Sorry, but I am really not keeping up in this blog. Let’s see, my life hasn’t been too interesting, just a lot of hanging out with friends, going out at night and trying to get myself to start writing my papers that are due in 5 days…
I’ve been trying to see Beatrice and Ana more because they are leaving me! Bea’s program ends in April, and Ana leaves to study in Italy while I’m gone on Semana Santa. Emily and I went to the “beach” with Bea, an English girl and another Spanish girl. Basically it was a patch of sand along the Tormes River. We just sat around, eating sunflower seeds (which are super popular here) and playing some card games with the weird Spanish deck of cards. Another day it was just me, a girl from Marruecos (Northern Africa), Bea (Italy) and the previously mentioned Spanish girl. I felt so international! I don’t feel like I completely belong sometimes, but I can understand the conversation and feel more comfortable in my own skin.
I’ve been going out on the weekends too. I know people who go out every night and get crazy drunk and others who don’t go out at all, so I feel like I’m at the right level. Last Thursday, Emily, Bea, Ana and I went to one of my intercambio house to have a party since his roommates were out of town. The funny thing was that no one else showed up, but it didn’t really matter. We played drinking games. I drank sangria, while the others drank calimocho (a popular drink which is a mix of red wine and coke - barf!). I drank way too much and ended up drinking a liter of sangria in addition to a few gin + fantas. It was fun since we all know English (some worse than others) and Spanish. We left to go dancing at Camelot, and I was ciega, or blind, meaning I was gone. Pretty drunk (sorry if Mom is reading this). We danced a while there, and later went to Potemkin, which was dark, dirty with an equally dark, kind of dirty crowd being all moody while 1950s American rock music played! Ahahaha. So I danced crazy since I was not self-conscious at this point. Towards the end of the night, Emily had been dancing with my intercambio and came to ask us if we were ready to leave. She asks Ana who says “Eh, whatever” (she’s Spanish - can stay out forever), asks Bea who says “Yeah I’m pretty tired” and turns to ask me, but she finds that I’m not listening in my own crazy Cousin It dancing trance (my hair is everywhere)! So I get home around 6 am, make more noise than usual and conk out for 4 hours until I have to get up to talk with my Mom on Skype. Then I go back home, sleep an hour and then try to eat comida which consists of a salad of lettuce, pasta, olives, tuna, crab and tomato, basically the worst thing someone could ask you to eat when you are hungover. I tell my host mom I can’t eat any more, and she knows I’m feeling sick, so she says fine. I then go back to bed for a while and get up around 6 pm to dar un paseo with Emily and put our two versions of the previous night together. It was pretty funny! Except for the resaca (hangover).
I’ve also been meeting with a really great intercambio!! I’m in love, but he’s expecting twins with his girlfriend. He really wants to help me improve and corrects me a lot. He buys my coffee always, so I taught him the words for chivalrous and the phrase “going dutch”. He was greatly amused and proceeded to send me an email using these news words in incorrect ways. Language truly is a humbling experience, when a 30 year old Spanish man is perfectly intelligent in Spanish, and then when he goes to speak in English, he can express himself like a child. On Thursday, we “snuck” into a seminary that used to be a military building/school, and we went into the dark basement (reminded me of the vaults in England - creepy) where Napoleon used to talk to his soldiers in the Guerra de Independencia in the early 1800s. It was really cool. I’m thinking this language partner will become a penpal maybe for the future.
Last night I went to party to celebrate an Argentinian new to Salamanca. Andrea and I show up, and it’s only boys (in the beginning)! It was funny/uncomfortable, but we chatted to a few people. At first I was discouraged because they were talking so quickly and with jokes (that fly over my head), but like one-on-one or with a few people, I do pretty well. More people showed up, and we hung out a bit. Weird thing was that this guy kept putting on old or strange music, such as the national anthem for Spain (ok, whatever), the anthem for Franco (whoa), then the anthem for the Spanish Republic (1931-1936) - weirder, and then! He put on, you will not believe this, the anthem for the Confederacy of the South during the US Civil War, and he knew the words! He asked Andrea where she was from (Virginia), and he was like, “Why don’t you know the words?” as he sang along. Andrea felt pretty offended….ahahaha.
Oh, funny story. I was in the Plaza Mayor with Emily and these two boys (like 13 or 14 years old) ride past and one of them hits me in the head on purpose! I was so pissed, and the first thing that I could think of to yell was, "pendejo!". Then 1 minute later the boys come back, and the one who hit me asks what pendejo means. So I tell him it's like hijo de puta and that it's a curse word from Mexico. The other boy is confused and asks us where we're from, and Emily and I both say Mexico. Not sure if they believed us, but the boy left by tapping my shoulder and saying "adios pendeja". I wasn't too mad anymore.
