Life Lessons, Learned in Spain

I've been thinking lately about what I've gained from studying abroad and choosing Spain. I used to worry because studying here is putting me back another semester at U of I, so I'll graduate in 4.5, if not 5 semesters (depending on how the Aerospace classes work.) But I figured out that what I've changed in ways that would not have changed if I had stayed in the USA. So, I came up with this list of ways I've grown.

The first thing is independence! Ohhhh my gosh, independence. If I thought I was independent at U of I, oh man was I wrong! I don't know if I can describe it correctly but, to me, Madrid, Spain is the real world. Not that college in the states isn't the real world, it's just so pre-structured for us. Right now, everything is up to me. I have to figure out which metro tickets I need, pay my bills, book my own hostels, figure out how to get to other cities I want to visit, and the list goes on and on. It's so hard to explain it, but I have so many more responsibilities here, and I'm okay with that :)

Courage. I didn't have a lot of courage when I came here. Actually, I was kind of scared of everything and I just didn't realize it until later. Two months ago, if I had seen a crowded Spanish bar with no free tables and only standing room at the bar, I wouldn't have gone in. But I've learned to just go stand up at the bar and order something. Some of the most delicious tapas I've ever had were at bars like that! I don't have to muster up the courage anymore; I just do it. And, it was really intimidating and scary at first to ask a store clerk something in Spanish, but now I've learned to swallow my pride and just ask in the best way I can. If I get confused about what they say, I can just ask and there's nothing lost. Overall I've just become a braver person. Haha, well, that's not to say I would go bungee-jumping off a bridge or something, (not exactly my cup of tea,) but I know I'm much, much more courageous.

Strength. Somedays, it feels like the world is out to get me, and it would be easy to just sit down and cry and whine. It's okay to cry sometimes, but then you wipe your tears and move on. Like, there will always be mean people that make me feel sad that I have to talk to on a daily basis, but I've grown to be a lot more resilient to the things they say. Now I'm a lot stronger when it comes to the things those people say, and I don't take it seriously or let it affect me anymore. I will just say very generally that this was a hard lesson to learn for me, and if we've been talking, you'll know what I mean. But, now that I'm getting stronger, it's so much easier to get over the sad, frustrating moments in life, and that makes me a lot happier.

The most important lesson I've learned is to be positive all the time. If something bad happens here, it's easy to let it ruin my day, but come on, I'm studying abroad in Europe! Nothing should be able to ruin my experience. So, I always think of something positive about the situation, no matter how bad it is. Actually, doing that always makes me feel a lot better, and then I forget about the bad things before I even know it! I'm definitely going to keep it up when I come back to U of I. It makes me feel like a whole new person sometimes.

So, those are the biggest lessons I've learned here! Sorry this was such a sappy self-discovery blog, but I mean, I hope someone reads this and reconsiders studying abroad if they weren't going to before. Like, not only have I had the coolest experience living, studying, and partying in Europe, but I've learned some really awesome life lessons too. I'm coming back a different person!

Semana Santa

So many things to update on!! I've been so busy for the last few weeks studying for exams like a nut. I mean, if you think Thermodynamics and Circuits would be hard to understand in English, try it in Spanish!! Yikes! I had my last exam Wednesday morning so now I can finally relax, thank goodness.

I still haven't explained my Semana Santa ("Holy Week,") even though it was forever ago; it was amazing and memorable. I went with my aunt and uncle to Sevilla, which is famous for its processions during Holy Week. We also took a day trip to Cordoba and visited Italica on the way out of Sevilla, finally ending the trip in Toledo.

First of all, I think Sevilla has got to be my favorite out of all the Spanish cities I've visited. It was just beautiful, quaint, and just so perfect all around! Since it's further south in Spain, it was warmer there, and there were orange trees everywhere, especially planted along the street. During Holy Week, the orange blossoms were finally blooming, and oh my gosh, I have never smelled a prettier smell. It's hard to describe, but it definitely didn't smell like an orange. It was more like this gorgeous, sweet floral scent, the kind that gets carried on the breeze so you smell it everywhere you go. So the city smelled beautiful, and it looked beautiful too. All the buildings and narrow streets were so authentically awesome; definitely something you don't see in Madrid.

