Adjusting to life in Madrid can be difficult. The language is foreign, the traffic laws are confusing and the culture moves at a different pace. Here, the men all love soccer, wear product in their hair and smell like cigarettes. The women, on the other hand, go everywhere in high heels, drink coffee like it’s their job and smell like cigarettes.

The living situation is different, too. Instead of a dorm room with friends or an off-campus apartment, students live with hosts. Some, like me, live alone with a host mother, while others live with entire families. That means we get home-cooked meals instead of cafeteria-manufactured crap, air-dried clothes instead of machine-dampened rags and lunches with grandkids instead of videogames with friends.

However, the biggest difference for me between life here and life in Syracuse happens every Sunday as I attempt to follow my favorite football team, the Washington Redskins.

Instead of trekking to ZJ’s Pizza every week to find a crowd of Redskins fans gathered around a large television set, I now have to search through the Internet to find a live stream on my laptop so that I can watch the game with the Redskins’ newest and most enthusiastic fan: my 65-year-old host mom, Carmen.

Usually when we’re together, Carmen and I pass the time talking about food, Spanish culture or her favorite topic: her four grandchildren. She’ll tell me stories about 10-year-old Jorge, the soccer star, and 5-year-old Lucia, the next Shakira, in addition to whatever else is going on in their lives. They often come visit her, and it’s easy to tell how much they’ve impacted her life.

Last Sunday, however, we spent our time talking about football. I told her all about the National Football League and the Redskins before we both sat down to watch the game. Granted she had never seen an American football game before and doesn’t speak a word of English, she had no idea what was happening at any point during the contest. Still, what she lacked in football knowledge, she more than made up for with passion.

As the Redskins mounted an improbable comeback during a fourth quarter with ever-mounting tension and excitement, I reacted demonstrably to every consequential play. When something good happened, I would pump my fist in the air and yell, ‘Yes!’ When something bad happened, I’d bang my fist on the desk and say the R-rated versions of words like ‘darn’ and ‘shucks.’

After every outburst, Carmen, who sitting beside me and staring intently at the screen, would tap me urgently on the shoulder and ask, ‘Qué pasó, chico? Qué pasó?!’ — ‘What happened? What happened?!’

I would then explain to her what happened on the last play and what it meant for the Redskins, and sure enough, she would react in the exact same way I did. Only louder. And in Spanish. Right before my very eyes, I saw a mild-mannered retiree — a woman described as ‘sweet’ and ‘adorable’ by everyone I know who has met her — transform into the type of loud and rambunctious fan you usually only find at the Carrier Dome. It was the most fun I’d ever had watching football. I was very impressed with her colorful vocabulary.

Luckily, Carmen’s grandkids weren’t there to hear any of it.

Danny Fersh is junior broadcast journalism major. His column appears occasionally, and he can be reached at dafersh@syr.edu.

 

Published on October 13, 2010 at 12:00 pm