Settled in Oxford

We've been in Oxford for two months now and we've really settled down, meeting the neighbors and making friends. The problem with Oxford is that it's such a nice place with so much going on that it's hard to focus on work! We've both been trying the discipline ourselves to get enough work done each day, but as you can see from some of the posts in my other blog, I've had mixed success.

Julián has been loving Oxford. His English is much better. Back in Madrid I was the only person who regularly spoke to him in English, so while he understood everything, he didn't say much. Now he's rattling on in English, even when he's playing by himself, and he's even picking up a bit of an English accent!

The school we have him at is good too. It's a Montessori school, and that allows him to pursue his own interests, mostly things related to geography like maps and animal cards. He's also producing two or three drawings a day.

I like the diversity there too. Most of the kids are bilingual or even trilingual, and his best friend is a little Nepali guy who is so much like him I beginning to think they're twins separated at birth. His school back in Madrid is mostly Spanish kids, with only a few North Africans and South Americans, so I'm glad he's getting to interact with so many different kinds of people. The best part is that he doesn't notice the differences at all; they're just the kids he plays with! Growing up in a whites-only neighborhood and a whites-only school, I had to unlearn a few things. Hopefully he won't have to unlearn anything.

Interesting New Book On Missouri History

I've written three books on Missouri history and I'm still amazed at how many interesting stories there are still to be told about this state's fascinating past. One of them is the tale of a dedicated Irish priest who set up a colony for Irish immigrants in the rough hill country of the Ozarks. Mystery of the Irish Wilderness by Leland and Crystal Payton is the latest release from Lens & Pen Press. The Paytons are well known for their beautiful photographs of the Ozark region, and like their earlier books this volume is filled with them. The text is interesting too, telling of Father John Joseph Hogan's efforts to develop and serve two different colonies in widely separated regions of Missouri, one in the northern prairie, and the other in the Ozarks near the southern edge of the state. The first colony prospered, but the other disappeared during the chaos of the Civil War.


The Paytons meticulously reconstruct what could have happened to the colonists, and found that at least some seemed to have returned to the region after the fighting stopped. Most, however, moved away to parts unknown, so an enduring air of mystery still surrounds Hogan's Ozark colony. To complete the story, the book covers Hogan's rise to become the first bishop of Kansas City and St. Joseph's, and the successful fight by twentieth century preservationists to get the "Irish Wilderness" declared National Forest.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Missouri, Irish-American, or Catholic history. I also enjoyed the Paytons' book See the Ozarks, also from Lens & Pen Press, about the development and reinvention of the rural region into a major holiday center. It's full of images of vintage postcards, a hobby of mine, so it was an easy sell for me!

Great Movie About Illegal Immigration

I watched an excellent movie about illegal immigration to Spain last week titled 14 Kilómetros. The title is taken from the shortest distance from Morocco to Spain, a route traversed by thousands of illegal African immigrants every year. The film follows three people from Mali and Niger as they trek across vast deserts and several borders trying to make it to the First World.

This is a seriously depressing movie. Almudena couldn't even watch it to the end, despite its good acting, beautiful scenery, and a soundtrack that we intend to buy. What struck me was the similarity to movies and documentaries I've seen about illegal imigrants crossing the desert from Mexico into the U.S.--the same natural dangers, the same hostile and occasionally helpful policemen, the same exploitative smugglers. The only things different were the culture and language. It would be interesting to see how a Central American audience would react to this movie.

Highly recommended, but not if you only watch movies to escape reality.

The Muslim Community in Spain

Police in Barcelona arrested nine people this week in connection with the March 11, 2004, terrorist attacks in Madrid. I'm glad they're hunting down these guys, but knowing Spain's wimpy sentencing laws I'm sure they won't spend the rest of their lives in jail like they deserve.

It's sad these idiots have become the face of the Muslim community in Europe, because all of my interactions with European Muslims have been positive ones. Just this week in Julián's favorite park he got to play with a little Moroccan girl. She had a big purple plastic hammer he liked (he's big into tools) and so she filled up a bucket with sand while he pounded the sand flat so she could fit more in. Meanwhile I shared a bench with the kid's mother, who dressed traditionally but spoke excellent Spanish.

