For Pearl

More about my host family...

I live with a married couple in an apartment on the 4th floor which is called the 3º, because the ground floor is la planta baja, and nobody lives there. Angeles and Fernando. Fernando works one day a week at a nearby hospital. He worked 5-6 days a week for I think 43 years, and now he gets the same salary as he did then. The hospital pays his check for one day a week, and the government picks up the other 4. Angeles does all the cooking and cleaning. She makes my bed everday despite my telling her that wasn´t necessary. She also opens the windows to air out the house. It´s -2 C today... Most days she visits her mother who is 84 and lives one street down. Angeles´ brother and sister also live nearby and help take care of her.

Angeles and Fernando had three daughters all of whom are married now. One still lives in Salamanca and her husband is the number 2 guy at a Bimbo factory, which is a major foodstuff company. The other two live in pueblos (small towns) outside the city. However, when they tell me outside the city, it means 5 kilometers from our house for one daughter and 7 for the other. Angeles es una abuela (she´s a grandmother.) Her youngest has a daughter now as well. So we have all remaining members of 4 generations living within a 7 kilometer radius.

Both my host parents are very nice. Fernando is much easier for me to understand and we talk much better. Angeles doesn´t think I understand anything (this is based in truth), so she repeats everything and always seems to shout at me. Ah well. Yesterday I had paella for one of my lunch courses. It´s the traditional dish of Spain that you´ll read about in all the tourist books. I like the saffron rice, but it took much self-control to eat and ´enjoy´ the mussels, kalamari, and random bits of mushy, fleshy stuff.

First Day of Classes

Yesterday, I went to mass at a nearby church with my host parents. All I got out of it was that it was the children’s mass and also that the children are very off key (they led the songs). I found a guide to the mass in Spanish and have been working on memorizing a few prayers, so hopefully that will be better in the future.

Well first day of classes done. Aahhhh! I got out of my first class and all I could do was laugh and think ‘oh crap.' As it turns out, classes that start at 10 here actually start sometime after the professor shows up at around 10:15. Good to know. Musica de España. I was one of only 5 students and after our short break, 1 of 3. The others are 4^th year Spanish students. I understood maybe half of the words the professor was saying, so I got the gist of maybe 1/3 of the sentences. We skimmed over history of Spanish kings and such as a groundwork for understanding what we mean by music of Spain, since Spain didn’t exist at the time. I learned most of this in AP Euro, but I definitely need to brush up and learn how to say the names in Spanish. Additionally, I have a 1000 word written piece to do for class. It’s due at some point in time and is probably on a certain subject or topic as well. Umm…yeah. I guess I should ask again tomorrow. I made him repeat it once and still didn’t understand. Eeek.

My second class was much more promising. It has closer to 30 students…the majority of whom are American. It was kinda strange. I don’t know where they came from, but there they all were. Many of them know less Spanish then me, but also, this was their only course with Spanish students. Kind of ironic. Contemporary Social Movements did lift my spirits, as I understood most everything the professor told us. I also know what is expected of the class in terms of work and even the final exam.

Finally, I figured out, mostly, the library. It's the first time I'd been to a library that has a stacks and the Spanish made it more confusing. There's a reading room that has a number of books in each discipline, but the vast majority of the books are kept out of site in back rooms that you cannot enter. I had to fill out a card and request that a librarian fetch it for me. Not so bad once I figured it out, but the librarian was less than helpful and not forgiving of my non-fluency. Everyone understands if you use the word computadora here. It is a word, but they use ordenador more formally. She refused to understand what I was saying until I used the correct word. On the other hand, most everyone I've encountered has been very kind and patient with me. Especially if it's a business, they don't care what language you speak as long as you carry euros. :)

Had a little fun with photoshop. This is a stairwell in the cathedral.

Catedrals

I took the time to visit the Cathedrals yesterday. It was a spectacular view of the city from the towers. Yay pictures! Sorry, in no particular order.A view of the old and new cathedrals from the other side of the roman bridge over the river Tormes.

Inside

Looking back towards the center.

Then in the evening it snowed. I feel right at home in the snow, so for me it was great. The rest of the city seemed to enjoy it too. Everyone was out throwing snowballs. What I learned this morning was that it’s extremely rare for it to snow the 1-2 inches or so that we got. On the news people are saying they can’t remember it ever snowing this much.

