Finals

       All of June and part of July was taken up by a blur of studying, tests, and sleeplessly warm nights. I decided I wasn´t eager to repeat last semester´s experience of failing my final exam, so I overcompensated this time around, and studied possibly more than I even would at UCSB. The library became a sort of social watering hole, to the point where I would take the bus to campus, spend two meager hours divided between sporadic studying and watching Youtube clips; then an hour at the dining halls for lunch followed by a Javi-mandated 45 minute coffee break. Around 3 o´clock we would return to a few hours of studying before the library closed, where about half the time I spent digesting a food coma. In the evenings we would usually have the brilliant idea of cracking open a bottle of wine on my terrace in order to study more, but how much are you really taking in after three glasses? With a daily schedule more or less like this, it´s no wonder it took six weeks to adequately prepare for four finals. It was the most studying without studying that I´ve ever done in my life, but I guess that goes in keeping with this whole year. Anyway, I´m very pleased with the end results, and maybe I could go as far as to say that tipsy studying on the terrace leads to excellence.
      Scattered in between my exams were a number of other social breaks--Javi´s band´s concert, BBQs, birthdays, tapas, midnight ice creams at the foot of the Alhambra, and a visit to the beach to say goodbye to some friends just two days before my hardest final. Although the coast was great, the stomach flu/food poisoning I developed afterwards was not, and between spending all Saturday at the beach and all Sunday in bed with a fever, I walked pale and nauseous into my Monday morning exam feeling somewhat less than prepared. Luckily the class was Contrastive Linguistics between English and Spanish, so I already had a 50% chance of passing merely thanks to growing up speaking English.
       However, coming down with the flu two days before leaving Granada for a month-long trip meant that I couldn´t visit my favorite places or say as many goodbyes as I would have liked. I´ll be back for one afternoon in August so I´ll have to cram in all my ´´lasts´´ then!

Germany

           As a reward for finishing three out of four finals, I took a week-long break to Germany to visit one of my best friends growing up, Kaila, who is studying for the year in Tübingen (south-west Germany). The flight over with Lufthansa was the true definition of luxury after spending too much time on Ryanair this year. For a trip of less than three hours they offered me a meal and wine or beer, which of course I accepted eagerly even though all I truly wanted was water, which shows me how messed up the U.S.’s drinking law is—deprivation apparently leads to hoarding….

I arrived in Munich in the night and met my couchsurfing host Baran in the train stop. Although I’ve never done couchsurfing alone and had some reservations, Baran and I immediately hit it off and it turned out to be pretty fun. On Thursday he showed me all around Munich, including the beautiful English Garden where we ate a traditional German meal in a beer garden. I don’t know how people can say portion sizes are huge in America if they’ve ever set foot in Bavaria—in one sitting people were eating pretzels bigger than my head, towers of meat dripping with sauce, and multiple liters of beer.

We walked around for a while longer and then headed to the Isar river to sit and relax. The river served as a perfect fridge to chill our beers, and people lined the shores, waded, drank and juggled while the sun set. That night we went to another beer garden to watch the Germany vs. Italy Eurocup game, but Germany lost so it was a pretty somber atmosphere.

Baran and me in the English Garden

Throughout the day Baran tried to teach me some German in preparation for next year, and I think it´s safe to say that if it took me 8 years to become fluent in Spanish, i´ll probably have grandchildren before I master German. The words are longer than I have breath to pronounce, and trying to make the ´ch´ sound in the back of my throat came out more similar to gagging than the pronunciation of an actual letter.  

The next day I took a long bus ride to Tübingen, and it was so great to reunite with Kaila after almost a year. She’s having an equally amazing time studying abroad, so it was so much fun to catch up and share stories. I immediately fell in love with Tübingen, which is a pretty small city (even smaller than Granada) and has such charming buildings and parks. That night I got some beers with her roommate Miles and his sister Milena, who was visiting as well.

