Day 17: Challenges and Cheerleaders
Yesterday was, in a word, challenging. It was my first day officially back at work (after being off since the end of the day on August 18th) and the first day Bill and I needed to juggle both working from the Hobbit House. It was a day full of technical challenges and scrambling for solutions. I suppose you could call it a rollercoaster of a day…and I’m not a fan of rollercoasters.
It started out well enough. There’s comfort in our new morning routines now that we wake up together thanks to the later way of life here in Spain. And our daily visit to Dream Coffee was even better than usual as I got to give big love to a big dog whose people spoke English so I could explain that I miss Mitzie and that’s why I’m being a goof around their pooch.
Since I didn’t start work til noon (5 am to the Chicago folks) I had time to pop down to the International Women’s Club of Valencia’s First Tuesday coffee. For those keeping track, yes this was my second women’s group event in as many weeks — I need to find my people! The first low-awesome thing happened on my way to the coffee…
My thumbnail on my right hand broke in the wrong direction as I was getting off the bus. This could have been a non-event if it weren’t for the blood that I didn’t notice until I was half-way to the cafe. No problem, I thought, I just need to find a band-aid…except I don’t know how to say band-aid in Spanish. No problem, I’ll just ask DeepL…except the answer I got didn’t seem to make any sense. No problem…I’ll just pop into this store here that looks like it sells a bit of everything, they’ll probably have band-aids, and I have my bloody thumb to help make it clear what I need. Yeah…they didn’t sell band-aids and didn’t say the word themselves so I could know what to ask for at the next spot. No problem…there’s a farmacia ahead and they must sell band-aids. Success! They did! And when I asked the nice man behind the counter what to call the thing (Now I had the picture on the box to explain what word I was looking for, after all), he said the word my app had offered up in the first place: Tiritas. The word for band-aid in Spanish is Tiritas. Ok and Onward!
The coffee was lovely, the ladies were friendly, and I met one woman who recognized me from a FB group thanks to my (cool, according to her) hair. I also had an offer to connect me to a member of the group who wasn’t there that day but who lives in our future neighborhood and is a painter. And another woman expressed interest in taking classes. And the coffee was good, and the cafe was outside of a museum that is one I should come back to visit. I had to leave quite a bit earlier than the rest of them (when I said I needed to go to work one of the women said, “well, I suppose someone has to.” Everyone else there was retired) and that felt strangely familiar.
Diving back into work meant onboarding (or starting to onboard) two new admins, slogging through notifications on multiple channels, and prepping to teach two classes…and realizing that Bill and I had overlapping meetings scheduled. I’m not sure I’ve fully explained how snug the Hobbit House is. We have access to wifi only on the main floor. There is a couch and just a yoga mat’s width between the couch and the other furniture (a heavy metal table). If we were to both meet at the same time everyone in each meeting would be a major participant in both. So, I left the Hobbit House and headed back to Dream Coffee with my laptop, phone, and earbuds. What could go wrong?
All of our meetings at HC are done via either zoom or google meet, and always with video on. It makes the meetings feel real and keeps us connected as a community. The wifi at Dream Coffee wasn’t up to the challenge of my zoom call (and really, why should it be? There is nowhere near the level of multitasking here as we’re used to from the US), and my airpods didn’t play well with my computer which meant joining from my phone without video. Not the ideal way to welcome the two new admins, and that also meant I didn’t have a screen-share option to make going through all the systems setup we needed to do go as smoothly as it should. We managed (because we’re resilient and the two women starting are awesome) but it was a bumpy meeting that didn’t cover everything I’d had planned.
I headed back to the Hobbit House in time to teach my first class, and that went well enough. I had forgotten to unpack fitness clothes (I’d been warned against wearing athleisure here in Spain…an unnecessary warning given all the athleisure I’ve seen since we arrived) but managed to put myself together enough to be on camera. Starting my teaching time off with yoga was just about perfect, as was having a new student on-screen with a regular, both of them people I admire and enjoy. I even got a fist-bump from Bill after class for making it through the first class in the Hobbit House!
My second class (after a few more hours of work) was less idyllic. The students were lovely, I’d had time to dig out an appropriate athleisure outfit, and my airpods were playing nicely with my computer. Everything was going my way until…the power went out…again. This class was happening at 17:30 here (11:30 am in Chicago) and, apparently, other people in the building had power needs, too, enough so that none of us got to have it. I thought, no biggie — I can finish class without AC or lights…and then I remembered that the magic of the internet is fueled by electricity. Back to my phone again, and just the phone as somehow my Spanish phone didn’t have hotspot capabilities, and my American phone doesn’t have enough data here to support my computer. The students were very kind and flexible and patient and wonderful (seriously, we have the best women in our HCEC community) and we managed to get back online to finish out the class on a high note.
I was shook. Teaching is a big part of my work life and needs to be doable from wherever I am. We are in the Hobbit House until the 22nd. Before I fully let panic take hold I turned to Graham of Settle-Easy and two of the more active FB groups I’m in here in Spain for help and reached out to our Airbnb host to see what could be done. From here, in the light of day, I can see the problem and a few solutions but wow was all that obscured last night, even once the power was back on. I ended up working later than planned and, as I said to another Spain-friend, I felt like I missed a whole day in Spain.
That was wrong, both because I didn’t miss it and because “days in Spain” are not a finite resource. I’m not on vacation — I LIVE HERE.
Offers from help came from expected and unexpected sources, a clearer understanding of the issue (and reassurances that this isn’t a Spain thing and that other people don’t have these intermittent power outages), and support for the increased costs of whatever solution I manage all helped to calm me down. Having Bill here by my side, letting me mope for a bit and then joining me in conversation when I was ready to talk helped to bolster me up. Discovering that, just like in the US, I have friends here willing to cheer me on and roll up their sleeves helped to show me I have community here, already.
Not all days are going to be awesome. Change is hard. Spain is a wonderful place to explore the edges of discomfort, especially when discovering they’re not all that sharp after all.
