¡Hola! I'm just finishing up my second week in Spain, but it feels like I've been here a lot longer than that. It hasn't quite been a week since my first post, but my plan is to post on Sunday nights from now on because that's likely to be when I have the most free time. So here we go with blog post número dos! I ended my last blog post on Tuesday night, and Wednesday was a very full day. I started with three hours of Spanish class in the morning and that is truly an immersion. I don't believe my professor speaks a single word of English. This makes the class very difficult, but I feel like I'm at least beginning to acclimate to her accent. Each day I seem to understand a little bit more of what she says during class, but honestly the biggest problem with that class is not the language barrier. The biggest problem is that this professor is probably the single most unorganized person I've ever met, making this the single most unorganized class I've ever taken. For a girl who quit the girl scouts at age six because it was too unorganized, this is truly a problem and is driving me insane. What makes it worse is that Cara and I have been coming home and having out host brother Juan go over our notes with us every day (did I mention her writing is also terrible, therefore causing us to take terrible notes) and helping us understand, but Juan leaves for Milan on Thursday! Then we're really going to be in trouble. Oh well, I guess we'll struggle through it for now and just hope it gets easier.
After Spanish we went to a café for lunch, which is always more difficult than I expect. The reason for this is that most menus are in Catalan (as are street signs, metro signs, etc.). I don't speak, read, write or understand Catalan. Granted, it's relatively similar to Spanish, but it's not like that's my native language either. So essentially when something is in Catalan, I have to translate it from a language I'm clueless about, to one I'm "proficient" in, to English. Needless to say, things literally get lost in translation. Thankfully, Spaniards speak Catalan, Spanish, and many of them speak English, so we're able to get by okay. Usually, whatever language you speak to them in is what they'll answer you in.
After lunch we went to our second class, the first day of The City in Visual Culture. It's taught by our resident director, Magda, who is great. It's offered in both Spanish and English and when I arrived to the English section, Magda was surprised by the amount of people in the class. She asked who all was in advanced Spanish and we reluctantly raised our hands. She then of course asked us to seriously consider taking it in Spanish. I sat in on the Spanish section of the class that day (and on Friday) and as Magda's Spanish is much easier to understand, I could completely follow along. So I'm going to talk to Magda tomorrow and officially switch into the Spanish section. The readings are in English and she said she could send us the English versions of the powerpoints, so I guess the only thing I'm worried about are taking the tests in Spanish and doing our final presentation in Spanish too. But hey, might as well challenge myself and make the most of the experience, right? Hopefully by then, I'll be comfortable enough with my Spanish that it won't be too big of an issue. Since the language isn't the focus of the class, I know Magda will be willing to help if there's something I don't understand. Maybe taking her class in Spanish will actually help me understand what's going on in my Spanish language class!
After that, we had our first studio session, which I had been nervous about for literally months. However, it all turned out okay. All the U of M students were placed into the intermediate studio, along with all but 5 older students with considerably more experience, who were of course placed into the advanced section. Since the intermediate section is so large, it was randomly split into two studios with different projects (since there are two studio professors) and we were assigned said semester projects that very day. This is very different from at the U, where they only reveal tiny parts at a time. Also, we're actually designing a space, which may not sound like a novel idea for an architecture major, but my education thus far has been far more conceptual and theory based, with a focus on design thinking. Because of this, the end project will likely be a really great addition to my portfolio and add some variety. I really like the project my group was assigned. There's an organization called Maggie's Cancer Caring Centers with a few centers built throughout the UK and expanding now into other areas of Europe. Although one has already been designed for Barcelona (without a site), we're essentially designing what we think would be an ideal center for this Mediterranean city (most of the projects have had very different climates and this creates a completely different design challenge). It seems like a really great organization and I'm actually pretty excited about the project, although right now it's at the very vague stage characteristic of architecture projects which I always find a little frustrating. But that'll pass and it should be an interesting semester.