Beautiful Tübingen

On Saturday we went to a huge outdoor swimming pool since it was ridiculously hot for German standards (although basically chilly for Granada´s), and spent the whole day lounging, swimming, and hanging out with some of Kaila’s California friends. That night turned into the biggest thunderstorm I have ever seen, with lightening every two seconds, but somehow we still managed to get out the door and meet Kaila’s program director/friend Jan for some drinks. He works in the California State University office, which also shares space with the Tufts office, and on this particular weekend the Tufts Dean of Admissions happened to be visiting, and also came to drinks with Jan. If I were a millionaire Tufts would have been my first choice school in a heartbeat, and here I found myself in the tiny town of Tübingen with the Dean of Admissions buying me rounds.

Riverfront island

Milena, Kaila, and me

Smelling that fresh Tübingen air

It rained every subsequent day of my stay in Germany, but I still had a fantastic time since the trip was really about the people I was with. Kaila, Miles, Milena and I baked, made elaborate meals (Greek stuffed tomatoes and fajitas), played cards, and drank amazing German beer (I will never drink a Bud’s light ever again). I think I spent 90% of the trip laughing, which, now that I think of it, is how I spend the majority of my time when I’m with Kaila or any member of the Wanberg family. 

We managed to do a lot of sight-seeing as well when the rain cleared up occasionally, and the beautiful town is nestled in luscious green hills. All the buildings have red rooves and I think I would have probably died from its quaintness if I had been there during Christmas.

I reluctantly returned to Granada´s final exams and heat after such a wonderful week. In fact, during the flight it became clear that I was almost back in Spain when Lufthansa decided to serve us none other than packaged strips of ham. I missed pretzels and sausage already....

(Side note: Spain won the Euro-cup while I was in Tübingen, which is great except that it occurred on one of the few occasions that I was OUTSIDE of the country. Also all the Germans were still depressed from Germany’s loss to Italy. I’m sure the atmosphere would have been a little more thrilling in Granada, but I’ll take a week trip to Germany if it means missing the game!)

Quick Update

           I have been a terrible blogger lately, since for some reason this country thinks it's a great idea to have an entire month and a half of final exams. I have four this semester and they happened to be spread out through the entire exam period, meaning I started studying in late May and don't finish until July 9th. June basically consisted of spending the day in the library with friends (with very extensive coffee and lunch breaks) and unwinding with more friends and wine on the terrace at night--meaning studying has still managed to be a ridiculously social affair, as this is still Spain after all. Of course, a highlight of such spread-out exams was that I had two weeks in between my third and fourth and thus took a trip to Germany (post to come, although at the rate I'm going it could take a while....).
           With exactly one month left in Europe, I'm experiencing the strangest emotions. I feel like I could break down in tears at any moment thinking about leaving, but it's also surreal to see Granada transforming into the place that it was when I first came: hot and empty, except for the throngs of tourists. Since it's such a university city and most students have already finished exams, the place is definitely starting to clear out, and an odd and lonely feeling remains. I only have a couple more days in this amazing city, and I walk by my favorite places now with such nostalgia, remembering the many times over the year that I went to a certain tapas bar, sat and people-watched in my favorite plaza, strolled by the river or was awed by the Alhambra lit up at night. But the other part of me is so eager to get out of here and start my month-long trip through Switzerland, Sweden and Northern Spain, and I'm emotionally drained from saying goodbyes to people who have made my stay here incredible, and who I might possibly never see again. (Depressing, but realistic). To study abroad they prep you for cultural differences, cuisine, what to pack, and how to greet with two kisses; but they neglect to prepare you on how to leave it all after a year.
         When I said goodbye to my program director Inma yesterday, she put it best: I'll be back one day for sure, so this is not adios but rather hasta luego. 

Speak.

