Friday, December 18, 2009

Meeting Su Alteza, el Príncipe Felipe

Now that over a month has passed and the Prince and I are still dating, I think it’s finally an appropriate time to update about our glorious meeting.

Barely a week and a half after receiving a call from Paula at the Fulbright Commission asking me if I’d like to meet the Prince (um, yes please!) and telling me I “deserve it,” I found myself booking it across Madrid in high heels to meet up with the rest of the group who would also be heading to the Palacio de la Zarzuela.

To be honest, I was actually wearing flats during my trek to the Commission, hauling my heels in my purse.  After hiking up the stairs to the Fulbright offices, Paula greeted me warmly, expressing mild concern about my one-minute fault in punctuality and then giving me a head-to-toe once-over, followed by an unimpressed expression.  I assured her that I had brought other shoes, and immediately sat down to change into what I was sure would nearly quadruple my fashion points for the day (heck yeah, Aerosoles heels picked out by my mother, what?).  As I was shoving my flats into the depths of my purple purse, I happened to glance up and notice Paula and Patricia exchanging a worried look above my head.  I could only interpret this as Paula attempting to reassure Patricia that she really had made the right choice in inviting me.  At least I was only switching my shoes; I had also packed a pair of tights, in case that suddenly seemed necessary too.   

Once I looked presentable, they ushered me into a meeting room at the Commission with a large table covered with coffee mugs, around which important-looking people mingled in dark suits.  Naturally, as everything is in Spain, our transportation was late, so I had a good half-hour to get to know my fellow Prince-meet-n-greeters.  Essentially our group was about 15 people—a grad student researcher from the US and I were the only current Fulbrighters, but there were also two Spanish ex-becarios (beca = scholarship) who both studied in the US for their masters degrees, and then the rest of our team consisted of a smattering of important American Embassy and Spain/US Fulbright bigwigs.  

Finally our private mini-bus showed up and drove us just outside of the city.  At the gate to the grounds surrounding the Palacio, a guard boarded our private mini-bus to check our IDs and inform us that no photos were allowed.  Too bad, because the ridiculous number of strange, Spanish-looking deer (aka just different from those in MN) I saw on our 5-minute ride up the “driveway” would totally have been worth a thousand words.

The bus dropped us off at the rather unremarkable front of the palace (it could have just seemed like a suburban brick mansion) and we were ushered into a waiting room for about 30 more minutes.  Another man came in to brief us about the audiencia, and I was pleased he included the important information that a simple hand-shake was sufficient and appropriate; we would not need to bow or curtsey, so my pre-visit prepping from the teachers at my school was all for naught.

Eventually we lined up in a large room with nothing but nice carpets and tapestries on the walls, and waited awkwardly for the Prince to enter.  When he did, I couldn’t help but laugh—it was such a strange experience, and everything was totally silent as we waited for this very tall man to make his way down the line and shake our hands.  The Fulbright Executive Director, Maria Jesus Pablos, introduced each of us to him in what seemed like a whisper.  Then we took an awesomely awkward group photo before she talked about the Fulbright and its 50-year history between Spain and the US and important projects, and then the Prince responded about how great the Fulbright is and blah blah.    



I'm the one with lots of skin showing.  The Prince is the one with the height. 
Also, this photo is definitely not mine. (Stolen from here)



During Maria Jesus' talk, she mentioned the Global Classrooms project, which is a Model UN program that all the secondary-school Fulbright English Teaching Assistants are in charge of—we will be running an MUN conference for our students in March, so in the meantime we are working with the bilingual 14-15-year-olds at our schools to prepare them for taking part in this conference (which will all be in English.  The topic this year is Education, and each school is assigned 11 different countries to represent).  

So it’s actually a really neat program, but what's funny is that Maria Jesus pointed me out as someone who helps with it, as she was speaking to the Prince -- so he interrupted her to look at me and say, in Spanish, “I’ll have to ask you questions about that later—I don't know anything about it.”  ....and then he really DID ask me later.  So I, nervous and quickly turning BRIGHT red, smiled apologetically and stumbled over a few words in Spanish before Maria Jesus suggested I explain in English, which I promptly and shamefully did.  Luckily Felipe (first-name basis, nbd) speaks amazing English (high school in Canada and a masters program at Georgetown will do that for ya), so he responded by talking about a similar simulation he did at Georgetown.

We were probably with the Prince for about 20 minutes or so, as other members of our group asked him questions in Spanish, and one former Ambassador made a long-winded story-comment in English about the benefits of studying abroad... and then we shook hands again and left.  No snacks, no presents, no marriage proposal... nothin.  But hey, I basically had a private convo with the Príncipe, so I guess the visit was worth it after all. :)


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