Settling In, part 6

The first time I went to Spanish class at the little language school in Aravaca, I wasn’t sure what to expect. It was just a five-minute drive from my house, but the narrow, clogged streets of the town were unfamiliar to me. There seemed to be lots of little shops, but nowhere to park. Sometimes a street would be completely blocked when a butane delivery truck was there. People who wanted to cook or heat with gas had to have it delivered in small tanks, and the butane truck would come and drop off a couple tanks and pick up your empties. But in those tiny streets the truck took up the whole width of the roadway, so you had to wait while the exchange was made.

I found the school that first day after driving past it twice and circling back. Given the typical lack of parking spaces, I found I had to drive on beyond it and continue for a couple of blocks just to find a place to leave the car. I walked back toward the school, passing apartment buildings with laundry hung on lines in the back.

There was a blond lady behind the desk in the reception area, and a silent little man sitting in a chair nearby. “Buenos días,” I greeted the lady. She answered politely and helped me register for class, explaining in Spanish that she would get the textbooks for the students. It wasn’t until weeks later that I learned that she was an Irishwoman named Bernice who, of course, spoke perfect English, and that the silent little man was her Spanish husband.

The classroom was tiny, with about eight chairs that had writing desks attached. There was a blackboard and a desk for the teacher, who came in just after me. “Me llamo Dolo,” she said—my name is Dolo. She explained that Dolo was a nickname for Dolores and said that she came from Galicia, in northwest Spain. She was short, dark and pretty and always smartly dressed. I was now used to seeing young mothers in the grocery section of Hipercor wearing jodhpur-style pants and riding boots—very stylish at that moment—and usually a sharply ironed blouse with a tweed jacket or a fine wool sweater. They always wore a pretty silk scarf or a necklace, and their hair was invariably pulled back into a tidy barrette. This was Dolo’s style, too. With her dark hair and complexion she almost always wore shades of brown, and she looked wonderful in them.

There was one person who’d arrived in class before me—an attractive young German woman who turned out to be an au pair for a Spanish family. She introduced herself in Spanish as Britta. Though she spoke great English, we only spoke Spanish in class—Dolo didn’t know English at all.

As I had hoped, Huibrecht Kruger arrived a few minutes after me. I had noticed that she was always wonderfully dressed, too, usually with an extra-interesting piece of jewelry. She favored unusual beads, abstract metal pins, and dangling multicolored earrings. Her artist’s flair was apparent. And she brought with her another South African woman, Karin, who was her partner in the painted-ostrich-egg business. “Su marido trabaja con el mío en la embajada de Sudáfrica,” Huibrecht said—“Her husband works with mine in the South African Embassy.” Karin was a few years younger than Huibrecht but equally pretty, with the same musical South African accent when I heard her speak in English.


“No hablo español como Huibrecht,” Karin told Dolo apologetically—“I don’t speak Spanish like Huibrecht.” But Huibrecht explained that she and her husband had been posted to the South African embassy in Peru at one time, and she’d learned Spanish then, though she claimed not to remember it too well.

We spent the class time conversing a bit and getting to know one another as Dolo assessed our ability level in Spanish. That way, she said, she could tell which textbook would be best for us. Bernice popped in about midway through the two-hour class and offered everyone “café o té”—coffee or tea—which seemed most civilized to me, though I was too shy to ask for any. But at the end of the class I left feeling happy that I’d found a place to continue to work on my Spanish, and that I’d get to know Huibrecht better.