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Thursday, April 24, 2003 Grumble, grumble. Construction work making big noise across the street. Over this last weekend -- this last, lovely, long weekend -- the construction people did the four-day holiday thing one better, playing hookey on Monday, not showing up here until Tuesday a.m. Five fine, luxurious days of no big racket. Then Tuesday a.m. dawned. 8 o'clock, the front-end/rear-end loader's engine gets cranked, at 8:15 work gets underway. This week's work has included the loader's version of a jackhammer as it excavates down into the building site. Man, that's some serious fun. The kind of sound that can gradually knock tooth fillings loose. There hasn't been a whole lot of that today, for which I am properly grateful. And the good thing about all of this, of course, is that I appreciate the bejesus out of it when they quit around 6 p.m. and silence falls, leaving only the noise of life going on in the barrio, a kind of noise I generally enjoy. And this week I started up evening Spanish classes after a week off. A small class -- just me, one other student, and Jesús, our instructor. A good guy, seriously into teaching language and apparently enjoying it. Slim, 30ish, thin, angular face, the ultracasual clothes of a perennial student (or a language instructor being paid the typical language instructor's skimpy wage). Has the kind of sideburns that plunge down in front of the ears in a thin, straight line, continuing along -- or just under, actually -- the jaw line to meet at the chin. Combined with the drastically short cut he got over the holidays, his black hair is now a uniform length everywhere on his cranium, from the very top to the point of his chin, creating a strange look. D., the other student in the class, is a tall late-40s fella from around San Francisco way who's lived in Europe for ages, spending a few years in, say, Sweden, learning the language, immersing himself in the culture and the lifestyle, teaching English to get along. Then moving on to, say, Germany for a few years, for the same routine. Then France. Then one or two other places. Multilingual. And smart. There are moments when I feel like the village idiot of this group. We sit in class up on the fourth floor of a building that fronts on la Calle de Arenal, three short blocks from the plaza in front of the Royal Opera House. The sky stays light until well after 9 p.m. now, so that there's a view out the room's side window and out the two French windows that open out on the small balcón overlooking Arenal for any time I feel like floating off mentally, staring out at the light and other buildings, where other people occasionally pop out onto the balcones to stare off toward the sunset or show in the windows to pull the shades. I can't drift that way for very long with only two other people in the room with me. Plus the material is advanced enough that I take the risk of getting hopelessly lost if I drift off for long enough that they've moved on to something I'm unfamiliar with, something that happens with unnerving frequency. Jesús has gotten used to my periodic glassy stare followed by an expression of total cluelessness and responds with the kindness of a language-teaching saint. Whatever he's getting paid, he deserves more. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In this journal's entry of March 10 (this year), I wrote: "Seen in the front window of a neighborhood bakery: an apple cake -- more a broad pastry than a cake, actually, baked in a broad pan, the creation only as tall as the pan's rim. Its surface is covered with apples slices, beautifully arranged, topped with a honey-colored gel. Sophisticated, high-quality bakery fare, scrumptious- looking. Someone has plunged a swizzle-stick into it that bears a small sign which reads ES DEFÍCIL HACER (Translation: IT'S HARD TO DO). No price, just those words." I passed by that same bakery recently and noticed that they still have that kind of delicious-looking apple thingie displayed in the window, though the message has changed. The sign poking up out of it now reads: ESTOY DICIENDO COMEME (Translation: I'M SAYING EAT ME) rws 2:17 PM [+]
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