Take a Second Look
A photo of part of the campus at Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Appreciating the mundane
Written by Cate Tarr, Arts Section Editor
One of my favorite writers, Suleika Jaquod, has a Substack account, an online platform offering subscription newsletters. In her weekly letters, Suleika ends each entry with a writing prompt for readers. Last semester when I studied abroad in Madrid, Spain, my routine changed drastically. So, I decided to use this as a chance to write more and began responding to Suleika’s prompts on a weekly basis.
One of my favorite responses came from her prompt that asked readers to “write about something you love anyway. Something imperfect that you value in spite of — maybe because of its flaws.” What first came to mind that February day in Madrid was my lunch hour at school.
The cafeteria at my university in Spain resembled a low-budget high school — an outdated color scheme washed over the room and a massive iPad-like structure to place your food orders sat at the front. My school also felt slightly in the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t anywhere else nearby to buy lunch.
I hadn’t eaten at a school cafeteria since 2019. In Madison, I had lived closer to street food than any sort of dining hall, and soon, I was cooking in my apartment. But in Madrid, I was back in tight lunch lines, eating at small, uniformed tables and chatting with the same classmates every day.
The cafeteria offered limited options; about ten varied baguette sandwiches, croissants ranging from chocolate-filled to cheese-stuffed and an array of traditional Spanish dishes under a category entitled “rations” sat as buttons on the iPad-like structure’s screen.
At first, I felt uneasy at the lack of control I would have over my diet at lunchtime.
Is this healthy? Should I really be eating an entire baguette every day?
Intrusive thoughts clouded my brain, a refrain that I found many students, especially women, struggle with while studying abroad.
Dimming the noise, I stuck with the cafeteria routine.
On my first day, I opted for a vegetable sandwich and a coffee with milk. Maybe a vegetable sandwich is the healthiest choice.
A ticket reading “bocadillo vegetal” was dispensed from the iPad-like structure. I handed it to the moody cafeteria worker, who snatched the ticket from my hand in a routine manner.
Seconds later, a phrase of Spanish words I was unable to decode jutted in my general direction. A few seconds later, the voice got louder, and I looked up from my phone reflexively. The cafeteria worker was talking to me.
He was asking me if I wanted the milk — in my coffee — to be cold or hot, an option I had never been given before.
Cold or hot milk
I tried to make sense of his alien request.
“Caliente,” I quickly replied, trying to appear confident and in control, as if I had heard the question many times before.
My friend and classmate later revealed that the cafeteria man had barked at another American girl the day prior to “learn more Spanish” after asking her the cold or hot milk question.
Back at our table, I unwrapped the “vegetal” baguette to find only a mayonnaise-like sauce drowning vague chunks of lettuce and tomato.
The following day, I selected a chicken baguette, no coffee. Packaged with only two ingredients, chicken and a baguette, the sandwich delivered what the ticket promised this time.
The chicken baguette became my new regular.
At first, my classmates and I sat at various tables in the main part of the cafeteria, but soon we stumbled upon a back room that quickly became our regular corner. Hidden next to the cafeteria counter, our new spot had more privacy and a greater chance of availability than the main cafeteria section.
Different characters came and went, but a few of us returned to the same table without fail every Monday and Tuesday.
Some days, we’d chat and laugh about our most recent adventure from the weekend. On other days, we played Wordle as a competitive group, and only rarely did we play alone in tired silence.
The cheap baguettes advertised on the iPad-like structure, the irritable cafeteria man, the rare days when he couldn’t help but wear a relaxed grin and our small table haven became consistencies I looked forward to every day in my first month in Madrid.
The routine wave to a classmate at the other table with the same break, the satisfied munching of a slightly stale baguette paired with flavorless chicken after a morning full of back-to-back classes and the collective decision to end the meal and figure out the next move on our agenda — library session or mindless campus wandering — are memories I can still see in my head and still bring joy into my body almost eight months after they have occurred.
What in your routine might be worth a second glance? What mundane moment could you learn to appreciate or value in spite of, or because of, its flaws?
Read more of Suleika’s prompts if interested here: https://theisolationjournals.substack.com/s/sunday-prompts