Altogether, I explored the cathedral (3rd largest by volume in the world,) the Alcazar, the Alcazar Gardens, the riverwalk, and all kinds of little streets and places. I even saw a flamenco show. Kruse was there for a few days so we met up and went to the cathedral and belltower together, and wow, those were amazing. I even went to Palm Sunday mass in the cathedral and I understood everything!! The cathedral is home to all kinds of incredible things, like the tombs of Cervantes (author of Don Quijote) and Christopher Columbus, yes THAT Christopher Columbus!!!! It was amazing, but now I go around comparing other incredible churches to it...woops.

The best part, which I've already kind of talked about a little, were the gardens of the Alcazar. I could have spent days there, and I'm not even kidding about that. If you know me, you know I love flowers and gardens, and this was just heaven. Right now I'm holding myself back from putting like 100 pictures here on my blog, because I really want to! On Tuesday, I had the siesta time free to go wherever I wanted, so I explored the entire garden and got to sit on a bench on this beautiful terrace and just think. There is no better feeling than that, let me tell you.

Cordoba was amazing too. Their Mezquita, an old old old cathedral, has been there for at least a thousand years! I got to try Gazpacho there (a cold soup) and it was really good.

One of the coolest parts of the trip was Italica, or the old Roman ruins outside of Sevilla. The Romans founded it in about 206 BC while they were conquering various other Iberian cities, and the modern Spanish city close to it, Santiponce, has been excavating it for the past 230 years. We got to see the amphitheater, incredible mosaic floors, the old public baths, and so many more incredible things. I am absolutely in love with archeology so you can imagine how cool I thought this was!

Overall, it was an awesome break. I'm leaving out so many details because I feel like I write novels for every blog! Keep an eye out for pictures on facebook and another blog this week. See you all later!

Ariel

PS, Today is April 25th, the perfect date! It's not too hot, and it's not too cold, all you need is a light jacket! ;)

Adventures in El Escorial

I'm still in Sevilla, but I found some internet again to update you guys! I have a lot to add since I missed 2 weeks of updates.

Let's see, where did I leave off? I got back from Las Fallas on a Saturday night, so my Sunday was free. Luckily, I'd heard that Matt the Mellophone was in town for the weekend! Matt is studying abroad in Sweden, but he decided to come visit Madrid and stay with Colin, yay! It was really great to see someone else from U of I in Spain. So we all decided to explore El Escorial, an old monastery/palace in another part of town.

I got a lot of pictures of the outside and a few of the gardens from afar, since pictures weren't really allowed inside. Ahem, but I did manage to get a few, ahem. Anyway, this place was huge! The Cathedral was the most impressive part. I've only seen churches that big in movies or video games, never real life.

The rest of El Escorial was filled with paintings, antique furniture, and different exhibits about the construction. Oh yeah, and...a mausoleum?! I couldn't believe the kings of Spain lived here with all the former kings of Spain just resting in peace in the basement, more or less!! There were a heck of a lot of tombs and corridors to other tombs. We found one room with a huge circular tomb with 60 different spaces for people to be buried, and I believe 47 of them were...ummm, occupied. (This is so weird to talk about...) The sad part was, it was in a room that was entirely dedicated to the burials of the royal children who never made it past puberty :( It was really interesting, but really morbid at the same time. Jesus H, if I could barely handle this, how am I gonna handle the crypts in Palermo!?!

Um, let's move away from the crypts... The rest of El Escorial was beautiful. We found a gorgeous painted ceiling in one part and snuck some pictures :o)

It took a long time to tour the whole place because it was so big. My favorite part was at the end when we saw the library!!! The books were all handwritten in latin, in calligraphy!! If you know me well, you know I love books and I love writing in calligraphy so this was pretty much heaven on earth for me :) They even had one book of hymnals, and all the scores were handwritten in calligraphy; it was just the coolest thing. The books were all hand-bound too, and all the illustrations were drawn one-by-one. They were just beautiful. I really didn't want to leave, but we had missed lunch and it was already 4, so we left after that.

I'll be back one day to explore the gardens since we didn't get to. Recently, I've been finding out that I'm kind of in love with European gardens. Kruse and I explored this garden in Sevilla the other day and I just would not shut up about how cool it was...woops. The picture here is of the gardens in Sevilla because they are so gorgeous and I just had to share a picture! I've been there twice and am considering visiting again, if I have time. Entrance is free for me because I'm a student so I can just visit whenever I want.

Anyway, I'm making a shopping list of gardens I want to see before I go back to the US, and I'm gonna try to work on being a little less awed when I visit, but we'll see how that goes ;)

See you all later!
Ariel

Long Time No See?

