February 2006
As rain raced down the sides and over the shaky bus stop that was my feeble shelter from the pelting rains of La Coruña, Spain, I shivered deep into my oversized rain jacket.
It was one of those nylon deals that folds into its self and zips up into a pouch. I bought it for a trip to Alaska three summers ago, and I will admit that it was a lot more fitting for that trip than for today. Today, it not only provided very little warmth from this chilly Galicia rain, it also was a major faux paux in a very fashion-conscious city. “American, right here!” The jacket screams to the passing cars. Wet, shivering, clueless, American.
A car pulls up to the stop. “This will not end good,” I think to myself “this can only end in disaster”.
The window rolled down and the woman inside began to speak to me. And for so many reasons I couldn’t reply. First of all, I understand little Spanish. I speak even less, and even if I could have understood her, the echo of the rain pelting the plexi-glass overhang and the roar of passing cars on a soaked street made hearing her a complete impossibility. And furthermore, I am pretty sure she was asking for directions (she yelled and gestured in that way that people do when they are lost and frustrated enough to ask a total stranger for help) and I have only lived here for a little over two weeks. Needless to say, it did, in fact, not end well.
I started to say that I don’t speak Spanish, but only needed to get three words out before she looked at me in that sad way, as if to say “You are even more lost than I am…”,rolled up her window and drove on.
It serves her right. Didn’t she notice the huge navy-blue nylon rain hoodie? How do you miss that?
Then again, maybe she was stopping to tell me how ridiculous I looked.
Tough to catch a bus in this town, it is.
I eventually gave up on catching the bus and went home. I didn’t need to go to the supermarket that badly. I sloshed up the stairs to an empty, silent apartment. I needed to call Mom. For being the kind of person who could go days without talking to another person, I was starting to feel a little too isolated. It had only been about twelve hours. “Strange…” I muttered under my breath.
I have a wicked cold. I even had to go back out into that weather to get some cough drops and tissues. Right now I am resting. I really should be studying Spanish, but I want to write this.
I guess I’m hoping it will be the introduction to a wonderful story.
