21 march 2005
Cemeteries and lemon trees are rolling by the bus window and the two dreadlocked American girls in front of me are talking about how bad rape is and how bad Spanish driving is. I am going to Granada, to the Alhambra, a place I have only seen in slideshows.
I am reading The Sun Also Rises whenever the landscape is monotonous and the dreadlocked girls are quiet, so I’m not reading much. Talley is sleeping in the seat next to me, sleeping right through the bus radio, which is playing a perfect recreation of a 1989 soft rock station. Love ballads mostly.
Last night we had dinner with Talley’s neighbors and their friends: a French guy and two couples from French-speaking islands. There was no language we all had in common. (Six years of high school French and I can’t even get through a dinner party.) Sometimes the conversation would split into two languages discussing the same topic. Sometimes an English speaker and a French speaker would try to understand each other in Spanish. I love this.
(We are driving by vineyards. The girls are talking about mama’s boys. Elton John is singing.)
The French couple hosting served salted duck with Moroccan bread and sangria. We passed the dishes around three times. Afterwards we drank honey liqueur. Aperitifs are highly underutilized in the states.
Full and tipsy and giddy with misunderstandings, we gathered around the Miss Espagne competition on television. It was at once more modest and more risqué than Miss America. The contestants were less plastic than Miss America, with a wider range of heights and hairstyles and – to a small degree – body types. In the swimsuit competition all the women wore the same bikini, which was primly full-coverage in the front but essentially absent in the rear. When fully dressed, the women wore abundant large plastic jewelry in beach colors. They towered on impossibly high heels at all times.
And now we are going to Granada.
(Fields of greenhouses, fruit pickers. Bonnie Taylor, Phil Collins.)
I am reading The Sun Also Rises whenever the landscape is monotonous and the dreadlocked girls are quiet, so I’m not reading much. Talley is sleeping in the seat next to me, sleeping right through the bus radio, which is playing a perfect recreation of a 1989 soft rock station. Love ballads mostly.
Last night we had dinner with Talley’s neighbors and their friends: a French guy and two couples from French-speaking islands. There was no language we all had in common. (Six years of high school French and I can’t even get through a dinner party.) Sometimes the conversation would split into two languages discussing the same topic. Sometimes an English speaker and a French speaker would try to understand each other in Spanish. I love this.
(We are driving by vineyards. The girls are talking about mama’s boys. Elton John is singing.)
The French couple hosting served salted duck with Moroccan bread and sangria. We passed the dishes around three times. Afterwards we drank honey liqueur. Aperitifs are highly underutilized in the states.
Full and tipsy and giddy with misunderstandings, we gathered around the Miss Espagne competition on television. It was at once more modest and more risqué than Miss America. The contestants were less plastic than Miss America, with a wider range of heights and hairstyles and – to a small degree – body types. In the swimsuit competition all the women wore the same bikini, which was primly full-coverage in the front but essentially absent in the rear. When fully dressed, the women wore abundant large plastic jewelry in beach colors. They towered on impossibly high heels at all times.
And now we are going to Granada.
(Fields of greenhouses, fruit pickers. Bonnie Taylor, Phil Collins.)
posted by tortaluga at 12:07 PM
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