A lot of pundits whine about Muslim immigrants not "becoming European". Well, I'm not becoming European either, and I bet these same pundits have never shared a bench with a Muslim immigrant and watched their children play together. I bet they won't report on it either.

War On The Poor, Madrid Style

Our beloved mayor has just announced that he's banning sandwich boards. You know, those old-style boards strapped to people's fronts and backs, making a walking advertisement for a restaurant or nightclub. There aren't very many of those guys in Madrid, but apparantly the rich who run the city don't want them around. They also want to ban the people who stand on sidewalks handing out fliers for English courses, computer repair, all-you-can-eat lunch buffets, etc.

Why? These people don't bother me, and I've never heard anyone complaining about them. These are terrible jobs that pay crap, and the people who do them obviously have no other choice. Many are immigrants who are probably doing this to get grocery money until something better comes along. Why persecute people for being poor and powerless? Aren't there more important issues facing madrileños such as domestic violence, pollution, and traffic congestion? Why doesn't the mayor tackle those?

Oh wait, silly me. Because solving those problems costs money. He might have to raise taxes on the rich or something.

Some things are the same the world over.

Monkey Waiters in Japan

I totally need to go to Japan. BBC reported that a restaurant there has two monkeys bringing the diners hot towels and bottles of booze in exchange for soya bean tips. You can see the film here. Good thing this isn't happening in the U.S., because they'd start whining about immigrant primates taking American jobs.

If I go to Japan I'll have to be careful where I stay. CNN reported that a recent survey by the Japanese government found that about a quarter of Japanese hotels didn't have any foreign guests last year, and don't want them. They claim they don't have the facilities or the language capability to deal with foreign guests. C'mon folks, you live in a global economy and you're in the hotel industry. Hire some recent graduates with language skills.

Where Have All The English Gone?

I was researching in the British Library last week and went into the cafeteria to get some lunch. The special that day was Cottage Pie. Having spent way too long staring at obscure tomes and not nearly enough talking to actual, live people, I tried to be witty by asking the two women behind the counter, "Is the Cottage Pie made with real cottages?"

They looked at each other in wide-eyed panic. Uh-oh, had I made some English faux pas?

"I'll get the chef," one of them replied in a Polish accent, running off.

"Um, I was just kidding," I said.

"Don't worry, he'll know," the other said in a Caribbean accent.

The chef came out and asked in an English accent, "What would you like to know, sir?"

Too embarrassed to repeat a lame joke twice, I feigned like I didn't know what Cottage Pie was and he patiently told me in his most polite explaining-to-the-clueless-Yank voice that it's made of minced beef and vegetables. Well, yeah.

A couple of days later the wife and I got a taxi to London Bridge station. The Arab taxi driver didn't know how to get there and I had to give directions! OK, I've written a guidebook to London, so it's not a problem, but this guy's a taxi driver!

I don't have anything against immigrants--how could I? I've been an immigrant twice, and so has Almudena--but it is a bit strange to spend a week in London and have the majority of my interactions be with people who aren't English. Even most of my London friends are from elsewhere. Does London even count as an English city anymore?

(I hear a chorus of English voices from the counties shouting "NO!")

Spanglish for Africans

Last weekend we visited a friend in the Madrid suburb of Torrejón, one of the older suburbs near where the U.S. had a military base. Julián loved the ride, sitting on our laps and staring out at all the cars on the highway. He also gave a lot of attention to the two African immigrants sitting across the aisle, who were either going home to the very mixed barrio that is Torrejón or going to work in the nearby industrial park. I've noticed that raising him to be bilingual has made him very interested when someone is speaking a language he doesn't understand.

I'm not sure what he thought of these guys. They were speaking some language I couldn't identify, but every now and then they slipped into Spanish. It amazed me to hear Africans doing what us guiris do, mix our language with the local one. But a moment's thought would show that it's only natural.

So what do you call their version of Spanglish? Spahili? No, Swahili is East African, and I'm pretty sure they were Nigerian. But which of the 512 Nigerian languages were they using to make their own Spanglish? Hausa? Igbo? Yoruba? It's nice to think that there are people speaking Spausa, Spigbo and Sporuba out there. Lots of Spaniards complain about immigrants and their bad language skills, but isn't Spanglishizing the first step towards fluency?

All the other immigrants do too. The French speak Spench, I've heard Romanians speaking Spomanian, and the Germans. . .well, never mind.