Salamanca, a city of splendor.

(Hi everyone! This post was written a few days ago and I’m sorry I haven’t updated the blog but I didn’t have internet until I arrived in Segovia and so I’m only able to post now! Enjoy!)

WOW! So this is my first blog post from Spain and all I can say is… wow.  Unbelievable. I spent so much time getting excited about places like Segovia, Seville, Madrid and Barcelona and so easily looked past my first city, Salamanca. This city is overwhelmingly beautiful in every way imaginable. It is a hidden gem of Spain. Well not exactly hidden because while I may have been totally out of the loop Spaniards definitely are already fully aware of everything this fantastic city has to offer. Salamanca is a beautiful and historic city and I can’t wait to tell you all about it but first let me walk you through what it took to get there.

Getting to Boston’s LaGuardia airport didn’t take any where near as long as anticipated and so we (Mom, Dad & Emily) had plenty of time before I had to go through security. This part gets embarrassing. As we went to get my bags checked we discovered that not one but both of my checked suitcases would be over the required weight limit and I would later learn that I had packed more than anyone else in the program. Like I said –embarrassing. Anyway life goes on and so we went out to lunch before I went through security which was very nice but then the rest is somewhat of a blur. I made it through security and managed not to cry but did choke up after I saw my parents and Emily walking away and sat at gate E4 for what felt like six seconds before we started boarding. I barely remember getting onto the plane or finding my seat etc. but all of the sudden we were flying in the air looking out over the beautiful US of A one last time. The flight was not all that bad though it was a little difficult because the flight is also adjusted to Spanish time and so we were served dinner and breakfast at their respective Spanish times.

The only negative aspect of my journey to Spain was seated directly behind me in the form of a little French boy. For hours this little child who was at least old enough to speak, cried and cried like someone was trying to kill him. When he wasn’t screaming or crying, he was running up and down the aisle but usually was doing a combination of both. The parents tried coaxing the child, pleading for him to settle down but after a few minutes gave up all together and seemed oblivious to the fact that the child was still screaming. Needless to say this made sleeping rather difficult. I was seated next an Italian family and was able to communicate with the mother through Spanish and at one point she looked at me and flatly said, “And this is why nobody likes the French”.

And so eventually we arrived at Barajas airport and made it through customs and found our teacher and all 14 of us in the program boarded the bus and after a couple of hours arrived in Salamanca at El Colegio Mayor, Hernan Cortez where we would be staying for the next three days. We lived in dorms and shortly after moving in we all went for a walk as a group. All I can say is that Salamanca is one of the most beautiful places that I’ve ever seen in my life. This small city is such a precious place and I felt such an instant connection to it. I don’t know how to explain it but the city is so personable and I think that there is a feeling that everyone who visits gets that is almost like the city was made this beautiful just for them. It seems weird to say about a city but it is just so intoxicating to be there amidst all of the splendor and history etc. it is such an intimate place.

The three days in Salamanca were incredible and served perfectly as an orientation to Spain and also to our program in general. I didn’t really know anyone from our group very well before arriving in Spain but our group of 14 students became really close over these three days in Salamanca and I think a main component of this has to do with our experiences in Salamanca. While this isn’t exactly ground breaking news, I think we are all drawn together because of this experience we are sharing. In just three days I’ve been frustrated, scared, excited, nervous, overwhelmed and overjoyed and having all of these emotions in such a concentrated amount of time can be pretty crazy but knowing that there are 13 other people going through all this too, maybe not in exactly the same way or order but at least somewhat like it, is so comforting to me.

I definitely have a new appreciation for humanity and the beauty of experience. It is really a beautiful thing to be able to be friends and become so close with people who I may have not otherwise been friends with or even met at all. We are each other’s support systems now.

Okay enough with all of that sappiness. I don’t have too much more time to be writing but I will post some pictures here so that you can see the glorious city that for three days I could call home. Salamanca was incredible and so off I go to Segovia to meet my first host family!

Hasta, Segovia mi gente!

(until Segovia my people)

Okay so this first picture is outside of the University of Salamanca which is one of the oldest universities in the world. This is the entrance to the university and it was commissioned by the Catholic monarchs as an ornate symbol of how prestigious the university is. Somewhere in all of the decoration is a frog sitting on top of a skull and it is tradition for each student to be able to find this before they graduate. It is more difficult than you would think but I actually found it. This picture is only from my phone so the quality isn't fantastic but I'll try to upload pictures from my camera soon and you can see if you can find it! Double click on the pictures to see them bigger!

This is inside one of the Cathedrals in Salamanca. There are SO many of them that we saw in such a small area that I'm not 100% sure of which one this is exactly but believe it or not they are ALL this ornate and this beautiful. It's very common to have weddings on Saturdays in the summer and because the Cathedrals in Salamanca are so beautiful people come from all over to get married here. On our tour of the Salamanca Cathedrals (it was on a Saturday) we saw 5 bodas (weddings)! It was crazy. There were literally brides everywhere. Double click on the pictures to see them bigger!

