Study Abroad 2017: ~Semana Uno (Week 1)~

For pictures, see end of post.

¡Hola mis amigos! Well it is now Saturday and that means I have made it through the week. I guess it doesn’t matter where you are--the weekend is still a wonderful thing. It has been a roller coaster of a week. There have definitely been times where I consider moving here because I love the beautiful beach and palm trees or the fact that it doesn’t get dark until 10pm. Then, there are times where I miss America and the comforts of home so much that it hurts. I think this week was definitely an experimental week. There are 16 other students in the program all from DU, but almost none of us knew each other before this trip. There is a benefit to that because then that allows us to start fresh become friends at the same time. The hard part is that we are all so different. We are learning to navigate life in Santander very quickly and I am sure, in no time, we will have our groups. We all live in very spread out parts of the city. I am the only one that is by the beach, which is nice, but it is a more heavily tourist part of town and I am about a 25 minute walk to anyone else’s house. Without any phone service, it’s very tough to connect and meet up at places. Luckily, we have wifi at our houses and can message through WhatsApp so it’s working out. It’s very cheap to get a phone plan here so that’s also a possibility.

I definitely admit it is different than I expected. I actually did not know what to expect. There have been two nights with my host family that I absolutely loved. For dinner, which we have at about 9pm, it was a candlelit dinner with two courses and Sangria and dessert. The food was delicious but I also just loved the time we spent talking. I feel like I have already improved a lot with my speaking and understanding in Spanish, especially with how confident I am, so it was enjoyable for me to have a conversation with the entire family. My host mom has a cook that comes and makes dinner in the afternoon. In Colorado, I do not like fish besides sushi. Here, they have a dish called “paella” that is rice with all sorts of different fish like shrimp and mussels and clams. I actually really enjoy it! It’s very fresh. In Spain, for lunch, which is from 1-3pm roughly, it is common to order “El Menú del Día” which is where you choose off a limited menu and get two courses, dessert, and a drink for between 12-18 euros depending on how nice the restaurant is. I’ve also gone to the grocery store about 3 times already and I’m always so proud of myself for figuring out how to pay and ask for help. It makes me feel like a local. The store is called Lupa and I have one right down the street from my house. One of the things I’ve noticed is that it is really hard to work out. Don’t get me wrong, I walk about 15,000 steps a day but that isn’t a good old workout at a gym. The University’s gym is very small and there are no fitness gyms here that I’ve seen. I’ve gone on a run and it was wonderful but my sleep schedule is too messed up right now to do it consistently. I need a schedule first so I can get to bed early enough to run before class. But the run was definitely one of my high points this week. It was so beautiful and the weather was perfect.

School was hard but good! I really like all my teachers and they are teaching me a lot. I have found that my “accent” is very hard for them to understand. Even if I know how to say the sentence, they don’t understand me because I say it weird. They also have a heavy accent and don’t use as much slang as mexican spanish so it is very difficult to try to comprehend everything they say. I think spain spanish is so pretty though. My favorite word that they say here is “vale” which just means okay, but the way they use it in a sentence makes their language sound very beautiful and it flows so nicely.

Well today we had an excursion as a group where we toured Roman ruins and made bricks out of mud and straw ropes and saw the inside of the huts and then the insides of massive 10,000 square foot houses for Romans who were very rich. I’m glad we went on the excursion but everything was in Spanish and there were a lot of words that were tough to understand because they were tools or things about their history. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t even understand it in English. It would have been even better if I wore the appropriate clothes. It was rainy and there was a lot of fog and mist which made it super cold because we were in the “mountains.” Although, compared to Colorado mountains, they were just hills. All of us had all planned to wear shorts and tank tops because it has been so hot the last few days. Instead it was cold and windy so we all froze and that just didn’t help us enjoy it as much. I’m really happy I still have the rest of tonight and all day tomorrow to hang out and chill before week 2 starts.

Two more things that I anticipated to be easy but that has actually been hard is the time difference and down time. Eight hours is just enough where I am pretty much on opposite schedules as my friends and family back home. There are small windows of time where I can talk to someone but then they have to be available too. It works, it’s just harder than I had thought. Also, I had heard that it is easy to get lonely because you have nothing to do and you have so much free time. WRONG. At least right now--because we have been so busy so I have hardly had time to have any down time. I guess if you know me, you know down time and me just don’t go in the same sentence. But I’m striving for it! I will get my down time one of these days...or weeks...or months...

I miss all of you and hope all is well! Thanks for reading! I keep thinking my blogs will get shorter and then that doesn’t happen. Hmm, well ¡hasta luego!