Differences

So I posted earlier about how walking on the street in Spain is different than walking on the street in America. Which led me to dig out another post I'd been working on since I got to Spain, which is a list of the differences I've noticed while I was there. Some of them are interesting, some of them aren't, but I feel like it merits posting because it describes some of the daily life that I forget to mention in my normal posts.

• You always wear socks & shoes in the house. Always. You want to go to the bathroom across the hall? You wear your flip-flops.
  
• There is graffiti everywhere and it doesn't seem to be a very big deal. It's on the garage doors over closed shops, abandoned buildings, walls of the city… everything. Some of it is artsy, a lot of it is scribbled words, kind of like the USA.
  
• As a foreigner, you get to walk that tricky line between taking large amounts of money out of the ATM to avoid too many fees and then being hated by cashiers for handing them 50 euro bills when your coffee & pastry comes to a grand total of 3.20.
  
• ALWAYS turn off the lights, because electricity is so expensive here. The government controls it, and they keep raising the tax on it. María likes to talk about this. A lot.
  
• People don't go over to one another's houses very often. Houses are for family and close friends. I wouldn't even ask María if a friend could come over to the house to study or watch a movie. Everybody does those things in town. I once had a conversation with my host brother about the kind of house parties that happen in the USA, and he can barely wrap his head around the idea.
  
• They don't use dryers. Which is probably really good for my clothes… it's just annoying when it rains for two weeks so when you pack for Morocco, half your clothes are wet and you have no idea how to pack.
  
• People don't sit at cafés by themselves. If I'm wandering around town on my own, I usually get coffee to go and find a library or some other location to sit at in lieu of taking up a whole table to myself.
  
• People are much better at conversations here. There's a lot fewer awkward pauses when everyone just decides to get on their phones because the topic ran out. That's something I'm going to miss. Plus they all talk over each other, so following a conversation is like trying to watch a crazy ping-pong match, I'm surprised I haven't gotten whiplash yet.
  
• Lunch is the main meal of the day. You know how in America (at least in my world) kids tend to eat lunch with their friends or out of the house, but for dinner you go home and eat with your family? In Spain, you go home and eat lunch with your family, it's the biggest meal of the day. Dinners are much, much lighter (María just eats fruit or something little), and if you're going to eat out with friends, it's usually at dinner.
  
• They have ham-flavored potato chips.
  
• They also have paprika-flavored Pringles.
  
• Pharmacies here are like going to the medicine aisle of Target. If you're sick, you go in, you tell them your problem, they give you something to fix it. Even if you just need something like Nyquil or Ibuprofen, you still go talk to the pharmacist.
  
• Dinner isn't until 8 PM at least, which means kids don't leave to go out with their friends until around 10, depending on the age. I meet my friends in the Plaza around 11 most nights.
  
• It hasn't snowed here. And some of the trees still have leaves. It's rained like nobody's business (although I've been told repeatedly this is not normal…), but I've seen no snow.
  
• Gyms are expensive. So I haven't been to one for months, given that when I asked about a pass for the month, I was told it would be 75 euro–50 for the gym + pool, and a 25 euro joining fee. It's nonsense. I tried to do push-ups and stuff like that, but there's so little space in the apartment. I really can't wait to go back to the gym at home, even if it will be overrun with people who just made the New Year's Resolution to work out more.
  
• The food… is just not same. Don't get me wrong, I love María's cooking. And they do breakfasts right, especially at the hotels we've been staying at on our excursions. I don't know exactly how to describe the difference, because the only words that come to mind are "bland" and "heavy", and those ones sound so negative to me. They just use a lot fewer seasonings, and a lot more olive oil. And especially coming from Colorado where people are stereotypically in love with salads and anything fresh-tasting, and believe fats and anything fried is food of Satan, food with this much oil just makes me feel heavy.
  
• If you go out to eat, there is rarely a host to great you. Depending on the caliber of the restaurant, you either just seat yourself or a waiter will snag you between waiting tables to tell you where to have a seat.
  
• People are much more direct. This is something I was personally prepared for from everything I'd learned about Spanish culture and from having a native Spanish professor, but my family was not. It came to light one night at dinner, when my English-speaking family was under the impression the waiter was annoyed with us, when to me he seemed just a little rushed because he had a lot of tables to get to.
  

Mi Casa

Mkay, I got photos of the apartment. Only a few, but there's not a lot of spaces to take photos of here… It's still adorable and cute though. 

Living Room

Left door is our bedroom, the right door is the kitchen

The front hallway–the first door is the kitchen again, second is our bedroom. The room at the end is the living room

Doors on the other side of the hall–bathroom & María's room

View from the back window of the kitchen

The kitchen from one angle–table & back door

Other side of the kitchen–oven, kitchen sink, etc.

View of our clothes drying from our bedroom window

And that's the place! It's fairly little and dense but very cute and livable. Not too far from the plaza, but far enough that things like the nightly concerts during the festivals don't bug us even a little bit.

Today's Adventure: Swimming

So today, after class and a lovely siesta, I decided to go work out. María told me about this olympic-size pool that was a decently short walk from our piso, so I figured it couldn't be that hard. And it really wasn't that bad… I just got lost for a while… and when I asked someone for help they weren't from Salamanca… then it was super busy at the pool so it was hard to actually work out… and I forgot my flip flops… and a towel… moral of the story is, I may not have died or anything, but it was a little bit of a mess. On the bright side, I now know what to do and what not to do. Half the battle, right?