This is just a picture from Salamanca at night. All of the buildings are so old and the way that the city was built makes the street systems more like a labyrinth to try and navigate. In the picture after this is the Plaza Mayor de Salamanca, which essentially was the city center hundreds and hundreds of years ago. As the city grew and became more populated, since there was already a city center, it expanded around the plaza mayor simply creating a bigger circumference to the city which would be very unorthodox in comparison to the organization of american cities which are much more linear. Double click on the pictures to see them bigger!

And here is the Plaza Mayor. I'll upload more pictures of it later from during the day but here it is in all of its splendor at night. Just breathtaking. It is hard to explain without an aerial photo but this is just the main side and there are four other sides that are similar to this making it a square. The bottom floors are shops, restaurants and bars and the other floors are small apartments, costing somewhere around 600,000 euros. Pretty swanky stuff. Double click on the pictures to see them bigger!

Outline of my schedule in Spain!

Hello all,

I’m currently on a train on my way to visit one of my dearest friends from St. Lawrence, Ariel Lash in Vermont. My planned 3 ½ hour car ride has somehow turned into a 9 hour train ride (I truly wish I was exaggerating). As my luck goes the train that I’m riding actually got struck by lightning, which interrupted the electric communication system. I have no idea what that means but that is how they announced it. Anyway, it is now almost 10:00 pm and I am one of four people left in this entire car of the train and the creepy guy two rows in front of me who is wearing a kilt just turned around and winked at me. Needless to say today will be marked forever as a day of many firsts for me, getting struck by lightning and all.

On to what this blog is all about in the first place –Spain! So as promised in my last entry I’ll give you an idea of what, at least the first few weeks of my time in Spain will be like. I’m saving writing about my families for the trip back since I already watched all of the movies I brought (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Notebook, Wedding Crasher’s and Roman Holiday. Quite the potpourri I know).

I leave the states from Boston and fly directly to Madrid on the evening of August 26^th (Pop Kirby's birthday!) and arrive at Barajas Airport on the morning of August 27^th. Once we arrive we separate our baggage and take only one bag while the rest of our luggage is sent to storage until we arrive in Madrid. We leave the airport with our one bag and go to Salamanca which is northwest of Madrid touching Portugal and we have three days of orientation.

On the 30^th of August after our last orientation session we are transported to our Segovia village homes. Segovia is in central Spain and is just north of Madrid. The purpose of the Segovia village phase is to be immersed in the Spanish culture particularly in regards to language. Everyone in the program lives with a family and because Segovia is much more rural than Madrid these families are usually more traditionally Spanish. These two weeks are designed to be extremely language intensive and will probably be the most challenging time of the whole experience but I’m so looking forward to it as I think it will be the most rewarding two weeks of my experience as well.

After these two weeks the program then moves one last time to Madrid on the 15^th of September. We have a few days of orientation and lectures on Madrid and time to adapt to our new living situation and then classes begin on Tuesday the 21^st. 

Here is a visual aid of these first few weeks in Spain for me.

Throughout the semester we go on several scheduled excursions throughout Spain as a group and there is also ample time for personal travel. Unfortunately this will be the first year ever that I will not be home for Thanksgiving and I’m still trying to figure out what I’m going to do for Christmas. Christmas in Spain is celebrated on January 6^th which is the day of the Epiphany and so I could go home for Christmas without missing Spanish Christmas which would be really nice but at the same time I’ve heard from lots of people not to go home because it will make a lot of things more difficult for me and set me back several months as far as the language goes. Just last weekend I had a long conversation with my Dad’s cousin Christy about the predicament. Christy went to Hamilton and also spent a year abroad but in France and the programs sounded relatively similar. Christy felt very strongly that it was important to stay for the year and brought up a lot of other great advice for me. I’m so lucky to have so many people that can give great advice that I can trust. I think mama Lynne would be on board to celebrate Christmas in Europe but I think that Dad is going to be a harder egg to crack. I do see and feel the other side of the argument too and I know that I’m really going to be aching for home and my family if I don’t go back to visit at all so I guess we will see. As of now I still have a plane ticket home for Christmas but I suppose it is still somewhat of a pending matter. Please feel free to vote in the poll on the left side of the blog and give me your opinion and definitely leave a comment if you want to share more about what you think I should do about Christmas.

Even if I did go home for Christmas I would only be home for about five days before I returned to Spain because I’m planning on definitely spending New Years there. Can’t wait!! On January 10^th, the internships for the year students begin. This is one of a few main reasons that I chose to stay for the year as opposed to only a semester. To me, the opportunity to have an internship in Spain was too good to pass up and it is a component only of the year program. I’m still not sure what my internship will be and I won’t find out for at least a little while but I’m SO looking forward to having this opportunity. I will definitely keep you all posted on this! As the other year students and I continue to work at our internships the Spring semester students will be arriving for the first time and beginning their village stay like the one I will have already done earlier in the year. Their village stay is in Salamanca rather than Segovia though. Second semester classes begin on February 14^th and will be similar to the first semester in setup. There will also be several scheduled excursions throughout Spain but the places will be different than the first semester which will be nice. 

