Where to begin? The last two weeks have been insane for me.
One of my housemates, Georg, had two of his friends over for a couple of days two weeks ago, and I spent those days doing around with them- always fun going around with visitors and doing the normal tourist stuff. Also, my friend from Madrid, Sergio, came for one night and we had a great time hanging out in Alcalá. This is on Friday the 12th of March. The following week was supposed to be an down-week for me because I was getting tired of constantly going and doing during the past week, and the truth be told, I can only do la noche en blanco(all-nighters) like once or twice and then I´m needing some heavy sleep for a while; but of course, things don´t go as I´d have liked. The week of the 15th got off to a good smooth start and then kicked off with St. Patrick´s day on that Wednesday and another housemate´s Birthday party on Thursday (Camille). This birthday party was GREAT, but the electricity shuts off completely that night. It wasn´t a simple flipped breaker, it was major ´call your electrician´ electrical problems. We decided to rough it out that night and wake up the following morning in order to call our landlord, Rosa and have the problem solved. Little did we know that Señora Rosa was in Rome. "No worries! We´ll have a few days of no electricity or hot water!" - this is where it begins.
The following day, Friday the 19th, the entire house wakes up early (there were 9 of us at the time) and go have lunch at the local Mexican restaurant- don´t get excited, it´s not good Mexican- and afterward we go to our grocery store Carrefour in order to buy a grill and food to go with it. We get back home and start preparing all of the food that we bought along with food that was going to ruin in the fridges.
As night falls, we begin to light all 10.000 candles we bought and light up the grill. The night was incredible- literally one of the best nights I´ve had this year in Spain (nearly :) ). We sat around and talked, sang, played games and just bonded in a way that I haven´t experienced in a very long time. The conversation was light yet at times deep and thought-provoking. We stayed up until about 7.30 in the morning doing this.
The next day was a lazy day filled with the same things except a little bit of reading and studying too. Everything was just so much easier without the clutter of the constant stimulus of THINGS invading your senses at all times. We decided to put 3 of our individual mattresses together in the common area on the third floor and make "Supermattress" so we could all just have a place to lay, talk and read. That night we all cooked the remnants in the fridges and 6 of us watched a film and then slept. On Sunday, we were able to get in touch with our landlord, and she had someone come and repair the electrical problem by mid-afternoon.
It was a great yet simple 3 days filled with a lot of different conversations and a lot of thinking on my part. One conversation I had with a really interesting character made me think a lot.
We were talking about nationalities and things- The first thing you ask someone you meet is "where are you from?". Why is this? I believe it´s because we as humans love to put things into boxes that are labeled because by doing this we give order to our crazy lives, but I honestly think this is ludicrous. At best, knowing someone´s nationality gives you a minute inkling of what they COULD have been exposed to throughout their lives, but in reality tells nothing of value. All it seems to do is make people think they know things about you, and the majority of those things are probably not positive. Me being from the United States of America- What does that say about me? What does someone being from Germany say about them? Nothing- yet we all are obsessed with this question, myself included. Why?
Each person is their own- French, English, German or American. Yes, we are a product of our environment, but our environment is so much more than our nationality- it´s who we associate with, our parents. It´s that one time we were embarrassed in front of the entire class or that one trip to a foreign land. My nationality is only a small SMALL part of what defines me.
Asking someone where they are from or what their parents do for a living are good questions to point you in very broad direction in getting to know a person, but once you do get to know a person you can quickly trash any ideas of their nationality. If you want to get to know someone; sit, talk, ask questions and listen. When you make first contact with a person and ask ´Where are you from?´ you will have a marble slab and by bonding with this person and just having personal conversation you will slowly chip away at this "slab" until slowly, very slowly what´s left is a unique person that no country can claim as their own.
