At 4:30am on October 4, I kissed a very sleepy Brian and Malta goodbye and began my journey to Long Beach, California, to visit my sister and her family. I had one last Spanish experience before leaving the country when two men stopped me on my way to the train station to ask for directions to Club Gordo, a nightclub in my neighborhood. I was awake enough to give them accurate directions (in Spanish) but not enough to remember that it’s not open on Tuesdays. I hope they found somewhere else to dance!
Just before boarding in Valencia, I found out my second flight from Paris to LAX was delayed 5 hours, extending my layover in the bedbug capital of Europe to 9.5 hours. I had my first ever experience with rude Parisians, though I think it’s more likely that airport workers everywhere are meaner than the general population. Here’s a PSA, though: If your flight to or from an EU country is significantly delayed, you’re entitled to financial compensation. My 5-hour delay stretched to 6, granting me 600 EUR, essentially making my flights free.
When I finally landed in Los Angeles, my sister met me with In-N-Out and whisked me to my COVID booster appointment. Milkshakes? 10:30pm vaccination slots? I’m definitely back in the USA.
You know what else is estadounidense? Halloween. I really missed spooky season last year, my first October in Spain, so I’m stoked to spend it with my sister, the queen of Halloween. Her house is decked out with pumpkins, Nightmare Before Christmas stuff, and old-school decorations that straddle the line between cute and creepy.
My first day in town, we took my nieces to see Hocus Pocus in theaters, sparking three weeks of us saying “yabbos.” I’ve only seen one movie in Spain (Barbie!), so I’m not sure whether the super plush reclining theater seats are an American thing or not, but they were definitely a treat. The next day, we went to the Bob Baker Marionette Theater in Los Angeles, the oldest marionette theater in the US, for their Halloween Spooktacular. Some find marionettes terrifying in and of themselves, but these puppets and their puppeteers are mesmerizing, especially the ghosts. I sat on the floor, so puppets sat in my lap and sang to me!
We wrapped up the weekend with another LA classic: Knott’s Berry Farm, where I rode my first roller coasters in 15 years. I still like them, but at 32, I am no longer immune to nausea (but I did not barf!). Knott’s Berry Farm is still largely Wild West themed, with an onsite museum displaying a hodgepodge of donated collections, from coins and tools to religious memorabilia. Now that I live in a place with very old customs, this sort of thing—grasping at miscellany to pull together a history—feels very American to me.
This trip was planned around the Give Up/Transatlanticism 20th Anniversary show at the Hollywood Bowl. I missed The Postal Service’s 10th anniversary tour in 2013 because my mom was having open heart surgery, so I feel like seeing them live has been 10 years in the making. The show was phenomenal—first of all, I’ve never been in a venue with better acoustics than the Hollywood Bowl. We got to see a guy propose to his girlfriend while Death Cab played “Transatlanticism,” and the crowd was hyped for The Postal Service. This was my first live show since the pandemic started, and I forgot what it feels like to be joyful and in sync with thousands of people. Pure magic.
It’s enough to make you feel like you’re home—a tricky thing about living in a new country is a lack of shared cultural touchstones with everyone else. Once, Brian and I went to a bar and we were the only ones there who knew “Get Busy” when the DJ played it, but the crowd sang along to all of these Spanish songs I had never heard before.
I got my second dose of community spirit bright and early the next day when my niece and I ran the Aquarium of the Pacific 5K on very little sleep. I love races. I love seeing track coaches and dads cheering on kids, running groups psyching each other up, and people who run in costume—this time, a guy was wearing the Michael Scott fun run shirt and carrying a container of fettuccine alfredo. I kept stopping to take pictures—when else am I going to see the Queen Mary at sunrise or a seal in the aquarium watching a race?—and ended up finishing in 36:41. Since we were up so early, we were able to catch the 9am solar eclipse—sometimes there’s nothing better than simply being in the right place at the right time.
American culture has its ups and downs, and its downs are what made me want to leave in the first place. I confronted some of these on this trip, like a flyer at my sister’s office with instructions for active shooter situations, getting catcalled more in 3 weeks than in the past 2 years, and metastatic Islamophobia that’s giving me flashbacks to 2002. Last time I was in New York, I had a muscle spasm and had to pay $250 out of pocket to see a doctor at urgent care. There are things about the US that just feel violent or callous, and once I left, I lost the base level of armor it takes to live with these things.
At the same time, there are things that are so beautiful about the US, California in particular. It’s so culturally diverse, and in a lot of ways, the culture has evolved past a lot of the sorts of offensive language/imagery you still see in Spain (like calling red light districts “barrios chinos” or using the word “oriental”). As someone who constantly thinks about food, Valencia’s restaurant scene often disappoints me. All cuisines tend to cater to a Spanish palate, which means cream cheese in all the sushi, few vegetables, and virtually no spice.
So eating in California was a dream. I ate Cambodian noodle soup, pho, papaya salad, Cuban pastries, ramen with house-made noodles, dim sum, Korean barbecue, and, in the American tradition, corn dogs and top-tier vegan chicken nuggets. My brother-in-law’s family has run Japanese restaurants in LA for decades, and his mom treated us to omakase at her current restaurant, Eigikutei, which was possibly the best meal I’ve ever had in my life. I took one bite of the carnitas taco at Holé Molé and immediately understood why Californians think you can’t get a good taco in New York. Mexican food out here is just another planet. They also make a hard shell taco where they deep fry a fresh corn tortilla, and I literally exclaimed when I took my first bite of it.
I think the American Dream might just be eating.
My sister, brother-in-law, and nieces were so generous in hosting me for three weeks, and I was excited to give a little bit back to them. Brian and I have gotten good at making arroz con cosas (it does not fit the criteria for a paella), and I made a Spanish-style arroz with American-sized chicken thighs. I brought my nieces hand-painted wood and silk fans from Abanicos Carbonell, a Valencian fan workshop that’s been open for 200 years, and we had fun learning about fan language. My nieces have also been obsessed with tostones since Brian and I made them for Easter 2021, and so I made a Puerto Rican dinner with pollo guisado and tons of tostones. I taught everyone the Carmen Valldejuli tostón method, so now I’ve added one more thread to the tapestry of Long Beach international food.
Listen this week:
Instead of my usual song, I’m linking to Jewish Currents’ On the Nose podcast, through which I’ve been learning about Israel/Palestine and the Jewish left for the past two years. I recommend their current episodes on the October 7th attack by Hamas and the ensuing violence against Palestinians, as well as episodes that discuss how things got to this point, like “Victory for Netanyahu’s Far-Right Alliance,” “The Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh,” “The Mapping Project,” “A Surge of Violence in Israel/Palestine” (from 2022), and “The Meaning of Apartheid.”
Pa’lante,
—Kata
It was so nice seeing you, not once but twice. Thank you again for my fan, it has the place of honor by my chair.
See you next time❣️AJ