"Emilia, clavel, pasa."

"Emily, carnation, come in," were the first words he ever spoke to me.

In late February of 2004, I had been living just outside of Barcelona for nearly a month when my host mother concluded that I would take flamenco guitar classes as a way to further immerse myself in traditional Spanish culture. Since I had never shown much of an aptitude for music, I wasn't thrilled with the idea of wasting my time plucking aimlessly away at a foreign instrument. I was so used to spending my time perfecting my schoolwork or reading ahead in the textbooks, that I didn't understand what I had to gain from music lessons. But it had already been arranged, so reluctantly I agreed to venture out to Sabadell, a nearby town where I would meet with Eduard.

Eduard was nothing like what I had expected. He looked like the kind of person that you might expect to see as a circus ring leader. He had thick black curls which fell down below his shoulders, and a Roman nose that stuck out like the bird on the Fruit Loops box. He had several hair-sprouting moles which arranged themselves around his chin and forehead like some sort of uncharted constellation. But what caught me more off guard than his untraditional appearance was his initial manner. Spaniards have a well-deserved reputation of being vivacious and outgoing when first being introduced to someone, but the first time that we met, he embraced me and kissed my cheeks as though he had known me for my entire life. He squeezed my hand and pulled me into his studio where brightly colored mosaic tile covered the floor and the walls were plastered with countless portraits of Paco de Lucia, Pepe Habichuela, and Miguel Poveda, and other famous flamenco "guitaristas."

The two of us sat down together, and he grabbed my guitar from me to begin tuning. His long shirt had large ruffles which draped down from his wrists and danced as he strummed. He asked me if I had ever played before, and without waiting for a response, he dove into the most beautiful flamenco guitar music I had ever heard: La Malagena. I would have been content spending the entire session listening to him play, but he handed the instrument back to me, and instructed me to play what I knew. I tried to tell him that I couldn't play music, but his fixated gaze told me that he didn't care. I began plucking on the guitar which emitted a plethora of awkward strums and screeches, but he just smiled.

"Necesitas relajarte y aprender que tocar con tu corazon," he said softly. "You need to relax and to learn to play with your heart."

Eduard was a patient teacher, and over the next few months, my guitar came to produce sound more closely resembling music as I learned to let go of my inhibitions and just play what I was feeling. It became a way to release the stress of the week while I cleared my mind of all thoughts other than me and my guitar. Some days, we would play together, without even bothering to look at the sheet music. He would gingerly strum on his guitar which could have almost passed for an antique, cracked in some places, bent in others. While playing, he nurtured it, like it was a part of him, softly plucking the strings which reverberated down the torso of the instrument. He used to tell me that to play flamenco, all you need is passion.

"Pasion para la musica, pasion para la vida." "Passion for music, passion for life. If you have that, you have everything."

Eduard taught me that life isn't about regimen, but about developing yourself as a person. He helped me to discover an entirely new side of myself, and over the past two years, I have put less focus on perfection and more focus onto cultivating my own interests, especially in art. One of the last things that I did before leaving Spain was take his photograph while he played his guitar. A copy of that photograph sits in my bedroom, and when I look at his face, I think about how he helped me transform into who that I am today. Sometimes, when I am alone, I pull out the music that we used to play and strum gently the way that Eduard taught me to. I may mute notes or not be able to get a chord right, but it no longer matters. All that matters is that I remember the lessons I traveled a continent away to learn.

Te acuerdo.

I remember you.

 This essay was written by Emily Alli, Center School Class of 2006, New York University Class of 2010.