Dancing with the Mop: Lessons Learned from Studying Abroad

Photo: Museo Nacional del Prado

By Bethy Hardeman, follow her blog on Yahoo!

I walked out of my third- floor apartment in Madrid, Spain to the sound of Antonio's birds chirping above me. I looked up after shutting the door to see Antonio himself cleaning in the hallway. He looked up and a smile crept across his chubby face.

"What are you doing, Antonio?" I asked in Spanish.

He stopped his cleaning briefly and smiled bigger. "I'm dancing," he said, winking, "dancing with the mop." He immediately swooped the mop up in his arms and commenced a funny little dance, humming merrily as he did so.

That was my study abroad experience. It wasn't filled with loud dorm rooms full of other American students or large universities packed to the brim with English-speaking young people. No, my experience involved a small language school in the center of Madrid, weekend adventures around Europe and, of course, friendly Spanish faces.

My program at Tandem, Madrid kept me on my toes with classes taught completely in Spanish. Apart from an intensive language course each day, we could also choose from a variety of cultural classes, such as Art and Architecture and Spanish Film. Through my Art and Architecture class, I enjoyed taking walks with colleagues through old and new sections of the city, exploring the architecture we were studying in person.

Excursions around Europe during my study abroad semester allowed me to experience culture outside of the classroom. I learned how to travel independently, despite limited language knowledge, travel frugally by staying in hostels and going by train, and travel thoroughly by experiencing destination cities by foot and immersing myself in the culture.

But at the end of the day, my favorite part about studying abroad was the people I met there. Antonio was the doorman of my apartment building. When not "dancing with the mop," he could be found sitting at the front desk, building a wooden cage for his birds. He would inevitably stop me to pull out a picture of the biggest fish he ever caught, proudly pointing out how large it was. And then there was Jaime, my language exchange partner. We didn't just get together to help each other with our pronunciation. Jaime gave me a real-life language learning experience when he took me car shopping one afternoon. Then there were of course my fellow students at Tandem. Since many of them didn't speak English well, we could only communicate effectively by practicing our Spanish together. I learned how to properly drink beer from a German dentist and how to have fun doing just about anything with friends in the city from a skinny French student. But most of all, I learned how to be confident in speaking the language that will always have my heart: Spanish.

Gal about the Globe on the Set of HBO's "Rome"

Araceli ran into some actors while touring the set as well. Perhaps she was an extra on the set of HBO's Rome, an extra from the future that is, as her clothes are clearly sewn and of the moment!

Rome Today Visits Largest Olive Tree in Europe: L’ulive più grande d’Europa

Olive harvest 2011 was a healthy success! Thanks to our friends from La Tartaruga Sabina, the villa and estate of the Micheletta family, Rome Today learned about the thorough process of turning olives into oil for a year-long supply of extra virgin olive oil. Luckily, their amazing OSCO olive oil will soon be available on store shelves in the United States, with New York as its first stop. In our upcoming video (log on to Rome Today), we’ll learn more about the beautiful region of Sabina and its most prized possession – Sabina DOP extra virgin olive oil!

Along the tour, we took a quick detour and drove up to the oldest and largest olive oil tree of in all of Europe. To our surprise, we discovered the tree stands on private property and the lovely owner – Ottavio Bertini – stepped out to greet us. We couldn’t resist and quickly asked him to give us a quick interview on the history of how this amazing tree has managed to weather the storm all these years. Like everything else, it’s a miracle when you consider that its trunk measures 7 meters in diameter and it’s been certified to be over 2,400 years in age! Luckily, this olive tree is protected by the European Union for years to come.

After seeing this tree, it’s easy to understand why this region produces golden olive oil in surplus.

A Fellow Gal about the Globe Publishes "Femoir"

I had the wonderful opportunity to meet Montreal-based international color marketing expert, Catherine Larose. As a Gal about the Globe, I’m always looking for older Gals about the Globe. They are mentors who’ve not just “been there done that,” but offer a window into my own future as they’ve blazed so many of life’s trails I can’t wait to trample through. Any Color But Beige: Living Life in Color is Larose's new, honest femoir documenting her ethnically diverse background, globe-trotting career, lifestyle, and relationships.

“The book itself is what I call a circular memoir,” says Larose, “it starts off with my very colorful Irish-Italian-American childhood. Then growing up and my life as an adult—during which I lived a very beige and secure marriage in the suburbs; my beige existence.” One of the most significant changes in Larose’s life came one day when working in Paris. While gazing at the Paris sunset she “wanted to fold it up, put it in my pocket and take it home with me.” Larose discovered that something was missing from her life—color—and didn’t want to continue living the rest of her life in beige. “I made some major changes to put color back into my life, which is very ironic because I sell color for a living,” Larose begins, “so here I am putting color into everyone’s lives as a result of my job, traveling the world, not realizing all along that what’s missing from my life is color.”

The book is divided into sections of Larose’s life based on color; primary colors coincide with her childhood, while colorblind coincides with her divorce. Chicago, Paris, Shanghai, Johannesburg, and Trieste are a few destinations of Larose’s life story, as is her creative career as an international color marketing expert. Her descriptive voice and presentations on color marketing and color intuition are clever, and made me feel like I was dropping in on conference rooms around the world. I’ll never look at color or a paint chip quite the same again, as there’s a “tactical side,” and a contextual story side to her job that is so specialized, and yet so every-day, you’d forget it must be somebody’s job to sell color.

But what Larose really does with color in this book is make you realize that color represents so much of who we are, who we want to be, and especially who others are. While I don’t want to give away the whole story, as featured in the book trailer above, Larose flies back home from Paris, divorces her husband, and paints her bedroom a beautiful Bordeaux red. “I’m not advocating divorce as a means to put color in your life, not at all, otherwise, I wouldn’t have been married for 20 years,” Larose says, “but I think that was necessary for me to move on in my life.”

Any Color But Beige: Living Life in Color is a memoir, but reads like a travel narrative, with a little red suitcase from Larose’s childhood dragging its way through Larose’s travels and life tribulations. The book can be purchased on Amazon, available in paperback, hardcover, and e-book. You can also check out Catherine Larose’s blog, updated regularly, at Café Girl Chronicles