I insist that I knew next to nothing about this country before coming here, and I still know embarrassingly little. But heck, that´s why I´m here! So I learn a little bit every day, about the language, about the culture, or the history, or something that relates all three.
Maybe I should start this post by copying the email I sent to my immediate family upon arrival. It gives a good summary of my trip here and the first couple days. I´ve never been to Europe before, so this is all pretty exciting.
Ok, before I do anything else today, I need to update my family on life on the Iberian Peninsula.
(This may eventually become the first entry of the blog, which I don't know when I'll start. I'll also put up photos maybe tomorrow. Can someone forward this to Kristin and Mary, as I can never remember their emails?)
I know I haven't talked to any of you much, but what a hectic orientation week this has been. Not only did we have an intensive Spanish course for about six hours a day, but then we also had excursions, day outings, tours and some homework! Not to mention you have to walk everywhere so a lot of my time is spent walking between whatever activity we have with the program, (tours of the faculties, hot chocolate and churros, etc) and making it home for meals with the family (Paella, chicken, pork lots lof meat). Some kids are living in a dorm on campus, but most are with host families. There are about 45 kids in the program, and if they live with a host family, they most likely have a roommate. Mine's name is Nathan Osborne, a junior from Penn State. He's a really nice guy. We have fun, and have spent a lot of time together in the first week. Our first night here we went out for a beer so we could talk and get to know one another. It felt very adult.
Our host family is very nice to us. They're a fun little group, and not strangers to having americans in their house. It's not at all uncomfortable to have us there. Mari, (or Rosa, or Maria Rosa) told us they've been doing this for over ten years, with various programs, and have had everything from Japanese kids living with them to Swedes. Salamanca is a hotspot destination for students who want to study in Spain from other countries. The campus has about 35,000 students, and at any given time around 5,000 of them are foreigners. Lots of Asians, especially.
We had course counseling and have chosen our classes, but we have a bit of time to decide if we like them or not, and can drop them and pick up others. Right now I'm signed up for 4 courses at the university, all in addition to the Spanish tutoring we get all semester. So at the university I have Comparative History of Spain and Portugal, (very interesting), Linguistics, Semantics and Spanish Lit of the 20th Century. So I'm essentially taking 5 classes. Shouldn't be too bad. This is Europe, after all, so there really isn't homework, just tests every once in a while, and if you haven't been in class to listen and take notes, too bad.
The trip here wasn't too bad. The flight was nice to Britain, and I sat next to a guy a bit older than me who is in his first year of Med School in Scotland. His parents are Indian, and he had lived all over the place, including Scotland, before they settled in Arizona when he was still young. He had traveled all over the word himself, and was very intelligent. He had spent the Christmas break in Philly with his girlfriend (in Grad school at Penn) who lives in Rittenhouse Square, by the way. She apparently got lucky with the apartment. So he had an interesting life story.
After we landed in Hethrow, the captain informed us most British Airway flights were canceled. They aren't used to having so much snow in London, and couldn't really get adjusted to the two weeks of it they were having. So I walked the airport for a while. It was soooo hectic. They had a whiteboard with flight numbers of canceled flights right off the plane, but mine wasn't on it, so I wandered around till I found some BA counters, and an employee told me my flight was canceled and to get in line. I was about 30th in line, and soon so many people had settled in behind me that the line wrapped through the terminal and out of site. It wouldn't budge. Only two counters were open for BA (American Airlines and 3 other airlines all had countless counters, and were manned, but they were empty of waiting passengers. It didn't make sense to any of us why they couldn't just change those counters over to BA... Whatever.) Eventually the concierge people started walking up and down the line with cellphones in hand, calling BA reps, checking tickets and putting people on other flights. Eventually she came to me, and along with two elderly couples and a British man, she took us out of line and booked us on flights for later that day or in the morning. I had fun translating for her to the one elderly couple, who was from Barcelona. They smiled a lot and thanked me, and the British guy was very impressed with my ability to speak Spanish, and as we talked, he called me "My boy" several times. So British, I loved it!
BA gave us a 5 pound voucher to buy something to eat on the concourse. So I got a croissant and some fruit, and spent the next 6 hours or so in and out of sleep, watching the screens for my flight number.
When I finally got on the plane, I was a little apprehensive because of the snow storm. The captain reassured us that BA was a very safe airline, and for that reason they had canceled so many flights and waited for the weather to clear a bit. They de-iced the wings and we waited for a while, before the 2 hour flight to Madrid. When we finally landed, I was a bit unnerved again. It was very cloudy, and I didn't even know we were so close to the ground until through the fog I saw a highway beneath us (800 feet beneath us). I thought we would crash because the copilot had made a point of reminding us where the emergency exits were before our descent. Thanks copilot. But we landed without a hiccup, much to my relief, and waited a long time on the runway before they got us to the terminal. I spent the next several hours trying to report my second checked bag missing, and finally fell asleep on the floor in front of a ticket counter, with about a hundred other people. In the morning everyone from the program arrived, and I met my Lithuanian friend Juste in the terminal, the one who spent last semester here and liked it so much she stayed. And we took the bus to Salamanca!
And you know the rest, for the most part. Eventually my bag was sent to my home.
So it´s been an interesting time since that first week. I like my classes, and I´m slowly but surely making Spanish friends and practicing my linguistic skills daily.
I think I´ll cut myself off here, as I´m sure you´re tired of reading. In the future I will attempt (as always) to make more frequent and less lengthy posts.
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