A few of my favorite things

So as I have only been updating by blog every two weeks I will try to cover multiple topics in this blog, and perhaps make it shorter, since my blog posts tend to be really long.

My last post was kind of negative, but I think its important to be realistic, there are things you will love about studying abroad, and things you will hate. This will focus on some of the things that I love about being here, which makes the few negative things totally worth it.
For me being here and learning about the culture is the most exciting thing. I love learning about why people do the things they do, and where traditions come from. Siesta is one such cultural thing, which is actually observed in Germany as well, that is one such thing. It is hard to do anything at that time of day, 2-5pm, because it is so hot. So they take a break, but then work later into the night. I think it is a wonderful custom, people have more energy and are more productive. I also enjoy the way the Spanish family is different than the American family. Here it is normal for children to be at home much longer than American children. My host brother is 30 and is still at home. This does not mean that hey wastes his money, and lives off his parents, he plays an active part in the family, but his parents did not expect him to move out when he turned 18 whether or not he had a job or any prospects. Which I know does happen in America, parents cannot wait till their children turn 18 and leave, and here parents want their children at home until they decide to leave.
I also enjoy how things like wine and beer are viewed, granted people should probably drink a little bit more water here, but that's a different subject, I have been told numerous times that "los borrochos beben agua" (water is for drunk) Just because they have alcohol does not mean they are not accetable to sell at the university, it also does not mean that people drink it for the sole reason to get drunk.  I think they have a much better way of viewing those things, as just another beverage.
Then there is food, there is not much that I don't like. I love drinking coffee and have toña, which is a sweet bread, in the morning for breakfast.
 My host mom cooks with a lot of fish, and I enjoy how fresh it is, although sometimes it is difficult to try different things. Like the picture below, which is a mix of fish that are used to make soup, I have never seen anything like this in northern Michigan.
I also love the language, and the colloquial terms that I have learned. As Spain is next to Portugal, there are certain words that are impacted by Portuguese. For example to say I miss you they say "te echo de menos" echo means to cast away, so the means I cast you away less. Which makes no sense unless you learn it comes from a Portuguese saying that over time was shortened into that.
Learning how they speak has been interesting as well. It is often hard to understand some of the words people use, because they had their own accent here. They, like people from Michigan, just don't pronounce all of the word and they particularly don't like words that had "d" in them. They say pescao instead of pescado, or dormio instead of dormido. I had such a hard time understanding my host father for the longest time because he has a thick accent. Now that I have been here longer my host mom is not as careful with what she says and how she says it. For example avacados here are also called kiwi's. Which is no help to me because it means the fruit too. So the other day I had no idea what she was talking about, but she caught herself and explained.
They also say "vale" instead of "bueno" like they say in Mexico for okay.
Learning these things has been a lot of fun, and challenging, but the more you can try and pick of the way local people talk the more they appreciate your attempts to speak the language.

I am taking off to see La Alhambra tomorrow, so there will be another update soon with that adventure.

Saludos,
Damaris

So lets get real about living in a foreign country

This is my fantastic host mom, Fini. She has taken me in with such open arms and has completely spoiled me. Not only does she treat me as her daughter, but we have become great friends. With Fini I have a different relationship that is a bit different that any of the other students, for several reasons. I think the biggest is that we talk about my wedding a lot. She enjoys watching say yes to the dress and telling me what kind of dress she thinks would look good on me. She also gives me tips about taking care of a house and cooking, which I enjoy because she is an amazing cook. We don't just talk about my wedding, we talk about everything; family, friends, classes as well as philosophy and theology. She sees the world differently than I do and that has challenged me a lot. Having grown up in a completely different culture it is such a privilege to be able to have the relationship I have with her so that she will be honest with me about how she views things. We have not always agreed, but it has made me really think about why I think the way I do. 

With that in mind it has been really hard for me to reconcile some of the cultural differences that I see on a regular basis, but at the same time think about why my culture is the way it is. I think the best example is how wound up people from the United States get about working. Our culture focuses so much on making money and always moving in to the next best thing that we don't stop and just relax and enjoy where we are. I stress about college because of how much it costs, and so I don't want to waste my time so I stress about doing my best. Students here do not worry about that, prices in the University have recently gone up but they are still paying less than $3,000 a year for classes. I have a professor that fails about 60% of his class every semester here. Students here don't have to worry about that they just take the class over and the time does not matter. I have a hard time understanding this because I don't want to be in college longer than necessary, and at times it has been frustrating to me. I view my ability to go to college as a privilege and so failing a class is a big deal. I don't think either way is right, I think Americans loose something very important by stressing out so much about work, there is more to life than the next pay check and maybe as prices go up here students will realize how lucky they are to attend. 

There is also the issue of the language barrier, that sometimes can be a huge problem, especially with people who don't know how to have patience for someone who is learning the language. I have only really had one bad experience with this, but it is hard to remember that interacting with someone who is learning Spanish is a challenge for both parties. I tried to explain something to my host father, and instead of telling me he did not understand he just laughed at my mistake, and that hurt. 

Understanding that these things are bound to happen is good to remember when deciding to study abroad, because it is hard not to take it personally. I have had the most difficulty with my host father, his speech mannerisms and accent, which are influenced by a Valencian accent make it hard to understand him at times, and his sense of humor can be really harsh, as well as him making a joke about everything. If that was the only thing I dwelt on though I would miss out on a lot. 

I finally brought up him walking with me to the bus stop every morning, because I really did not understand why. It turns out it is because previously the girl that lived with them was uncomfortable walking to the bus stop because of some of the people who were present in the area that would try and talk to her, he would go with her and just decided to do the same with me in case I was uncomfortable as well. Now that I know the reason I think it is really sweet and considerate that they thought of this, but is also is why communication is important because had I not said something I would have just continued to be confused by why he did this. 

There are a lot more things I could talk about, but I will possibly write more about this later, for now I want to talk about Alicante, the city. 

I live about a 30 minute walk away from everything in the city, in a barrio, which is like a neighborhoods. It don't mind that it is so far away although it does leave me less inclined to go out at night because I don't particularly enjoy walking home really late at night, but from what I have experienced it is a really safe neighborhood and have never felt unsafe walking home even late at night. I spend a lot of time on the explanada and walking around the Rambla. The explanada is a long plaza that has shops and restaurants, and the Rambla has the same. Both are very touristy so they have a lot to offer. I love this ice cream shop that also sells crepes that are filled with nutella. The restaurant Miami is also nice, a bit on the pricier side but they have really good pizza if you don't want to eat typical Spanish food, it is the only place I have had anything truly spicy as well. 

I also enjoy the walk ways that are built around these beautiful old trees, that are like nothing I have ever seen before. This below is one of those trees. It is a picture looking up into the leaves, they look blue because of the light in the surrounding area. 

 Well I am going to end this blog before it gets too long. I will update next week after my trip to Madrid. I hope you have enjoyed reading about my trip so far. I know this blog got a bit honest about some of the difficulties that I have dealt with, but I am truly having a wondeful time and learning a lot. I love learning more about the culture and trying all of the new things. Every experience has its positive and its negative parts and I think it is necessary to take the negativity in stride and attempt to understand where it might becoming from.

Saludos!  

Culture, birthday and Germany

I did not realize how long it had been since I updated my blog, sorry for the delay! I most have just been going to school, and every day life stuff. Up until last weekend that is, last weekend I went to Germany, but more about that later.

Spain has started to cool down, possibly more next week, as I still spent all of yesterday at the beach. It was a good way to spend Halloween, after the beach we walked around Alicante, which is probably my favorite past time here. I have spent so many hours walking up and down the Explanada, which is a long plaza by the port that is home to lots of little shops and restaurants, and right before the beach. I have tried a few of the restaurants, but these tend to be more expensive, so not very often. Even Mcdonalds there is expensive, at about $9 for a happy meal Where I have eaten is called Miami, Katie and I have split different pizzas the few times we have been there. The only place where I have actually found spicy food. Every other time I have been warned the food is spicy it is never spicy, even a weak hot sauce is stronger, or it is vinegary, I was told something was spicy but it was pickled. So that has been an interesting difference. I have finally given in and eat toña for breakfast most mornings, it is a sweet bread that tastes amazing with coffee, which is cheap and amazing, they are espresso shots, and I always have mine with milk, but they are very small.

I keep wanting to start a paragraph that addresses some of the things I am struggling with, but I am not quite sure how to address them. They are not things that are really specific to Spain, more generational than anything, it is kind of hard to watch relations where men want to keep things the way they used to be while the women want things to progress forward. I have observed this is relationships at home, but it never has really impacted me until here. Understanding this has been really hard, and at time tried my patience. There are always different things that will be challenging in a new culture though. Everything else is really just small unimportant things, like the wifi not working when you want it to, or the language barrier that still has to be maneuvered occasionally due to lack of vocabulary.

My birthday was this past week, and I have to say I was surprised more than once. My host family ended up having to small cakes for me, one Tuesday, and another today, Saturday as her son and his girlfriend were able to be here today. She made Salmon and muscles for lunch today, and Mexican food for dinner on Tuesday. I was also surprised by my fiance who contacted one of the other students here to help have flowers delivered, as well as some of the souvenirs that I had said I wanted, actually all of them, I was thoroughly surprised.

Lastly there is Germany, and castles and Turkish food kind of sums up my trip. I love history, and castles so it was like Christmas for Ralphie Parker when he got the Red Ryder B.B.gun. I hope that gives you an accurate description of how excited I was. We saw the Heidelberg castle, which was so beautiful, the architecture and size just blew me away, especially since it was made around the same time as some of them castles we saw in Spain, but the structure and style is so different. We also got lots in Trier, which was fun,just included a lot of walking.
Below are some pictures of my trip to Germany.

The description of the statue was in German, but what I do know
is that it was a victim of the Fig leaving by the Church in attempt
to cover up the genitalia on any statutes. 

Just a small part of the castle, was not
able to get a picture of the whole thing

The birthday cake my host family had for me today

Me sitting in the last castle we saw, it made for
some fun photo ops. 

Castles and Belgium

So a lot has happened since I last posted, I have been really busy seeing places and going to school. So first I'll talk about the castles that I saw with my geography class. It's a geography for tourism class, so the idea was to tour different castles and evaluate the services that they offered and the accessibility of the castle for tourists. We visited four, Castalla, Onil, Bier and Villena. They were all so incredible. So much history! It is so weird to stand on something that had started in the 11th century. We walked a lot all day. Only one castle had street access, every other one you had to walk uphill to get to. We walked through the old parts of cities where the roads are so narrow, and very steep.

The picture with Darth Vader was taking at the Volvo Boat race event in Alicante. The beginning of the around the world started yesterday, and they had events going on all week; Including the cast of starwars walking around to take pictures with.

The part about Belgium in below these pictures.

 

 
 


This weekend I went to Belgium to visit a friend who is studying there. Katie, another CMU student and blogger( so you should check our her page) went with me. We were only there two days really, but we saw so many beautiful places. The climate is really similar to Michigan, so it was nice to have a few cool days away from the heat of Spain. Daniel, my friend there, had class on Friday so Katie and I explored Kortrijk on our way. We found some amazing sites, and even a house that was abandoned. Kortrijk is a smaller town which is becoming a college town as more students are studying there. His school, Howest, is pretty neat from what I saw. When we got there a band was practicing and we met some of his classmates, it was fun seeing their work. On our walk around we tried Belgian waffles, from a vending machine. Now you think they would not tasted that good, but they were amazing! We also found a vending machine that had bread in it. Shopping at Aldi was fun because we don't speak Dutch, which is what they speak in that part of Belgium. Most people we found spoke English though so it was easy getting around. The train system made traveling easy, and was not all that expensive. 11 euros to travel from Brussels to Kortrijk, which is two hours away by train.

On Saturday we left late in the day to go to Brussels. I wanted to see some museums, but we got there kind of late so I'll have to come back another time. We went to the Hard Rock Cafe there and Katie about died of excitement. We later found a book store that has books that Daniel collects and he was really excited, and the artwork in the store was really awesome. Walking around Brussels we saw some interesting sites, and I fell in love with the city. The architecture is incredibly detailed and ornate. We tried real Belgian waffles, which tasted amazing, and also Belgian fries, which I could have eaten a lot more of.

I could talk a lot more about Belgium, but I'll just put pictures below instead.

Festival de los Moros Y Cristianos

Last night I attended my first Spanish festival. It celebrates the history between the Mores and Christians, who both have controlled this area. It is incredible to see how a town incorporates their history, and to see a place that has that much history. The castles we saw were built in the 12th century, and many of the houses in the actual town are 300 years old. Each house will fly flags from whichever group they came from, but within the Mores and Christians there are a lot of subgroups, like clans, so lots of different flags. Another interesting thing is that each group has a building in the town where they stay together while the festival is going on. All together there are about 20,000 people dressed in costumes for the festival, with some of the costumes costing around $1,400. They are so incredible to look at! There are even some costumes that have the designs hand sown on the back, and they are not simple either, the detail on the faces, and decor of the designs are incredible. One thing I found interesting is that each group had a band, and a leader. the leader controlled the speed they walked, Mores walk a lot more controlled and slow, and the Christians walked really fast. Pirates, and Templar knights were Christians, I was kind of surprised that Pirates were considered Christians though. They even had kids leading their own groups of Mores and Christians. They all did a really good job.

All of the CMU students with
 some of the parade participants

Flags hanging from the balcony
 signify family ties

 I also tried some foods for the first time. Shrimp with garlic, was amazing at the first place, really fishy at the second place. I also had baby squid, okay I know that sounds strange, but it was amazing! it was not too chewy, and the flavor was great! Jamon Iberico, a famous Spanish dish. Russian salad, which is made with mayo and pickled vegetable, that was my least favorite, but it was still pretty good.

I have been getting closer to my host mom, and I really enjoy that we can sit down and have a conversation about anything, and she does not have to explain very much to me. We talked about life in general today, and I have really enjoyed getting to know her. I don't know their son, Cris very well yet, but the father, Cristobal, has been really kind. He has taken me all around the city, to make sure I can find my way around. He jokes a lot too, so that's fun except when I don't understand his jokes. When we went to the beach he even set my towel out for me. My host mom is just as attentive, always going out of her way to make sure I have everything I need.

This is one of the costumes the women wore
it was beautiful, this horse went is front of her
group, the horses were incredible. They all
were so well trained to dance in place. 

Saludos,
Damaris

Across the pond

Well I made it! It is pretty hot here, I really appreciate the air conditioning that my host family has. My flight went really well, I did not have any problems, which was nice, although I did not sleep at all on the flight, so I was awake for over 24 hours straight. I met some really nice people on the flight, one girl was on her way to France, she is originally form Morocco, so it was nice to talk about her cultural. The food on the plane was interesting. They gave us a kitkat for breakfast, along with several different things, which I did not eat because I was not hungry at all. The Airport food was expensive, it was $14 for a wrap, that had not flavor and a water bottle.  Below is a picture that I took from the plane, as I don't have any other pictures yet, but I uploaded this one because I thought the view was really beautiful.

There are a few things that I can think of that have really stuck out to me since I arrived, the first being that the first sign I saw flying into Madrid was in English, That was surprising. Also it is normal to wear slippers here in the house, all the time. Customs, and my host mom reminds me whenever she tells me something that is a norm. She bought me slippers this morning to have in the house, it may take a little getting used to. My host family has been wonderful so far, Fini, Cristobal and Cris their son. They have been so welcoming, kind and inclusive. Fini explained right away that because I was living with them I was considered family. As I write this it is siesta time here and we just got done having lunch, I had anchovies, which is kind of a first. I have had them a few times, but never whole, or fried, or preserved in oil with salt.They were a lot better than I thought they would be, I definitely prefer them to the canned ones I have had in Michigan. I also had sword fish, which Fini made in case I did not like the anchovies. They both tasted really good. Fini said she would teach me how to cook some Spanish food, she wants me to teach her how to make pancakes, so I think it's a fair trade. I am excited to have a few Spanish recipes that I am comfortable making. Hopefully I will have a recipe to post soon!

Saludos!



 

Almost on my way

I have arrived at my first stop on my way to Spain. Torrington Wyoming. I have come to spend time with my family before I take off. We drove straight through, about a 24 hour car ride, my little brother Asa, my boyfriend Robert, and I took turns driving, needless to say we were ready to be done by the time we got there. Sleeping in my car is not the easiest thing to do. Now that I am here it seems a little bit more real. I have about 85% of my things packed, and only a few more items to get before I leave. I still have to find an adapter, as the places I looked before did not not have one.

This trip has come together a lot easier then I thought it would. I am so excited for this new adventure that I am embarking on. So excited to meet my host family, and new friends. I am most excited to explore the city and to find my favorite place, and learn the history of Alicante.  

A few weeks ago I met a woman from Alicante at the store where I work at in Petoskey. She was in Michigan visiting CMU, and drove up to Petoskey to visit as well. It was nice getting to talk to her, even though it was a brief conversation. It made me so much more excited for this journey to begin. She was not the only person from Spain to come into the store this summer. There was another family that I got to meet as well. My coworkers really enjoyed calling me up for something without telling me it was so that I could speak to a Spanish family, it happened on multiple occasions, I was even able to translate for one family. I was able to understand everyone really well, I was concerned that I would be thrown off my accents, but it did not happen at all. Well I will try and post again before I leave, thanks for reading :)

Damaris