Like Wonderful

I haven’t been as scared and panicked as I was this afternoon in a long, long time. I mean, hands shaking, heart racing, adrenaline-pumping type of scared. After about a ten-minute taxi ride from San Sebastian to Lasarte, we pulled up to a closed restaurant. I couldn’t believe it. I broke out into a cold sweat. I’m resourceful and I knew if worse came to worse, I would figure something out, but still…

It sounds absolutely absurd, but it was the first moment I realized that there were (are!) an unbelievable amount of unknown variables regarding my next three months. I truly don’t know how I was able to disregard so many unexpected fundamental components to my days here. For starters, I didn’t know where or with whom I would be living or what my work schedule would be like.

I hunted around the restaurant for a Mr. Mikel to no avail, all the while leaving my suitcases out in the open, because I couldn’t drag them around with me. Mr. Mikel was supposed to be my contact on the day I arrived. I went back through my email to be certain that I hadn’t mixed up the day or his name. I hadn’t.

I hunted through a restaurant in shambles. It was a shell of its former self (so I hoped!). It looked as though it was in the process of undergoing an enormous renovation. I could envision a beautiful kitchen and dining room through the dust, plastic, tools and workers, but it was difficult. To my knowledge, the restaurant was supposed to open tomorrow. I couldn’t see how this would be humanly possible. What was I doing here?

Eventually, I found my way to a woman named Sunny. She did not speak English, but luckily, she could help me. We went down to the basement of the restaurant and she opened a door to a jail-cell bedroom. I’ve watched enough Law and Order to know that this was a perfect replica. My heart sank. Truly. I felt like I was going to burst into tears. My contact had mentioned the possibility of living in the restaurant, but there was no way I could live in that room. Just no way. I like to think I can make the most out of certain situations, but this was not going to be one of them. Thankfully, she grabbed sheets and blankets and motioned to me to follow her.

We walked about five minutes from the restaurant into town. It’s not beautiful like San Sebastian, but charming and feels like a very small city. We stopped at a small apartment building—slightly larger in size than a townhouse—and walked the three flights of stairs up to the flat in which I would be living. I wanted to ask her where the other stages were, when they would be coming, how many of us there would be, but I couldn’t. The language barrier only intensified my panic and anxiety.

If the basement jail cell was bad, the flat is only a small step up. The pictures below kind of say it all—six people in one bedroom, twelve people total in our one flat, one bathroom period—it’s going to be challenging to say the least. I'm not counting on much rest or many showers in the foreseeable future.

The silver lining was this—four of my twelve roommates took me to a shopping mall close by to get a pillow. Apparently we had to bring our own and I hadn’t been informed. We piled into a very tiny, very Euro car (I was in the middle of the backseat, of course) and I was very surprised and overwhelmed, in a sensitive, I’m going to burst into tears way, that these four guys spanning the ages of 21-33 were willing to pop in the car and help me get what I needed. They are the only roommates out the twelve that have been working in the restaurant previous to today and know their way around town.

They also included me when they went to the supermarket to get food for dinner. In a mixture of Spanish and English, we (one American woman, one Spanish man, one Dominican man, one Portuguese man and one Argentinean man) discussed the 16-hour, five day-a-week schedule. To make myself feel better, I bought these cute little packaged flans that I used to inhale when my host mother in France served them to Lee and I for dinner. I picked up a package of salted pistachios to boot—another staple I consumed in mass quantity while in France. I guess I was feeling nostalgic.

I also picked up a new nickname today. One roommate, Wonder, “Like Wonderful!” he told me, using some of the only English words he knows, called me (phonetically) Al-lay-jahn-dreet-ah. I wonder how long it will stick.