So in preparation for my trip to Florence for the weekend (I realized today that I haven’t left Spain since I went to Portugal about 2 months ago, and I haven’t been on a plane since I arrived in Spain…hmmm…hopefully my spring will be more international than that!), I bought 2 pairs of knee-high socks (argyle! Amazing!) and the most fantastic red hat EVER at H&M (every girl I know studying abroad right now is forever in debt to the glory that is H&M…I think Cati wins, with 4 separate stores at all 4 corners of an intersection…!!!).
Just look at it!
I was going to hold out until I made it home (20 days, but who is counting!? Oh right, me…down to the seconds…hey, it’s a Widget, okay?! Speaking of which, I just decided that I’m going to go to the airport the night before my flight instead of getting up at 6am to catch the train to Madrid…I’d rather sleep in the airport than worry about getting there late or having a delayed train or whatever, plus I feel like it’d be easier to say goodbye to Julio etc. the night before as opposed to having to deal with all of that drama at 6am, you know??), but then I realized that my ears get really cold no matter how tightly I wrap my scarf (WHY oh WHY did I leave my amazing poofy grey scarf from Italy that Maki and Poppi got for me a few years ago at HOME?!) and it’s smart to wear a hat in the wintertime because all the heat leaves from the top of your head, blah blah, and I figured it couldn’t hurt to ensure some warmth before heading off to foreign climes. They’re pretty much exactly the same as in Salamanca, according to weather.com, but we’ll see. Pray for lots of sun and minimal rain, please, even though aforementioned website suggests the slight possibility of a rainyish Saturday. Bring it on! I have a nice red hat.
Anyway, here I am, a week into being 20! Cards and presents were gratefully received, sushi was had, quality time was spent with Julio, phone calls were passionately welcomed, facebook messages and wallposts were read and appreciated, and I made myself some “To Do” lists for my life and for the year before I turn 21 (I like lists, so I made some more of “Weird things I Do” just in case I forget what I was like at 20 when I turn 30 or 40 or 80 or whatever). And then it was Thanksgiving, which was weird, but joyfully celebrated with a 4-star lunch (no, seriously), courtesy of IES. With goat cheese and brie. And wine and champagne (okay, it’s called cava, it wasn’t from Champagne in France, sorry). And tiramisu for dessert. Oh, and steak and veggies and all sorts of weird appetizer thingies. Most importantly, tiramisu. And the cheeeeeese. A little red wine never hurt anyone, either. Yum. Wow. Sigh.
And then Sammie came to visit me!!!!!! She adventurously flew into Valladolid (and boy are her arms tired! Har har har) and since I hadn’t been there before and it’s the capital of Castilla y León, I figured I’d go a little early and meet her there. In case you didn’t see the photos in my last post, here they are:
http://bowdoin.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2018452&l=c2c75&id=4602208
I have to say I’m pretty cocky about my abilities to just hop off a train with only my Spain guidebook to guide me. It’s kind of exciting to search out the Plaza Mayor, main street, cool plazas or statues, and important buildings, as well as the tourism office (yay, free maps!) with only your Spanish and sense of adventure to guide you. Julio thinks Valladolid is “asqueroso” which means disgusting, but I’m not really sure why. In terms of a capital city of one of the most historically important autonomous communities in all of Spain, it wasn’t all that impressive, but it has its charm and is so similar to Salamanca in so many ways that I felt right at home! Salamanca definitely wins in the cuteness department as well as in the Cathedral department, but if anyone else wants to fly into Valladolid instead of Madrid in the future, you are absolutely welcome to do so!! The Valladolid airport is easily reachable by bus (3 euro from the train station) and while teeny and in the middle of nowhere, is really new and clean and cute. And Ryanair flies out of there! So. Keep it in mind.
I shamefully didn’t take that many photos of Sammie’s actual visit or presence in Salamanca, but suffice it to say that we were having such a good time and such good catching-up-I-miss-you,-roomie chats that I just didn’t want to pause to photograph it all!!! Here they are, anyway:
http://bowdoin.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2018453&l=b92b4&id=4602208
Sammie met Julio, Jose, Álvaro, Sarai, Becca, and my entire host family (including chuchi). She even saw my room (sorry, Kat and Julia)!!! Sammie and Julio both made impressive efforts to communicate in the other person’s native language (no seriously, they did well!!!) and I served as translator. I am happy to say that they both seem to like each other equally, though probably not as much as I like each of them. Did that make sense? We had a great time!!!! It was freezing and windy and grey on Saturday so I have to confess that after sightseeing, Sammie and I headed into her hotel and watched some Arrested Development…she’d never seen it from the beginning!!! Incredible.
