Orientation, part 7

Soon I was able to find someone from my own program. I reached her by phone, using the number my friend from home had given me. Her name was Lorraine, and she sounded happy to hear from me. “It’s great that you’re here!” she said. “The group was getting so small—Marlene had to go back to the Philippines, and the two English girls finished school and went home. Everybody else is still on vacation, but I could meet you, if you want, and we could talk.” I was delighted, and I agreed to meet her at the church where the Thursday night English-speaking group met, in the northeast part of the city.

I took the train into the central station and got a taxi to take me to the church, because I couldn’t figure out exactly where it was. It was 8:00 on a September evening, still light out, and I saw that the church was a modern one with a large concrete entrance plaza. I tried the glass doors to the church’s school building, but they were locked.

“Are you Susie?”

There was a beautiful young blonde talking to me. “Are you Lorraine?” I asked her. She was!

Lorraine and I talked for two hours, sitting out on the plaza, watching the constant stream of people going in and out of the church and the shops on the street nearby. We watched the sky darken gradually as we told each other about ourselves. I confessed how scared I was, constantly, even though I was excited to be in Spain. I told her about my family and my history, and she told me hers. She was the daughter of an American woman and a Spanish man, her parents were divorced, and she’d grown up in both countries. Her father owned a language school in Madrid—thousands of Spaniards were in the process of learning English and other languages at commercial schools all over the city—and she did some teaching there, and some translating, and she worked as a freelance writer. She had published a couple of nonfiction books and was a little bit known, she said, from appearing on talk shows to promote her books.

We clicked immediately. Lorraine was warm and understanding about my fears and offered to help me and guide me in any way that would be useful. I was thrilled to connect with someone who was simpática and who understood what I was going through. She promised to call me as soon as the other members of the group returned, and she assured me that I would love them all.