greetings!

It’s been quite some time but I have many new things to talk about.

Semana Santa is the holiday break here for the spring. It’s the holy week and everyone travels. Much like Easter, obviously. So I left with my friend Matt and we went to Portugal for a week. I honestly never really knew much about Portugal, but Matt lived in Brazil for a year in high school and now speaks fluent in Portuguese. He also knew much about Portuguese history, etc. so I got lucky! I knew they spoke more english than Spain did (every country speaks more english than spain i’m learning), and if I spoke in Spanish they would understand me since it’s very similar, but honestly, Spanish was wearing on me and I just needed a vacation away from all of it. Matt and I laughed about it, hahha, yeah. The vacation from the permanent vacation. Tough life…. But Spain isn’t all tranquil and amazing as it’s built up to be. Especially when you’re directly jumping into a city that’s always busy with no way to escape it. As much as I wanted it to be, Spain will never have been a vacation for me here in Madrid.

So Portugal was so much more than I imagined it to be. Some people label it as the “poorer version of spain,” or Spaniards do, for the most part. But it’s so much more cultural and beautiful than spain will ever be to me. Maybe I just haven’t seen enough of spain yet, but I will tell you, there’s nothing like this country.

I had accidently booked my flight to go to Lisbon (Lisboa) first, so I had to take the train to meet Matt because he was all the way north in Porto, or Oporto. So after a mess of getting out of the airport, onto the bus, to the wrong train station, trying to tell a cab driver where to take me, and finally getting to the other train station, I was on my way to meet Matt. As the train went north, it ran right next to the ocean! I mean, the train was basically on the beach! It was ridiculous. When I arrived to Oporto and got situated in the hostel, the week was starting off great. In Oporto, we went to the famous Sandeman wine cellars and tasted port wine, saw cathedrals, the port, everything. it was great. What I loved was the time i looked down and saw a little woman planting flowers in her garden that was on the top of her roof. Everything in Portugal is old Europe. The houses are small, clothes hanging on the line, sun hitting the gardens, streets of tile, history everywhere. And no bellowing noises of city life.

We traveled to Coimbra, where we stayed in the coolest hostel with crazy decorations, and the people at the hostel were so kind that they invited us to a small birthday party one night for their friend. i couldn’t understand anything but i loved it. We got to see live Fado music in Portugal too at this hole in the wall local bar which was wonderful. Coimbra is a university town, but it was dead over break. Either way it was so calm and great. One day we went out of the town by train to Lousa and climbed a mountain in the pouring down rain. There was a castle so intertwined with trees it looked like it’s own mountain. When we reached the top, which was the hardest physical workout ive done in Europe, we took photos of us jumping up and down and completely soaked. It was probably the best moment I had on the trip. I never knew I’d find myself at the top of a mountain in the random city of lousa in portugal. But life works like that sometimes. Thank God it does.

Our last place to go was Lisboa, of course. This attracted more tourists (spaniards, especially) but we still had fun. Every time Matt and I heard spanish we were like RUN SPANISH INVASION GO GO! haha. We found small restaurants to eat at, home cooked everything in all cities, and drank vino verde, which is very popular in portugal. It’s a white wine but it’s very fruity like. We saw castles, went to art museums, saw monuments, did almost everything you ever could in one week. I learned so much and i was loving life. I met a lot of really interesting people in the hostels too from all over the world and now have their emails, facebooks, etc.

Now I’m back in Spain, with no money at all. I missed my flight, big drama not even going into it, and had to pay 240 euros for a one hour, one way flight back to madrid. Times that by 1.58 and you have dollar equivalent. It was really an awful weekend getting back, and after that I wasn’t very happy.

Sometimes I think whats difficult for me to handle is that my expectations for spain were not what it was really going to be like. I got back and received a paper on Monday and I failed it. I’ve never failed anything. My professor told me i have completely perfect grammar (thank you Sra.!) and that my paper was very well written, but i didn’t answer the question right. That day my credit card didnt work at all and I could not put money on my phone to call anyone. The next day I tried to send a package to my mom and didn’t realize that an envelope is called a sobre, and i kept asking sobre que? Until the lady was basically yelling at me because i didn’t know and she refused to slow down for me. My classes the entire week were terrible, since I had taken a week off from speaking spanish. I tried to find ONE book in the library i needed to understand my class and no one could help me and i couldn’t find it. I tried to print something off of a computer and it took me and hour to discover I needed to buy a printing card. I bought the card, took it all the way back to the lab, just to find it didn’t come with any money charged on it so i had to go all the way back and figure out how to charge it. When i bought it, no one told me that. And to make it worse my internet didn’t work in the house so I couldn’t cry to friends over msn. I ended up sleepiing through some of my classes, laying in bed, and not talking much to anyone. I didn’t want to see spaniards, I didn’t want to go outside and hear them speak.

