The calm before the storm

I want to mention a few things before I start with the whole summary of my life these last two weeks:

1. It's been stormy for the last two days here in Bilbao - rain and wind all over the place. But since it's not cold, I don't really mind the tempest state of things.
1a. Braving the storm this afternoon was a lone swan floating down river. Not just a goose or an oversized seagull but an actual swan! His tranquility stood in stark contrast to the debris and mud building up on the surface of the water.

2. I'm going to the opera at Euskalduna tonight! It's an adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth by Giuseppe Verdi, so they'll be singing in Italian, but the captions will be in Spanish. I'm therefore looking forward to being enveloped in a world of unfamiliar sights and sounds with an accompaniment of (semi)-familiar text. Nevertheless, I'll be able to understand the story through context clues and fully enjoy the experience of high culture in Bilbao.
2a. I have to get going to the opera but a recap of transpired events is coming soon - prometo (I promise)!

Tenacity

The nachos here are delicious! If you're ever in town,
look up La Foca Nicanora.

First off, I'd like to apologize in advance for being so American. I'm at a casual pizza restaurant eating nachos and blogging. Now, you might say, "Sarah. Stop being so American! Go out and eat some pintxos! See the city, go to a museum, do something!" and you would be totally justified in your tirade. In my defense, though, I have become quite cultured and cosmopolitan in this last month and I'm rewarding myself with nachos. Tomorrow I will have been in the glorious city of Bilbao for a month, and I can't believe how quickly the time is passing. I also can't believe how quickly I just ate those nachos.

I'm trying to get into a routine of blogging, but that plan obviously hasn't worked out so far. I'm hoping that after this entry I'll make it a point to write on Wednesday nights, even if it means rewarding myself with more nachos every Wednesday that I keep to my goal. Definitely worth it. Since my last entry, my 21st birthday came and went. We celebrated by going to a discoteca on Saturday night the 29th and to a great Spanish movie called También la lluvia on Sunday. My host mom gave me a card and some chocolate, and I made myself a cake from a mix whose instructions were only in Spanish! Re: last entry, I'm counting the completion of that cake as a definite victory. The following week went smoothly: I made a few trips to the library to pick up more books and some Basque music, but most of my free time has been dedicated to learning as much Spanish as possible. We're almost done with our first module of Spanish (out of 3), which means that after our final exam next Tuesday the 15th, 3 of my 10 credits will have already been accounted for. The modular system is a foreign concept to me, but I like the prospect of divvying up the credits because it's much less daunting than having the fate of 10 credits depend on the results of one final exam.

In other news, almost our entire group went to the south of France over the weekend, to a fishing/tourist town called St. Jean de Luz. The weather was perfect, 65˚F and sunny for the duration. We walked along the beach and through the city during the day and stayed in and cooked dinner for ourselves at night, just like a giant family. We ran into a few mishaps, including (but not limited to) getting attacked by the incoming tide at one point, but overall it was an amazing weekend. The most difficult part was talking to the locals at the cafés and the grocery store because even though they're just over the Spanish/French border, they barely speak Spanish at all. We ended up with a dependable system of communication consisting of the five or six French words we knew, a smattering of Spanglish, and a whole lot of gestures and pointing. The trip back was also a little difficult to arrange because the bus from St. Jean de Luz to the hub at San Sebastián doesn't run on Sundays. We had to take taxis to the nearest airport (Biarritz), catch a bus from the airport to San Sebastián, and quickly connect to our final bus from San Sebastián to Bilbao. Even though it seemed like a never-ending journey, it was empowering to struggle with figurative road blocks and ultimately prevail.

You have my full permission to reprint this on a postcard.

Even the less than put-together appearance of the
subject of the photo can't detract from the breathtaking view.

 This week has flown by. I have two more classes tomorrow and then I'm out for the weekend! I'm not sure if I've mentioned this already, but four-day school weeks mean three-day weekends, so I'm basically  weekending half the time I'm here. Don't worry though, I'm making the most of it. My two regular university classes (European Law and International Trade Law) are going to be difficult because even though they're taught in English, the classes seem to be part of a predetermined track for students wishing to study law. The professor of International Trade Law keeps referencing all these regulations and conventions that I've never heard of, but she knows some of us haven't taken Private International Law and International Organizations, so I think I'll be just fine.

This weekend we're going on an overnight excursion to Pamplona and Logroño. Pamplona is the site of the Running of the Bulls every July, so it will be exciting to see where that happens. Also, to my family and friends reading this, I'm making good use of all my Spanish-themed presents: my dictionaries, Spanish history book, phrasebooks, camera, knitting materials, and kind monetary donations have all proven invaluable. I can't wait to see you all again, tell you about my adventures, and hear about yours!

I can say with confidence that I've adjusted well to my life abroad. I've fallen into a comfortable routine, going to school, studying, visiting libraries and cafés, and spending time with my host family. The next obstacle will be making Spanish and other European friends in my regular university classes. While I was hoping to join a political group like the Young Democrats here, I don't think they have any clubs of that sort. With that in mind, I think I'll join a group like Amnesty International and see where that takes me. I convinced myself that the hardest part of the trip would be the first two weeks; I figured within a fortnight, I'd know enough of the Spanish language and customs to get by on my own without embarrassing myself. It actually took a month, but here I am, alive and well.


Tenaciously,

Sarah

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.

