Brilliant

I should really think a name for him. Or better yet, simply ask, ¿cómo te llamas? He might be one of my favorite persons in this city, that keeps feeling smaller and smaller each day. Yet I don´t even know his name. But he makes me smile and brightens up these never-ending rainy mornings.

And for all of you back home thinking, but you have a boyfriend, no os preocupeis. Don´t worry. I am in love with his music, as my favorite nameless stranger is a violinist. A brilliant one at that, always playing Mozart, Vivaldi, and Handel. So talented. He stands and plays for thousands of people busily passing by him on their commutes to work, right before the Cercanias (notice my favorite word again) entrance at Nuevos Ministerios. It´s like that story about the famous violinist, Joshua Bell, discovered on the streets of New York and who now is a world renowned musician.

I should really find out his name.

My Best Discovery Yet

For the first two months of my commute to work from the city centre of Madrid, I took the metro, the subway system that, in my opinion, the Spanish have done so right in comparison with other subways in Europe's biggest cities. Despite the metro's convenience, it would take me an hour and a half to get to work morning. And logically, I'd make the same 90-minute trek on my way home at night. I'm not sure what made more exhausted - my students or the commute.

It wasn't until I started my private English lessons after school that I discovered Madrid's best-kept secret. The train. Cercanías has become my favorite word in Spanish.

My commute is now cut in half. I can sleep in, have that extra cup of café con leche in the morning, and it's always guaranteed that I can find a place to sit and read on the train, something that was unheard of when taking the metro. I can enjoy sunlight, the views of the mountains as the train heads northward and, if I'm tired enough, even take a little siesta, knowing exactly what time I will arrive at my destination.

Perhaps it's my best discovery yet ...

The Ultimate Identity Crisis

My freshman year of college, I decided to be called Kate. After 18 years of being known as Katie, Kate seemed to be more appropriate, more grown-up, a way of separating myself from my family and friends from childhood. An act of independence, my first step in achieving it. And 5 years later, I have no regrets about this decision. I enjoy how these two names distinguish my family and my college (now young professional) friends. Even my parents and best friend since the sixth grade have gotten in the habit of calling me Kate, after years of being Katie to them. Everyone in my life was fine with the name change, accepted it in a no pasa nada sort of way (though I still have a close friend from middle school who makes it a point to purposefully call me Katie when the rest of her world, especially at UW-Madison, began calling me Kate).

Yet when I arrived in Spain, I had the ultimate identity crisis. Kate was too difficult for my students to pronounce and for the first two days of work, I was known as Kay ... a name I'm not fond of, though I completely adore my Great Aunt Kay. So I made the decision to revert to being 10 years old once again and had students and teachers alike begin to call me Katie. Yet, given that everyone I work with is a native Spanish speaker, my name was always pronounced Kah-tee.

So here I am, known as Profe Kah-tee all throughout Northern Madrid. It has been five months since this name change, but I still cannot accept whether or not I am okay with being called this. This new name presents new challenges here, as I never know how I should introduce myself to people I meet for the first time. I'm now known to many different people as three, sometimes four if you count my birth certificate approved 'Kathryn', names.

To complicate things even further, there is one Spanish teacher at school who speaks English beautifully. She always calls me Katie, pronouncing my name just as my Mom does. My second graders, the best behaved group and the class most eager to learn, are constantly confused, hearing this teacher call me Katie, and not Kah-tee, like the rest of their teachers and peers. Poor things ... I never meant to present them with such confusion. These 8 year-olds are simply trying to keep track of LIFE in two languages. Between memorizing the water cycle in English and remembering which animals have stripes (Profe, what are stripes again? How do you say 'stripes' in Spanish?) versus which ones have spots, they are now even more perplexed as to how to pronounce my name. Who really is our teacher? And how in the world do you say her name? Joder. I'm ready for recreo.