So of course, it was great to see Sammie, my friend and roommate and all-around passionate, energetic, smiling, happy, and effervescent GAL!!!!! I’m bummed that I’m not going to be at Bowdoin to live with her for the spring, but I’m still glad that I’ve decided to stay here in Salamanca. It will just make our senior together (with crepe pan, felicity, arrested development, and Sammie’s guitar) that much sweeter!
And here comes the confusing, emotional crisis part. This has been really hard for me to write/think about, but I want to be as honest as possible here and I need to get it off my chest. I am not looking for pity or sympathy or anything, I’m not trying to whine about Salamanca or belittle the amazingness that is Spain or even the Spanish-freaking-language. You get the idea. And Sammie, if you’re reading this, I’m not trying to be negative about your visit or our time together or ANYTHING like that. I couldn’t have been happier to spend the weekend with you and I am beyond thrilled and happy that you and Julio got along so well, despite the mostly-hysterical language barrier!!!!! Thank you again for my amazingly cute birthday presents (I am obsessed with the lip balm, oh my god, honeyyyyy and beeswaxxxxx) and one of the most heartfelt and perfect and happiest cards I’ve ever gotten!!! You rock so hardcore and I know someday you’ll be 90233394324 times more famous and amazing than KT Tunstall is. =D
Anyway, onto the crisis. I know that studying abroad is not a competition, but after Sammie’s visit, I felt like she’d won. Sammie is an English major and an education minor and wants to be a high school English teacher. She’s studying in Glasgow, where my ex-boyfriend Sam studied during his junior year (the semester before I met him). Sammie met her amazing Scottish boyfriend Sam (yeah, I know) in Glasgow, but he lives in Edinburgh (his parents and 3 younger siblings live there, too, but he has his own apartment) and is studying there. He wants to be a doctor, he has an amazing accent (it sounds stupid, but if you heard it, you’d freak out, too), he loves Sammie, he’s funny and witty and all of those lovely things that boyfriends tend to be. Sammie gets to hang out with his cousins, his friends, his family, she gets to know Edinburgh and Glasgow, she will probably visit them next summer or in March, they love her, all is glorious and amazing. Sammie loves Scotland, she feels at home there, she feels a connection, she loves the country, she misses home but she’s barely been homesick, she feels a future there, all of those amazing connections.
And while I love Spain and love Salamanca, I don’t feel the way about it that Sammie does about Scotland. I’ve always loved british/irish/Scottish/(welsh?!) accents, I debated studying abroad somewhere in the UK but I knew that if I wanted to stick with Spanish I should obviously go to Spain or somewhere in Latin America, etc etc. And I love Spanish history, I love learning about it and feeling pride for this place and wanting to teach other people about it. But this isn’t my second home, at least not yet. Hearing Sammie talk about Sam and Scotland and Glasgow and Edinburgh and the beauty of it and the history and just…that FEELING of SOMETHING tying you to the place and the people and everything…I just got intensely and insanely jealous. And sad, and worried that I’d missed out on the chance of a lifetime to feel connected like Sammie does, to feel at home, to feel like I would love to marry a guy with an accent like Sam’s (haha it sounds so shallow and weird and obviously I’m not thinking about marriage yet, but you know what I mean), to live in the UK, all of those silly things. It’s a feeling in my gut, it’s the feeling that I thought I’d have here, the feeling that I wanted studying abroad to be.
And I know that study abroad experiences aren’t perfect, they are different for everyone, and I’m only halfway through mine! I’m only 20, I have time, I can GO to the UK, I can travel or study or work or LIVE there even though I speak Spanish and have studied here. I can also fall in love with Spain as time goes on. I can change my mind, I can grow, I might end up falling in love with South Africa, WHO KNOWS?!?! But I still worry, I still feel jealous and awful and just. Argh. I don’t know. It’s like with my host family—we get along great and life is good now, but it’s not perfect, it’s not life-changing, it’s not a perfect fit. And that’s okay, I’m moving to the residencia in the spring but it doesn’t mean I haven’t been having a great time here. Like my dad said, sometimes you just click and sometimes you don’t, and so far, Spain hasn’t clicked for me like Scotland has for Sammie. And I know I still have to give it time, and I know she’s at the end of her semester and she and I are different people and blah blah and who knows, maybe in May I will be feeling the way she is now, but nonetheless, it still hurts to think about the way things could have been. Which is totally useless and unproductive, but here I am.
Here is the good part.
