Month: January 2009

Random Cultural Observations

Some things I’ve noticed in my first month or so in Spain:

  • I didn’t realize how much of a fixed routine Americans seem to require. Everyone seems to talk about how Spaniards are good about mixing work with leisure, but I didn’t realize how subconscious it all would be. I don’t notice it so much in how Spaniards act as I do in how I act differently from them. I keep trying to establish some kind of fixed daily routine here, and I find such routines to be less helpful here than they are in the US. Aside from school, I’m pretty free to improvise on most days. Going out for tapas isn’t restricted to the weekend, and loafing around can happen whenever. Plenty of hard work can happen too, it’s not “lazier” here really, it’s just approached with a different mindset.
  • Linguistically, Spaniards exaggerate much less. (Rather, they exaggerate less.) When I speak in English, I tend to say something is very easy, very fun, much faster, etc. Here, modifiers like “much,” “more” and “very” are reserved for descriptions of truly exceptional qualities.
  • Since Spain only emerged from its nationalist dictatorship about thirty years ago, there’s a huge generational gap in attitudes here. The older set is generally more politically and socially conservative, no longer influenced by Franco but more than anything influenced by the still state-funded Catholic church. Younger generations (I’d say under 40 to 50) seem to vary more in their views; some keep their traditional values, and many others have quickly moved to a more “European” lifestyle.
    Overall, there seems to be a big cultural separation here between “traditional” and “modern” lives, and while they coexist, they seem to be pretty scared of each other as well. I haven’t been here long enough to really appreciate the nuances of it, but I’ve definitely noticed some similar deficiencies in understanding in the States as well.
  • If my professors are to believed, the 1980s were a sort of “golden age” for Spanish pop music. While I can understand the claim (huge artistic outpouring after the downfall of authoritarian dictatorship), I simply cannot accept that the 1980s was a good decade for music, anywhere. I’m a pretty understanding guy, but drum machines and cheesy synths are where I have to draw the line.

Granada Update

It’s been a little while, so I figured I’d pop my head in and give y’all a quick update on life over here.

I’m through 9 of 15 days of my intensive language course. Things are going well – I still feel like I’m reviewing the exact stuff that I’ve been learning and repeatedly screwing up for years now. This time it is clicking with a bit more ease, but it’s no walk in the park. The nice thing is that this time I actually feel motivated to study it and get it down.

I switched my course for the semester that starts in early February. I was in the Language, Literature & Culture program, but I changed to the Hispanic Studies program. Hispanic Studies has more faculty members from the University of Granada, and are more focused on the actual subject matter than they are on linguistic aspects. I signed up for some cool ones (Flamenco and Traditional Music, anyone?) so I’m looking forward to the start of that semester. Unfortunately, Hispanic Studies also comes with more homework. But I’ll only have 4 days of class a week, so I can’t complain too much.

More random observations and personal experiences from recent days:

  • As expected, Andalucia is awesome for its free tapas. Each drink you order comes with awesome free snacks.
  • While lacking spice and strong flavor, I am really starting to enjoy how the mediterranean diet is quite healthy without sacrificing much in the taste department. Obesity here is way less frequent, and I see a lot less unhealthily skinny people here too. It seems like a lot of people here manage to hover around “just right,” and that they don’t have to work too hard to stay there.
  • My family and teachers have started trying to correct some Latin American influences on my Spanish – and are trying to get me to pick up the Castillian lisp as well. I’m subconsciously starting to use it at times, and also picking up the sloppy Andalucian habit of dropping the ends of many words (“Muchas gracias” sounds like “mucha gracia” and “más o menos” becomes “Má o meno”)
    As a native of another former imperial colony whose language has mutated much from the mother tongue, I don’t know what to think. I react negatively to the idea of British English being superior to an American dialect, since we can all understand each other regardless. I’m not closing my mind to Castillian Spanish – after all, I chose this country for study abroad over a plethora of Latin American options – but it certainly is making things more confusing. Once I was an American trying to pick up Mexican Spanish. In a few months I’ll sound a third American, a third Mexican, and a third Spanish. If I do Peace Corps in Latin America after I graduate, the people there are going to be crazy confused. 
  • Last week I got a cold, mostly hanging around the throat and nose. Now it’s turned into a really annoying cough. I’m hoping it passes soon, but at least my head feels clear now.
  • I watched inauguration online since I didn’t know if the televised coverage would dub over the speeches or not (they didn’t). People seem pretty interested but I didn’t get the best vantage point to really comment on Spaniards’ opinions. It’s obvious that people over here are very interested, but beyond that I don’t really know.

