Orientation, part 5

We had seen Retiro, the big city park near the Prado, on a weekday when we’d first visited Mike in Madrid, but we heard that Sunday was a much better day to go, so we drove into town one early fall day around noon to see the goings-on. Sure enough, the quiet park we’d visited was teeming with people—Peruvian flute bands, puppeteers and dancers, merchants selling scarves and folk remedies. Two vendors caught the attention of Julie and Lisa—one who would write your name on a grain of rice, which would be sealed in a little capsule hung on a string so you could wear it as a necklace. The other had a sign that read “Trenzas”—and the woman there would braid a little segment of your hair and then wrap it with thread in whatever colors you chose. Of course, each girl got a rice necklace, and each got a trenza. “I can’t wait to show Alia at school tomorrow!” Lisa said, beaming. “She has a trenza, and now I have one, too!” It was a pleasure listening to the kids speak Spanish—though they’d learned only a little in these first weeks, their accents were perfect, because young children could expertly mimic their teachers, and the ASM teachers were Spaniards.

We took a walk over to the lagoon where you could rent rowboats. “I want to row,” Julie said.

“Are you sure?” Mike asked. “I’m happy to do the rowing.”

“No, I do it at camp! I can do it.” And she took us on a relaxing half-hour trip around the lagoon.

We walked back to the path where all the merchants were set up, and we came to a guy dressed in a swashbuckler’s cape who was setting up a tightrope between a couple of lampposts. We joined the gathering crowd, and we watched his theatrical turn as he swished his cape, did a little fire eating, and juggled a bit, all accompanied by nonstop patter in Spanish.

Suddenly I realized something. “I can understand this guy much better than I can most Spaniards,” I thought. “I think he must be American.” I focused more carefully on his speech as he did his tightrope act, eliciting squeals from the kids in the crowd.

“How can I find out if I’m right?” I wondered. I was too embarrassed to go up and ask the guy if he was American. But as the act ended and we pitched some coins in the hat for him, I heard somebody else pose the question.

“De donde es usted?” a girl asked—Where are you from?

He recognized her American accent right away and answered in English—“I’m from Baltimore.”