Victories and near-victories

This third week in Spain, I've been through a cascade of experiences that I suppose won't have a substantial impact on my life overall; nevertheless, I'm going to tell you alll about them. Be forewarned that a lot of this is going to be jumbled thoughts awkwardly organized.

I don't want to backtrack, but let's forge ahead with a recap of last week anyway. We started classes on Monday the 17th, so I've had almost two full weeks of class so far. We're still in the drop/add period, which means that we don't officially register for classes until Tuesday the 1st of February, but I'm pretty well settled in to my 10-hour a week Spanish class and my 3-hour USA/EU Transatlantic Relations class. The other two I plan to dive into are Law of International Trade and Law of the European Union, but those don't start until Tuesday, are regular University of Deusto classes, and have 3-week drop/add periods of their own. This is all really confusing, but I think I've got it under control. Anyway, I'm learning so much Spanish everyday! If you want to learn a language, I totally recommend this course of action, aka the zero to hero method. Since I knew about 40 words of Spanish before I got here, I was virtually a blank slate slated to sink or swim depending on my reaction to the world of immersion in which I find myself.

12-second break to marvel at that masterpiece of a sentence.

And we're back. Re: above sentence, I'm treading water so far but I don't know if I'm nearing a breaking point. I'm pretty sure that I can keep it up, but learning a language at hyperspeed can be exhausting. Obviously I'm just being impatient, but it's frustrating when I want to say something that doesn't seem complicated at all in English but is impossible for me to say in Spanish because it's apparently in the imperfect subjunctive tense or employs some obscure grammar rule with which I'm not yet familiar. It'll all come in time, but at present I'm starting to get really adept at speaking in the present tense. So that's a victory.

Re: the title of this entry, which I started about four days ago and haven't got back around to until now, all of my near victories involve encounters with local people. One such example is the tale of how I bought a phone (almost) by myself and talked in Spanish the whole time! Another great one is the story of how I (almost) opened a local bank account to avoid ridiculous international ATM fees, but alas, that one turned out as another near victory as I don't have an official stamp of approval from the Bilbao police - at least I'm pretty sure that's what the bank teller told me.

All in all, I'm doing well adjusting to living in the city, even though it's a struggle to adapt to the different customs. Bilbao is one of the most beautiful places I've visited; walking to school every day along the river (technically estuary) is awesome, and even though the weather has been pretty chilly and overcast almost every day, the climate is pretty similar to that of the Pacific Northwest, so I can appreciate it for what it is.

(Placeholder picture from Viaje Jet until I upload one of my own. But this captures the essence of the weather recently)

ALSO this weekend is my 21st birthday, and I don't have any big plans. For the last two years I've had birthday adventures to two of the fantastic botanical gardens of the world, both conveniently located in Arizona (The Desert Botanical Garden and the Boyce Thompson Arboretum), and I think we have some botanical gardens in Bilbao (jardines botánicos), so I might make an excursion out to one of those. Basically, the main purpose of this post is to remind you of my birthday. Don't forget! Visit a botanical garden in my honor.