After a hearty breakfast, la Charo dropped me off in la Plaza de Toros, and I caught the bus from Puerto de Santa Maria to Cadiz. It let me off half a block away from the Telepizza on the Avenida. I found myself on La Calle Condesa Villafuentes Bermeja, literally on the doorstep of where my host family used to live. Should I check to see if they still live there? Would they remember me? What would the children look like after 10 years. Marta...the youngest, was 3 when I left. Miguel and Javier were 8 and 10. I decided not to decide just yet. Instead I called my friend Sonia. Sonia and I met about 2 weeks before I was about to leave Cadiz.
The back story on my friends: During the 1999/2000 academic year, I lived in Cadiz and attended the University of Cadiz, where I studied Spanish and Spanish culture. For the first half of the year I lived with a crazy woman and her annoying dog, as well as a host of interesting characters in a lovely 6 bedroom apartment in Vaya Blanca on Calle Tamarindos. That's where I met Dr. Bea...who at the time was in her first year of med school. Also living in the house was another med student from Granada, a German girl, and some 40 year old business man. The German girl spoke English and we got along pretty well. She and my crazy host mom did not get along, and this was one of the factors that lead to me eventually needing to leave the house and get a new host family. I digress.
When we first arrived, there was a welcome party where all the exchange students and our host families got together to mingle, drink good Spanish wine and watch a Flamenco show. Well the Flamenco part never happened...but we did drink a lot of wine and somehow I ended with my 28 other colleagues knocking back the drinks at O'Connel's the Irish pub in the center of the old part of town. We were all obsessed with the idea of making Spanish friends, and kind of disappointed to realize that most of our classes would be just with the other Americans.
In a bold...(alright and also slightly drunken) move, I sent a drink to a good looking gentleman across the bar. I had never done that before (or since come to think of it), but I figured...why not? When he came over to thank me, I realized that though he was cute, he was also about 6 inches shorter than me. Note to self...wait til the cute boy stands up before sending him a drink. It didn't really matter. It turned out Rafa was headed to England the following week to study English for a year...but before he left he introduced me to his cousin David. Through David I met his brother Juan de Dios and their friends Luis, Joaquin, and Paco (otherwise known as Dr. Pudge). We spent all year hanging out...having barbecues in Chiclana, botelloning in La Plaza Mina, and dancing at La Punta de San Felipe. David and Sonia were good friends and in the end Sonia, Juande and Luis ended up visiting me in Seattle. You never know how things are going to turn out.
It turns out, Sonia's family lives about a block away from my old house. She currently lives in Italy with her husband and daughter, but they just happened to be visiting her family for a few months. Before taking me to meet them, we stopped at a small cafe bar to have a manchado and catch up. It's been 6 years since we've seen each other outside of Facebook. She is even thinner than I remember. Her once blond hair is brown, but other than that she looks the same, she laughs the same and she still smokes like a chimney. When I asked about the old gang, she had a story about each of them, but all the stories ended in them not talking anymore. I had tried to contact David a few months ago, but never heard back. Maybe it's just as well. One of my friends told me once that friendships either last for a reason, a season, or a lifetime...but what no one tells you is that you can't tell which friends are which in advance. You just have to wait and see.
Coffee finished, we made our way back to Sonia's house which she warned me would be insane. In addition to her parents, her husband and 5 year old daughter, I would also be meeting her sister Jesse and Jesse's 2 small children. Having spent a whole summer away from small children, going to Sonia's house was a bit of a shock. I honestly think babysitting for children under 5 is probably one of the most effective forms of birth control I've ever encountered. Sonia's daughter and niece were nice enough, but her nephew was a mess. He has 2 teeth coming in so he was cranky and he drooled on everything and everyone. Plus he is an octopus, always with a hand somewhere it shouldn't be...in the toilet, in the kitty litter, pulling the dogs tail...and then for no reason what so ever he would just start to scream. Everyone else seemed to be used to it. They just kept talking like he wasn't screaming at the top of his lungs. When Sonia said she had to run some errands, I was happy to accompany her.
First we went to the supermarket, then to a different kind of market where there were different stands selling fruit, olives and fresh meat. Sonia was determined to bring back all her favorite foods back to Italy. Her luggage is going to be so over weight. It was nice to walk around and listen to all the people talking in that thick Cadiz accent.
We shared a late lunch of chicken with french fries and fried fish (this fish is a Cadiz delicacy) served with a sweet red wine. Sonia's dad told me dirty jokes, while her mom kept telling me I wasn't eating enough. It was actually perfect. Then around 6pm, she dropped me back off at the Telepizza where I met up with Sergio, one of my friends from the Facultad.
Sergio I hadn't seen for 10 years, but he looks almost exactly the same. He is the official Griot for that year in Cadiz. As we passed through the new part of the city into the old, I really felt like I was in some kind of time machine with a running commentary. That's where you guys had that welcome dinner and that's where Son Latinos used to be (the bar where I had my first mojito and learned how to salsa...now it's something else...couldn't bring myself to go in it). He seemed to remember every place we'd ever hung out and knew if it had changed hands or if it was the same.
We walked through la Plaza de Flores, which still sells flowers and past that cafe with the good churros. Then further in past La Catedral...which shows up in every postcard of the Cadiz coastline...la Plaza de San Antonio by my favorite icecream store...la Plaza de San Fransisco where I took my Mom to meet my friends for drinks on Christmas...la Plaza de Mina where a pigeon crapped on my head once. I have to say it was kind of weird, like being a ghost of my own life...the ghost of Cadiz past, and even more so because of being with Segio who reminded me of things that happened that I forgot about...who wore what costume during Carnivales, which girls went out with which guys, how he burnt his hand trying to drink a flaming Dr. Pepper (Flaming Dr. Pepper was one of our bizarre bar traditions. The only place you can get this drink in Cadiz was in a bar called Woodstock...which was a hippie rock bar that was closed to the dorms and often the first stop in a good night out. The Flaming Dr. Pepper is a shot of I don't know what that you set on fire, slap it with your hand-somehow this create suction so it sticks to your hand-and then you drop it in a pint of beer and chug it...it's supposed to taste like Dr. Pepper...yes we were dumb. We were 20, what do you expect?)
Then we visited the Facultad which was eerily empty and looked almost the same. White walls, white and gray marble floors, light green uncomfortable wooden chairs. It was a bittersweet visit. That year in my life was an incredible time. Coming to Cadiz was transformative. I met people, Americans and Spaniards who have become some of my closest friends...and other people who, though we've lost touch, still had a huge impact on my life. I also developed a bit of a wanderlust that hasn't gone away. That was the year I really learned how to speak Spanish, it was the year I learned how to travel, how to salsa, how to make tortilla de patata. It was also the year my best friend died. She was killed in a car crash days before her 21st birthday. At the time only one of my friends had a car. He was in the military and stationed at Rota. When I heard the news, it was too late to get to Madrid. Eric drove me the 2 hours to Sevilla and we spent the night in front of the station so I could get on the first train to catch a flight home.
When I came back to Spain to finish my year...it was hard. I wanted to be that same person I was before, but losing Robin and then being surrounded by people who never knew her...it was hard. All these years later it's still hard. As Sergio and I sat on the wall outside the Cathedral and watched the sun go down over the ocean (as we had so many times before), I couldn't help but be glad it was over. Time is meant to keep moving. And while that means you can't cling to every perfect moment, it also means that when those horrible things happen, you can't cling to them either. I'm glad I came and got to visit the past, but happier still to live in the present.
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