December....??

How or when it became December I would not be able to tell you, I can however tell you that it's days like this, days when I begin to grasp just HOW fast my time in Spain is passing, that I appreciate how lucky I am to have the opportunity to stay for the entire academic year. I feel terrible about how bad I've been about updating my blog but consider that instead of staying in and updating my blog I've been out having all sorts of adventures in my second favorite country in the world. I feel young, free and alive.

I was talking with my incredibly awesome Aunt Anne the other day and she completely put into words exactly as I felt/feel. When someone asks me, "How's Spain?" I can barely come up with an intelligible answer and it's because I can hardly begin to think of where I can even start. I have met so many new people, been to o many new places and have had so many new experiences that any attempt to summarize all of it inevitably fails. Where do I even start?

In the past three months I've traveled all over Spain (note the map)

I've been to (in chronological order):

Salamanca

Segovia

Madrid

Toledo

Santiago de Compostela

Astorga

Córdoba

Sevilla (Seville)

La Mancha

Barcelona

(I'll post a link to pictures from these visits soon)

I've been completely charmed by Spain in more ways than I could have possibly imagined before coming here. At first I took much of being here as a new way to appreciate everything that I've come from. The experience opened my eyes to how lucky I am to have the life that I do back in the states. I had a new appreciation for my upbringing, beliefs, family, customs, the english language etc. This is kind of difficult to explain but Spain (especially Madrid) was/is definitely a lot more foreign than I ever expected it to be. I've tried to explain this more than once to people but I haven't quite articulated it very well. While evidence of globalization is undeniably present in certain aspects of life here, mainly in the genre of pop-culture (like I posted earlier, you can't walk into a bar without hearing American music), it has almost strangely left certain other aspects of Spanish culture completely untouched. 

There's a certain intangible essence to Spanish life that feels so real and pure when you live here that makes me thankful that every place in the world isn't like America. Don't get me wrong, I am still 100% as patriotic of the land of the free and home of the brave as I was when I first got here but it's just that now, after nearly four months and 10 trips around this beautiful country I've shifted my perspective. While at first my perspective of being here was focused on appreciating what I've come from, I'm now learning how to appreciate where I am. 

It sort of reminds me of the classes that I'm taking here- at first my list of classes was nothing short of intimidating to me. I have classes in language, history of spanish literature, art and theatre. When telling people about my classes I would find myself saying, "It's especially challenging because a lot of the vocabulary that I'm learning, I don't even know in English." But now I've learned that this couldn't be farther from the truth. I've found that I've gained that best understanding for things when I've stopped trying to equivocate it to something else. When making flashcards for vocabulary I've stopped writing the English translation on the back and instead I describe the words how I understand them in Spanish. 

What I'm trying to say about all of this is that I'm beginning to believe that this school of thought shouldn't just be reserved for language and vocabulary. While I can't deny that comparing things to what we already know is a good way to get our footing in new experiences, I'm trying now (in all aspects of my life) to appreciate things and experiences, especially experiences, as their own entities. When you stop bogging yourself down with what something is similar to, you can begin to see it for what it is and then truly appreciate it completely. As with everything thus far in my life, the more I learn the more I realize how little I actually know. I more than cut this post in half as the rest is more of an account of my travels (don't worry it is already written I will post it after this has been up and marinated with you all for a week or so). 

Hasta luego amigos y familia,

Kathleen