That's really the most exciting story I have so far. My mother requested a photo of my living quarters and my host mom… here's the living quarters, I don't have one of María quite yet. I'll work on that. See if I can get a whole family photo with Megan & David too. That just requires everyone being home at the same time… which could be difficult!

So that's my side of the room. There's a little closet to the left where, miraculously, all my clothes fit. The bed is kind of messy right now because I just kinda dump my stuff and then clean it up before I go out at night or go to bed. There's a bunch of books on the shelves that others students have left, so I won't run out of reading material! And those are Megan's legs, I think she was sky ping with her boyfriend when I took the photo. Also, the calendar is from some other students she had, but it's a Colorado calendar! It sounds like she's had a lot of students from Colorado, both Boulder & Denver. Oh, and they're kinda hard to see, but on my bottom shelf there's a tumbler glass from Jamba Juice, and Megan has one on the right edge of the photo. A student left María those so that the students can fill them up before they go out for the night, and then they don't have to worry about waking up María if they want water when they get home! Genius, those kids.

Also, I just realized from going through some of my other posts that you already have photos of the bedroom. Currently I'm super shy about taking photos of the apartment because I dunno if María would be okay with it (yes Daddy, I know I should just ask her) but I'll try to get on that!! 

I'll hopefully take some photos of the free fireworks and free concert tonight, so I'll post those tomorrow! Chau!

Salamanca, finalmente.

Today began with another buffet breakfast–gracias ISA!

 After that, we trekked back onto the bus and began our drive back north to just outside Madrid at El Escorial. El Escorial is quite large, and made all of granite, the same as the granite used in the aqueduct in Segovia! The Romans liked that one, apparently.

When we arrived, we met up with a tour guide who began in inglés but switched to español the moment we asked, so we could practice a little more! It's a really awesome thing that everyone in the group is excited enough to learn Spanish that we're actually asking for people to speak Spanish to us. Win. Other groups we've encountered on this trip have been… less than happy to be in a place where they don't speak the language. I believe the phrase "Get on the English train" was used the other day. We may have relentlessly mocked them ever since… Sorry guys.

Anyway, we went on in that giant door you see in the picture above, and, after going through our bazillionth bag & metal scanner, entered el Patio de los Reyes, where there were several quite large statues of kings that all were related to King Solomon's Temple somehow. Solomon is the one on the middle left I believe.

We got to tour inside, but sadly I couldn't take any photos. We toured the museum surrounding the church in the middle. The left side of Escorial is a private college, and the right side is where the monks of El Escorial live. So in the museum there were a lot of old paintings and old artifacts, things like old beds, an old office, et cetera. We saw the bed where el Rey Felipe II passed away while listening to mass, because the bedchamber has a door that opens to the main church room, so he could lay there and listen to mass, since he was sick. 

Then we went down to the crypt where a whole bunch of remains are kept. First we went to the main crypt where the kings and mothers of kings are buried. Beautiful dark granite and gold detailing. I was so sad I couldn't take photos. But since I have no photos, here's a fun fact I learned. They only put the bones in the caskets. So where, you may ask, does the rest of the body go? Well, when a royal passes away, they bring the body to a room that basically translates to "rotting room". And the body sits there for 25-40 years, until the bones can be separated to put them into the casket. You know you find that fascinating, even if it's a little bit repulsive. Anyway, at the end of this story, I'm about 80% sure I walked by the door of the rotting room where the parents of Juan Carlos, the current king, are currently residing and waiting to fill the last two empty spaces in the crypt!

Mkay back to real life now. We went to lunch, we got ice cream (dulce de leche flavor, yum!) then got back on the bus for 2 hours until we reached Salamanca!

Once in Salamanca, we trooped off the bus and all got picked up by our respective host mamás! Everyone was all skittery and nervous, it was kind of funny. Megan and I were picked up by David, María's son. He brought us back to the apartment building, where María met us on the first floor with besitos and a barrage of Spanish! She's absolutely fantastic and was so excited to meet us. So excited that we seemed normal too, she was scared she'd have crazy ones or something. She's been working with students for 15 years though, so she's got a pretty good handle on it! And our room is just the cutest thing, just like María. 

She made us tortilla española for dinner, which is basically a quiche-looking thing that has potatoes and eggs. It's delicious! And salad, which consisted of lettuce with corn on it. New, but actually pretty good. Also, everywhere I've been has a little holder for salt, pepper, oil, and vinegar on the tables, including María's house!

I'd love to write all about how amazing it is to finally be here, but we only get internet until 10 PM and I am just a few minutes outside of that, so I'll leave you with my first photo of Salamanca before I go! This is really all I've seen of the city. I get a tour (and therefore you get more photos) tomorrow!

Home Sweet Homestay

I have housing info! Here's some brief details! Myself and another girl from Tennessee are staying with a 60-year-old woman named María. According to the info I got from my program, "former students have rated her as excellent in every way." I'm calling that a plus! I'll be staying in an area which is a 15-20 minute walk from the universidad.

That's my exciting news, now I really am ready to head off! Just a few more boxes to check off in the next 21 (eek!) days!