Studying abroad is like an endless dream. Not in the sense of “learning” in Europe aka “sight-seeing, eating, and lounging about”, but the sleeping kind of dream, the one where the Cheshier cat insists that you meet the Queen or where a man gives you seeds that will sprout into puppies. In your dream, you know exactly what’s going on; the Cheshier cat is certain the Queen will “be mad about you, simply mad!” and you sincerely believe you will grow a garden full of puppies.
Despite that you know where you are, that you know what is being said, there remains an element of confusion— like Picasso’s cubism. Something seems odd and so you question “am I really here right now?” I sometimes feel as though I’m on the verge of waking up from this dream and then eating dinner at 9:00 PM would feel natural, not forced and then, then Irene would talk to me in English. Now and then, I’m under the impression that I am speaking in English, when really it’s all in Spanish. Or vice versa, I’ve heard John Elliot’s words in my head as if he had said them in Spanish. But that’s impossible; he doesn’t speak Spanish.
What it boils down to is time; time to really, really acclimate to the culture and time to lose that dependency on friends and family at “home.” Because just like the majority of foreign students I’ve kept one foot in my home country, blame it on the internet. Nevertheless, I know time soothes the initial sharpness of a foreign culture. For instance, if another Spaniard were to tell me that olive oil isn’t fattening, I wouldn’t laugh like I first did. I’d just leave it be. What’s more, time makes “home” feel more and more distant. Although Skype lets me see Riley wagging his tail and gazing at the computer upon hearing my voice, I can’t touch him no matter how much I want to. Is he real? I guess so... Finally, and for me most importantly, I need much more time to perfect my Spanish. The enormity of basic words I have yet to learn is overwhelming. Tell me how is it that I just learned the verb for “to tear”? Perhaps it is because a native speaker knows roughly 20,000 “basic” words.
I hope you understand that this dream of mine has not been a bad one. On the contrary, I have loved all of my experiences abroad, learning of the culture of three foreign countries and through comparison, of my own. Despite that I sometimes feel unbalanced and that I’m not as goofy as I am in the U.S., you’ll still catch me rockin’ down the street singing “We Speak No Americano.” So, I will say again what I’ve said before-- I am beyond words appreciative of this year of traveling. As it winds down, I know all in all it’s been worth the occasional feeling of being out to lunch!
Even if it was the most northern part, it was Africa. The best part: the trip was through my university and so the cost for all the food, transportation, and housing for 3 entire days was only 30€!! But like the rest of the trips, it was another early morning and a long bus ride. I surprised myself by sleeping the 2.5 hours, but then again, I was doubling my sleep from the night before... After the bus, we took a ferry and another bus before finally arriving at the hotel. Upon arrival, we had our first taste of Moroccan tea. I will never look at tea the same. It was ridiculously sweet with honey and beautiful at the same time because of the mint leaves left within the glass. Throughout the weekend, we would drink a lot of
this tea, often served with little cookies. Everyone looked forward to the tea at the end of the meal, and if they didn’t serve it, would jokingly complain “where’s my tea?!”
From the hotel, we went to the art workshop school of Tetuan where we learned about the steps to the traditional Moroccan art. It’s a long process- the students are required to practice drawing the designs for 3 months before they’re allowed to actually carve and paint. After this visit, we were starving and relieved to be going to lunch. We were led through a narrow walkway, turning left, turning right, and turning left again in order to reach a traditional restaurant hidden within the labyrinth. Before each group was set a humongous couscous dish right in the middle of the table and nos pusimos ciegos (we stuffed ourselves). It was awesome. Waddling from there, we were given a tour of Tetuan by Moroccan guide who told us that he had 3 wives. Abdul was the man—he knew everyone and everything. He explained that the doors of the houses were lower than a person’s head to make it necessary to bow your head in respect what you’ve been given, a home. I thought that was really interesting. Abdul took us through more narrow roads and into the middle of a meat-smelling market (Minnesotans, think the dear hunter’s garage). Even more smelly was our last stop, at the leather mill that had cow hides soaking in pits. That was quite the day and so we returned back to the restaurant for more tea and cookies (ha, ha), had dinner at the hotel, and then sprinted to our beds.