So, it's been awhile since I've last posted here. A few weeks ago, some things changed in my life, and honestly, I was a little depressed (to say the least.) Basically, I didn't want to be writing a blog with all this depressing stuff in it! So I didn't, and it was a good choice, because now I'm back to my old self! :)

I should explain where I'm at now: I'm in Sevilla, a town in the southwestern part of Spain, in Andalucia, to be specific. Internet was a little hard to come by, but I was able to snag some to post this!

Oh, I should do a quick recap over the last few weeks before I explain Sevilla. Let's see... three weeks ago, I was busy finishing up some things for school. I found out I have to take my engineering classes for a grade, so yikes! I had to start studying really hard for those. Circuits is going okay, and so is Thermodynamics, but of course, they're harder in Spanish. The week after that, I went to visit my friend Jesus in Valencia for the festival Las Fallas.

Actually, holy cow, Las Fallas, where do I even begin?! It was amazing!!! I'm talking fireworks at ALL hours of the day, and not the little wimpy baby kinds, they were like the kinds that are so loud, they sound like bombs going off!! Actually, the streets did sort of look like a warzone with the firework remnants littered everywhere and the booming sounds in the background.

I was there for Thursday night, which apparently was the most insane night of them all. There were at least 100,000 people out on the street at 3 am. Jesus said this was definitely the craziest he'd seen it all month. We bought some fireworks and lit them off in the street (and off the balcony) too, so that was really cool. I don't know if I'd do that in the USA though, haha. Here the cops really didn't care if you were lighting off fireworks or drinking in the street; it was the most bizarre thing. At one point I saw a group of people sitting on cop cars, drinking, and the cops were just chilling nearby.

They had a street that was decorated entirely in lights. Every street had a few light decorations, but Calle Sueca was the most decorated of them all! I took about a million pictures of it; here's one of them. You can kind of see how far back it goes. It was definitely really awe-inspiring. And it sort of reminded me of Disney World or something.

Friday is when all the neighborhoods light off las Mascletas, or their own sets of extremely loud fireworks. Jesus and I went and watched the fireworks for the biggest falla. By the way, a falla is a GIANT paper/cardboard sculpture (but trust me, they don't look like paper or cardboard!) I'm putting a picture here to show you guys...

That's one of the smaller ones, too. Every neighborhood has a falla, and a ninot, or a little falla. Some of these fallas can take up to a year to make and cost hundreds of thousands of euros. And, at the end of the festival...


They burn them!!!!! I watched 3 burn and they were all really impressive. It was a pyromaniac's dream. They also had a huge falla of the Virgin Mary, consecrated with row upon row of roses.


A lot more happened at Las Fallas, but I'd better stop for now since this blog is getting kind of long. The week after, my aunt and uncle came to visit and I took them around Madrid! Finally, this week we're in Sevilla for Semana Santa, or Holy Week. More to come on that, later.

Luego!
Ariel

Cookies!

Hi everyone! I figured I'd update everyone on how things are going since I have a little time.

School has been going great, except last week on Thursday, they announced that my Thermodynamics class has changed hours...again. It's like they have ESP about when my other classes are, because both times this class has moved, it's been conflicting with another class. So, I just have to drop my fun Spanish History Through Cinema class and start taking Spanish Culture Postmodernity, which is equally cool, but I haven't attended class at all because I wasn't supposed to be taking it. Even worse, if I miss a certain number of classes, I can't sit for the final exam, so I have to go talk to some more people because this whole thing isn't my fault. This may sound really stressful, and it was at first, but I think my stress tolerance is increasing or something just by being in Spain. Yay?

The good news is, that's the worst thing that's happened recently :) I visited the Prado again this Sunday with Kruse, who has infinite wisdom over the subjects of the religious paintings because he's studying Theology and knows all these different languages. It's really cool! Both of us talked about how awkward church is here. Both in Germany and the United States, people sing in Catholic masses, but here, it's like a CD playing music for one song, and people just kind of mumble along to the mass. So at least I know I'm not weird for thinking Spanish church is weird.

On Sunday morning, I visited El Rastro (fleat market) again and bought a leather schoolbag! Now I really look like a European...just kidding 8) It's real leather, though, so it actually smells like leather, and lemme tell you, it's a REALLY strong scent. Right now it's airing out on the porch because my room was starting to smell like a tannery, yuck.

