La Segunda Semana del Intensivo y Toledo

Sorry I haven’t been keeping up with this, it’s been difficult to find time! The second week of intensivo went pretty well. We worked on our radio programs, which actually turned out to be really fun. Vero, Maureen and I recorded a commercial for a special type of cookies we always have in our house, and we put that together with reports on two news events, an “interview” with Don Omar (who I’m seeing in concert next week!), and the results of a poll to make our very own Despierta Salamanca news show. The poll was cool too, we compared Salamanca and American drinking habits and to do that we had to ask random people in the street how many drinks they had on average on a night out. Vero speaks Spanish, but she made Maureen and I ask a few of them and it was hilarious. Maureen almost had people running away from her with her aggressive “HOLA”s and whenever I asked I almost always forgot a word/blacked out from sheer terror. You’d think we didn’t speak Spanish every day. But yeah, it was fun and we put it on in front of class, and then the next day we had our exam, which wasn’t too hard at all. And voila, we’re done with a three credit class!

I decided to add a Latin American Civilization class to make it an 18 credit semester, so we’ll see how this goes. We got our schedules very last minute and mine looks good so far, but I still haven’t gotten it for the internship, where we go to the schools and essentially teach English. Jesus, the program director sent out an email with almost everyone’s schedule, and with it was a syllabus which revealed to me the fun fact that it’s six hours a week! Which is a lot more than I was expecting. I can’t even imagine going to class and having a lot of homework because I’m already so busy without all that stuff! We’ll see how it goes, though. I’m excited.

On Saturday we took a day trip to Toledo, which was amazing. It’s an ancient city about a three hour bus ride from Salamanca that’s known for having Muslims, Jews and Christians all live together in what I think was pretty much peace. Which never happened. It’s extremely beautiful, and you can tell by looking at it that it has so much history. We visited a cathedral first, which was absolutely amazing. I probably use the word amazing too much, but that’s because there’s really no other way to describe it. The cathedral was hugeee, and had tons of ornate altars and crazy sculptures. It was built in the 1200s, and it’s just amazing to think about all the thought that was put into things and what work it must have taken to build something like that. Next we went to a synagogue, which I think Jesus said had been taken at some point to be turned into a church. And last we went to a mosque that was built in the year 999. What? It’s just crazy to me that something that old is still around. It was beautiful, to say the least, and had the remnants of an original ancient Roman road nearby. Before we left, we went to the outskirts to see what was the absolute best view I’ve ever seen. You could overlook the whole city, including a gorgeous river. Amazing.

We came back that same night and Jesus told us to enjoy tonight, rest tomorrow, and be ready to study on Monday. So we enjoyed.

View of Toledo ^^

Madrid- Enero

Carolyn, Maureen and I decided to go to Madrid this weekend. At first, a lot of people were talking about going, but since it’s our first weekend most people wanted to stay here. We’re going with JMU, but since it’s such a big city we wanted to go and see the things we might not get to see when we go with the group. We took a bus from Salamanca to Madrid on Friday evening, and when we got there we had to figure out which metro line to take. We were looking at a map when an old man approached us and was so eager to help us that he actually escorted us to our first stop, and told us where to transfer. “Bienvenidos a España.” When we got to our metro stop, we only had to walk like two minutes to our hostal, which was in the Anton Martin area of Madrid. It was actually a pretty nice hostal, we had a room with four beds and a balcony that overlooked a busy little side street. The keys to our room were these little sensory things that they made into watches, which was a little weird but it worked out. We each had our own locker, and it was a little scary at first because I had never done anything like that, or even traveled on my own before Salamanca, but we were proud of ourselves and it ended up being really good. We met up with Maureen’s friend who is studying in Madrid and we hung out with her for a lot of the weekend. On Saturday we woke up at a decent hour and tried to go to some of the museums that we wouldn’t be going to when we come with JMU, but by the time we figured out how to get to them, it was siesta and they were closed for a few hours. So we ended up just walking for most of the time, which was fine because we still got to see the city. We went to a small contemporary art museum, and stumbled upon an ancient Egyptian temple that had been moved for preservation. We also came across these cablecar things that went across Madrid and had like a voice recorded guided tour thing, which was really cool and introduced us to what the different buildings were. Later that day we went to El Parque del Retiro, which was so beautiful. We rented a canoe for less than 5 euros since it was such a nice day, and just being on the water was soo nice. We had tapas for dinner, which was nice but it was really difficult finding Sunday morning we woke up and went to this HUGE open air market which is basically throughout the whole plaza mayor and a lot of Madrid. They had EVERYTHING you could possibly think of from clothes, to scarves to electronics to jewelry. It was really cool, except it was so hard to walk because there were so many people. At 3:30 we took a bus back to Madrid and I had to sit next to this French homeless guy who was so excited that I spoke English because he had been in Spain for like two months without talking to anyone. He said he was an artist- a stone mason and he told me all about his travels and said that he had walked more than 800 kilometers in Spain. He begs for money for the bus, and sometimes stays at churches that give him a little food. He was really nice, and wasn’t that creepy, I think he was just really lonely so we talked for almost the whole bus ride home, partly in English, partly in Spanish, and partly acting things out that he couldn’t remember, and he gave me a little pendant he had carved.

