Joshua Zamrycki’s Weblog

“When are you coming home?”
The answer:
“I haven’t the foggiest.” I know that I’m here until July for sure, but after that, I really don’t know. It’s nice to have the entire world as an option seeing as though I have absolutely no obligations at this point in my life, but I’m starting to feel a little uneasy not knowing, myself. The most realistic options for the summer of 1999 and thereafter are as follows:
1)stay here in Barcelona.
2)return to the US and find a place in
2.1)New York or
2.2)California.
3)try my hand at another country like
3.1)Italy or
3.2)France or
3.3)Argentina or
3.4)Australia or
3.5)Yugoslavia
I don’t know. What I’m telling everyone right now is that it depends on all of the time between now and July and I’ll decide then. I’ll walk the earth until I find a place that just feels right. I’m just trying to make the most of what I have right now. I hope all of you are doing the same. If you’re receiving this email it’s because you are in my thoughts. Be good.

Loves to hear the robin go “tweet tweet tweet”,
Josh

Here are a couple little anecdotes from the classroom I’d like to leave you with. First, I was teaching my class of twenty-something year old girls about animals, so I thought a writing exercise on farms might be a nice exercise. I had them write a description of what they thought a farmer’s daily life is like. The animals on Natalia’s farm were “a beef, a coward, and a pink”. It took me a little while, but after a few questions I realized that the farmer had a cow, a chicken, and a pig. It was one of those “bad dictionary days”. And then, in my class with the 18 year olds, I decided to have a fun day so we played Scrabble. The four of them had to make words in English and I had to play in Spanish. Xavi was having some trouble making a word with his letters so I leaned over and told him he could make the word “fun”. He didn’t know what “fun” meant, so like any good educator, I told him to look it up. After a few seconds of searching through the dictionary, Xavi looked up with a big smile on his face, said “ah yes” and started raising and lowering a fist in front of his midsection. Now, I don’t know how the average Spaniard defines “fun”, but this came as a bit of a surprise. I wanted to make sure I understood him correctly so I asked Xavi how you say “fan” in Spanish (dreading the answer). With a smile stretching from ear to ear he said, “una hincha”. I then realized, with a sigh of relief, that he had actually looked up the word “fan” in the dictionary and was waving a banner like at a football game. Ah, the joys of miscommunication.

Maybe it’s because of my little bicycle excursion up Tibidabo or maybe it’s because of my never-ending sense of adventure, but I am currently planning a bicycle trek for sometime this summer (right now, the thought is July). Here’s what I’m thinking right now (nothing’s definite): 1) buy a bicycle (that’s kinda important). 2) Buy a tent (I need a place to sleep). Then, I think I’ll make my way up to Shannon, Ireland to begin the excursion. The route right now will take me across Ireland (maybe to Dublin), down to London and across England, and then down to Paris where I can maybe sell the bike and liquidate my assets. The whole trip could take me anywhere from two to four weeks depending on how much time I’d like to stay in each city I discover. What do you think?

I may make my first appearance on a Spanish stage sooner than I thought. The play that I was cast in, The Dice, is now in rehearsals full force. The three of us work almost everyday and need to have the show ready in 20 days to show to a producer! After that, my director would like to do a run in English, like the script was written, and then translate it and do another run in Spanish! This should be interesting. I wonder if it’ll be harder to memorize my lines because they’re in Spanish or easier because I already know them in English. The play was almost cancelled a little while back because we had trouble finding a third actor and my director was busy writing another play. He actually asked me if I was interested in directing the show! I thought about it, but ultimately decided that it would be too much. The director is dedicated to this show now and we found a really cool actor to fill the cast – a 6′6″ black English guy with dreadlocks named Jay. Imagine this: he’s a university physics professor and the two short white guys are the intimidating police detectives. And we actually make it work. I have an audition for another play next week, as well. It’s called Volpone and was written by Ben Johnson, a friend of William Shakespeare (the language is pretty much the same). It’s all about greed and lust and all of the people in the play have personalities indicative of certain animals. There’s a fox, a crow, a snake, a lawyer, and oh so many others. I may even get to play the trumpet in this show (I’ve been planning on picking it up again after a 4 year hiatus). I’ll keep you updated on that one.

I went to see Ani DiFranco, one of my favorite singers, play a concert in Zeleste, one of my favorite disco techs in Barcelona! It rocked. She is soooo cool. Her new songs are great and she totally revamped all of her old stuff. I think the audience was half English speakers and half not, but everyone seemed to laugh at all of her jokes. One of my favorite parts of the concert was when she improvised a song about Gaudi and how crazy he was for building the Sagrada Familia and all the funky stuff he did in Barcelona. I have fun at her concerts because she has fun at her concerts. It made me realize something that I’m sure I’ve realized before: if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, why the hell are you doing it? She enjoys singing for people and I hope to find something that I can enjoy doing everyday, too. Inspirational. I even considered hopping on a train for Madrid to see her again the next night, but then I came to my senses.