Only a few observations:
1) For those of you that are sports fans, this will probably be my only comment ever on sports here. Many of you may know that Rafa Nadal, the #1 ranked tennis player in the WORLD, is Spanish. And a nice boy from the pueblo. People obviously love him here and are thrilled with his success. Spaniards also like the Lakers since there are a couple of Spaniards on the team. Ok, that’s it.
2) Public bathrooms DO NOT exist here. You have to pay for a coffee if you want to use a bathroom, although McDonalds is an exception. But to prove this point more, I have seen 2 kids peeing in the street probably because there were no bathrooms to use (a boy and a girl). There are no bathrooms in supermarkets too. Thankfully university buildings are open during the week and I can go in there.
3) Speaking of McDonalds, the McFlurries here are amazing. Way more delicious.
4) Since it’s been pretty nice out, students have been sitting out on the lawn, and by lawn, I mean the patches of grass in a stone plaza by some university buildings. There is one juggler, some people with guitars and lots of dogs. But it doesn’t feel like a college campus at all. Weird!
So Semana Santa is next week, and I’m going to be on vacation for 10 days! Budapest, Hungary, then Prague, Czech Republic, then Vienna, Austria (by myself!) and then a night in Madrid. I’m excited and looking forward to the freedom of traveling and staying in hostels and meeting strangers and trying to find people that speak English. Then when I come back, 3 days later I go to Portugal with my program. April is a busy time! So if I don’t email you, you know why!
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Friday, March 27, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
Malentendidos, Mimes & Mexican food.
Alright, haven’t written in a while, but maybe that’s a good sign that I’m busy? More like I’ve just been soaking in the nice, sunny weather! Ok, funny things to share…
The last weekend in Feb, my program went to Madrid for the day. Slightly anticlimactic because we went to the Palacio Real (been there) and a speed tour of the Prado art museum (done that). But Jen, Emily, Andrea and I had a nice lunch in the Parque del Retiro (where the kings used to relax) and we rented one of the rowboats! You can see the pictures on Facebook, which by the way, I still haven’t put up my pictures from Valladolid + Ciudad Rodrigo, so I’ll try to do that soon. I’ve also been oddly sick for the past 10 days. I’m thinking I had a small sinus infection, but it’s going away.
So Mexican food. We (like 20 of us!) went out for Mexican food for Adriana’s b-day because she’s Mexicana/Americana and wanted to go. It was subpar, but it was nice to get out. I had a beer with my meal and complained about the lack of spicy/hot sauce. Spanish people are weak!
On Tuesday, I went to Trivia night at Holy Cross, a bar with church looking windows and confessional looking booths, ahaha. Emily, Andrea and I met with my intercambio friend Ana to go play! There were 3 rounds: 1) questions about Spain’s history, movies, sports, famous people, etc., 2) songs - Spanish pop, American songs, national anthems, movie scores and 3) pictures of famous people that have been photoshopped (in this case, all were bald!). We didn’t win, but we met Beatrice, Ana’s nice Italian friend. Afterwards they invited us to go out, but it was a school night! Psh, so Ana said she’d call me that weekend to go out to a party.
Malententido = Misunderstanding. This story is hilarious, but also upsetting. So a few of us went to “Variaciones sobre Rosa Parks”, a monologue-ish play about Rosa Parks written by a Spaniard. We were hands-down the youngest ones there by like 30 years. I felt proud because I could understand almost all of the play, and it included Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech which almost makes me cry, among other historical mentions, like the murder of Eliot, the boy from Mississippi (?) and segregation laws. Afterwards there was a chat, and some people asked stupid questions. I raised my hand and asked the director/actresses what they thought the purpose was of showing this type of play to a Spanish audience just because it included so many references to American culture and historical events. The audience all turned around to look at me, asking me to expand upon my ideas, etc. Then a bunch were all talking at the same time explaining to me about how it was about civil rights (well duh) and how that’s a universal theme. Ok, yes, I knew that, thank you Spanish women. But then! Afterwards some women crowded around us telling us about it being national women’s day soon and how racism doesn’t just exist in the US (well super DUH). I just nod my head, realizing my question has been misunderstood. Before the director had asked the audience how many of them knew the history of Rosa Parks before seeing the play - like 20 out of 40, and that included 10 American girls. So then! We get out of the theater and another group of old Spanish women are waiting for us to talk about how the play has a message about civil rights and women overcoming difficulties (DUH). I was just so mad and amused to be so misunderstood. My main concern was that the Spanish audience wouldn’t feel as connected to the play because: 1) They can’t hear the powerful way MLK delivers his speech, but read an ok translation of it, and 2) did they know the surrounding events such as Eliot’s murder or the bombings in a Birmingham church? It’s like if the US watched a play about Franco whom few really know about, and they would understand the basics (dictatorship, repression, etc.), but would they truly appreciate the jokes about Franco’s appearance, or the irony of how he employed Muslim Africans to fight for a Catholic Spain or his religious, sad upbringing? NO is the answer. I rest my case. Hope that made some sense.
