Guys! Chicos! People! Today, Thursday, marks my first month in Spain.

Four weeks ago at this time, I was having my first jarra (a size of beer) in the square across from the Catedral de la Santa Maria de la Rotunda at a place called Beso Café.  Or maybe at this exact moment four weeks ago, I was having my second beer at Beso Café – a pequeña, that time.

Everything was so unfamiliar, so new. We weren’t sure if  we should just sit down at the tables outside of the café and wait for someone to come, or if we were supposed to go in and request a table like we do in the states? We didn’t even know what they serve to drink? We were given no menus. We were just supposed to know.

I listened to the conversation at the table next to ours. It was a Spanish girl with dark curly hair in a pony tail, who was wearing a walnut leather jacket. She said her s’s like sh (Shi, shi for sí, sí) and she had to reapply her raspberry red lipstick because it rubbed off on the glass of the cortado she was drinking. Her coffee mate was a young man with a mohawk mullet thing who fidgeted with his paperboy cap, taking it off to rub his hand over the hawk and then putting it back on. When he finished his café, he pulled out papers and rolled a cigarette that he stuck into a white tip he’d pressed between his lips.

I was really tired that first day, fresh off the plane. I was in that deep space nine mode, where you’re not really conscious but still functioning. Chris insisted we stay up to fight the jet lag.

He did cave, however, when we went back to the hostel. I climbed into my sleeping bag to warm up from a drizzle we got caught in on the walk, and wanted to take a short tiger snooze. He allowed it, but only until 8 p.m., at which point we had to get up to go have dinner – our first and only menu del dia so far.

We absolutely butchered the ordering experience, and the night might have been a flop if we hadn’t heard a bad 80s cover band warming up at the bar next door. Bar Picasso was sparsely crowded, giving us room to breathe but also the opportunity to blend into the crowd of people cautiously swaying to the clumsy music. It gave us somewhere to be until it was a respectable time to go home.

Poco a poco

It’s hard to quantify exactly how much I feel I’ve learned in the past month when there’s so much ground I still want to cover.

I can understand more Spanish than I could when I arrived – MUCH more. When people speak, I can pick out the gems that I know and string them together into a sentence that means something. But it’s still a far cry from fluency, which is where I’d like to be before I leave Logroño. I am arranging my first language exchange for next week, so I will have someone who I can practice with to make sure I’m comprehensible.

I have a place of my own with hot water and internet. Small things, but important things that make me feel comfortable and connected. I still don’t like the furniture or feel like it’s at all in a style I like, but that will take time to fix.

I have friends, about 435 of them under the age of 16. Since I started teaching, that’s how many children I’ve had to introduce myself to. And because my schools are within a 10-minute walking radius, I see them ALL THE TIME. It’s actually kind of nice to have people telling you “hello” when you’re walking down the street to grab some bread from the grocery store or pick up a bottle of vino in the evening.

ALSO, DID I MENTION THE 1 EURO WINE BOTTLES?? It really doesn’t get better than that in my opinion? You got a buck – you got yourself a bottle of vino from the region.

I’d like to meet more locals. I’d like to know people who I could ask all of my questions that brought me here in the first place. What’s it like to grow up here? What’s your perspective on the world? Your country?

This week, I watched the Democratic debate on replay the next morning. I listened to Hilary Clinton battle Bernie Sanders over his views on capitalism, coming back at him about the American Dream and supporting small and medium-sized businesses. She said the United States is one of the best places economically for entrepreneurs to start family-owned businesses that keep the middle class strong. This may very well be the case, but there are more family-owned businesses on my block and on every block in this city, than I’ve seen in any neighborhood back home. It also has the fewest chains.

I wish I knew why. Is it easier to start your own business because there is less competition from chains? Do they keep chains out deliberately? Or are people just not interested in a homogenous experience because they prefer a shop with roots, where they have an identity? Is it easy or difficult to start a business here? What’s the process?

If you don’t feel comfortable in your own skin now, when will you?

When I first arrived, I felt like I had a big ‘outsider’ stamp on my forehead.

• I couldn’t speak the language really
• I didn’t look like anyone here; pale, eye-browless strawberry blondes are in short order
• I never knew where I was going
• I didn’t know the norms (Did you know that no one here carries a water bottle around with them? You never see people just having a snack on a park bench. Parents let their kids pee outside on the reg. You pay more to order on the terrazzo. Oh, I could go on… but I won’t!)

It’s taken me some time to stop feeling like I stand out or care if I don’t look like I fit in. But I was inspired by an Australian woman we met who was coming off the Camino. That’s what she told her friend, who was feeling similarly self-conscious:

If you don’t feel comfortable in your own skin now, when will you ever?

It’s true, and it’s something I remember every day when I embark on another ‘first.’ This lifestyle has endless firsts.

Europa es la agua de vida

On the bus ride to Zaragoza last weekend, I ended up sitting in the aisle seat next to an old man. He was wearing a blue button up t-shirt and trousers, and he also had one of those paperboy caps on – it must be a Spanish thing (like mullets).

As soon as the bus pulled out of the parking lot in Logroño, he started talking. He talked and talked and talked throughout the two-hour bus ride, hardly pausing long enough to realize I wasn’t a native Spanish speaker.

I nearly stopped him at the start to tell him I only understand a little, but I instead looked at it like a golden opportunity  – a gift – just to listen. He talked about doing the Camino de Santaigo. He talked about Burgos. He talked about all the people he had met along the trail. He talked about his home, and about his stockpiles of almonds, olives and apples.

During the pause, he dropped the line: Europa es la agua de vida.

I don’t know if he was trying to be profound or if I misunderstood him, but I don’t think he was wrong (for me). This whole experience is an adventure in living outside of my comfort zone.

My hope is that it teaches me to thrive in new experiences, to try things even when I’m uncertain, and to stop caring so damn much what anyone else thinks about me and I’m doing things the right or wrong ways.