OK, I’m out for now… Time to beat myself over the head with some Spanish grammar.

Dear iPhone:

We need to talk.

We’ve been together for almost a year and a half now, and it’s been great – I have few complaints. You’ve freed up space in my pockets by letting me leave my PDA and iPod at home. You’ve made me feel more liberated with Google Maps at my fingertips. I even hacked your SIM-lock so I could bring you with me to Spain, instead of having a fling with some Spanish phone. But I have a confession to make.

There’s somebody else:

Her name’s Pre. I feel guilty saying it, but she’s giving me unfaithful thoughts. And it’s not just her features (though I do like her tactile keyboard and revealing slider): she’s got a great brain, too.

She does picture messaging and syncs with cloud services. She knows how to copy and paste, something I’ve patiently overlooked with you since we first met. And – I know you don’t do this because it’s against your values, too “kinky” – but she multitasks her apps.

I haven’t done anything yet but I wanted to get it all out in the open now. I want our relationship to work, I really do, but if you don’t start to pull it together and do some of the things that the Pre does so well – you’ve been promising me push notifications since September – I might have to reconsider. Nobody else is getting in my pants pockets but you, but if you don’t start working on improving our relationship soon, I’m not going to stick around forever.

I hope you understand.

-Zeke

Photos from the first week in Granada

We’re getting pretty well settled here in Granada… Much easier to blend in a bit and feel more like a local. I’m learning the streets more and have a better sense of direction…

Today we went for a tour of the Albayzin – the historic Muslim quarter of town on a huge hill next to the Alhambra. It’s a beautiful, quieter part of town that has less roads and more footpaths. Very hilly, too. We saw a lot of great stuff and I got my first good look at the Alhambra, too.

Getting home from the tour was a bit difficult… There was a huge Gaza protest going on in the street. We wanted to  check it out, but at the same time I knew that abroad, Americans can be seen as “OMG Israel can totally do whatever the hell they want.” So we tried to lie low walking through the enormous crowd, not wanting to look very American. Hopefully with the new presidency our foreign policy might come out of the sewers so we aren’t seen as supporters of genocide.

OK, I digress. The photos:

Granada, semana primera

Small Victories (with apologies to Shakira)

My intensive spanish course doesn’t allow the use of English to help define Spanish words, so when we don’t know one, we have to explain its meaning in Spanish. It’s difficult at times… I’ll give you an example here. I’ll leave it alone for the hispanohablantes to figure it out, with English spoilers afterwards…

Today we were going over vocabulary for different body parts. The word caderas came up and most of the students didn’t know what it meant. It took me a minute and an example involving a dancing student and then I figured it out. Trying to define it to the class in Spanish, however, was near impossible, until it came to me:

“No mienten.”

About half the class figured it out just with that.

ENGLISH CLUE #1:
 “No mienten” = They don’t lie.

ENGLISH CLUE #2 (for the truly hopeless)

Well I’ve been in Granada for a couple of days now, and I’ve been able to adjust to the city some more. I’ll commence the unfocused mental dump of my observations from the last few days:

  • Granada feels way more urban than I had expected. I thought it would be a small to medium-sized town like Fort Collins, but it’s about twice the size of that – around 250,000 people. I’ve been saying for a while that I’d like to try living in a big city, and while Granada is pretty small relative to Denver, Phoenix or Madrid, it’s still way more urban than anywhere I’ve lived before. Maybe it’ll make for a good trial of a somewhat larger city before taking the plunge into a city of millions.
  • Living in an old city with old streets is a very – well, foreign – concept. It’s obvious that there was no master planner in Granada, and it’s really easy to make a wrong turn that takes you way farther away from your destination than you had intended. I’ve gotten lost several times but the major streets and landmarks in the city center are starting to become familiar. I know enough to get home and get to class 😀
  • The weather here is abnormally cold. It snowed yesterday, which is very rare. Many, many scarves. I’ll probably pick up the trend this weekend.
  • Because of the crappy weather, I haven’t bothered to go anywhere near La Alhambra yet. I want to tour it when the weather is just a bit better.
  • Going out tonight for the first time, not counting the pool hall I went to in Madrid. I’ve heard good things about the nightlife here, so I’ll have to report back on that.
  • I have one class for the next three weeks. It’s four hours long every day, with two profesoras that teach for two hours each. Neither of them know a word of English (or at least they claim) and it’s not allowed to define or translate an English word for another student – we have to try to define the word we have in mind in Spanish. It’s more difficult, and after several hours of this  my brain definitely starts to hurt. We won’t be learning any new grammar in our class, but instead will be reviewing everything we’ve learned and perfecting it in order to correct all of the little mistakes. It’s exactly what I need, so it’ll be hard, but I’ll be glad I did it by the end of the month. After that I’ll advance a level and take my semester classes one level up.
  • I’m resisting the temptation to eat at Burger King. My roommate went there today and he says it’s better than it is in the States. I’m going to guess that I’ll cave in in another day or two.
  • Everything they say about learning a language by studying abroad is definitely true. Being around it all  for just a week has helped me to pick up so much, and I’ve met a few students who were here for the last semester that are excellent with the language.
  • My English writing has gotten sigificantly worse because my mind keeps trying to form sentences in Spanish structures.
  • In the last day or so I’ve started correcting myself constantly, even mid-sentence. I think it’s good that I’m thinking about the “little rules” that I so often break, but at the same time it’s probably annoying to try and carry on a  conversation with someone who can barely complete their sentences.
  • Spanish food is hearty and healthy. I’m still adjusting to the meal schedule but the food is great (and it’s nice to not have to find a million restaurants of varying quality and prices, like we had to for the first week). It is a bit more bland than some of my favorite foods, like Mexican or Thai, which definitely are a bit more strong in their tastes. I’ll have to go in search of some cayenne or something.
  • Starting to look at plans for my ~10 day break after the intensive month class is over. Ryanair is amazingly cheap, I can fly from Granada to Italy for like… 4 euro. I don’t have a huge list of “must-sees” for while I’m here, but I would like to see Belgium, Prague, Rome, maybe Amsterdam. Overall I’d like to stick to Spain, though. I don’t like the idea of spending lots of time in a place where I don’ know any of the language.
  • Before getting to Granada, I definitely felt like more of an observer than a participant in Spanish life. I’m starting to blend in a bit more and I’m sure that within a couple of weeks it will just come naturally to me.
  • Navigating streets and crowded areas is pretty strange – there really isn’t much of a concept of personal space here. I’m noticing little things I do to get out of others’ way that nobody else does, and realizing how funny it must look. I normally have great “crowd navigation skills” but here people have different fixed habits of which side to move to when you’re in someone’s way, and other things too.

In Granada

I’m here in Granada now… nothing much to report except that I’m really excited! We haven’t seen much of the city yet, but we’ve met our host family and moved into our room. The family is very nice and it seems like it will be a great place to spend five months. (Five months seems like such a long time now, I still find it pretty hard to believe!)

Tomorrow I take my Spanish placement exam and a walking tour of the city, and at night we’ll have our first intercambio, or inter-student exchange with students learning English. We’ll go to something like a café and spend half an hour speaking in English and half an hour speaking in Spanish. And the day after that, we start our classes.

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been here for a week already. Even harder to believe that I’m here for a whole semester. Very exciting though, so far I have no regrets and no worries, besides the basic cultural transplant jitters.

Madrid (pre-written, posted from Toledo)

Greetings from Madrid! I’ve been in Spain for three days now and it’s already been a very memorable experience. I’m being dropped into two new things at the same time: European culture and history (it’s my first time here) and the Spanish language and lifestyle.

My first day here was pretty mellow. I got to the hotel earlier than I expected and had a few hours to burn before meeting up with a few other study abroad students who had showed up a day or two early like me. After we met up, the four of us explored Madrid for about five hours. We walked all around el Parque de Buen Retiro, which is comparable in my mind, if a tiny bit smaller, to Central Park. Later in the evening we explored more city streets and found ourself at the Plaza Mayor, which has played host over the years to royal weddings, burnings of heretics at the stake, bullfights, and much more. Before long, the jetlag started to wear in so we had a much earlier than usual dinner – 6 or 7pm – and I headed back to the hotel at 8. I forced myself to stay awake until about 10:30 in an effort to adjust to local time.

The next day was free until the ISA meetup at 6pm (ISA is my study abroad program) so I met up with the early folks again and we walked around Madrid for another six hours or so. We strolled around el Parque del Oeste, saw the Palacio Real (royal palace) and a cathedral built next to it. That afternoon we found a great tapas bar and I later sampled churros con chocolate for the first time.

