My Trip to Spain
By C. Randall Nicholson

During spring break 2009, in tenth grade, I went with my high school Spanish club to tour some Spanish cities for nine days. We went to Madrid, Toledo, Seville, Granada, Málaga, and I don't remember where else. Sometimes we were all together and sometimes we split up into smaller groups, at which point I was generally with three other guys whom I roomed with. There was also a group of foul-mouthed kids from Quebec who accompanied us much of the time. Before I go any farther, can I just say that Spain is really beautiful? The architecture was beautiful, the trees were beautiful, and even the graffiti was beautiful (aside from the American flag that said "verdaderos terroristas" on it).

I'm front row, center. Just kidding. Second row, farthest right. The sun was in my eyes.

True, it wasn't all sunshine and roses. Half the population smoked cigarettes and I saw beggars with no arms or legs rattling bowls with their teeth. But there are too many problems with my own country (mostly with its government) for me to spend a lot of time criticizing others'. Also, I forgot to bring my antidepressants and neglected to pray or read my scriptures the whole time, thus causing some emotional turmoil that brought me to the verge of suicide via drowning in the hotel pool, but that was my own fault. I was good at Spanish but the only thing I knew about Spain itself was that the rain on the plain mainly falls there. I did sort of know a Spanish girl, Lorena, who'd been an exchange student staying with a family in my grandparents' ward in Glens Falls. I told her I was going to Spain and we thought it would be neat if she could arrange to meet me there and blow my classmates' minds, but it didn't happen. Spain is bigger than it looks on a map and I didn't want to risk the tour being delayed or rearranged and her being stuck waiting for nothing. On top of that, she never gave me the advice she'd promised about talking to Spanish girls. Sigh. On a more positive note, she's really smart. Besides Spanish and English, she also knows French and Basque.

My participation in the trip was made possible by my parents' generosity. Long in advance they gave me odd jobs to do around the house and stuff to earn money for it (in addition to the Spanish club fundraisers, which were difficult for me because I had too much anxiety to go door-to-door and solicit strangers, and also because no one wants to buy that stuff in the first place), but I was lazy and procrastinated and hadn't earned nearly enough by the time it rolled around. They let me go anyway. They really wanted me to have this opportunity and experience a culture besides that of upstate New York. I appreciate that.

Airport Hijinks

One guy in our class decided to make a scene with every store owner and custodian in the airport, just because he could and if he embarrassed himself he'd never see them again anyway. He'd say weird things or break into song and dance numbers, like the Ting Tings' "That's Not My Name". They usually found it amusing - more amusing, at least, than natives and other tourists that he tried similar things on once we'd arrived in the country. While some friends and I were in the bathroom, a woman made an announcement over the intercom and one of them commented, "She has a cute voice." A janitor burst in and asked, laughing, "Who said de woman has a cute voice?" When my friend raised his hand (and an eyebrow) he explained, "Dat woman is about sixty years old." After he left, she made another announcement. My friend muttered, somewhat peeved, "She doesn't sound sixty." On the return trip, we were exhausted, but some kept their spirits up by wearing their airplane blankets and sleep masks and running around the terminal pretending to be superheroes. Did I mention that we were exhausted? I was just wandering around in a daze when I heard a girl giggling at me. I asked her, "What's so funny?" She said, "You just walked into a wall." I looked and saw that she was correct.

Fran

Fran was our heavyset Basque-speaking tour guide. He was awesome. His catchphrase was getting our attention over the bus intercom by softly saying "Hola, hola, guys, guys, chicos, chicos..." If you could hear his voice it would be better, I promise. Other notable quotes: (On being asked if the food at a certain place was good) "It is good, because it is cooked and prepared well. But I think what you meant to ask is will you like it. And that I do not know." (On Spain's Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero) "He is a butt. And when he speaks, he says exactly what you would expect a butt to say." (On swimming at Costa del Sol) "I do not like to get in the water. I tend to attract Japanese and Norwegian boats, and they try to harpoon me." (This is why I had to mention that he was heavyset. You didn't think I was just being rude, did you?)

La Comida

I don't recall many particular exotic Spanish foods we ate, aside from calamari sandwiches that we got at a great little store hidden in an alley behind a town square. Mine was really, really good.  The bread was dry and crusty and the squid was kind of moist and rubbery, but not unpleasantly so. And we drank a lot of Fanta, which I'd never heard of but was apparently the national drink. I instantly fell in love with its blend of carbonation and natural fruit flavors. We stopped at a little outdoor restaurant in La Mancha, too, and had some kind of chicken soup while admiring scrap metal sculptures of Don Quijote. We went to an Irish pub somewhere and a classmate got a shirt that said "Irish I Were Drunk". And at least a couple times we ate cinnamon churros dipped in chocolate. Mmmmmm.

We ate ice cream a few times. One restaurant gave it to us in litle plastic tubs and I ended up with so many that I just left the extras on a hotel balcony. When I went to buy a cone sometime later, I couldn't remember the word for "scoops" ("bolas" in this context, even though that usually means "balls" and the normal word for "scoops" is "cucharas", i.e. "spoonfuls", hence I was unsure), so I panicked and used sign language the whole time. In addition to three scoops of my desired ice cream flavor I ended up with a free taste spoon sample of something else. I apologize to my countrymen for contributing to the stereotype of idiot American tourists, but at least I wasn't yelling random Spanish swear words in the streets to see if I got a reaction (like some people I could mention). We ate at McDonald's once, too. It was kind of dumb because there's no apostrophe s in Spanish grammar, so its name doesn't even make sense there, but the food was just as high class as in the States so I was willing to overlook that.

