I’ve been to 8 (technically 9) of the 17 Autonomous Communities: Castilla y León, Castilla y La Mancha, Madrid, Extremadura, Cataluña, Andalucia, Cantabria, País Vasco (and technically Asturias).
I’ve been to Spain, Italy and Portugal during my year abroad (okay, and the US).
I’ve been to the following towns/cities in Spain: Salamanca, Madrid, Toledo, Barcelona, Granada, Sevilla, Córdoba, Llerena, Villafranca de Córdoba, Trujillo, Mérida, Bilbao, Santander, San Vicente de la Barquera, Laredo, Santillana del Mar, Santoña, Comillas, Zamora, Toro, Segovia, Valladolid, Ávila (plus a few more where the train has stopped but I haven't gotten off...I've been to them so many times though that it feels like they should count).
I’ve seen the bodies of water that surround the Iberian peninsula from ¾ sides (not the southern one).
There are many things that have happened this semester, especially in the second half, that I’ve never written about on here, partly because I forgot, because I didn’t know how to write about it or because it was written about in enough detail on my journal for me to feel like I had sufficiently covered the subject. Such as the momentous event on May 5th when the director of IES Salamanca and his wife, supposed director of housing etc. were fired (“resigned”, except not). Which was pretty much one of the best days of our lives, for IES Salamanca Spring 2008 and the dozen or 2 dozen semesters before us. Which means the guy in charge of student activities was technically in charge for almost 2 months and there were 3 staff members instead of 5, one of whom works part time, so really 2. Yeah. We met the vice president of IES from Chicago because he came here to make sure the directors actually and literally left the office THAT SAME DAY. Which was cool. He came here to the residencia with David and hung out, chatted us up, and even met with IES students to see what sorts of things would be good/important to change. And loved my suggestions. So there.
Janna and I actually met the NEW IES Salamanca program head (both, actually, one here and one in Chicago) yesterday. They came to visit the residencia to check it out and although it was a super confusing situation due to the incompetence of a certain IES staff member, mixups about who was who, and nobody knowing how good everyone’s Spanish skills were, the new Salamanca director seems AWESOME. Completely the opposite of the old one, I am not kidding. She is young, American (she has a brother in Sudbury, like next door to my town!) from Rhode Island, has lived here for 16 years, pretty, seems excited about the job, nice, etc. I already trust her more than I trusted the old director. Ack.
We also met a media-PR sort of guy from IES Chicago a month or two ago who came and taped us individually talking about our experiences here, essentially making a “Come to Salamanca!” video that is supposed to be on the website by about August. I will post on here when that happens because it’s going to be hilarious. Eek.
Another thing I never wrote about, for example, would be the final IES Salamanca dinner we had like 5 weeks ago (haha yes, I am still here). It was a yummy dinner, I sat with cool kids like Janna and Kendra and my favorite Methodology professor (from Middlebury, too!) Noemí sat with us and we laughed and talked and just…had a blast. And then the drag queens came out! And danced for LITERALLY 2 hours. Oh and there was a belly-dancing girl, too. Snore. It was one of the most surreal experiences of my life, if not the MOST surreal. You’re SO glad you weren’t there.
I’ve been reading Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett in SPANISH and I’m over 700 pages in. It’s 1300-ish pages long. I am amazing. The book is really good, and I’m glad my mom has it at home in English so I can finish it before going up to Bowdoin. It’s a little slow sometimes and certainly EPIC but for a book in Spanish I am moving along through it at a much faster pace than I expected. Well, I did read Part 1 of Don Quijote, La Celestina, Zaragoza, las Bizarrias de Belisa and Lazarillo del Tormes this semester, not to mention about 8 billion pages of photocopies for Methodology, articles and books for Surrealism papers and gender papers, so I had practice!
Last Friday Julio and I were at his house, trying to decide what to do for the night. He was finishing up a project on Depression which was a big wooden cube covered in sepia-tone photos with black frames nailed on each side with a sort of tube through the middle with a tiny dollhouse chair and lightbulb at the far end of the tunnel/tube. Hard to explain but it looked awesome and worked really well with the project. He was putting on a sort of lens over the mouth of the tunnel by nailing its frame onto the wooden cube…and then everything was done! We were so happy. Then he tried to turn the light on…and it didn’t work!! So we spent the next 2-3 hours (I was more stressed than he was, it was amazing, I was quite impressed with him) sawing a hole in the bottom of the cube, changing the lightbulb (a LOT harder than it sounds), checking the wires….etc. And I finally suggested that maybe it was the switch…and so we took off the plastic cover and discovered that yes, the wires were shot. So we fixed that, Julio’s brother shocked himself (Lola--his girlfriend--and I were a lot surprised it didn’t happen sooner), and after MUCH maneuvering and skilled techniques (like Julio holding the lightbulb with his left hand while I screwed on the socket with my right hand…without seeing what we were doing), it finally all came together. And then we switched the light on and discovered that the new lens on the front created some pretty awesome effects…
My brother is in New Orleans with 80 other kids from our high school building things and clearing lots and generally being a good kid. He turns 18 in 5 days.