Today I went to get a haircut, and in the waiting room there was a man sitting silently, having accompanied his wife and daughter. At first I picked up a magazine so we wouldn’t just be staring at each other, but after a little while he began talking to me. We chatted about the typical things like weather (Is that a cultural universal, finding yourselves in forced situations where you have to mention the climate? Maybe Granada’s 90+ degree heat lends itself especially well to weather small talk), and then moved on to his multiple heart and stomach operations, his family, final exams, my time in Granada, etc. He was very difficult to understand, which I thought was due to his age (65+), so I caught about 70 per cent and the remaining 30 I sort of just nodded and let out the occasional laugh, which he seemed satisfied enough with. When his wife and daughter finished they introduced themselves and seemed particularly nice to me, and once again I was left to ponder just how open and friendly Andalusians can be.

            When it was time for my haircut, I chatted about this and that with the hairdresser, and then the subject of that family came up. She stopped cutting my hair and looked at me really seriously and said, “I can’t believe that man talked to you today! It’s been three months since he’s said a single word.” I wasn’t sure if I completely understood her right, but she went on to say that when his wife heard him speaking to me in the waiting room she was ecstatic and completely surprised, because he hasn’t even talked to her in this whole time as a side effect of mental deterioration (possibly Altzeimer’s). “Mi marido ha vuelto a hablar,” she told the hairdresser (my husband speaks again). Of course I was completely oblivious of all this at the time, mostly worrying throughout the whole conversation if I should treat the man with Tú verses Usted (one of my greatest fears in speaking Spanish is that I’ll greatly offend someone by using the casual form with a superior), and it never crossed my mind that the reason he was so difficult to understand was that he hadn’t exercised his voice in three months. Even though I’m sure it was coincidental, I feel so honored that he chose a sputtering, blumbering guiri to share his first words after so much time!

The Family Chronicles: Part II

After my sister and I spent a week in Granada by ourselves while our parents were hiking in the Pyrenees, we took an overnight bus to reunite with them in San Sebastian, part of the Basque Country in the north of Spain. I was particularly excited for this because I’d heard from everyone I’ve talked to how beautiful the north is, how different it is from Andalusia, and how great the food is there. I was certainly not disappointed.

            We arrived after a 12-hour bus ride, which somehow felt two hours long since I managed to sleep most of the way. Something about moving vehicles makes me pass out almost immediately. When I finally awoke we were driving through lush green countryside, which in Eastern Andalusia simply doesn’t exist. It reminded me so much of West Marin that I felt like our 12-hour journey had actually been a flight back to California.

            As my parents had not yet arrived from the mountains, Katie and I checked into the hotel and then headed straight to the beach, which was absolutely picturesque. Perfect sand, shallow turquoise water, and beautiful surrounding hills. San Sebastian is situated around a cove, so the water is really calm and warmer than the actual Atlantic. After spending some nice time tanning and swimming we went off in search of pinchos, the Basque version of Tapas. Pinchos are renowned for being some of the best cuisine in the world (here I’m quoting Anthony Bourdain yet again), and although I’ll say they’re no burrito, there is something thrilling in the fact that you walk into any bar and there are at least twenty different varieties of bite-sized plates laid out before your eyes, ready for you to point at and eat immediately. I felt like a child in a candy store, only instead of sugary treats I was surrounded by lots of exotic fish and meat that looked questionable but tasted great.

            The next day the whole family went on a walk to a hill overlooking the entire city. Then Katie and I decided to cut the hike short and return to the beach, because once you get a taste of heaven it’s hard to do much else. We got so lucky with the weather while we were there—normally it rains a lot in the north, but we were blessed with 80 degree sunshine, perfect for swimming. I’ll wrap up the San Sebastian part now, since in reality we did little more than eat, sleep, and swim, which I’m starting to realize is my idea of a perfect vacation.

 

            The next day we drove an hour west to Bilbao, still part of Basque Country. While the rest of my family spent hours in the Guggenheim Museum, I walked all around the town, exploring the old parts of the city and a grassy park perched on a hill overlooking everything. As the museum is really the attraction of this city, there’s not too much to relay about Bilbao, except that it had a feeling I really liked—industrial but on the upswing.