Oh yeah, I bought chocolate chip cookies today!! This may not sound that exciting, but cookies aren't really that big here, and I was kinda starting to miss them. (I'm not a big cookie fan in the first place so that's saying a lot.) And I bought different types of tea so now hopefully I can stay awake for my 8 am's. One of these days, I'm going to find somewhere that sells brownies. I miss those too.

Lately, there's been a lot of protests going on in Madrid. Parliament recently approved a law allowing abortion, which is somewhat unusual given the number of Catholics in Spain (it's like 76%.) I've seen a few protests from far away and MAN they're scary!! It's like 20x the GEO protests at U of I; there's so many people, it almost sounds like you're at a football game or something. It's just weird because I haven't seen many protests in my life.

One more thing: it's c-c-c-cold here this week!! The weather was great for the last couple of weeks, but it dipped down again for this week. This morning it was 34F when I was walking to school :S It stinks because I have a lot of early classes, so I have to walk to school when it's really cold. I end up wearing like 4 sweaters and a jacket and looking like a weirdo. Hopefully it gets warmer soon! I'm ready to start wearing dresses!!

I'm gonna make some Manzanilla (Chamomile) tea con anise and get to studying! :) Hasta luego, amigos!

Really? Cool! :)

The other day, the club for exchange students here organized a party at a bar, and I decided to go. It was a lot fun because I got to talk to so many other exchange students. I met people from France, China, Singapore, Switzerland, Germany, Mexico, and I can't even remember the rest, there were so many countries!

Every exchange student that wants a "buddy" is partnered with one, or a Spaniard that they can talk to for fun. I have a buddy, and we never actually found each other that night (it was REALLY crowded!!) But, in the process of trying to find him, I talked to a lot of other Spaniards.

The cool part was, they all said something at one point about how good my Spanish was! I couldn't believe it; at first I thought they were talking about someone else. I asked, "me??" and they were like "yep!" I guess that means I'm not nearly as terrible at Spanish as I think I am! :) I still have to work on rolling my R's, though. That always gets me.

Overall it was just a nice boost of confidence. Also, it's the weekend, woooooo!! I have a job interview today through Skype. Wish me luck!!

Luego!

Going for a Walk, and El Rastro

Today, I was going to try to go shopping to catch some of the sales as they start lowering prices ridiculously, but I found out I had to be back for dinner at 7:30. So, I decided to walk around my neighborhood instead, and it was definitely a good decision.

I walked up and down a few streets, made zig-zags across the blocks, and did a whole lot of window shopping. I found out there's lots of cool restaurants right around the corner, some cute little boutiques, a flower shop, and a whole lot of old-lady-clothing stores! (At least I know I won't be shopping around here very much.) And for some reason, walking around for an hour and a half gave me this really cool feeling of inner peace. Haha...not to sound like a hippie or anything, it was just very nice.

Up until now, I've been really nervous walking around, even if I have no reason to be on my guard. Our neighborhood is relatively safe; ie, you won't find a lot of pickpockets here, or so I've heard. But I just could not get myself to relax and stop to smell the roses. Finally today I got to, and it was the best feeling ever!

In other news, I went to Starbucks today because I was really craving coffee. It was like being in America for 2 minutes, except for when I was ordering. Oh yeah, and their Starbucks is HUGE!! It still manages to be packed every time I walk past it, though. I went early in the morning so almost nobody was there, but at any given time during the day, there's gotta be at least 40-50 students crowded around the tiny tables.

Oh, and I went to El Rastro on Sunday! El Rastro is a gigantic flea market that happens on Sundays. It was packed! There were so many people, it was hard to get to the booths sometimes. There were a few tourist-trap-like booths, but there were so many more cool ones. I didn't buy anything this week, but I'll definitely be returning next week to go on the hunt for a leather schoolbag! There were some antiques sections too, and they were selling a lot of cool stuff.

As a side note, almost every furniture salesman had a pocket trumpet for sale. They like to leave them out on tables for decoration, I think, although that is definitely not my type of decoration since I would most likely want to pick it up and play it instead of leaving it out. I think I saw at least 4 that day.

Today I started my Circuits Theory class and started talking to this Spanish girl named Maria. I told her I was from the United States, and she went, "oh! I lived in Kansas for awhile. It sucks..."I lol'd for real. Morris, Illinois probably isn't that different from Kansas, so I would have to agree with her observation.

We're having dinner soon, so that's all for now! I always seem to write these before meals, hmmm.

Tata for now!