Pure Spanish Joy

I really think my weekend in Madrid might have been the best thing that ever happened to me. Until this week in Salamanca, that is. Because once you’ve mastered meeting your basic needs in a given city, you can move onto new (Spanish) tasks, altogether more enjoyable than laundry. I had so many distinct moments of pure joy this week. A few examples are listed below.

INTERCAMBIO-MANIA
i.e. demystifying the mystifying Spanish

Intercambio: definition: the way to meet Spanish friends. A chance to meet and get coffee, speak in English for a while, and speak in Spanish for a while. Basically the equivalent of a language inspired blind date (even if your intercambio partner is a girl). Intercambios can be found on flyers around campus or on the university’s website. Once you communicate via email for awhile, you agree to meet at some cliché common meeting place: under the clock in the plaza mayor, at the frog on the university’s façade, etc. From there, it is truly a first date: feeling each other out, getting to know the basics about one another, deciding if more intercambios are in your mutual future.

Okay, now that we’re all on the same page, I’ll be honest. I was made for intercambios. Es decir, I am most comfortable one on one, I have an intense desire to practice Spanish, and I have no problems helping people with English. Although we were all eager to intercambio it up immediately, our program warned us that they don’t get up and running until mid February when classes are well under way.

So, this week, I had my first intercambio! And it was amazing. We talked about our lives, we talked about our classes, we talked about traveling and our families and weird dreams we’ve been having lately. We did all of this in a mix of English and Spanish and Spanglish, making it all the more enjoyable and rewarding. The thing about intercambios is that the person is also attempting to learn a new language, and is therefore unbelievably patient and helpful. (Even though our host moms are kind, they cannot possibly relate to attempting to conduct their lives in a foreign language because they have never tried). At certain points in the 2 hour plus conversation, we got tired, couldn’t think of words, and made mistakes (I told him my professor was “corto” instead of “bajo,” communicating that he was stunted mentally instead of short). But we only used the dictionary twice and were able to cover a wide variety of topics. We made lots of plans for the rest of the semester, and I left the café feeling rejuvenated and content.

Intercambio side note: almost as enjoyable was when I returned home late for cena and faced intense questioning from my host mom. By which I mean, once she found out the intercambio partner was, in fact, a boy my age, she bombarded me with questions. Is he cute? Is he tall? Where does he live? What does he study? He didn’t walk you home in the rain??

Intercambio side note 2: On Wednesday, our program sponsored and intercambio party and invited Spanish students. This is basically an awkward mixer where you feel each other out and decide if you want to trade contact information. Although I spent a while being awkward before jumping into the fray, I had some good conversations at the party as well. Throughout the night, my friends and I had a brilliant realization: the Spaniards can be just as awkward as us. And although there’s no exact translation for the word awkward, this realization is quite helpful for our relations, indeed.

A Real Life University Class

After a scary brush with the Inquisition, I was excited to try another university class. With my English teaching schedule, few options were open, so I selected a gender class that meets Thursday nights. Unfortunately, nobody told the professor about my enthusiasm to try her course, and she failed to show up for the first two weeks. This week was sort of do or die time (except that really the only choice was “do” because I am required to have both a university class and a schedule with five courses). Furthermore, Friday the 13th marked the last day to change our schedules around. Leaving me no time to try out other classes.

Luckily, everything went great on Thursday! The professor is very nice, and although I’ve taken a lot of courses on gender before, I’ve never taken one focused on Spain, and I’ve never taken one taught in the Spanish language. The teacher talks fast, and I missed a few punchlines of her jokes, but at the end of the night, I had to give myself props. It’s not everyday that one enrolls in a course in Spain as if she were an average Joe (Juan? Juana?) Spanish student. I consider taking in the information and making organized notes an accomplishment. So imagine how I’ll feel after writing a paper and taking an oral final! (yikes!!)

Sunny with a Chance of Crazy

I have decided that I suffer from seasonal depression. I know this not because I feel bad when it is cold and cloudy and rainy. I know this because I feel on top of the world whenever the sun shines for more than half an hour. Coincidentally, the sun arrived in Salamanca this week. As in five days of consecutive sun. As in my umbrella did not flip once this week, doing wonders for my mental health.

Now, before coming to Salamanca, I heard how the city has an amazing student life. I also heard that in Spain, the social life is almost exclusively outside of the home. Everything takes place on the streets and in restaurants. The problem is that it’s somewhat difficult to establish an amazing outdoor social life from under umbrellas, coats, scarves, hats and gloves. Even more so if you have to overcome shivering to talk. This week, all of these problems dissolved. The city came alive. Students lounged on the steps outside of the university. The Plaza Mayor filled up with guitar players and people eating ice cream. People juggled. I nearly died of happiness.