I liked Madrid, and I’m glad we went but I’m so glad I live in Salamanca instead. In Madrid, almost everyone smokes and you cannot go anywhere without being shoulder to shoulder with a million people.  Soy contenta en Salamanca :)

^^ The little lake thing in El Parque Retiro; My first hostel stay!

La Primera Semana del Intensivo

We started intensivo last Monday, and we had to take a placement exam because the class is divided into two groups. I surprisingly placed into the higher level, and both my roommates are in the same class. Our professor’s name is Javier, and he seems really intelligent and like he’ll be a good teacher. We have to talk about a different thing from the news everyday, and at the end of the class we have to present a 30 minute radio program in groups of three, so I’m working with Vero and Maureen. We’re basically studying everything we need in order to not sound like a stupid American in Spain, like how to talk in restaurants, at the doctor, in stores, etc. When I was sitting in class, it finally hit me that I’m studying abroad in Spain, and I started to tear up. I just feel so lucky to have this opportunity, and it came at just the right time.

On Monday night we went out walking around and we came across a place called the Irish Rover and stayed for awhile. We met up with Maureen's friend who is getting her Masters here and she was talking to us about all the cool places and her experiences here, it was fun! Class hasn't been really hard at all, it's really interesting. We learned a lot of the differences between our cultures and what things are “de mal educación,” in Spain but not in America. A lot of it is actually like the exact opposite, like even kids cuss here, you’re supposed to put both arms on the table when you eat, and tear your bread instead of biting it. Also, if you smile at someone it means that you like.. like them. Which is really hard to get used to, I've been smiling at all the old men and getting weird looks haha! I was surprised by a lot of the differences. Also, you’re never supposed to eat in class, and stretching or coming in your pajamas is like incredulous. I understand everything my professor says and I’m already starting to understand the majority of what Carmen says, even though she talks faster than anyone I’ve met so far. We learned a lot of slang words that we can use with other students here, and it’s already so helpful.

One day after class last week we went to find la rana! On the front of one of the university buildings, there are tons and tons of intricate sculptures, and one is of a tiny frog. They say if you find the frog, you’ll pass all your exams and you’ll come back to Spain. We found that and then went the catedral nueva, which was absolutely breathtaking. They have different rooms where you can go to pray to certain saints, and in one of them there’s an urn with the arm of a priest just chillin. It was amazing, and there were paintings and sculptures everywhere. After that we went to an archivo, which had a lot of stuff from the Spanish Civil War. We asked the security guard to explain some of it to us, but of course I didn’t understand everything. Apparently there were Free Masons there too, and they were just like philosophers who would sit and talk about stuff, and Franco didn’t like them because he thought they might challenge him, so they were targeted by him. They wore the same hoods as the KKK and the same ones they wear in the Semana Santa parades for Easter, so I’m interested to find out the reason the KKK chose those outfits to copy. We asked our madre if we could have an early dinner to watch the Real Madrid vs. Barcelona game, and she said okay and we had the most amazzzinnnggg fried empanada things. She’s a pretty good cook, and I think she’s warming up to us. She’s started to call us hijas, which is really cute. We went to Gatsby to watch the game, and there were chairs lined up like a little mini auditorium, and the place was full! Barcelona won 2 to 1. I definitely want to start keeping up with soccer here, I love watching it. 

All in all the first week of school was really good! I'm really excited for everything! 

