Long Time Coming

I've been here for 4 weeks now and things are just beginning to settle into a rhythm. For the first week we were up in Santiago del Compastela which is this teeny little old city with cobblestone streets and the richest cultural history ever. We stayed in dorm rooms and had the most wonderful "monitores" (payed friends) showing us around and getting us used to the culture. We had LOTS of tapas, I tried octopus, a lot of it actually, its not that bad unless they give it to you whole, like when you can see the suctiony things and stuff...weeiiirrdd. But that week was essentially siesta, tapas, fiesta and getting back at 6 or 7 in the morning every night: CRAZY. We come home and the streets are still out of control. But what that week was really good for was getting to know the other people on the program so that when we were dropped here in Madrid we had kind of a safety net to fall back on. I got really close to four other girls, 3 of them are wesleyan students and one girl from Vassar. They're so so so great, and I love them soooo much. When we were in Santiago one of the monitores coined us The Spice Girls, we were the craziest of the group and always out the latest. WOOHOO.

Then we came to Madrid. That travel day was soooo hard. Its actually a really short flight but for some reason it was in the airport on that day that it hit me for the first time that I was going to be here for 4 months and not home or at Wes for the whole time. But I got to my little apartment with my very old couple and their very old dog "Boss," and they're so so sweet, and I have my own teeny tiny, room with my own bathroom that I've already managed to flood with the shower. But it's all ok. Paloma cooks dinner for me everynight, she's fantASTic. Lots of meat, chicken, and potatoes. A salad every night and a piece of fruit for dessert. Lunch we buy at school depending on classes. There's an incredible sandwich shop near campus run by two women that literally is to die for. All of the little colored paper are sandwiches people have invented and had named after them.

School is an hour away give or take, and it's CRAZY having everything in spanish. I'm taking Gender Soc, Theory of Image, Intro to Law, and a required language course. It's so interesting because school just isn't as big of a deal here as in the U.S. As long as you show up for the final, attendance doesn't matter at all and there is pretty much no required anything during the semester except for recommended background stuff. I'm actually doing way more work here than I do at Wesleyan cause I need to pick up the vocab and stuff.

But up until now everything has been about getting acclamated to having our entire lives turned upside down and into a new language. I know it's only going to get so much better from here, and I can feel that the settling in phase is coming to an end. It's crazy that it really does take as long as everyone said to feel comfortable.

La primer día

¡Esto es el primer día con el horario español!

Today is my first day on an official spanish schedule...we woke up at 7:30 to have a little breakfast and then go see the Cathedral of St. James in Santiago. It was beautiful. I put some pictures up on facebook, but I'm no professional photographer, so I most likely didn't capture it acurately. The history of Santiago is super rich, and in fact we're in the year of Santiago which means the Camino (walk) de Santiago is going on so there are pilgamages of both people from Spain as well as all over Europe to visit the relics of Santiago el Mayor. So it's an incredible time for us to be here. 


Traveling here was quite an experience. I left my house at 2 in the afternoon on Wednesday and arrived Madrid about 12 hours later not having slept at all on the plane and then had a 4 hour layover until the 1 hour flight to Santiago. Once we got here we had lunch and explored the city of Santiago a bit so it was over 24 hours before we were able to sleep again, but it was still a great day.


Today I've had a very nice long siesta (nap) and will be going out for Tapas at 9 tonight followed by a night on the town with several students from Santiago that are paid by the program to be our friends. There actually really great, it's just a funny thing. 


It's so incredible to be in a place with such rich culture as well as people so different from us. Walking around and exploring some of the bars and cafes, everyone is so open to conversation. This week we're taking some mini orientation type classes, so that should make communicating with other people even better once we get to Madrid. It's just so exciting to be able to communicate with so many different people. We try to speak Spanish as much as possible with each other as well so we don't taint the immersion we all came here for. It's such an beautiful language and culture, and I hope it becomes part of who I am through my time here.