So that was Wednesday. We didn't have any free time so class was pretty much all that happened that day. Thursday was pretty uneventful. We had Spanish again (woohoo..), and then had a meeting about cultural immersion and basically how not to be an American. I don't know how good of a job I'm doing, but I'm taking baby steps. At least now I'm extra aware of when I'm in the "American bubble" as they called it, like yesterday when I just couldn't resist and I got Domino's pizza for dinner, ha. I just was really craving some food that I recognized and it can really get overwhelming after awhile being surrounded by a language and a culture you don't completely understand. Domino's was my way of coping, strange as that may be. After the meeting we went grocery shopping with Helen, so that we don't have to keep buying lunch every day. I made some stupid American mistakes that caused extra work for the cashier and I felt bad. Also, peanut butter does not exist here, which made me really sad. I love peanut butter. I should have brought some. I did find Nutella, though, which is also delicious. That reminds me, my Christmas candy supply ran out :(. I guess I'll have to actually try to acclimate to Spanish meal times now. The main problem is they don't really snack in between meals and just have huge meals, but I'm not used to that. I can't eat that much all at once and my host dad always picks on me for not eating enough, but then I'm hungry again before it's time for another meal. I'll need to buy some granola bars or something.
Then came Friday, where we started the day with Spanish class, of course. I can't wait until this week is over and we only have it three times weekly. Then for the City in Visual Culture, we took a walking tour of the Barri Gotíc, Barcelona's Gothic Quarter. We found out, however, that that's a bit of a misnomer intended to attract tourists. It is the oldest part of the city, and it is incredibly beautiful, but some of the "Gothic" architecture was actually not built during the Gothic era and was instead consciously constructed to appear Gothic at a somewhat later time (though still a very long time ago and not meant to be deceitful, but more to pay homage). This disillusionment made me a little sad at first, but then I realized knowing the truth put me a step above tourists and there was really no reason to be disappointed because it is still a very historic and very pretty area. I forgot to take pictures that day because I was taking notes for class, but I'm sure I'll return. I went to bed early that night, so I could get up early in the morning for our day trip to Montserrat!
A group of 9 of us left on the 9:36 am train out of Barcelona (after I successfully asked for and got directions to the train station en Español!). It was about an hour train ride and we watched the on-board thermometer continue to drop as we all realized we had forgotten to take into the account the possible temperature change from Barcelona to the mountains. We got to Montserrat and it was definitely chilly. Our train tickets included a round trip ride on bright yellow cable cars that took us part of the way up the mountains into the little town itself. Montserrat is an adorable little town set right into the hillside, it's main attractions being the monastery and the hiking trails. We visited the monastery first and it was absolutely beautiful. Camera's weren't allowed in some areas, so I tried to take some sneaky pictures, but they turned out blurry. That's what I get for breaking the rules, I guess. Then we split into two groups for the hike: a group of 6 who wanted a longer, higher hike and a group of 3 girls who had gone out the night before and were way too tired to hike, so they took the shortest trail. I went with the longer hike, although I was nervous about my athletic ability. I was definitely at the back of the group, my short legs not helping at all, but it was so worth it. We hiked for a few hours and it was so incredible. We took tons of pictures, ate the picnic lunches we had brought up on the mountain, and even saw 3 cats! We have no clue why there were cats on the mountain, but there were and they were adorable and friendly :). We eventually got to a point where our group split again, having found out we had not taken the trail we thought we had. We started our trail at the bottom of the funicular rail and hiked up to the top of it, but the trail we thought we were taking actually started at the top of the funicular. 4 people were determined to get to the highest point and take the trail we had originally intended to take, on top of all the hours of hiking we had already done, but I was not one of them. It was another hour there and another hour back and I was just way too tired. I decided not to push myself too hard, and I don't regret it seeing as I still saw awesome sights and seeing as the other group couldn't actually see all that much more from the higher vantage point due to the slightly cloudy day. So Nathan, who is not a huge fan of heights, and I hiked just another 20 minutes or so to an old hermitage on the mountain (according to the pamphlet we picked up, there's 13 of them scattered around up there!) and it was really neat. Then we walked down and waited for the others in the food court/gift shop. They hiked down to the area where we had split up and then took the funicular back down to the town where we were waiting. Then we hopped back into our cable car, caught the train and were back in Barcelona by nightfall. Needless to say, I was exhausted and just did a little homework and went to bed. (Just to make it explicit, I'm a boring person.)