Piso (apartment) party and Mimes! So Ana invited Emily and I to go to a party of her friend from England. It was great because imagine a room full of students from: Italy, Spain, France, Slovakia, Holland, Argentina, China, Ireland, England and the US. Yay! The room was full of Spanish and English, and the birthday girl and some of her friends dressing up like mimes with face paint, striped shirts, gloves and hats. We had a couple of drinks (I brought some beer, I felt so adult!) and went out to a couple of bars. But greatest thing ever! This girl from China loved me because I actually knew something of her culture and was telling her about Lexi! She was so excited when I spoke in Chinese (yeah I did). I said the words for: bus, dumpling, friend, dance, I love you and I’ll beat you to death/kill you. She was thrilled, as were the people around me. I am setting out a great name for the US - you’re welcome USA (Jenny: 2 points, US: 0). As for the 2 bars we went to, it was so funny because we danced to songs from…Grease! So weird. And we danced a crazy long time and weren’t bothered AT ALL by gross boys because there were boys with us, and I had so much fun. They were such nice people, and I’ll hopefully see a few of them at trivia tomorrow. By the end, I was wearing white mime gloves and a cowboy hat with black and white spots like a cow. I kept telling them it was incorrect since I am from the north. Anyway, great times.
.
Observations:
1) There is no Spanish word for blueberries. Cranberries, blackberries, etc. yeah. But my host-mom had no idea of what I was walking about.
2) I love Spanish milk. Yes, I admit it. Before I left, I told mom I thought Spanish milk was weird. And it kind of is because you don’t have to refrigerate it. But it doesn’t taste weird and hormone-y like US milk. And it’s strange because Spanish kids tend to be malnourished of calcium and don’t’ get enough. There are even commercials for chocolate for kids to get calcium!
3) So there was an article a while ago saying that the US is #1 in Internet availability and consistency. Agreed. School buildings are closed on the weekends, so I can’t use it there and have to pay for a drink in some café to use some maybe dependable wifi.
4) Politics. I never considered myself a particularly political person, but here I say I am definitely. Spanish people don’t like to talk about politics and say all politicians are corrupt/liars, which could maybe be true. When I was at the party this weekend I was saying how my mom did door-knocking for Obama’s campaign, and this Italian guy was like, “That’s SO American!”. Really? Guess so. Proud to be politically interested.
5) I went to an Intercambio with Emily. I just have one comment. He said he couldn’t tell I was American when I spoke in Spanish (awesome!), but he said I had a Mexican accent in terms of intonation! Ahaha.
The last weekend in Feb, my program went to Madrid for the day. Slightly anticlimactic because we went to the Palacio Real (been there) and a speed tour of the Prado art museum (done that). But Jen, Emily, Andrea and I had a nice lunch in the Parque del Retiro (where the kings used to relax) and we rented one of the rowboats! You can see the pictures on Facebook, which by the way, I still haven’t put up my pictures from Valladolid + Ciudad Rodrigo, so I’ll try to do that soon. I’ve also been oddly sick for the past 10 days. I’m thinking I had a small sinus infection, but it’s going away.
So Mexican food. We (like 20 of us!) went out for Mexican food for Adriana’s b-day because she’s Mexicana/Americana and wanted to go. It was subpar, but it was nice to get out. I had a beer with my meal and complained about the lack of spicy/hot sauce. Spanish people are weak!
On Tuesday, I went to Trivia night at Holy Cross, a bar with church looking windows and confessional looking booths, ahaha. Emily, Andrea and I met with my intercambio friend Ana to go play! There were 3 rounds: 1) questions about Spain’s history, movies, sports, famous people, etc., 2) songs - Spanish pop, American songs, national anthems, movie scores and 3) pictures of famous people that have been photoshopped (in this case, all were bald!). We didn’t win, but we met Beatrice, Ana’s nice Italian friend. Afterwards they invited us to go out, but it was a school night! Psh, so Ana said she’d call me that weekend to go out to a party.