I have a spring vacation in April for Easter (Pascua) and am SO looking forward to hopefully spending Easter and at least part of Holy Week (Semana Santa) in Seville where their Holy Week traditions attract Catholics from all over the world. Look here to read about this and see pictures. You can even just google “Semana Santa Seville” and look at the images to get an idea of the festivities. If you can get past the fact that much of the dress resembles the Klu Klux Klan you’ll see that it is truly one of the wonderfully preserved traditions of Catholic Spain. Monks from all over Seville and Spain process through the streets on each day of celebrations leading up to Easter. It really is worth reading more about. Very cool stuff. This would be a great time for any Catholics planning to visit to come. Or non-Catholics for that matter. I don’t discriminate if you have an appreciation for this type of thing. Either way I’m really hoping to be there and I hope that you are excited to read about it eventually!

Our classes end on April 29^th and we then return to the states on May 8^th.  Wow. So crazy that all of this will be happening so soon! I’m scared because I know that much of my time in Spain will fly by but I hope that between keeping a blog and keeping a personal journal I will be able to appreciate and savor my time in España maybe a little bit more as it happens.

In my next post I will write about my Spanish host families and what I know about them so far!! Thank you for reading and please leave comments if you have any questions and continue to take the polls!! Love you all!!!

Besos (kisses!)

Kathleen

One month to go...

And so the countdown begins.... 25 days until my flight leaves for Spain. I'm overwhelmed with so many emotions and the fact that it's Shark Week on the Discovery channel is barely helping my emotional overload. Since I was accepted into the Madrid year program I've had all sorts of things to do in preparation for my departure including the nightmare of obtaining my student visa, registering for classes, contacting my host families, organizing flights etc.

While figuring out the logistics of the rapidly approaching semester has had its own excitements and frustrations, another aspect of my preparation, my Spanish preparation has been a whirlwind of emotions as well. Amongst the verb charts, flashcards, books, music and all of the other tools I've been using to prepare myself I feel like I've been swept away into a tizzy of all things español. My facebook is set to Spanish, I'm reading Harry Potter in Spanish, I even watch the news in Spanish!

(If you're interested I read the online version of the big newspaper there el país, literally meaning the country and I also watch an online news channel called la 2 noticias which is basically like channel 2 news. Links for both are El País  and La 2 Noticias)

Even though at times I think I may be going a little over kill I still have concerns that I'm not doing enough. After all, up until this point I've only had one Spanish professor who was from Spain and so pretty much everything I have been taught is very distinctly South American Spanish. I find myself second guessing my accent particularly the ceseo or lisp with which Spaniards speak. And while the more challenging aspect as a Spanish student will be for me to become accustomed to the vosotros verb conjugation (essentially a plural form of you) which just doesn't exist in the Spanish that I already know, I'm more concerned about the ceseo, without which will instantly identify me as a foreigner. The ceseo is the accent characteristic only of the Spanish spoken in Spain. (There is Castilian which is the official language and spoken through most parts of Spain including Madrid and also Catalan which is spoken primarily in Barcelona, this difference in language only adding to the cultural rivalry between the two cities). There is a story that the ceseo accent stems from King Ferdinand having a lisp and then the people of Spain copying the way he spoke but this is just an old wive's tale. If you're interested in learning more about the real origins of the ceseo and lots of more specifics you can click on these links: Where did the Spaniards get their "lisp"? or Ceseo. 

Regardless of all of that history of Spanish linguistics the fact of the matter is that today in Spain they speak with a different accent than I am accustomed to hearing or speaking. I know I'm going pretty far out on a limb by saying this will mark me as a foreigner in Spain because obviously I have blonde hair, blue eyes and light skin (thanks a lot Dad) and amongst other reasons am rather stereotypically American, but the accent is something that I feel I have within my control and so it is something that as a student I am still pretty insecure about and for the life of me I can't work it into my pronunciation without it feeling awkward. I know that this is only normal and that I probably won't make much progress on it until I actually get to Spain and only then will it start to become integrated into my normal flow of speech but unfortunately until then I will be stuck with this as an insecurity as I go into Spain. A silly thing to lose sleep over but such is life. I think most people have only heard me talk about my strengths and excitement up until this point so hopefully knowing this will shed some light on the more nervous part of my anticipation. 

Of course I'm nervous for all sorts of other reasons too like meeting my host families, finding my way around the city, getting to all the places I'm hoping to see in Spain and around Europe before the end of the year and all the while staying on top of my school work at a Spanish University! In my next post, I'll give a better idea of what the next year will look like as far as an abstract itinerary goes and I'll also post about my host families and other exciting things like that! I'm still trying to figure out this whole blog situation but bear with me and I promise I'll do my best to stay updated.

Love you all!!

xxxx