Just Visiting, part 11

I worked hard and did well in the class. I crammed my head full of vocabulary every night. I tried to use a Castilian accent in class, lisping the c’s and z’s, but most of the time I spoke Latin American-accented Spanish like everyone else. A lot of learning was packed into the first six weeks. Homework was at least as demanding as the class time itself. It took a lot of hours to memorize the amount of grammar and vocabulary needed to assimilate the course in six weeks. The 42-year-old brain, I found, did not take this stuff in as rapidly as the teenage one I’d had when I learned French in high school.

The second half of the summer was less useful. The teacher was not as good as Lourdes had been, and the material covered was no more than a review of what we’d learned in the first half. I was amazed to look back and see that we’d learned all the basics of the language in Spanish I.

As the summer went on I became more and more nervous about the move. I missed Mike, who was still away most of the time. The kids were enjoying their summer, as I had hoped they would, but I was pretty frazzled. I was afraid of being in Spain, and I was afraid of leaving behind my life in Connecticut. I worried about the kids’ school, about shipping our household goods, about tenants for our house in Stamford. I didn’t know how the money was going to work out. Since I was less busy with school, I had lots more time to worry.

My sister had gotten me started on America Online a few months earlier—the idea of online chat was new, at least to me, in 1994—and I began to stay up late at night playing in the Parlor Games area on AOL. It was a place where a “room” full of 26 people played word games and Jeopardy-style games, hosted by volunteer staffers. I “met” a lot of nice people there and told several of them about my move and my worries. It was certainly habit-forming, but it helped me with some of the loneliness and fear I was feeling.

Mike did find us a place to live during the late spring. He had continued to hunt with Marilu, and occasionally a PW colleague would give him a lead. He saw places that were too expensive, bigger than we needed, or not very nice.

“I don’t think I’m going to find what we want in an apartment here,” he said on the phone one night. “Everything is unfurnished, and I don’t want to have to deal with shipping all our furniture over here. I’ll look at houses, too.”

“Okay,” I said, “but no pool. I don’t want to have to take care of a pool.” Then Marilu found him the perfect place—a medium-size house (similar in interior space to the 2,500 square feet we were used to), furnished, near the American School. It was just a few years old, had a nice kitchen, and—unusual for a Spanish house—had wall-to-wall carpeting throughout. Made of brown brick with a tile roof, it was contemporary in style. The interior walls were covered with white stucco on which I ended up scraping my knuckles hundreds of times while carrying laundry upstairs. There were three bedrooms on the second floor and a playroom and office on the third floor. There was a small carport in front and a little yard in back with a small swimming pool.

“Wait a minute. I said no pool!” I told Mike.

“Look,” he replied, “we don’t even have to fill it if we don’t want to. But this house is a great deal. The owner is moving to Mexico for two years, and he’s asking $2,500 a month, furnished. Most of the places I’ve seen are $3,500 a month unfurnished!” Obviously, it was too good a deal to pass up.