Last night I ran into Americans for the first time since arriving in Spain. It was a group of nearly 30 students from BC doing an away program in Madrid. It was good to speak English and talk about some of the things that are so different here. Things like the fact that our host families insist on opening the windows for the fresh air while they’re trying to heat the house and it’s 4 C outside. Also there’s an entire leg, hoof and all, of a pig in the kitchen just covered in a towel. Oh and the milk is in a box and it’s not refrigerated. This scares me a little. To be fair though, the food has been great. The only real meal of the day is lunch, and it’s two different dishes followed by dessert.

Today I need to go out and finish finding a few school supplies. I feel like I need to start taking classes so I have some direction, but it’s a pretty scary thought. It took me about 40 minutes to muddle through a newspaper article yesterday, and I still don’t understand all of it.

Classes

Well, I start classes Monday. As it is right now, I have only 3 classes, because I can add classes, but cannot drop them. I’m planning on going to 4 for the first two weeks at which point I have to decide whether or not to add the fourth. Right now I have The Music of Spain in the 17^th and 18^th Centuries, Social Movements in Contemporary Spain, The Primitive Christianity (Study of history and spread of Christianity following the death of Christ), and Cultural Anthropology of Iberoamerica. I have classes all day Monday and Tuesday but none on Wednesday and Friday. I can’t complain. If I can afford to skip a Thursday class, I can take a 5 day weekend to travel.

On an unrelated note. There really are many more smokers here. I can’t say that everyone smokes, but there are so many and I figure you can’t be smoking all the time such that it’s got to be a considerable percentage. The only thing that outnumbers the many Tobacco stores is the banks. There are a bajillion banks. There’s a Caja Duero next to a Santander next to another Caja Duero near my school. There’s even a Banco Espiritu Santo which is Holy Spirit Bank. It makes me laugh anyway. Oh and now I have a picture of the Plaza Mayor at night. Enjoy!

First Day

Today I mostly wandered around the city. I found my school, the Cursos Internacionales department, and the school of history where all of my classes will be. The historic entrance to the school is ornately carved stone, and while I don’t think it’s beautiful, it’s impressive. The cathedral is, of course, ginormous. I’ll have to see the inside later. The Plaza Mayor or el centro, is really fantastic. It’s a huge stone courtyard surrounded by one continuous building. It’s about a 10 minute walk from my house. I think I’m really going to like the city, especially if I start understanding Spanish.

First time outside the US

So I arrived in Spain Wednesday afternoon. Flying in was gorgeous. Coming from London, when we hit the Spanish coastline, there are immediately the mountains. Circling and flying into Madrid was neat too. Madrid is huge. My guitar didn’t quite make the trip (it missed a transfer), but has since been delivered to me and all is well. The Metro is the subway in Madrid, and much nicer than the T. I made my first mistake trying to buy two tickets. I ended up buy two pieces of paper each worth 10 tickets, so if you come to visit, you can share some of my 19 available rides. Oh well. I’m now in Salamanca which is a nearly 3 hour bus ride west (and a little north) of Madrid. On the way I saw a mountain ridgeline covered in windmills. It was great. Also, I will need to see closer The Valley of the Fallen where a giant stone cross is erected and Avila where there’s actually a castle and the whole city is surrounded by large stone wall.

My host parents seem nice. I don’t quite understand everything they say, but I am hoping it will come in time. The only drawback so far is that for some reason, I can’t use their phone and need to walk outside to use my calling card at a payphone. Breakfast is around 10am, lunch at 2:30pm, and dinner at 9:30pm. Lunch is the main meal of the day and both breakfast and dinner are much smaller. Also, classes are much later. Nothing starts before 10am, and Mondays I have class until 9pm and Tuesdays until 8. It’s going to take a lot of getting used to.

Blogging from Spain

I'm going to try to use this blog to keep everyone up to date while I have my (mis)adventures in Spain. I will be studying history at the University of Salamanca. I'll be in Spain from January 25 through June 13. It seems that my host family is a single woman, but she seems very nice, and Though I'm scared right now, I'm sure things will go well.