Malententido = Misunderstanding. This story is hilarious, but also upsetting. So a few of us went to “Variaciones sobre Rosa Parks”, a monologue-ish play about Rosa Parks written by a Spaniard. We were hands-down the youngest ones there by like 30 years. I felt proud because I could understand almost all of the play, and it included Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech which almost makes me cry, among other historical mentions, like the murder of Eliot, the boy from Mississippi (?) and segregation laws. Afterwards there was a chat, and some people asked stupid questions. I raised my hand and asked the director/actresses what they thought the purpose was of showing this type of play to a Spanish audience just because it included so many references to American culture and historical events. The audience all turned around to look at me, asking me to expand upon my ideas, etc. Then a bunch were all talking at the same time explaining to me about how it was about civil rights (well duh) and how that’s a universal theme. Ok, yes, I knew that, thank you Spanish women. But then! Afterwards some women crowded around us telling us about it being national women’s day soon and how racism doesn’t just exist in the US (well super DUH). I just nod my head, realizing my question has been misunderstood. Before the director had asked the audience how many of them knew the history of Rosa Parks before seeing the play - like 20 out of 40, and that included 10 American girls. So then! We get out of the theater and another group of old Spanish women are waiting for us to talk about how the play has a message about civil rights and women overcoming difficulties (DUH). I was just so mad and amused to be so misunderstood. My main concern was that the Spanish audience wouldn’t feel as connected to the play because: 1) They can’t hear the powerful way MLK delivers his speech, but read an ok translation of it, and 2) did they know the surrounding events such as Eliot’s murder or the bombings in a Birmingham church? It’s like if the US watched a play about Franco whom few really know about, and they would understand the basics (dictatorship, repression, etc.), but would they truly appreciate the jokes about Franco’s appearance, or the irony of how he employed Muslim Africans to fight for a Catholic Spain or his religious, sad upbringing? NO is the answer. I rest my case. Hope that made some sense.
Piso (apartment) party and Mimes! So Ana invited Emily and I to go to a party of her friend from England. It was great because imagine a room full of students from: Italy, Spain, France, Slovakia, Holland, Argentina, China, Ireland, England and the US. Yay! The room was full of Spanish and English, and the birthday girl and some of her friends dressing up like mimes with face paint, striped shirts, gloves and hats. We had a couple of drinks (I brought some beer, I felt so adult!) and went out to a couple of bars. But greatest thing ever! This girl from China loved me because I actually knew something of her culture and was telling her about Lexi! She was so excited when I spoke in Chinese (yeah I did). I said the words for: bus, dumpling, friend, dance, I love you and I’ll beat you to death/kill you. She was thrilled, as were the people around me. I am setting out a great name for the US - you’re welcome USA (Jenny: 2 points, US: 0). As for the 2 bars we went to, it was so funny because we danced to songs from…Grease! So weird. And we danced a crazy long time and weren’t bothered AT ALL by gross boys because there were boys with us, and I had so much fun. They were such nice people, and I’ll hopefully see a few of them at trivia tomorrow. By the end, I was wearing white mime gloves and a cowboy hat with black and white spots like a cow. I kept telling them it was incorrect since I am from the north. Anyway, great times.
.
Observations:
1) There is no Spanish word for blueberries. Cranberries, blackberries, etc. yeah. But my host-mom had no idea of what I was walking about.
2) I love Spanish milk. Yes, I admit it. Before I left, I told mom I thought Spanish milk was weird. And it kind of is because you don’t have to refrigerate it. But it doesn’t taste weird and hormone-y like US milk. And it’s strange because Spanish kids tend to be malnourished of calcium and don’t’ get enough. There are even commercials for chocolate for kids to get calcium!
3) So there was an article a while ago saying that the US is #1 in Internet availability and consistency. Agreed. School buildings are closed on the weekends, so I can’t use it there and have to pay for a drink in some café to use some maybe dependable wifi.
4) Politics. I never considered myself a particularly political person, but here I say I am definitely. Spanish people don’t like to talk about politics and say all politicians are corrupt/liars, which could maybe be true. When I was at the party this weekend I was saying how my mom did door-knocking for Obama’s campaign, and this Italian guy was like, “That’s SO American!”. Really? Guess so. Proud to be politically interested.
5) I went to an Intercambio with Emily. I just have one comment. He said he couldn’t tell I was American when I spoke in Spanish (awesome!), but he said I had a Mexican accent in terms of intonation! Ahaha.
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