One of the reasons that I haven’t written one of these epics in a while is because I haven’t really had very many exciting adventures lately. Well, I had one last Sunday that may make me want to rest for a while before my next one. I received a phone call from on of my Catalunyan friends, Ricard, where he asked me if I’d be interested in going on a little bicycle trek with him and his friends. Sounds harmless enough, right? So I skipped volleyball on the beach that day and I borrowed a mountain bike from one of his friends and eight of us took the metro to Tibidabo, the highest mountain in the Barcelona area. I should have known by the professional spandex bicycle outfits and helmets that these guys had on that they were maybe a little more seasoned at this than me. But I felt good. I felt damn good. So when we reached the bottom of the tram to the top of Tibidabo and Ricart asked me if I’d like to ride up with him on the tram or actually bicycle up with three of his friends, I said, “I feel damn good. I think I’ll bike it.” He gave me a little look of concern, wished me luck, and headed off to the tram (I think I heard him laugh, too). This mountain was steep. This mountain was tall. I was fine for the first 2km of the climb, but frequently thereafter I found myself fighting the urge to fall off my bike and hit myself repeatedly in the head for deciding to do this. You know that useless last gear on bikes that allow you to peddle at a million miles an hour without really moving? That was too hard to use. I wanted another one after it. But I pushed on and I made it to the top. I wasn’t even in last place! And the feeling of making it to the top without quitting almost allowed me to forget the sensation of my legs weighing 200lbs each. We met up with Ricart and the others for, what they called, the fun part: we had to ride down the other side! The trails we took were a bit too narrow and rocky for my taste, but that didn’t stop any of us from racing down, swerving in and out of horses in our way, slipping on gravel, and jumping any little ramp we could find. One of the guy’s James Bond-type-digital-bike-something-meter said that we actually reached speeds over 50km/h (I have no idea what that means) and traveled over 25km in total. I’m really happy I went and even glad that I biked up the first half, but if they ask me what I’m doing next weekend, I’m playing volleyball on the beach.

I absolutely love my new flat! Now that I’ve been here a few months, I can better explain it and the people inside it. The first thing you notice when you enter the flat is that it has a very long history of artists living under its roof. It has a very long history in general – the building is over 400 years old (that’s older than the US!). There are paintings, drawings, and sculptures all over the place (even on some of the furniture). I love the inspiration I get just from living here. I’ve already painted my room with swirls of blues and whites and left one wall blank to draw on and fill up with cool quotes and stuff (mostly in Spanish, of course). There are actually two complete flats connected by a very nice patio outside, but we live like one big family. In each “side” of the flat there are three people (that makes six all together). Let me introduce the cast of characters:
My side:
1)Me (Josh) – you already know me.
2)Paolo – a 28 year old architect from Italy. He’s sort of the dad of the house. He and I have the same work schedule (only in the evenings) so while I’m playing volleyball on the beach, he’s windsurfing.
3)Mar (I love that name, it means “the sea”) – a 23 year old student from right here in Barcelona. She’s very hippie. Very jazz. Very sweet.
The other side:
4)Johannas (yo-Han-as) – a 27 year old guy from Germany studying architecture. Johannas has a deep desire to perfect his Spanish so he’s always looking for a conversation. He plays the guitar and frequently changes his hairstyle. Really into photography, as well.
5)Sabine (sa-BEEN) – a 21 year old graphic design student from Germany (I don’t think I’ve met a German girl yet that isn’t taller than me), Sabine is very talented and has already turned me on to some cool music that I’d never heard of before. I can’t really get into the techno, though.
6)Damien (dam-YA) – a 22 year old visual communications (?) student from France. Damien is a freak – in a good way. He likes to speak with sounds rather than words and his French accent while speaking Spanish is fun to try and imitate. He made me this really cool chess set out of dried sponge for my birthday which I now force him to play me on.
We really are kinda like a family in that we all eat together whenever we’re home at the same time and we like to go out together. I love it. This week is Semana Santa (the week before Easter) so I have 10 days off of work. This is a very popular time to travel here in Europe as exemplified by our 13(!) house guests this week. Even my Russian friend from University, Evginey, is coming to visit. Should be interesting.

Well, I celebrated my very first birthday out of the US in February and my very good friend Jovan traveled all the way to Spain from New York to celebrate with me. We had a blast – I got to do a bunch of those touristy things that I enjoy so much while showing off in my new surroundings. The thing that probably made this birthday so memorable, though, was the fact that it landed smack dab on the same weekend as Carnival (car-ni-VAHL)! Joe, my Argentinean friend Gabriel, and I traveled south to a very cool beach town called Sitges for one of Spain’s largest fiestas of the year. I don’t know how many thousands of people were crowded into this little village, but I think half of them were dressed in drag. Joe powdered his face and added some fake blood around his mouth (not too much) and Gabi and I each sported huge afro wigs (his was orange and mine was blue) and a bit of face paint just for the occasion. We stood and watched the street parade that lasted for at least two hours filled with robots, drag queens, show girls, aliens, McDonalds workers, Zorros, more show girls, and even people in black face playing Dixieland music (that would never go over in the US) before we hit the discos and bars of the area. With no cover charges at any of the bars, we bounced from place to place until the sun came up and our legs gave out. We met some interesting people and saw some interesting things that night (use your imagination). If I remember correctly, we woke up at an impressively early 3pm the next day.

This is a little awkward telling you over the internet like this, but I’ll just come right out and say it: I’m getting married. I know – calm down mom. Her name is María and she’s from here in Barcelona. We’ve only been dating for about two months now, but we both just know that it’s right. She’s beautiful, intelligent, loves volleyball almost as much as I do, makes me very happy, and can truly appreciate a well thought out April Fool’s Day joke – you didn’t actually believe me did you? Sorry mom.

Well, all that was told continues to be true: still doing the actor thing; still playing volleyball whenever possible (but now back on the beach again); still playing chess; still teaching English; still living in Barcelona. But, yes, I have added to my list of new and exciting adventures: I am now also working as a freelance graphic designer (and making fairly decent money!); I am possibly going to be acting in another play!; I am being more artsy-fartsy than ever with my drawings and paintings; I am still meeting more people than I can possibly remember the names of. “More details!” you demand? Fine, read on…