On Saturday, we had a quick breakfast at the hotel and got on the bus to go to Asilah, a beautiful beach town with white houses and interesting wall murals. Just like in everywhere in Morocco, people stared at us, tried to talk to us, or tried to get us to buy something. One guy asked me to be his girlfriend and apparently I could give him no satisfactory reason why I shouldn’t be his... But instead of boyfriends, all of the girls came home with henna tattoos and I've enjoyed looking at mine throughout the week and remembering Morocco. After our short stint in Asilah, we went to Tanger, the most cosmopolitan city that we visited. Before entering the city, we first ate lunch on the outskirts of town on a hill overlooking the sea. It was another fantastic meal, a curried-chicken patty with a caramelized crispy outside. And of course, the meal ended with tea and cookies :)
Near the restaurant was the Hercules Cave. I couldn’t get a good picture of it, but at a certain angle it’s Africa upside down! It was very interesting but we didn’t stay long because we had camel to catch. Yeah, man... I rode a camel!!!! Not only that, but we were late for our tea date with some Moroccans. Unfortunately, we did miss the majority of them except for Jasmine and Oussama, the most gorgeous couple. They both spoke Arabic and French fluently and English and Spanish quite well. This is typical of most Moroccans and I died in envy thinking about it. After awhile, the beauty goddess left but Oussama stayed with us for a while. I talked to him for over an hour and eventually came to asking him about the polygamy because I just hadn’t been able wrap my mind around it.
Me: “Is there still polegamy?”
Oussama: “Yes.”
Me: “Are you going to have more than one wife?”
Oussama: “Yes.”
Me: “Well how does your girlfriend feel about that? Won’t she be jealous?”
Oussama: “Of course she would be...”
Me: “Welll??”
The conversation carried on for 5 minutes before he said “...but it’s not common anymore.” What?? What have we been talking about for the last 5 minutes?? Apparently, he hadn’t known exactly what I was asking him, but I eventually understood that although polygamy is legal, it isn’t common anymore. In fact, the man has to ask the first wife to agree before he can marry a second. Later, I asked Virginia about Abdul and she said, “He does have three women, his wife and his two daughters...” Apparently, it had been joke that he forgot to finish telling. All of the Americans had thought that polygamy was still alive and well... Well, how should we have known??
Our last day of the trip was a visit to Chaouen, a cute little town, that we reached by taking windy roads to get to the top of the mountain. Poor Jennifer, I’m so lucky I don’t get carsick... Anyway, it is built on the side of the mountain so our tour was a workout, up and down the streets. All the streets and houses are white and baby-blue and are painted 7 times a year!! I'm not exactly sure, but it has something to do with the heating and cooling system. That was the last of our Moroccan experience and we sadly started our 6 hour trip back to Sevilla. Sigh... at least I still have my henna tattoo.
Barcelona was another incredible trip, much different from my other travels in Europe. With a population of 5,000,000 (Metro area), Barcelona is much bigger than Sevilla (population 1,500,000). On Friday, Oct. 29th, Amber, Molly, Michael, and I flew in around 11 AM arriving with plenty of the day left. We checked into our hostel, which was our first taste of the diversity. There was a group of Americans studying in Italy. There was a guy at the front desk from Iran, fluent in Arabic, English, Spanish, and Persian. There was a guy from California making his living refurnishing guitars to buy and redistribute weed... Finally, the cutest was a girl from Japan whom I was happy to impress with my one Japanese phrase “HARA HACHI BU”!!
Our first adventure, the walk down La Rambla, also had a lot of diversity. The main touristy avenue, it was smeared with every type of person, mostly notably people in wild Halloween costumes peddling for money and the tourists gathered to take pictures of them. On this trip, we wore the same blinking, shiny “I’m-a-tourist” button on our chests, taking a mountain of pictures, frequently whipping out our maps, and talking in English. I could pretend that we were speaking English because Molly’s boyfriend was with us. But in reality, we were there to enjoy ourselves, not study.
The Roman wall in the background
At the end of La Rambla, we came to a statue of Christopher Columbus at which point we could see the Balearic/Mediterranean Sea. We strolled along the dock without any sense of hurry and Amber and I mused about how lucky we were to be there. We eventually made our way to the Picasso Museum, interesting to me because you can see the changes of Picasso’s work throughout his life: the Blue Period, the Rose Period, the African-influenced Period, and Cubism. Cubism was my favorite period, because of its surrealism. It kept making me thing of how a kid would draw the world, yet obviously he painted masterfully and in a thought-provoking way. We spent a long time in the museum and so tired, we did little more that night. Amber and I did go together to see the Roman wall ruins, which I had really wanted to see. They were really cool but it seemed strange seeing them surrounded by tall buildings. Later that evening, we went out to eat, confusing Michael on the etiquette of tapa style eating: together you choose the tapas and share them so that everyone tries a little of everything.