Llegada a España y Orientación

¡Hola de España!
After my aunt and uncle and Mom and Doug dropped me off at JFK airport, I took my seven hour flight to Madrid and navigated the airport with little problems. When I got to Madrid, I was in a different terminal than the other students so I had to figure out how to take a bus to the right one, which was a little overwhelming but I finally found a big group of people from JMU and I was so relieved! We waited a while in the airport and our program director came to pick us up, and we took a two hour bus ride to Salamanca, where our madres were waiting for us!

My madre´s name is Carmen, and she lives on the sixth floor of an apartment building. She has one son who´s married, and I think she´s widowed, but I´m not sure. My two roommates´names are Maureen and Veronica, and they´re both really nice and we get along well. Veronica is fluent in Spanish because she´s from Chile, so our host mom has taken to only addressing her which is a little weird. It´s gotten a little better since we´ve been here and I think it´ll be fine once Maureen and I start speaking Spanish more fluently. She talks super super fast, and is overall pretty nice. She has some weird rules, like we´re not allowed to keep our shoes in the closet because they smell, and we have to open our windows during the day even though it´s like 30 degrees because of the smell too? We asked our professor if that was normal, and he was like uhhh no. Interesting!

We had orientation on Saturday and Sunday where we walked around and saw the buildings of the university, the doctor, and the JMU office. Salamanca is probably the most beautiful place I´ve ever been, the architecture is amazing. It´s a pretty small city but of course I get lost everywhere so I think I´m going to walk around with my map and try to figure things out when I get a chance. Also, it´s been snowing here! Our program director says that it hasn´t snowed in four years. It´s a lott more cold here than I thought it would be, so I´ve had to buy some more sweaters and a pair of boots, which is fine because there are crazyyy sales here right now. It´s like black Friday everyday for like a month. Yayy

Almost all of the JMU students went out on Saturday night (like 22 people), and we had to plan to meet at a certain place at a certain time because none of us had cell phones and not all of us have internet at our house (I don´t). It´s still pretty weird because I´m so used to always having multiple forms of communication available, but I think it will help us become more involved in things and once we get used to it it´ll be good. So we met at 11, which we figured out was wayy too early because nothingg was open. When people say Spaniards stay up late, they mean it. So we ended up just kind of hanging out in the street until about 12:30, when we went bar hopping and found a place called Jacko´s (yes, a Michael Jackson bar), where they had a shot that was no lie named the JMU shot. Apparently JMU has the same reputation here as it does at home, go figure. We ended up at a discoteca called Camelot, which was mucho fun and we stayed out until 5am! It was a good start to the trip, and I got to order my first legal drink ;)

Today we started our Intensivo class, which is four hours a day for two weeks. We took a placement exam and were divided into two groups, and I surprisingly placed into the higher level. For some reason it hadn´t really hit me yet that this whole thing was happening, but when I was sitting in class today, everything hit and I got pretty emotional. I feel so so lucky to have this opportunity and everything is just so amazing here.

I miss everyone so much! I don´t have internet at my house, and I use it when I can at the University library, but once I get the hang of things and figure out the wifi deal at the university, I´ll let everyone know when I can skype and set things up! Also I´ll post pictures soon! Amor a mi familia, Philia a mis Hermanos de PSP y besos a mis amigos!

^^^ La Plaza Mayor! (the center of Salamanca where there are a bunch of shops and cafes)

Pre-Vacilando

Hi friends!

I leave for my semester abroad in Salamanca, Spain in one week. This trip requires a lot of preparation, probably more than I have actually done, and one of my to-do list items was making a blog. Let me start off by saying that I am probably more excited for this trip than I have ever been for anything in my entire life. During the past few months, I have been bombarding my friends, family and innocent passersby with random facts about my trip and occasionally screaming "¡Viva España!" in case anyone might have missed the message that: ESTOY MUY EMOCIONADA!

The term vacilando, which I have chosen to name my blog, I learned from the book "Travels with Charley," by John Steinbeck. He says: "In Spanish there is a word for which I can't find a counterword in English. It is the verb vacilar, present participle vacilando. It does not mean vacillating at all. If one is vacilando, he is going somewhere, but does not greatly care whether or not he gets there, though he has direction." In other words, it is the act of wandering in which the experience of traveling is more important than traveling for the purpose of reaching a destination. Or, in the oh so wise words of Miley Cyrus: "It's all about the climb."

¡Viva España!