The reason I ultimately decided to write about all of that internal crisis/drama/whatever is because of something I got in the mail today. My dad is one of the best pen pals I know (well, I hardly send him anything, so it’s pretty one-sided, but whatever) and sends me mail on an almost weekly basis, much to the frustration of my housemate, Becca (Mari still can’t remember our names, she just calls us hija or reina or niña, and at meals will announce that one of us has a letter waiting for us….it’s 99% of the time for me, for which I am ETERNALLY GRATEFUL to all of you who have sent me mail!!!!). Today, I got a letter he wrote me on my birthday (on more of my grandfather’s amazing stationery from hotels around the world!!! Incredible!) as well as an article from a September edition of the New York Times Magazine about Grupo Gallegos, an advertising firm based in L.A. that works on converting ad campaigns or slogans such as those for companies like Energizer or Wal-Mart or Comcast into Spanish, or just making them more latino-friendly. The article reminded me of a few of the reasons why I’ve been studying Spanish my whole life and why I ultimately decided to stick with it in college (and for the rest of my life??)—latinos are the largest minority in the US, and growing! Bilingualism is awesome! The Spanish language is beautiful! It’s a HUGELY important skill to be able to speak Spanish AND English, AND to want to work with kids and help form the future of our country, and all of those things. While I still don’t know precisely what I’d like to do after college, I know I want to work with kids and if I can use my Spanish skills, all the better. There was a woman in the article who works as a sort of intermediary/translator at a school for parents who aren’t comfortable speaking English. That sounds awesome!!!!! Point being, thank you, Dad, for helping remind me about the GOOD parts of MY study abroad experience.
In other exciting news, Em Ho is definitely visiting me in March!!! She is arriving the day after my parents and brother leave, and although it’s probably going to be a kind of intense 3 weeks, I can’t WAIT to see her and introduce her to this amazing place!!!!! Thank you, Em!!! Can’t wait. You won’t regret it. =D Additionally, although it’s kind of early to be babbling about this, there are plans afoot to visit Micaela in Dublin in the spring, Erica in wherever she’s gonna be in Ireland, Anna and Livs and Austin in London-ish, and potentially crash Sam (Sammie’s boyfriend)’s apartment in Edinburgh. And I really want to go to Geneva. And maybe Heidelberg, to visit people from my music class here and to go to Germany just because I can. Also, Laura Henry (Alexei’s mom and Sam’s advisor from Bowdoin) said I could visit her and Vlad in Russia in May or June. Which would be kind of incredible….! Haha okay I’m gettingn REALLY ahead of myself. I still have to make it home. And make money over break…I already tried to sell myself to my next door neighbors, the Reichhelds, for New Year’s Eve Babysitting, but no luck. Anyone? Anyone? Who wants to pay me to watch the ball drop on TV while your children sleep?!?! Oh well.
In addition to the new hat and socks, today I also bought new shampoo, new conditioner (the shampoo and conditioner I brought with me from the US lasted all this time! And I swear I shower almost every day!!!), and new lotion. Something about new smells and feeling SUPER SUPER clean is just fantastic. Maybe I’m weird. I also love lotion.
Now that my blog post has degenerated into some random babble about my bathing tendencies, I think it’s really time to go to bed. I’ve made about 6 lists of things I CANNOT FORGET for Italy, I am charging batteries and organizing clothes, etc etc and I have all the tickets I need. I only have 2 classes tomorrow and Julio and I are going to go to a movie in the afternoon (wooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!! Not sure which one yet, but who cares!) and I’m pretty psyched.
Love you guys a whole whole lot more than I love pumpkin pie and bagels with cream cheese (which is a lot, let me tell you…I spaced out in music class today for like 3 minutes just thinking about sesame seed bagels from the café at Bowdoin, toasted, with cream cheese. They feed me really well here, I’m just weird…)!!!
Besos y abrazos,
-c-
p.s. The one sad thing about going to Italy this particular weekend is that they light up all of the street decorations on December 1st and I’m going to miss it!!! I’ll take photos when I get back, I promise!
p.p.s. How many of you out there have a list of potential baby names, whether or not you are male or female and whether or not you are planning on having kids in the near or super-distant future or never? Inquiring minds need to know.
p.p.p.s. Bowdoin-ites (and others)—thoughts on telling the off-campus office about my blog? They are dying to have blogs to link to on their website, both for students already abroad and for students looking to study abroad. Not sure if they only want foreign-language ones or if they’d be interested in this one, but do you guys think it’s worth telling them about it? I don’t want them to read it and think “why did she even BOTHER??”