The morning of the next day, Amber and I went to find food and turned down a random street. As serendipity would have it, we stumbled onto the Open Air Market, or the Mercat de la Boqueria. It ended up being one of the highlights of my trip, a humongous smorgasbord with the traditional salt treated whole pig legs, fruits and vegetables (the typical and the strange), fish, nuts, and crabs... At one stand, while staring at the crabs I realized with a start that they were moving. After I yelled my discovery at Amber, a man at my side smiled and laughed at me. Continuing on through the maze of booths, we were overwhelmed by the chocolate stand and the delicious fruit drink stands. Around 20 distinct combination of fruits drinks, I chose Mango/Kiwi, but oohed at the combinations of pineapple, strawberry, blackberry, watermelon, coconut, dragon fruit, banana, peach, pear...
That day we also went to one of Spain’s top tourist attractions, La Sagrada Familia, the Basilica designed by Antoni Gaudi. Although it began in 1882 it still is not finished, however anticipated to be completed between 2020-2040. Of everything in Spain, this was the one thing that I knew while still in the U.S. that I wanted to see (Blame it on Jennie’s birthday present, the Basilica puzzle, that we put together this summer). Needless to say, I wasn’t disappointed with its extremely impressive towers that make a complete picture hard to take.
On Sunday, Amber and I had a very productive Gaudi-filled day. We first went to the Güell Park which is situated on a hill overlooking the city. Gaudi designed it and so it of course was full of interesting architecture and windy paths. Living in there for 20 years, he would walk everyday down to the Basilica to oversee the construction. After the park, we went to the Casa Batlló and Casa Mila also designed by Gaudi. While we just took a look at the outside of Casa Mila, we payed the 12 euros to go into the Casa Batlló which was certainly worth the hole it burned in my pocket. The house was almost completely made of curves, including the walls and ceilings. It had the feeling of aquatic life with different shades of blues and greens, shell shaped lights, and scale patterns on the wall. Using broken ceramic tiles, Gaudi created beautiful mosaics throughout the house which made every room, including the attic, very interesting.
"I just want some ice" was a feasible enough excuse to go talk to the Spaniards sitting next to us in the plaza. They, of course, were willing to give me some, smiling at me and then bombarding me with questions: "Where are you from?", "What's your name?", "Why are you here?". Spaniards always asks me where I am from even though they know the answer. That's because they know the American accent due to the million, billion of us americanos here. Sooo, I sometimes play a game with them because I think it's funny:
Spaniards¨: Where are you from?
Me: Italy
S: No you´re not. Where are you from?
M: Germany
S: No you´re not. Where are you from?
M: France
S: *speaks in French*
M: Oh... I don´t speak French
S: So, where are you from?
M: The U.S.
S: OH!!! I love the U.S.
Spaniards usually seem to like the U.S. and almost always have some connection to it like "my friend lives in New York" or "I went to San Fransisco last summer".
This time, I just answered "the U.S." and continued talking to them until 4 AM. In particular, one girl and I really hit it off. I went home with my fingers and toes crossed in the hopes that she would follow through with her promise to call me. She did and has been faithfully calling me ever since.
Irene is my main girl. From the Canary Islands, she is studying technical architecture in the University of Sevilla, sharing a flat with her sister. Irene is ¨la mar de simpatica" (A Spanish expression, outdated but still cute meaning literally "the sea of nice" or endlessly nice.) She has been so good to me, always including me when she goes out at night. Her cousin, Maria, is another doll from the Canary Islands. The three of us are perfect together, buying matching bracelets, making fun of each other, and dancing in the street at 4 in the morning. Sadly though, Maria went back to the Canaries on Saturday. It was not, however, before I made her promise to visit me in Bemidji one day with Irene. She enthusiastically agreed and told me the cutest thing, something similiar to this: "I've gotten closer to you in the last 2 weeks than I have with most people over years".