I’m still recovering from all of that last week. I went to my advisors that work for my university at the end of last week and told them i failed my paper. After that I just cried. Sometimes it’s really hard because i am the only one in my program except for my friend matt, who is doing a whole year here from my university. But i never see him unless we hang out on weekends but it’s still tough through the week. It takes me an hour to go to school, i go, and then i travel an hour back. That’s what my days, even before portugal, were like. Although I have made some friends, its very hard to. My advisors asked why i don’t hang out with kids in the other programs, and i told them that I don’t want american friends here because i can make those every day in the states. After portugal, i just didn’t want to come back. Everything just seems so much harder to do here, when in the beginning I thought life would be so much easier. I guess it’s hitting me harder now because although things have gotten better from the start, it’s been two months and im still feeling like every day kills me. My advisors told me autonoma is really a mess of a program and every student that has tried it has come into the office with tears. Glad they told me that now!

I’m a lot better now because my advisors decided to take me out of the city the next day for a day trip to Aranjuez, a small town outside madrid. it has beautiful gardens and a palace there. other students came, and it was a nice time. They also offered me a job teaching english. I tutor a 12 year old twice a week with his homework and it makes me so happy now. I actually love it. And his mom stopped by the institute yesterday to tell my advisors how happy she is with how ive helped him because now he is so much more confident about his english and has completely changed his attitude. It meant a lot to me. Things are turning better this week. I hope it continues that way.

I really like Spain, but sometimes it doesn’t matter where you are. It’s what program you chose, who you live with, the friends you have or dont have, everything that can make things better or worse. I know my program is a tough one but no one who comes here just to travel and take classes in english won’t have what i have and im proud of that. Teaching english has changed a lot of things for me, although i’m having to relearn the tenses of my own language, and how to explain why bread is not breads or rice not rices,…hahahha

The good thing is that the other night I went out with a few friends and some spoke english and others spoke spanish so the whole night I was laughing so hard because I kept mixing it up. I’d speak spanish to the english, english to the spanish and they all thought it was hilarious. Sometimes i even think just in spanish now, and translate things to english. Every now and then i even mess up my english. Like, i’ll say, oh it’s there, two streets more, instead of two more blocks.. just little things that give me a hard time. But i actually enjoy the mix up for the moment. it’s hard to see how much better you are getting at a language sometimes because when you are in their country you will always see yourself at a lower level in language. It’s hard to guage. I think it’s all going well though! And it makes me feel better when I know im getting at least the ability to speak out of this semester. My ear understands almost everything said, and my mind thinks it. Something’s working up there at least!

Ending on a good note, my friend from Barcelona and i are going to the beach in two weekends for her birthday.. Guess what it’s called. Oh i hate to be immature but i can’t ever help it… Peniscola. :X!!!! haha! (It’s actually Peñiscola which changes everything but i’m still like 5 years old.)

Hope all is well!!! More updates soon!

love

It is Saturday, one week down.

So here are some other interesting things that I’ve been through

Last Saturday, for lunch, we went to a baguette sandwich place, my mom, grandmother and I. There were sandwiches listed under Frio and under Caliente. I wanted a hot sandwich so I ordered salmon y queso fresco. It was a long loaf of bread with sushi-like salmon and a few piecese of mozzarella cheese, and it was cold. I asked him why it wasn’t hott, and he said the sign was wrong. Oh,..

Corte Ingles. It’s like a Macy’s department store. It has everything you need but never what you’re looking for. All we needed was a bottle of wine, a bottle opener, plug adaptor, and maybe a pair of jeans if I got lucky. Six hours later we at least found the wine and bottle opener. eh…

So the metro doesn’t take my credit card or debit. Note to self…

Pisto is not equal to money because it was in my sandwich the other night for dinner…

(I saved that blog the other day. Today is Sunday. I am in the same cafe and made the aweful mistake of wearing my barcelona sweatshirt. OMGOMGOMGG everyone is staring at me. STOOPPPPP They aren’t going to let me out of here alive. It was the perfect day to wear it. Want to know why? I counted 20 Real Madrid fans here with jerseys on. You tell me. I just committed suicide.)

I’m sorry it’s hard to concentrate right now.

I just like, keep laughing, this could be the last day of my life. I’ve already had three drunk fans come up to me and ask me if I am from Barcelona and why I am wearing my sweatshirt. The hard part is, I can’t even explain to them in spanish that I just wanted to wear a sweatshirt today, because that’s just not a good answer. THE GAME IS ON TODAY. CONYOOO…This was the boldest move any American could have ever taken. Wow, I’m just pushing my limits aren’t I?

Soccer is life or death. Don’t mess around with that. As 20 people stare at me right now and I’m sweating through my clothes, please don’t make this mistake.