Toledo

I think Toledo was the most beautiful place we visited; the view coming in was so nice that the bus stopped for us to take pictures. It looked the same as I imagine it probably did two centuries ago, with its old architecture and narrow cobblestoned streets. The phrase "Holy Toledo" apparently comes from the number of cathedrals in the town, and I could see why. We also got to see a sword being made of the famous Toledo steel. The tour guide of Toledo was a strange old man. He took us through a cathedral and warned us, "No talking. If there is talking, the girls will be spanked, and the boys will be beheaded." (I don't think there was supposed to be anything kinky about that. My non-American lady friends talk about spanking like it's no big deal.) At one point during the tour a girl was talking and he said "Quiet, or I will have to spank you." She was quite taken by surprise, in part because he apparently hadn't realized she was one of the teachers. Later, as we discussed this incident, Camden said "Well, from behind she does look like she's fifteen. But then she turns around and it's like, 'Woah! Seventeen!'"

Immigrants

There were a lot of African immigrants in the streets selling watches, sunglasses, etcetera, which confused me for a while because I hadn't checked a map recently and realized Spain's proximity to Africa. Like most such street vendors they engaged their customers in bartering over the price. Bartering is good fun for both parties but I was never very good at it because it's too much like arguing and makes me uncomfortable, so I generally paid full price for everything. One of my friends got confused and pushed the price up, causing the vendor no small merriment. There were a lot of middle-aged Asian women on the beach at Costa del Sol, too, selling massages (and that I still don't understand). We had a running gag that they were illegal aliens, so whenever we were on the beach and heard a police siren we would pretend to be them and run into the water yelling "No masaje!" You had to be there. It was during one of those runs that I lost the sunglasses I'd bought from an African immigrant. I bought a massage from one of the women and it felt so good, and it was worth every euro, though I started to get a little concerned about how low she was getting. Unfortunately, too, it indirectly led to -

The Massage Incident

One of my classmates, let's call him "Bob", was known for being good at massages. I asked for one and he said "Sorry, I only give them to girls." I thought "Okay, that's fair." Later he gave massages to a couple of guys, and when I asked him about it he said "I make exceptions for my two best friends." I thought "Okay, that's fair." (They were his two best friends.) So I went and bought a massage from one of the middle-aged Asian women on the beach, as mentioned. And that was all fine and dandy until later when we were gathered around talking about something, and one of the girls rhetorically asked, "Why would anyone pay for a massage when they could get one from Bob for free?" Keep in mind that I'd been off my antidepressants for a few days. I snapped, "I'm sick and tired of hearing about Bob's ****ing massages!" Everyone's eyes got big, as they were unaccustomed to hearing such language from me. Bob said, "Okay, okay!  You can have a massage!" He was clearly terrified (and later admitted "I thought you were going to stab me"), which made me feel horrible. I tried to dissuade him from giving me a massage, but he insisted. So that was awkward for both of us.

¿Tabú? No Comprendo

European cultures really are different. There was a sex store in the middle of one town, where anyone could just walk right in. I didn't realize what it was until we were already inside, and of course my companions didn't want to leave. I won't go into detail about the disturbing selection of merchandise. One of my companions bought a pair of fuzzy pink handcuffs for his girlfriend, but airport security confiscated them on the way home. Oh, and there were naked people on the beach at Costa del Sol, but they were mostly the kind of people no one would want to see naked. They bore little resemblance to the women on the postcards displayed in our hotel lobby (which our teacher turned over.)

Maybe there's something in the air that lowers people's moral standards, because I wasn't immune. One night after I and a classmate both won at bingo (see picture) and split the twenty dollar jackpot, a bunch of us celebrated with a little party on the balcony outside a female classmate's hotel room, and at someone else's suggestion I wore one of her bras while a male classmate tried to take it off with his teeth. There are photographs of it, somewhere, which is why I can never run for political office. (Bob had them on his Facebook page, but they disappeared when his account got hacked and he had to make a new one. If they ever surface I'll post them here so you, too, can be scarred for life.) I also made inappropriate comments to some of the girls and I don't even know why, but I probably just wanted them to know I wasn't gay.

The Camera Incident

I'm going to make a confession here in a futile effort to ease my guilt. My sister, who had a hobby of taking pictures, generously let me borrow her camera for the trip. Then, on the bus going to the airport on the way home, I had it out looking at them, and left it under the seat. When we stopped I felt a spiritual impression to look under the seat. But, like the Israelites who couldn't be bothered to look at Moses' snake staff and be healed, I didn't. The bus was illegally parked and we were in a hurry to get out so I didn't take three seconds to do something that should have been common sense. When I got home and realized what had happened, I knew I should call the bus company and see if there was a way to get the camera back, but I had too much anxiety to talk to strangers on the phone. When I happened to mention this to the District President at church a couple weeks later, bless his heart, he called them and tried his best to get it back, but the trail had gone cold. So to summarize: I ignored the Spirit and lost my sister's camera, and then I neglected to do what was in my power to get it back. Because of this my sister's picture-taking hobby was put on hold. I obtained her forgiveness and bought her a new one, but I still feel awful whenever I think about it and I imagine I always will.

Slideshow Essay

For Creative Non-Fiction Writing in early 2016 I had to do some kind of unorthodox essay format for an end-of-semester project. Two days before the end of the semester I thought of something to do and started working on it. It was never meant for public consumption, but then since it existed I figured I might as well share it anyway. Warning: NSFW language