Irene on the left, Maria on the right
Grace, Irene, Maria, Elisa
This is why it´s been so long since I´ve written in my blog. Every free moment I want to be with them, and so I jump on the bus and knock at their door. Of 7 nights of last week, I spent 4 on their couch. During those nights, it was Irene, Elisa (her sister), Fatima (her flat-mate), Maria, Mari (her mom), and me. Maria and Mari had been visiting for the 2 weeks before and so with the addition of me, the apartment was full of loud, energetic, and silly girls. We stayed up until 3AM talking about boys, Catholicism vs. Protestantism, and on the secrets of the Spanish tortilla. They helped me with my essays and taught me colloquial phrases from the Canaries. "You're going to visit us, Grace. Our house is always open for you," they told me repeatedly. They continued, "the Canary Islands is where it is always a nice temperature- not too hot and not too cold. It's where the beaches are black and the water is crystal blue." Also, they told me about the whistled language, a cultural phenomenon worth a side-track story:
La Gomera and El Hierro are two of the Canary Islands, both very mountainous. Communication has always been difficult and so ages ago, they developed a whistled language. It allows them to have a conversation between the mountain ridges! It's amazing because while Irene, Maria, Elisa, and I watched a youtube video, we could sometimes hear whistles that resembled Spanish words!! The majority of the people on these islands speak this language, including little old ladies. Everyone has their different style some with one hand, some with two. Sorry Kathy McK, your whistle is loud, but theirs is a train whistle. Check it out: La Gomera: Whistled Language
Summary: According to Irene and her family, the Canary Islands are the vac-cay spot. If I had time, if I had money. Poor me... Hahaha.
Besides Irene and the girls, I also hang out with her b/f Miguel and his best friend Brauli. They're really great, funny and random- just what I love. Sometimes Miguel mixes Spanish with his basic English. For example, he will say "Soy cool" (I am cool). So when he said to me "Soy kinky", I stammered "whawhaaat?" Their definition of "kinky" is much different than mine ("kinky"- a dude, bro-ish, maybe cool?)
I'm so in debt to Irene. Even though she tells me "No pasa nada, Graciela", she really has drastically changed my experience here. I don't have time to read the Spanish newspaper anymore. But I'm really, really OK with that.
Studying abroad is like an endless dream. Not in the sense of “learning” in Europe aka “sight-seeing, eating, and lounging about”, but the sleeping kind of dream, the one where the Cheshier cat insists that you meet the Queen or where a man gives you seeds that will sprout into puppies. In your dream, you know exactly what’s going on; the Cheshier cat is certain the Queen will “be mad about you, simply mad!” and you sincerely believe you will grow a garden full of puppies.
Despite that you know where you are, that you know what is being said, there remains an element of confusion— like Picasso’s cubism. Something seems odd and so you question “am I really here right now?” I sometimes feel as though I’m on the verge of waking up from this dream and then eating dinner at 9:00 PM would feel natural, not forced and then, then Irene would talk to me in English. Now and then, I’m under the impression that I am speaking in English, when really it’s all in Spanish. Or vice versa, I’ve heard John Elliot’s words in my head as if he had said them in Spanish. But that’s impossible; he doesn’t speak Spanish. 
What it boils down to is time; time to really, really acclimate to the culture and time to lose that dependency on friends and family at “home.” Because just like the majority of foreign students I’ve kept one foot in my home country, blame it on the internet. Nevertheless, I know time soothes the initial sharpness of a foreign culture. For instance, if another Spaniard were to tell me that olive oil isn’t fattening, I wouldn’t laugh like I first did. I’d just leave it be. What’s more, time makes “home” feel more and more distant. Although Skype lets me see Riley wagging his tail and gazing at the computer upon hearing my voice, I can’t touch him no matter how much I want to. Is he real? I guess so... Finally, and for me most importantly, I need much more time to perfect my Spanish. The enormity of basic words I have yet to learn is overwhelming. Tell me how is it that I just learned the verb for “to tear”? Perhaps it is because a native speaker knows roughly 20,000 “basic” words.
I hope you understand that this dream of mine has not been a bad one. On the contrary, I have loved all of my experiences abroad, learning of the culture of three foreign countries and through comparison, of my own. Despite that I sometimes feel unbalanced and that I’m not as goofy as I am in the U.S., you’ll still catch me rockin’ down the street singing “We Speak No Americano.” So, I will say again what I’ve said before-- I am beyond words appreciative of this year of traveling. As it winds down, I know all in all it’s been worth the occasional feeling of being out to lunch! 