That night we had an ISA meeting and got to meet everyone else doing the ISA Granada program, including my roommate Matt. We went on a night bus tour of Madrid – the people who had just arrived that day were nodding off through the whole tour – and later that night a couple of us went looking for nightclubs and ended up at some pool hall.

Today we went to Valle de los Caidos (“Valley of the Fallen”) and El Escorial. Valle de los Caidos was constructed by fascist dictator Francisco Franco as a monument, an enormous basilica cut into the mountainside, and a monastery. We happened to go there while Sunday morning mass was going, and we got to watch the monk-led mass. The songs and prayers were most beautiful, and the acoustics of the underground granite basilica were beyond description. For the first five or ten minutes I was just stuck in some kind of hypnotic reverence. Then a few other things started to pass through my mind: how over 30,000 Spanish Civil War combatants’ remains lie in the walls and floors of the monument, how maltreated Republican prisoners were forced to build the huge thing before its ironic dedication to the fallen soldiers of both sides of the conflict, the discomfort from the idea that the mass’ beautiful and selfless expressions of love for the almighty were being done in a place with roots in violence, fascism, and even slavery.

Valle de los Caidos is a curious place today. Now that Franco is dead and democracy has come to Spain, the context in which it was built seems a bit hard to understand. My Fodor’s travel guide describes it as a monument to fascism’s victory over democracy to some, and to religion’s victory over communism to others. Being just a few hours later now, I don’t know exactly what I think about it yet, but it sure was fascinating regardless of my unresolved moral quandary.

El Escorial was cool. Saw the tomb of all the Spanish kings and queens since the 16th century. Apparently they don’t put their bodies in the big rock caskets until they’ve sat in the “Rotting room” for about 25 years, which is currently occupied by three members of King Juan Carlos’ family. Once they’re done rotting, the tomb will be full and they’ll need to build another one to fit Juan Carlos somewhere.

Tonight more people plan on going out, and tomorrow we tour La Reina Sofia (where I’ll see Picasso’s Güernica) and then leave for Toledo.

 

I have so many first impressions, I don’t really know where to even start. I guess I’ll just dump as much as I can out now so I can compare them to what I think later once I’ve been here for a longer time:

  • Adjusting to the 8-hour time difference is bad enough, but on top of that Spaniards have a very different meal schedule: a very light breakfast, a large and long lunch around maybe 2:00 or so, and dinner isn’t until 9 or 10. I haven’t adjusted to this at all, so I’m practically living off of granola bars when I get hungry. I think I’m down to my last one now, I’ll have to go buy more from El Corte Ingles before going to Toledo.
  • Madrid is EXPENSIVE! I hate the process of converting my spendings to dollars and realizing how much I’ve spent.
  • I’m definitely noticing so much stuff in town that’s really old (where “really old” means like… within the last 600 years or so). The U.S. has almost nothing older than a couple of hundred years, especially in populated areas, so walking around town and seeing old monuments everywhere is a real trip.
  • All the men wear spandex pants while jogging. I have yet to see any female joggers. Two strange observations.
  • Nighttime fashion for men seems to require a large black jacket. I don’t have one of these. I wonder how ridiculous I must look.
  • Madrid is cool, but I wouldn’t want to spend 5 months here. I think I prefer cities that don’t have populations of 3.5 million.
  • The metro system here is the best I’ve ever seen – better than the NYC metro or BART/Muni. 1 euro will get you anywhere in town and the trains run every few minutes.
  • I’m really glad I had a couple of days to see Madrid before hooking up with the rest of the group. The four of us went around town with no agenda and we had to stick our necks out more. Once we get to Granada it will be great, I think.
  • Wi-fi is hard to find, and expensive. I have yet to find a free wi-fi hotspot here. I’m writing blog posts offline and preparing picture uploads to go up later. I’ve also realized how much I rely on my iPhone’s internet connectivity now, it’s become a subconscious reflex to check for missed calls and new e-mail, despite my total lack of connectivity.
  • I’m anxious to start meeting and mingling with more Spaniards. Getting on and off of tour buses with other Americans lets me see Spain, but not live it. This will soon be remedied in Granada, I’m sure.
  • Editing photos on an 8.9”, 1024×600 screen is a pain that I wouldn’t inflict on my worst enemy.

Photos