outside, it happens from the inside, out. I've loved meeting new people, and I am always surprised at how that means that you invite them into your world, and you are invited into theirs. I am always surprised at how beautiful intertwining is.

For my birthday, we all went out dancing. Before, the girls all came over and we were in the living room, the doors leading out to the balcony all wide open letting the cool air come in. The Sagrada glowing down the road. Music playing. I went to my room to get something, and one of my dear new friends, Bella, followed me in. “I made you this card, and wanted to give it to you!”, I opened it, read it, and on the inside was a picture she had drawn. It was of a doberman, holding balloons. “It’s your dog, the one you spoke about”. I started to cry, and she insisted I didn’t. But in a way as if to say it’s okay. I cried because I missed Ziva, but mostly I cried because of the kindness. I cried because I thought all the way back. I thought about her leading me to this moment. I cried because of gratitude.

“C,mon let’s get back out there”, she said. We walked down to the living room and I saw the lights were off. On the table was a cake so filled with candles you’d swore it was on fire. They sang happy birthday. I felt 5 years old again. Everyone’s voices turned into one harmony. The room went blurry because I was looking through salt-water filled eyes. Everybody looked beautiful, and we danced the whole night away.

Now, summer is approaching, and I’m so excited. Mama and I have plans to meet one another in August, in Switzerland. We’re going to do some slow traveling by train from Zurich through the mountains. I’m getting used to getting on the metro to go to the beach, and also coming back by metro, with sandy feet and warmed skin on the train. I miss driving the Jeep, but city living isn’t so bad. There are always so many people to watch, to admire.

The cafe downstairs on the corner, the Panery, is my usual. Cafe con leche, a savoury croissant or a fresh tuna sandwich. They do it so well. They also have the most glorious chocolate muffins, and these small doughy balls showered with powdered sugar for .40 cents each. That’s dangerous for the figure. But who am I kidding? I always get at least 2. You can’t something savoury without something sweet, that’s my universal rule.

I’ve also joined the gym down the road, called Metropolitan. It’s state of the art, and breaks the bank a little, but it is so worth it. The bottom levels have the swimming pools, and then there are the relaxing pools with beds inside, massage beds. Water fountains. Sauna. Steam room. Ice plunge. It’s all dim lights that change from red, to green, to blue, to purple. It feels like another planet down there, and it is ridiculously relaxing.

I’ve been loving the roof top training section. It’s quiet in the mornings if I make it for opening, and the sunrise and view of the Sagrada, and the rooftops of this neighbourhood take my breath away. It’s so beautiful.

I realised walking home from the gym that this is home for me, for now. I feel settled, but still in that sweet spot of looking forward to discovering more, and none of the novelties has worn. I don’t think it ever really does for me. It reminds me of a line in a poem my friend Madeline once wrote. She wrote that she only ever really loves a place if she knows she’s going to leave it. I adopted that one immediately, because it summed up a part of my functioning that I never knew I could have words to describe but existed. My life has had a lot of change, and slowly but surely have I realised, as if to crack some code, that if I keep changing, it makes it all the more exciting not knowing when the next drop of the hat might be. That may not sound so fun for many people, but for me, it makes all the sense in the world.

I am sitting on the balcony now, and behind me is the Sagrada, and the trees lining the avenue are filling up more every day. So green. The air is a tonic, it’s so fresh, and there’s this light scent of jasmine. I am facing toward the station, and I can see people walking out and down the stairs leading down. There’s the fountain right next to the entrance, and the pigeons love flittering their wings in the shallow water during a hot day. I love it up here, there’s always movement, but I can also lift my gaze to the tree tops, the sky, and find tranquility, and quiet.

My room is very small, but it’s cosy. I have an internal window, which means it looks and opens into the inside of the building, a square. I’ve come to romanticise it, because at the beginning of the course, my friend Breanna who I met, was renting the room just a level below, and her bedroom window was across from mine. We’d whisper to each other, across the space, and it felt very cinematic, and very girlhood.

She has since moved to another place, but when I see the light inside flicker on, now belonging to another stranger, I smile. Cities also have a sweet, but sometimes ruthless, way of teaching you impermanence. A constant flow. Whether you go with that flow or not.

The other evening, I was laying on my bed, about to put on a movie on my projector which projects perfectly onto the wall. I had made dinner, my salt lamp was glowing, I felt so relaxed, albeit a little lonely. Then, music. A violin began to echo up through the inside of the building. I opened my window a tiny bit more, feeling fresh air flow in, and the sound became more clear. It started, stopped, then started again. Someone, somewhere, in the building, was playing the violin. I sat by my desk by the window and ate my dinner, listening. It was beautiful. They never played a whole song in full, as they were practicing. But there was something about the pausing, the correcting, the repeating, that made a song in itself. I felt behind the scenes with them. I felt appreciative of the process. I practiced patience, and let go of my expectations of what it should sound like, and just let it be. When they finished a grand finale, silence. No clapping. No audible sigh of relief. Silence, until the sound of faint birdsong, someone coming up the elevator, the sound of plates clattering in a window. Life. The sounds of life continued, filling in the spaces of what one might perceive as nothing.

Sounds familiar, huh?

I’m here, in Barcelona. I’m on the front stage and behind the scenes simulatenously. I’m learning, I’m practicing. I’m correcting, and repeating. I am letting go of my expectations, I am appreciating the process.

I am beginning to pay attention to the sounds, the feeling, the being: in the spaces and moments of what one might perceive as nothing.

It’s not the same as it was, I am not the same as I was, and that’s the whole point of the journey.