            We spent that night, as well as the next two nights, in a tiny little village in the province of Cantabria, called Santillana del Mar. This is, according to the not-so-trustworthy Lonely Planet guide, “the most picturesque village in Spain.” The authors weren’t far from the mark this time, as Santillana is a beautifully preserved medieval village complete with rolling hills and grazing livestock in the background. There were about twenty shops and restaurants in the whole place, so needless to say the time we spent there was very relaxing. On the first day we visited the nearby Altamira and Castillo caves with some of the first discovered cave paintings in Spain. In the latter we actually got to go deep inside the original cave and see the sketches first-hand, and the Spanish guide talked about a word a minute and made me feel really great about my level of comprehension. Actually my parents even understood about 85% of what he said and they’ve never even taken a Spanish lesson.

The most shocking part of the whole experience was not seeing 30,000+ year-old art, but rather the fact that my Stanford-educated father proceeded to ask the guide (after we had already been on the tour for half an hour): “Hay paleolíticos aquí?” (Literally: are there paleolithics here?) What he meant to ask was if Paleolithic humans came that far back into the cave, as we were very deep in, but the language barrier presented such problems that even the guide looked at my dad like he had severe mental issues. I, in turn, swiftly melted into the group of other tourists and pretended I was in no way associated, as I was expecting the guide to say any minute,  “Um, who do you think we’ve been talking about for the better part of an hour? Have you been missing the entire concept that these paintings were made by really really old people? Or did you mean, are there Paleolithic people here at this very moment? Yes, in fact, at the end of the tour we get to meet the very artists themselves!” My poor dad, as if he didn’t take enough brutal jokes from my sister and I on the duration of the trip, he now appears in my blog. But it’s my duty to report my favorite memories from my year abroad, and also all brilliant people are allowed an occasional slip—especially if they’re making it in Spanish. Love ya daddy!

            That afternoon, as though suffering sufficient humiliation was not brutal enough, we all went to Santillana’s only attraction: the torture museum. It’s an odd paradox that this seemed to be one of the first times we all truly meshed well as a family on the trip; maybe the presence of skull-crushing devices, human melting pots and body-spearing poles made us realize how fortunate we all were to have each other. We soon realized, however, that this torture museum was no joke, and the light mood in which we entered was very quickly erased, to the point where the paella I had for lunch was not sitting so well with me after reading the last of 100 descriptions of torture. What is wrong with the human race? In the first place we inflict torture. In the second we establish museums devoted to torture, and in the third place we then pay to see them.

The adorable town of Santillana del Mar

            The next day Katie and I opted to skip the grueling mountain trek that my parents headed off to, and we caught a bus to the beach instead. After the water of San Sebastian I was dying for more, and Cantabria’s beaches didn’t disappoint. If Santa Barbara’s beaches were anything like northern Spain’s, I would surely have gone swimming more than twice in my 2 years there.

            The last day of the trip we drove to Segovia, which has the most famous Roman aqueduct in all of Spain. It truly was a sight, and even though there’s not too much going on in that sleepy city, I’ll say that it was one of my favorite places I’ve been to in Spain because of the ancient structure. We had a last family dinner in the Plaza Mayor and then got ready to head our separate ways in the morning.

            Although my heart will always lie with Andalusia, the north of Spain is absolutely beautiful and I’m so glad I got the chance to see it. The second half of the trip was overall really great, as I think the initial bumps of traveling with my family after 9 months of independence wore off a bit. I truly am so grateful that they came to visit me, even if I have a bit too sarcastic way of expressing it on my blog! Also it was so great to see my sister for 3 weeks and get along with her in a way that I would have never thought possible in our middle-school and high-school days. It only took 10 years of rocky adolescence for us to treat each other humanely again!!

Bathroom Linguistics

One of the most entertaining ways to improve your Spanish at the University of Granada is studying the graffiti on the bathroom walls. I wonder if there is a single culture in the world that doesn’t write encouraging, disturbing, or simply profane messages to each other via a toilet stall? 

