Tag Archives: experience

A Letter to Sevilla

Oh, Sevilla.

How you exhaust me! I’ve now become acquainted with your winding cobblestone streets, your beautiful people, higher temperatures, and incredible monuments. Although acquainted doesn’t necessarily mean I would admit to knowing you just yet. It was only four days ago that I managed to get lost on my way home from a day trip.

However, I do think we are getting along nicely.

I must say, you have so much beauty. Several hundreds years worth. In my time that I’ve been here, I have gotten to visit your cathedral and look out of the bell tower, your amazing plaza, your incredible palace (where they filmed Game of Thrones), and a bunch of places in between!

Pretty incredible, huh? They even filmed a portion of star wars here!

Pretty incredible, huh? They even filmed a portion of star wars here!

You have kept me so busy that I’ve barely had any time to blog about you. I can’t believe how quickly time has passed here. And yet, I have had the opportunity to do so much already. Even though I’ve done a lot, I know that it still won’t be everything I wish to do. Therefore, Sevilla, I must cope with the knowledge that I may never truly get to know you as much as I had hoped.

What I have learned though is that you are, at times, like any other city. You have graffiti across some walls and monuments, and quite a few homeless people begging for money on the streets. There’s trash on the ground in some places, and I occasionally feel assaulted by smells that I would rather not smell. But at the same time, you are so different from anything I’ve ever known. History is rooted so deeply here. In the United States, you can’t see things like you do here. Our country simply isn’t old enough. Compared to you, my country is just an adolescent! Don’t take offense though, Sevilla, you age beautifully.

I have enjoyed you so much in such little time and will be sad when we part and go our separate ways in a few weeks. However, I will be happy to be home as well. You’re like a dream, Sevilla. And everybody knows that at some point, you must wake up from your dreams. I will appreciated your beauty while I’m still dreaming, although I know that I will do so even after I wake up.

Until then, Sevilla.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back and Better than Ever

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I’ve been avoiding writing this blog post for FAR too long. A few *cough, cough* weeks, to be exact. In the whirlwind of getting home
and readjusting to my newly sedentary life of movie-binging and Internet-surfing,
I just haven’t wanted to force myself to reflect. