Good news...I got a new umbrella, at a Chinese Store (which is like the dollar tree only more stuff and it´s not a dollar). My other one was a wimpy dollar tree POS that kept blowing inside out and was already ripped...but this new, communist-made one is bright pink, huge, strong, and totally ready to take on the next old lady that gets in my personal space with her own umbrella. Get ready, viejas! It's UMBRELLA WAR time! And this time I am armed for battle.

Porque...no sé

From what I've read, culture shocks comes in waves of frusteration and acceptance. And from what I've experienced, this is also true. Studying abroad is a constant flow of being incredibly excited and loving all the new experiences one minute, to hating everything about the host country the next. Well, maybe not hating everything, but vehemently disliking.

I would say that my acceptance recently peaked around my birthday, and now I'm plateauting at the what-the-fuck-Spain stage for the moment. Seriously. Why must people pee on the stone walls near my apartment in broad daylight? Why does the guy sitting behind me in the cafe light up a cigarette when I am trying to study? Why don't old Spanish ladys know how to walk with an umbrella without putting someones eye out or making me walk in the street? Why do I always almost get hit by cars? Why is there so much dog shit everywhere? ¿Por qué, Spain? ¿POR QUÉ?!!!

To get over culture shock in the beginning I kept telling myself "Different doesn't neccesarily mean bad. It's just different." Now though I feel like hey, I know different is different, and it's not bad per say. But maybe I prefer things like they're done in the U.S. If anything I will come back home with a healthy appreciation for all things and customs American. Until then I will probably get lung cancer from second hand smoke...That is if I don't get run over by a car first.

Today I posted two blogs that I wrote on my laptop a bit earlier on the trip (September 26th and October 5th, if you want to go back and read them). The October 5th is notable for just how homesick and culture-shocked I was when I wrote it. It's nice to look back and see just how much things have improved in less than three weeks. It's crazy for me to think that I've been here for a month now. It doesn't seem like a month. I'm glad that everyone was right, homesickness does disappate after a while, and I'm also glad I didn't make a big deal of it even when I was pretty miserable. It let's me know I am growing up. Maybe I will even be an adult some day.

On Tuesday I was walking home from school and it was pouring down buckets of rain. So I was already wet. Then, a car drove into a puddle right as I was walking by and sent up a gigantic wave that completely drenched. Literally, I got soaked. I had to wring the water out of my clothes. And it was nasty Santander road water, and now I probably have some disease from it.


I'm having fun, but at times I get a little sad about what I am missing out on back home. Fall term is my favorite term at OSU, and I've only gotten to spend two of them there, as the first was wasted at Pretty Lame University as I like to call it. There are so many great things about Corvallis in the fall, and if I take time to think about it I really get a sense of what I'm missing out on- the fall polo season, football season, Halloween, fall and all the seasonal changes that I love...etc, etc. At times it's hard to think that I won't have another fall term there (if everything goes as planned with my education, la-di-da), and it makes me not appreciate being here so much. Oh well...nothing to do but suck it up I guess.

¡Joder!

Through trial and error, we have found that the best way to find Spanish people to talk to is to go to a crowded public place and speak English loudly. Poorly spoken Spanish doesn´t have the same magical properties, and speaking it will only get you weird, judgemental glares. But rapid fire English is a sure bet. For some reasons that fascinates and excites Spanish people who know a little bit of English. So they loudly shout out words in English, and then ask the obligatory "¿De dónde eres? ¿Ingleterra?" And they get extra excited when they find out that we are American, or estadounidense. Then maybe they call their friends over to talk broken English to us, while we reply in poor Spanish. One thing is for certain: Spainards cannot pronounce my name. The gan sound is just not a part of their phoenetics. They like to call me "Me-han," which I guess I´m okay with. It´s better than Mr. Markealli, my 8th grade language arts teacher, who called me "Megs." Oh no you didn't...

On Saturday night we had a typical Spanish interaction with a bunch of old Spanish dudes. This interaction was notable for two things. First, when I tried to tell them my name, after I repeated it like 4 times they decided that it was Maggie. I figured why the heck not, as said that was right, yo soy Maggie. Which sent them into stupid Spanish laughter, and got the comment "Like the baby in the Simpsons!" Yes, they have the Simpsons here, only it is dubbed with weird voices. Anyways, dumb old guys laughed about my fake name for a while, then invited us to go somewhere to dance. ¡Joder no! (Joder roughly means fucking hell in Spanish). Much to my dismay, half of my group debated taking up the offer to go dancing with los viejos. At which point I went back into the bar to drink more calimocho, as that's what situations like these call for.

¿McCain o Obama?

Interactions here in Spain with new people have seemed to take on a certain pattern. First, someone hears us speaking English, or figures out that I am not from around here because of the accent. First they ask if I´m from "Inglaterra" (England). I guess they figure it´s more likely that english speaking people are from England, because it´s so much closer although it seems strange to me because English accents are so distinctive. I correct them, and tell them that I´m from the United States. And, without fail, the next question is "¿McCain o Obama?" Which I don't like answering because usually the Spanish person likes Obama and wants to tell me why, and I don't give a crap because, seriously, they can't even vote. Sorry Spain, no one cares what you think about the U.S. I didn't even know the name of Spain's president before I get here, but every Spainard and their mother has a full set of opinions about U.S. elections. However, I did find one taxi driver that liked McCain, but I think that was more because he didn't like black people. I think. Sometimes my comprehension skills aren´t too good. but he definately called him Obama bin Laden. hah!

I refuse to pick up the Spain accent. Ricardo was trying to get me to use it properly on Friday night, but I really don´t want to. I know, when in Rome, right. But I have a feeling I will got back to the U.S. and be laughed right out of town by people that speak Mexican and South American Spanish if I have the Spain lisp. No gracias.

Something that is really common in Spain- Hacer pis en la calle (Peeing in the street). More popular than in Corvallis I think. It´s pretty common to be walking around and see several dudes pissing on a wall, or in a bush. What can I say, Spain is pretty sweet. My goal before I leave is to hacer pis en la calle. Let´s see how that works out.

PSA- I´ve noticed that I have a lot of typos in these entries. I´m not really that sloppy, and I have a good excuse. The Spanish keyboard is different from the American one, so it´s a lot easier to muck things up. So please don´t judge me for misspellings and wrong words. Or maybe my English is just getting worse. Pretty soon I will be speaking English just like the Spainards do. My favorite English phrase that I´ve heard from a Spanish speaker has been "I have to make a pee pee in myself." Of course, this was right before the speaker, our new friend Nacho, hizo pis en la calle. Funny story about that. I told Anna that he pooped in the calle too, as a joke, and she didn´t know it was a joke and was grossed out. I had to tell her the next day there was no mierda. ¡Qué raro!

My birthday only got better after the last post. I had two friends come over for dinner, which was delicious. I know, what a suprise, I actually like the food in Spain for once! Well, it was because Maria made me lasagna, so it´s not even Spanish. So I still don´t like Spanish food, although I did eat something that I liked in Spain. I also got chocolate cake and a really cute shirt and necklace from my host family. I really lucked in when I got put in this family I think.

After dinner was time for fiesta. We went out and met in la plaza del Ayuntamiento, which is sorta central. Which we were there some Moroccan creepers started talking to us, and one of my friends told them it was my birthday, so of course they all had to kiss me on the cheek (bleck! I hate that!) and then I got a picture with them for shitz ´n giggles. Will post it when I get it, it´s actually on someone else´s camera. Then it was off to some Plaza with a bunch of bars.

We ran into a huge group of other students from OSU...yeah and that´s about it. That group´s kind of clique-y and definately not fun, so me and some other girls made sure to ditch them really quick. We found a bar called the Peter Pan with gigantic drinks, then went back to the Plaza. Then we went to another favorite discoteca. While there we saw a guy with a geri-curl mullet, and another dude with a mohawk-type mullet. Anna really wanted a picture of him, so Courtney and I went up to him and I told him that he looked like a friend from home and asked if we could have a picture. hah! Foolz. Sometimes I can be sneaky like that.

Then we went back to the plaza and talked to some Spanish guys for the rest of the night. I tried to teach them how to correctlyt pronounce Beach and Bitch and was met with little success. Then they tried to teach me how to pronounce "Joder," which requires you to basically hack up a loogie to say the j sound properly, which I just couldn´t do. Que lastima. On the way home I got a taxi driver who liked McCain (Score!) and we spent the entire cab right making fun of Obama. Sometimes Spain suprises me, in a good way.

In other news, my new favorite Spanish phrase is "Me cagué en tu leche," which loosely translates as "I just owned you, sucka." Of course, it translate directly as "I shit in your milk." Que perfecto! I will definately be using this phrase when I return to the states.

Feliz cumpleaños a mí

Today is my birthday! I am 22 today. This is definately not as fun as turning 21, but I can´t complain too much. Tonight I am having two friends over for a special birthday dinner, then we are going out. I am super excited. Hopefully I will meet my future Spanish husband.

Today I went on another excursion with my group. First, we went to La Cueva del Castillo, which has this ancient cave paintings on the walls. It was so cool. This is La Cueva del Castillo: as you can tell, absolutely amazing. All these crazy stalagtimes, stalagmites, columns and rock formations. It was beautiful, and I think its so cool to stand in the same place that our ancestors stood thousands and thousands of years ago, and to see their artwork. It´s hard to believe that something can last for so long. I´ve always wondered how to make my mark on the world, and how long it will last after I am gone. So, basically, it would be a good idea to paint some junk in a cave, because that will last for milleniums!

Next we went to the Altamira museum. The Altamira Cave is a more famous cave with really amazing paintings in them. The caves themselves aren´t open to visitors because of the deterioration of the paintings, but the caves are recreated in the musuem. It was interesting, but not nearly as cool as seeing the actual paintings in Castillo, although I think the paintings in Altamira are gorgeous, in an ancient, simple way.

This is one of the bisontes (bison) from Altamira. Weird as it may seems, if I ever get a tattoo I would want it to be a recreation of one of the cave paintings in Altamira. This one is my favorite. Don´t worry mom and dad, I won´t come back with a bison tattoo, and tattoos can´t be that bad if Emilee has one, right?

After the visit through a musuem we went to a work shop on ancient cro-magnum hunting methods. It was really interesting, especially we got to throw spears at this big deer target. They actually use this other stick tool as a lever to chuck the spear harder, so it was kinda complicated. AKA, I sucked at it. I mananged to launch it about 5 feet. It was okay though, because no one hit el ciervo (the deer). The guy teaching us told us that if we were cro-magnum people, we would all be stuck eating setas (mushrooms). Good thing I live in the 21st century. I hate mushrooms.

Oviedo

This weekend is a four day weekend, and I never got around to making big travel plans. Instead last minute I went with two friends to Oviedo, which is about 3 hours away in Asturias.

I love Oviedo. It´s a smaller town than Santander, and much less crowded. There were a couple of beautiful cathedrals (Pictures to come! Promise!), one of which I got to go inside of. It apparently had the body of some saint, but she was in a stone coffin thing, so you couldn´t actually see her. We also randomly wandered into an art musuem, because it was free admission. We also spent part of the day searching for a statue of Woody Allen. Why is there a statue of Woody Allen in Oviedo you might ask...Well, I have no clue. I was talking to a friend of my host family who came to dinner, and she told me about the statue. I asked her why there was a statrue of him there. Because of my sub-par comprehension skills I didn´t really catch the answer. Either he got an award, or he gave Oviedo an award, or something, but he came to Olviedo and he really liked the gastronomy (her word, not mine) and some other junk, and voila, there´s a statue of him there. And yes, I did find it really randomly, and I got a picture with it. And that´s about it for my trip to Oviedo.

Other observations about Spain in general:

• The concept of La Casa and La Calle. People that have studied in Spain (AKA Jennifer) will know this, but maybe everyone elso won´t. In Spain, the house is sacred and thus is kept immaculate. The outside of the apartment building might look like the slums, but the inside is incredibly nice. People spend a lot of time, money, and effort to take care of their homes. It´s also a big ideal to get invited into a Spanish person´s home. On the flip side, the calle (street) belongs to everyone, so no one gives a shit about it. No one really cares about keeping the environment outside of the home pristine. People throw trash and stuff on the ground without a second thought, which seems so wrong to my good Oregon senses. It´s almost like a reversal of the culture back home, where you may let your house get messy and run down here or there (or maybe all the time), and no one gives a crap, but everyone works together to keep communal areas (parks, streets) clean.

• The return of The Mullet. For some god awful reason, mullets seem to be back in style in Spain. And not layered, semi-mullets but honest-to-God business in the front, party in the back mullets. And it´s not on trashy looking guys either. The ones I´ve seen rocking it look pretty stylish, not like if they were in the U.S. they´d be residing in a trailor park. I just don´t get it. Ánd I´ve seen way to many of them for this to just a random mullet encounter. It´s a real epidemic, albeit one that I enjoy.

Estoy enferma

I have gotten the inevitable study abroad cold. Bleck. There´s no reason to get sick when your mom isn´t there to take care of you, or you can´t even get real chicken noodle soup or a starbucks. No bueno. Oh well. I´m still going to Oviedo this weekend, this cold can suck it. Hopefully I don´t hurl in class tomorrow.

De Puta Madre

The title of this post is a local colloquialism, that basically means "the shit," or something that is really good. This is not to be confused with hijo de puta, which means son of a bitch. Es de puta madre is a good thing, albeit not something you would say in church or in front of your grandparents. In my grammer class we had to write sentances with all 4 past tenses in them, in a certain order, and I wrote such an awesome sentance that my professor, Esther, said it was de puta madre. Go me. Yo soy de puta madre.

La comida de aqui y yo no nos llevamos bien. I don´t like the food at all. I guess I´m a pretty picky eater when I am at home, and here, where everything is just randomly prepared for me is the pits. Maybe once every few days there will be something that I like, but who can get by on one good meal every 3 days? Let´s take today for example. For lunch I had boiled green beans (bleck!) to start out with. Wait, it gets worse. For the main course I had pescado. And by pescado I mean little fried fish. They were about 4 inches long, complete with skin, tail, and the spine. My host mom told me that you are suppose to eat them whole. I choked down one and couldn´t take anymore. 3 hours later I still feel queasy. Maria was suprised that I didn´t like them, because apparently they are delicacy in Santander. Man, I wish I had taco bell right now, or mashed potatoes and gravy. I went to try to buy snacks yesterday, but I only had a little luck. All the food is different, and the grocery stores don´t have the American snacks that I like. I did, however, find salt and vineger potatoe chips and chips ahoy. Let´s see if that lasts me 9 more weeks...

I learned in culture class today that some people in Spain eat horse and cat, because it is cheap. This makes no sense to me. I know people all over the world eat weird stuff, but come on. We are in Western Europe! Spainards discovered America. Why should they eat horses?! I keep picturing Love Bug on a dinner plate, and it is very unpleasant.

There are absolutely no espresso shops in Santander. Am I in the wrong town or what? On the plus side, I finally feel like I kinda sorta know my way around town. At least I haven´t gotten lost since that unfortunate night when I missed my bus stop. I went to the beach on Sunday and it was cool. Now I can say that I have been in the Atlantic Ocean...well, kinda. It´s actually the Cantabrian Sea. But it´s attached to the Atlantic, I think.

Mom- If I understood correctly in art class (chances is I didn´t though), in some cathedral in Santander there are the heads of the two patron saints of the city. They´re over a thousand years old I think. It seems disgusting, but I would love to go and see them. If I go I hope I can take pictures. Nothing says semester in Europe like two ancient rotten heads.

Tengo morrina. That means that I am homesick. It was bad at first, then as the week wore on it got better, and now this weekend it has worsened a lot. I was talking to Emma, one of the members of my host family, and she asked me if I was happy, because apparently I look sad sometimes. I don’t want to look sad, and I don’t want to count the days until I am home.