This morning I slept until 10 and definitely felt and continue to feel the aftermath of yesterday's hiking. Today consisted of more homework with a break in between for a trip to the beach house. Our host parents were there all weekend and today we joined them along with Juan and Helen's mother, her sister, and her sister's two study abroad students from the U.S. as well. Juan and his cousin like to argue about who is better: his Americans or hers. The other two were really nice, they're through the same organization but in the Advanced Liberal Arts program as opposed to Architecture and Design, so we hadn't seen them around yet. Their program requires a higher knowledge of Spanish, as learning the language is the focus, so they were both pretty fluent. Helen made paella and therefore I had authentic Spanish paella for the first time! I was nervous about the amount of seafood in it, which included mussels, calamari, shrimp and crayfish. The thing about the shrimp and crayfish is they're still whole creatures when you put them in, so you then have to dissect them before eating. It seems like a pain, but I wouldn't really know because I avoided the crayfish (I just couldn't do it, they were looking at me!) and only had one shrimp, which Cara dissected for me because I was clueless. I did try the mussels and calamari though, with the rice, and it was good. I wouldn't say it's a new favorite or anything but I've seen restaurants advertise vegetarian paella and I think I might like that more.
Mealtime conversation is always interesting because I've noticed that the worries in the U.S. about always being politically correct and not offending anyone are nonexistent in Spain. My host father is a huge joker, so he means well and isn't serious at all, but the things he jokes about would not be acceptable even for joke material in the States. For example, religion and politics are not forbidden conversation territory. The first weekend, I was jokingly told I was going to Hell because I'm not Catholic. (Cara is, so she's golden). The other two girls who were there today are Jewish (or as our host dad said in his somewhat broken English "Oh, you are Jew!"), and that managed to come up in the conversation tonight as well, along with a family argument about Spanish politics where we all remained mute, Juan going around the table asking all the Americans what we thought of Obama, our host father making it clear he leans to the right and him informing us that only Cara would be allowed to marry his son, as she is the only one who is Catholic (as long as she's not a Socialist). He's an interesting guy and he just always says very unexpected things. He also asks us often "Are you happy?" and means just in general, in life. But like I said, he means well (he always refers to us as "mi hijas", my daughters) and is really just joking, and although it was awkward, I don't think anyone left feeling too offended. Anyways, we went for a walk after dinner and then came back here to Barcelona. On the drive back, I loved looking at the lights from the little villages stuck into the hills. I've tried to avoid using cliche words like quaint and picturesque, but it's impossible because some of these places, especially the smaller villages around the beach house, are the absolute epitome of quaint and picturesque.
But it's about 11 right now and I should probably go to bed because Cara and I have to get up earlier than usual tomorrow. Until now, our commute to school meant walking 5 minutes or so to the metro, a 5-10 minute metro ride (one train, no transfers) and then a 15-20 minute walk to the classroom building. Not too bad, pretty easy, but as of tomorrow, there's construction on the metro and now we have to either take a bus and then a train or take two trains, which would involve coming out from underground, walking to another stop, and then going back down. It's pretty obnoxious and we're not happy about it, but there's obviously nothing we can do so hopefully we can figure it out in the morning (that's why we're giving ourselves extra time). But that's all for today, again this is really long. I never even knew I had so much to say! Again, to anyone who got this far, thank you and I hope it wasn't too painful :).
No comments:
Post a Comment