Another thing I never wrote about was how last Tuesday (the day after finishing my exams) I went to Madrid with Julio, his parents, and his aunt (dad's sister). We drove to Julio's cousin's apartment (where Julio and I stayed during Semana Santa after my parents left and before Em came) to meet his (the cousin) new BABY, Daniel. Who was TWO WEEKS OLD. AH. Daniel has an older brother, Gerar, who is 2 and a half, I think. Julio's cousin Gerardo was super sweet to me because he knew I loved working with kids and even though Gerar was quite shy around me, he did tell me his colors in English (they start 'em early here) and gave me a kiss goodbye. We met the baby (SUCH A PEANUT. I ADORE BABIES.) and his mom, Pilar, who is potentially the most American-seeming Spanish woman I've ever met and yes that is a compliment, played Mario Kart Wii and Wii Baseball (Gerardo, Julio's cousin, destroyed me...awful), and ate dinner before heading back to Salamanca. I'm so glad I have Julio and Julio's family to take me places, introduce me to people, include me in family events. What a difference it makes!!!!
Last Saturday the Casa de las Conchas was turned into a sort of discoteca.
Three nights ago I saw Rufus Wainwright give a concert in the Plaza Mayor. He was dressed as a torero (!!) and said “For something so macho as bullfighting, this outfit is really gay. It doesn’t so much say ‘I’m gonna go kill bulls’ as ‘f%*k me in the ass’” which was hilarious, especially since only the Americans (okay, a lot of us) in the audience understood him.
Two nights ago I saw AWESOME fireworks down by the Puente Romano and said goodbye to Aquilino (will probably see him at Midd this summer, though) and gave him a friendship bracelet that he had asked me for. Crazy crazy man.
Last night I played Wii sports with Álvaro and Julio. Turns out I’m pretty good at bowling, suck at tennis, and am AWESOME at the target shooting game on Wii Play. Who knew!? I guess I have good hand-eye coordination when it comes to accuracy but I’m not that great at figuring out the Wii tennis deal. Oh, and I’m alright at baseball, which is disappointing. Luckily the boys didn’t give me a hard time…
Another thing I never wrote about was how we visited Julio's soon-to-be new apartment, soon as in like at least a year from now. It's outside of Salamanca in the sense that you really couldn't walk downtown like you can from Julio's current apartment but it's only like 5 minutes away by car.
It's on the top floor, a corner apartment, small but with a huuuuuge terrace. Wraparound. Pretty awesome.And here is Julio in his "new" room!
Julio has gotten 3 matrículas de honor (out of his 5 classes, he doesn’t know the last 2 grades yet) which are like super honor roll grades (A++ or something) and means that he doesn’t have to pay for his classes next year. Pretty awesome!!! What a guy.
Another thing I never wrote about was how Julio was hanging out here one afternoon last week and we decided to go take a walk downtown. He got here at 7, we went outside at 9...and the passenger seat window of his car was totally smashed! And the radio was gone! We were quite shocked, it being pretty much total daylight, it being right next to the residencia, there being at least 20 people who passed while we waited for his parents to show up, the fact that the punks didn't touch ANYTHING else in the car, not the nice sunglasses, not the CDs, nothing. They came prepared, they broke the window, they knew how to take out the radio because there were barely any marks at all, and they just peaced out. Julio was very levelheaded but is still pretty bitter about the radio thing because it was a nice radio from his cousin and obviously he would have preferred to not have to buy another one...so we went to the police with his parents, they filed a report, etc etc. He got a new window the next day (paid by insurance, yay) and I'm happy to say he has a new radio now, too, so the story ends somewhat happily!
This summer aka in about a week I will be living in Brunswick Apartments N2 with Sammie Francis at Bowdoin and working 20 hours a week doing odd jobs and projects for the Psych department, working odd hours at the Bowdoin children’s center and regularly babysitting Alexei, ~2 years old, who was 4-7months old last time I saw him! I will have my car, I will be coming home for 2 concerts in the first weekend of August, I will be visiting Middlebury and hope to see at least these people this summer (if I forgot you, feel free to yell at me! And most of you guys are guarantees, anyway!): Sammie, Tommy, Austin, Joe, Jess, Erica, Julia, Jesse, Joey….and more. So be in touch, okay?!
I can’t wait to have full use of an oven again. Actually, I can’t wait to be within 20 feet of a WORKING OVEN again. So I will be trying out various muffin, cake, cupcake etc recipes this summer.
Aaaaaaaand now I’m going to make a list of reasons why I’m glad I stayed for the whole year. Oh, and eat breakfast. And finish some important things on my to do list.
Much love,
-c-
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