I write to you from Spain. I would like for you to know what it is like here, and I would like for me to remember what it was like once I am gone. The format of this will be free style letters - they are easy and I am strapped for time. The main focus will be Spanish culture, and the ever self indulgent me, me and also me.
I've been here in Spain, more specifically Alicante, for nearly a week now and have almost honestly had no time to write. Today I will attempt to catch up on events in a more or less stream of consciousness fashion.
I first got on a plane to depart for Spain on the tired and slow morning of January 13th. I have what I am told is actually a somewhat common form of motion sickness in which I get about as sleepy as a mid-winter bear, and so I passed out after about 20 minutes and woke up in O'Hare. There I transferred to an Iberia flight (with some fear, the internets told me that the airline was deserving of a lofty 2.5/10 rating) and traveled Spainward. Something striking was that immediately on entering the Iberia plain, my prior veil of English culture immediately disintegrated. The crew spoke Spanish, the announcements were in Spanish, the passengers were mostly Spanish and spoke a language I'm sure you can guess. I did not speak Spanish. (Well at least)
I snoozed another nine-ish hours across the Atlantic, waking up for a mid-flight meal of cheese and unidentifiable vegetable stuff that was nonetheless good in a mushy-salty sort of way. Looking out the window was still one of the most breathtaking sights I have yet witnessed on the trip. It was a cloudy night and the moon was obscured over the ocean by wispy cloud layers, but it was so pure and bright that it cut through them and cast long lances of light across the water below. I didn't take a picture.
I arrived in Madrid the next morning and met up with a number of students going to the same city but a different program. We hung out in the Airport for a while, and eventually after a surprisingly light examination in security continued on to Alicante, my destination.
Alicante is an interesting place. If you google image search it, you will probably have an image in your head thereafter much like that of a Floridian resort town. It's colder than that but warmer than Seattle. I'll talk more about the city later, but for brevity I will omit an account now.
I planned on arriving two days before my scholastic program started in order to explore the city a bit and get over my deep fear of talking to Spaniards. It's scary to potentially express yourself incorrectly. To this end I booked a hostel with good ratings by the base of La Castilla de Santa Barbara (There's a fat castle in the middle of my city, how cool is that?) On arriving, I awkwardly conversed with the
attendant who spoke about as much English as I Spanish, and proceeded upstairs.
The place, Hostel de Sal, was only 26 euros a night and definitely too cool for me. They played music of a woman more or less musically screaming over the sound of violins, and their bare concrete walls were complemented by modern mesh and art. In the states it should have been about $80. The beds and accommodations were quite nice and there was a bar downstairs. The desk attendant informed me that the place was in the process of converting to a botique hotel, and that there would be celebrations. I took this in the sense that Americans take this, as in cheese and maybe a few cocktails, which was a humorously incorrect interpretation.
That night I went to bed after exploring Alicante by foot for many hours, and around 11 heard noises downstairs in the bar. By about 2 it was a raging party, and kept going until around 6. Evidently the Spanish like to stay out late, and their social environment is quite different than the American night scene. There is little to no music, and everyone talks, very, very loudly. I didn't actually mind that much since I was still excited to be in a new place, so I went downstairs and wandered around a bit and got a beer. (Drinking age is something like 18 here, so my 21st will be fairly anticlimactic)
The next night there was a similar party, but this time I donned my earplugs and popped some of my faithful traveling companion, Benadryl, since I would meet all the other Americans in my program the next day.
I packed up my luggage and slogged over to another hotel across the city, which was this time way too classy for me instead of way too cool. I felt super awkward in dirty jeans and a hoody as I walked past about seven Spaniards in suits and over a perfectly polished floor into a tasteful room of couches and checkered carpet to meet my program coordinator. Surprisingly I was able to understand her rapid Spanish... She spoke with illustrative hand gestures and a very clear tone. This would actually be something of a trend, I don't know when it happened, but some time since getting on the Iberia plain I suddenly started understanding Spanish. Lucksack right?
The program ran us through a bunch of orientation exercises, and put me up in a room with two interesting and all-considered pretty sweet dudes, Joe and Andrew. We spent a lot of time in a glisteningly clean meeting room with some candy and water in it listening to lectures that might have been considered obnoxiously persistent if there was not so much stupidly relevant information in them.
After two days of orientation, we grouped up in our great big hotel and were escorted nervously one by one to meet our host families. My host mother came to get me, and our initial conversation was uncomfortably halting. I adjusted to her Spanish and she to mine (which probably sounds something like the equivalent of a lawnmower's droning and an introductory ESL class for Chinese 5-year olds would to English speakers to her) after a seemingly long and jarring taxi ride. At my new home, which I will discuss later, but for now's purposes is freaking awesome, I met my host dad. They asked that I call them Mama and Papa, which I did and do going with the theme of accepting new things here.
We started classes not too long after, and as I write this I am still taking part in an intensive course intended to catch us all up to speaking speed. I still cannot write Spanish for my life, but it seems that I am doing well enough with the oral component which is a saving grace. Who needs to write good anyways?
A few days ago we hiked up to the Castilla after class. It is situated above a small mountain, and is about as cool as the male-embryo-transplant-stem-cell-baby (that's a thing right?) of Batman and Morgan Freeman would be. I hope to hike to its peak again and provide a more detailed account, but for now I will leave you with a few pictures of my time there.
Stay safe, stay healthy, and keeping reading my blog or I will know and be slightly insulted,
Tim
From (1)
From (2)
From (3)
Ghetto Photocredit:
(1)http://www.spain.info/es/conoce/monumentos/alicante/castillo_de_santa_barbara.html
(2)http://www.google.es/imgres?imgurl=http://sientealicante.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Castillo-de-Santa-B%C3%A1rbara.jpg&imgrefurl=http://sientealicante.com/castillo-de-santa-barbara/&usg=__hPLVP4xZV-NCD94qs0U1ocPr3DA=&h=466&w=700&sz=66&hl=es&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=6HV7nRyAThHAeM:&tbnh=145&tbnw=206&ei=td85TaX3EcG28QPbmqCvCA&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dla%2Bcastilla%2Bde%2Bsanta%2Bbarbara%26um%3D1%26hl%3Des%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26biw%3D1280%26bih%3D615%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=343&vpy=88&dur=46&hovh=183&hovw=275&tx=128&ty=67&oei=td85TaX3EcG28QPbmqCvCA&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=16&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:0
(3)Mary Beth Fernandez.
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