Sometimes the notes that girls write to each other are uplifting and cheerful: “Vine a España de Erasmus y encontré el amor de mi vida” (I came to Spain to study abroad and found the love of my life). Although then you start thinking, that’s so great for you and all, but was it so important that you deface this public space while at the same time making us all resent you?

Sometimes the messages present real moral dilemmas, and you may spend more time than you had planned in the stall trying to figure out how to resolve them: “Quiero a mi novio, pero no paro de pensar en otro….me atrae mucho mucho, que hago???” (I love my boyfriend, but I can’t stop thinking about someone else….he attracts me so much, what do I do???). Although luckily for future readers, someone has already taken the liberty to respond with some proper advice: “Fóllatelo y ya está y a seguir con el novio.” (Fuck him and that’s that, and continue with your boyfriend). If only we could all have such a clear moral conscience.

I’ve even learned new vocabulary from the bathroom stalls, although I’ll admit I would have liked to discover the word for “bleach” in a context that didn’t involve such a vulgar sexual reference.

            Then there are those times when it’s like a running dialogue between bathroom users, in which a sort of free therapy service emerges and the entire female university community can benefit. One posts something which she surely views as utterly profound, such as was the case in Stall #2: “In order for long distance relationships to work, you need three things: love, trust, and patience.” (Honestly how do these things occur to people while they’re relieving themselves?) Then another girl responds, acknowledging the previous claim and adding a personal anecdote: “I agree with you on this. In my case, we lacked two out of the three.” A third writer joins in, expressing her condolences that the previous girl’s relationship fell apart, and sharing her fear that hers is heading down the same path. 

Then finally, after you’re either sick from all the overly-corny advice columns or on the verge of peeing again from the outrageously dark humor that some of these girls come up with in the privacy of their own stall, you’re eyes drift to a remote lower corner, where from the looks of it someone (surely in the middle of finals month and at the end of her emotional limits) had enough of the toilet talk: “DEJAD DE DECIR Y ESCRIBIR GILIPOLLECES, TRABAJAD Y ESTUDIAR QUE VUESTROS PADRES SE ROMPEN LA CABEZA TRABAJANDO CONOOOOOO” (STOP SAYING AND WRITING SUCH BULLSHIT, WORK AND STUDY SINCE YOUR PARENTS ARE KILLING THEMSELVES WORKING FUCKKKKKKKKKK!!”

And on that somber note, my bathroom grammar lesson is over. 

I'm sick of thinking of Blog titles. Katie and me in Almuñécar.

On Saturday Katie and I took the bus down to Almuñécar, because Javi invited us to stay at his house over the weekend. It was perfect weather at the beach and we spent most of the time relaxing by his pool, chatting, and eating. Sound surprising? Also a large chunk of time was spent listening to Javi make fun of our Spanish accents, which could honestly be its own stand-up comedy act.

           Does Spain have some sort of secret capital punishment for its citizens if a family does not treat their guests like royalty? I’m starting to think this must be the case, because I’ve now stayed with four families and each one is absolutely the most friendly, warm and welcoming group of people I could have ever hoped to encounter. My sister and I were treated like queens in this beachside haven, as we were fed plate after plate of some of the best homemade food I’ve eaten in this country (paella and prawns and mussels and fried fish and baby octopus and meatballs and more, and glass after glass of wine with every meal). I had a great time talking to his brother, mom, dad and grandma (if you thought you were fluent, talking to a 95-year-old Spaniard will make you second-guess yourself). And if before I considered life in a Spanish city to be relaxing, life in a Spanish beach town is like infancy: no responsibilities, just napping and eating and chilling. I think I could make a life for myself just hopping from one Spanish family to the next, because my weekends spent in the houses of friends here have definitely been some of the most memorable and rewarding experiences in my time abroad. Also, watching my sister try to spit out sentences in Spanish after studying Russian for 6 years is priceless.

Katie getting her first taste of Spanish hospitality

GAMBAS