Anyways, last night I went with my Señora and her son (I’d totally be in love with him if I was younger, ah, he’s so cute) and her sister, her sister’s daughter (who is 4) and her sister’s husband. We all went out to dinner. I’m in love with the little girl. Her name is Ines, and I love her because she’s teaching me spanish. We’re basically at the same level. It’s great. I can talk to her and not care if I mess up my grammar because she doesn’t care. And we’re BFF now. She only wanted to hold MY hand, color with ME, and sit in MY lap in the car. I’m pretty awesome, and basically at a 4 year old level spanish. hahahhaa

Second coffee…

Some sayings you should know before coming here:

Vale: everyone says vale. It means several things, like, thank you, like “Vale, gracias,” or when we say right right, go on, “vale vale” when someone is talking, or when you understand something “ahh vale..”. But I can’t even tell you how much it’s used. If you can just say vale, then you will survive.

“No pasa nada.” It’s like, nothing’s going on, nothing happened. Tranquilo, etc. Sort of like, everything’s chill. But they say that a lot too. Also, if you don’t know by now, Spaniards always say their c’s and z’s like a “th”. Gra”th”ias, Di”th”es, pere”th”o”th”o… and their j’s are like you are hauking.. like HKKKHHHHH…Impossible to understand. And the vosotros, like I said, is not dying. They use those conjugations in every day talk. So don’t you dare blow it off.

I’ve been talking to Carlos (the son) a lot and he is studying about the United States colonial period in history. I was reading his text books and it’s great. The view is that, Britain just needed a revenue to support their travels, and it’s so funny because the perspective is that GB was justified in making revenue in the states. It’s sort of the opposite way we were taught–That it was treason and our independence was something completely necessary. I need to read more about this….It’s interesting.

Did you guys see the fake $100 bill about George Bush that my mom brought back? I doubt I need to say more on their perspective of our politics.. However, it’s so interesting. Their front pages here are of our elections. It’s incredible. And it’s only between Hillary and Obama, as far as they’re concerned. It’s funny because they have elections here on March 9, and our primaries are covered more than their own elections. This is how influential our country is abroad and that fascinates me.

Last night my Senora’s brother in law asked me, so who will it be? Obama or Hillary? I asked him, so we don’t have republican candidates this election? He laughed and said, “you’re right. But who would vote republican?” He didn’t know which candidates were up for the republican ballot, but like I said, no one cares about that. No worries there though!

So I start classes tomorrow. I finally have to start working again. Not even ready for it. Especially in spanish. I’m taking
Democracias y Dictaduras del Siglo XX
Antropologia Urbana
Asia Contemporaria: China
Something…y El Sujeto de Humano..I think it’s filosofia…

…Suerte mama!

The euro is smacking me hard in the face as well

I didn’t sleep at all.

Hugging my dad for the last time was heartbreaking, and even more heartbreaking was wishing my mom and grandmother goodbye as they left spain today.

There are so many things that are different here. Coffee is served in small cups. There is no coffee to go here. You sit. You talk. You finish your coffee before you walk out that cafe, because here, you have time. It’s not a place where we just can’t take a minute to have a conversation. It’s better that way. Cafe con leche, is cafe regular, so don’t ask for that if you want it the american way. 5 cups and 20 euros later, i finally figured out that you have to say “cafe americano.”

I love Spain. The Palacio Real (it was so beautiful inside that my eyes felt like your stomach does after a big meal when you can’t possibly eat anymore food), the small streets, the small coffee shops, the brick roads, the architecture… you will never really have any idea what it’s really like until you come. I developed such an image of what it would be like before I came and it was completely different. It’s like when you see New York City in movies, and then you go and the vision is so different. Part of the city here is old and part of it is very commercialized. My apartment is halfway in between, and I’m right near the metro to go to school.

I miss my family so much, and it’s hard because sometimes you feel like you just want to be able to touch them, and you know you can’t hug them until you get back. It’s the hardest feeling to overcome, but I think that it’s going to be possible to handle. Right now I am going through a lot of culture shock. To think that i have to live like a different culture for 5 months is overwhelming and very difficult to get used to. The spanish is freaking HARD AS HELLLLLLLL (PLEASE TAKE VOSOTROS SERIOUSLY!! WHOAAAAAA) and I’m doing my best to understand what’s going on but it’s incredibly difficult….I am also very sad, missing what i left in DC, despite being in on of the most amazing cities of the world. But I’m not worried too much. I’m going to find companionship soon with friends, my senora and her son are wonderful (more about that later. Her son is 15 and so cute by the way…. I’ll send pictures girls), my school is going to be so hard, but im in the hippy school of philosophy and a lot of marijuana, so how hard can they really make it??

I can’t wait to tell you all about my past week, but i have to run home to make it in time for dinner!!!!!!
This should be interesting!!!!