For some reason, my friends and I can’t just be normal bystanders or onlookers. Whenever we sit on the Plaza Mayor, we seem to hold an invisible sign that says: Please talk to us. This would be great if Don Juan responded, but we constantly attract a slightly more mature, senior citizen crowd. Thursday, three of us were sharing a bench with a real life dijeridou player who was providing the whole plaza with mood music. (For those of you who don’t know what that is, I’ve provided a picture above. Just an example. Not the Plaza Mayor man). An older woman came to sit with us, talking to us about America, asking if the dijeridou player was from the United States, telling us horror stories about drinking too much Sangria, describing her cooking, wishing us luck on our studies, and telling us to be safe. Naturally, we had no problem with her. However, the bench became a bit too crowded and uncomfortable upon the arrival of an older gentleman. He touched my hand and talked about my ice cream. He touched Jenny’s hair and said, “RUBIA!” (“blondie!”) He said a lot of other words that we couldn’t understand. Luckily, the woman told him to knock it off: “dejalas en paz. Que son muy maja!” My friends and I were able to briefly overcome our fear of Mr. Touchy Feely to be honored by her compliment. Another person who thinks we are good! Yess! We kindly thanked her and politely excused ourselves from the bench.

El Dia de San Valentin

Thursday, a friend texted me to inform me that I had a package at the IES center. As soon as a got a spare minute, I rushed to the center in great anticipation. I was not disappointed: a valentine’s day package from some of my dearest Tulsa friends! Just in the nick of time! American candy! Adorable cards! I am one lucky girl. The valentine’s package came in a week of increased communication from the homefront: valentine’s day cards from my mommy and daddy as well as both sets of grandparents. I’ve also been able to get internet in my homestay (although inconsistently) which is greatly improving overall communication this week. I had my first official skype date today, complete with audio and video, with Laura, Aaron, and Otis. We were all happy to see each other, although Otis was mostly unaware of what was going on. Sometimes, while here, (like when I receive surprise communication) I get to feeling bursts of love for my family and friends in the States. Rather than making me feel sad, I just get to feel like the luckiest girl in the world.

PS The valentine’s day package presented an interesting situation, as my friends were naturally very jealous. “Your friends love you more than ours do!” they told me. “My friends are the best at being friends” I replied. I found myself walking a thin line between showing my utter appreciation and pride for my home friends and making my Spain friends feel sad. So I just shared my valentine’s candy and kept most of my joy internal. :)

An “Amazing” Day at the Colegio

You may be thinking, “How could the week possibly get any better?” Well, it could end with a beautiful day at the elementary school. Say I unlocked a new communication skill for my English students. Or say they, too, made me adorable valentines. Or say, the hot gym teacher eyed me in the teacher’s lounge and asked me about my plans for the weekend. None of these things actually occurred, but an English teaching assistant can dream.

Here is what actually went down Friday. Miss Lucie and I taught the first graders art, as usual. Due to some glitch in the scheduling, there’s about 10 minutes when we should be in two places at once: waiting for the first graders to get picked up for gym, and starting Science with the fifth graders. Last week, I started the fifth grade lesson. This week, Miss Lucie left me with 26 Spanish six year olds. We had no objectives for the ten minutes, except to just wait them out. Which is possibly manageable, for ten minutes. When thirty five minutes pass and the teacher has failed to show up, things get a little chaotic. (Let’s just pretend they weren’t total chaos from the beginning). I had managed to entertain everybody (most everybody) with a game of “Dr. Monkey Says” (a version of Simon says?) for a while. But after twenty minutes, and with a limited set of English words, the game loses its magic. I attempted to teach “Heads Up Seven Up,” but only had about 8 interested participants. “And what of the other 18 niños?” you may wonder. Well, a few boys were in the back of the room emptying the contents of the trash can and strewing them about. Some kids were sitting on desks. Some were laughing and yelling. Some were crying. A pretty steady stream were filing in and out to the toilet. (because we use British words, it is the toilet). As for me, I alternated between yelling, attempting to reign them in, and just internally crying while surveying the situation.

Amidst the mess, one adorable girl approached me. “Miss Emily, I have a headache.” (internal response: “no ‘kidding’.” (let’s be honest- real internal response was a bit stronger) how could you not in here??). “Me too,” I said. “I’m sorry. We’ll have to rest this weekend.” The day concluded with Miss Lucie rescuing me and being very kind and apologetic and stressed out, and with the distribution of sandwiches for Operación Bocata (Operation Sandwich). This is a fundraiser that the school puts on, meaning several parents arrived to eat lunch with their kids. One mom was explaining to me that she needed to pick up her daughter and her sandwich so that they could eat together. When I failed to form an intelligent response about the sandwich situation, she asked me, “or don’t you speak any Spanish at all?” I was irked. I told her that, sí I speak Spanish thank you very much, but the truth is that I just didn’t know anything about Operación Bocata. Of course, the conversation was a bit strained over the yelling, playing children, who were at this point, exploring the bag of sandwiches. Ay dios mio.


You can’t win ‘em all. But some weeks, you can come very very close. My week ended with a guided tour of Salamanca, thanks to my intercambio. I went to a real life Spanish obra de teatro (play) in which I understood everything except for some jokes. (Jokes are hard because they require both a sophisticated use of the language, and some knowledge of the historical period). I spent more time outside, wandering, people watching, and finding a beautiful park. I hung out with new friends from my program. I went to a hip hop/ break dance battle, which was off the hook (just kidding. I don’t actually talk like that).

Sorry about the length of this post. When you’re bursting with joy, sometimes it’s hard to contain yourself. :)