Everyone that I talk to likes to tell me how lucky I am, and ask just how much fun I am having, and don’t I love it here. I feel like a retard when inside I’m not having the time of my life. Maybe other people that have been abroad understand. It’s not easy, and there are a lot of things that aren’t fun about it. This isn’t all a breeze. No one told me that this would be hard. I think almost every foreigner feels like this. Everything is different, and I am far away from the things I love, and I don’t even have the luxuries of the things that make me happy when I am down, like my cat, Starbucks, 5$ hot and ready pepperonis from Little Cesar or watching Adult Swim on Cartoon Central at night. When I was at PLU and hated it my dad always told me to do little things to get through each dad, and just go day by day. But I’m not in the U.S. anymore, so I can’t find those little things that make stuff easier.

I can’t focus on enjoying my experience here when I am so caught up in missing everything back home. And I really want to succeed. I want to have so much fun that I don’t want to come home. But maybe I need to redo my definition of success. Maybe I will discover that Europe is not the place for me. Even if I spend every single last day homesick, in culture shock and wishing for a caramel macchiato and taco bell, I will still have gained a lot. Holy crap will my Spanish get better. This really is the best way for improving it rapidly. And there will be a lot less that fazes me. Seriously, how can I not grow up and be more confident when I’ve traveled across the world all by myself and survived 2 and a half months in a foreign country?

Excursion 1

Yesterday my group went on its first excursion. Unfortunately, the bus had to go through a canyon that I will affectionately call ¨la calle del diablo.¨ Carsickness galore. Several people had barf bags in hand, ready to go. I however, refused. I´ve never puked from motion sickness before, and I don´t intend to start. I just got really sick, in fact I still feel sick now a day later.

First we went to this monastary that has a piece of the actual cross that Jesus was crucified on...so say the Catholics. They actually had some scientific tests done, and it really is a 2000 year old piece of wood. How cool would that be if it was real? I even got to touch the piece of wood. I´m not Catholic or anything (I actually think they´re a bit nutty), but it was a really deep, cool feeling to touch the piece of wood that thousands upon thousands of pilgrims have touched. It was really soft, from so many people touching it over the centuries. The monastary itself was beautiful, and you could hear the monks chanting in the background.

Later we went up a god-awful tram to the Picos de Europa mountains, where it was snowing! We even had a snowball fight, and a few crazies made snow angels. It was soooo high up. I definately did not enjoy the tram ride up, but I did enjoy the cup of copy I had at the top, and playing in the snow.

Next was a little town called Potes...and that´s about it. I bought three postcards. Yay Potes.

Finally we went to this 1000 year old church, supposedly one of the oldest in Cantabria. It had this really cool alter with a statue of Mary that got stolen in 1990, and was found 8 years later in Valencia and then returned. The church also had two 1000 year old trees, one olive and one was something else that I forgot, but it was pretty much dead. There was also this bench there that supposedly, if you sit on you will soon get married. Emilee, you should go there...hehehehe. I admit it, I sat on it, without about 1/2 of my group.

Then, it was back on the bus to get super carsick again.

Last night I went out for the first time. My first impressions of Spainish nightlife: they are uber smokey, the guys are short, and everyone stays out too late. I ended up talking politics with this one Spanish guy, and then I taught good American curse words. I stayed out until 3 am, which apparently isn´t too late in Spain, but seems crazy to my good American senses.

Mas larga...

My First full day in Spain was not the easiest. I´ve always thought that I had a pretty good sense of direction, and I don´t get lost that often, especially if I have a map. Well, here I don´t know which way is which, where anything is, or probably even where my own ass is. And it´s different to be lost when you don´t have anyone you can call for help or directions, or when the language everyone is speaking isn´t your own.



I´m glad to be here, but enough excuses. My goal now is to figure out how to enjoy this experience, not to just survive it. I want to find things here that I like, so that I don´t spend my time here missing my favorite things from home.