Número uno

Since I've just passed the one-week mark of being in Spain, I realized that I had better start this blog before it gets too late. Quick overview of the last 10 days: Thursday the 6th I took a flight from Seattle to Chicago, and then a flight to Boston. Here's where it gets a little sticky though - I missed my connecting flight from Boston to Madrid due to a few miscommunications between American Airlines and me. I ended up spending the night in Boston (shout out to Nora, Hugh, Kyle, Brianne, and Bridget for rescuing me and letting me stay at their house!) and returned to the airport at noon on the 7th, all ready to take a flight to JFK and then to Madrid. Of course, that would have been too easy, so my flight to JFK was delayed long enough that I would have missed the connecting flight there, and I hopped on a 7 pm plane to London and an 8 am flight (finalllly) from London to Madrid! Aha, but there's another twist. My luggage didn't get the memo to fly with me from London; apparently it was lazing around in the Heathrow airport while all the dutiful luggage flew on their connecting flights. Anyway, it was a journey and a half, but I survived! My luggage arrived the night we got to Bilbao, Monday the 10th. But first, some stories from the days preceding Bilbao!

Madrid: I'm one of 15 in a group who signed up to study abroad in Bilbao with a company called ISA (International Studies Abroad). Our program fee includes tuition at Universidad de Deusto, room and board with our host families, excursions throughout the semester, and free admission to the museums and other sites we visit with the group. The 15 of us are already getting to know each other  really well, and I'm relieved we've avoided any group drama (at least thus far). We're from all over the country: we have students from California, South Dakota, Michigan, Maryland, South Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, possibly Minnesota, and of course, Washington! Everyone else arrived in Madrid on the 7th so they all met each other before I got there, but I only ended up missing out on a quick orientation and a museum. After I took a taxi from the Madrid airport to the hotel at about 1 in the afternoon, everyone met back up at 2 to go to the Reina Sofía Museum, which houses a lot of Picasso's work including his masterpiece, the Guernica. We also saw some of Salvador Dali's work, so it was cool to see original paintings by Spanish artists in person. Needless to say, following our visit to the museum, I was running on 12 hours of sleep distributed over three days (it's probably not actually that dramatic of a statistic, but the time change exacerbated it my exhaustion), and I fell asleep at about 6 pm and woke up at 8 the next morning for our whirlwind trip to Toledo.

Toledo: Beautiful! Seriously, if you're in Spain, Toledo has to be at the top of your list of destinations. It's a super old city with a giant wall around about half of it. There are cathedrals everywhere, some of which we got to tour. Sidenote: all our tours have been conducted in Spanish, so I've been in total immersion since I got here. I was frustrated at first because I couldn't adequately express myself whenever I tried to talk to the tour guides or locals (or other people in the group, for that matter; our program director, Genoveva, encourages us to speak in Spanish all the time so we get more practice). However, I've picked up some useful phrases and vocabulary and improving every day. Although I haven't kept track yet, I set a goal of learning 10 Spanish words every day. I might be learning more than that right now, but everything's still jumbled in my head, trying to keep track of grammar and tense and articles. I thought taking 5 years of German would help me learn Spanish, but most of the grammar is way different so I can't trust German sentence structure to help me out.
More Toledo... the city is famous for their swords, daggers and suits of armor. We were there on a Sunday so not too much was open, but we still went in a few shops that displayed some pretty impressive armor. Anyway, we checked into the hotel in the afternoon and had a pretty relaxing night. Food that day consisted of a delicious chicken doner kebab for lunch and a jamón (ham) and huevo (egg) sandwich for dinner. With the 14 hours of sleep I achieved Saturday night, I think I avoided jet lag altogether! At least one good thing came out of a whole mess of traveling.

Bilbao: Monday morning we left for Bilbao on our autobús (charter bus). It's about a 4 hour drive from Toledo to Bilbao, since Toledo is about an hour south of Madrid and Bilbao is about 3 hours northwest of Madrid. We took a quick stop in Burgos for lunch (I'm pretty sure it was a truck stop restaurant) and hopped back on the bus for the remainder of our trip. Even after the first couple days of being in Spain, I felt like I'd been here for weeks at least because we've been packing so much action into every day. Once we got to Bilbao, our host families scooped us up and brought us home (we took the Metro). My host family consists of María Jesús, my host mom, and Carlos, my 24-year old host brother. I have a roommate from the program named Lauren, and she's a lot better at Spanish than me so she's been invaluable in translating for me. She's also super nice. So we set ourselves up in the apartment, which isn't huge but has plenty of living space (3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a living room, a study, and a kitchen) and took a 2 hour walk around the city. Bilbao is the capital city of the Bizkaia province (Basque country), and its population is something like 450,000 in the metropolitan area. The downtown area is so clean! And it feels so safe, even late at night. We walked along the river, which is actually more like an estuary, and when we got back, my luggage was waiting for me.
The next few days consisted of orientations, tours of the city, the university, the Guggenheim, and the Museo de Bellas Artes. We took a placement test for Spanish classes (I may have gotten 2 or 3 right out of 80), learned about extracurriculars, and just about exhausted all the information we'll ever need to know for the next four months. I've been adapting well to the city scene so far, the food is delicious, and I'll be posting something soon in the next few days (or at least within the week) to catch up on anything I forgot and add more exciting events that are transpiring.

We start school tomorrow! My only definite class is a 10-hour a week Spanish class. I'll be fluent in no time!
Hasta luego!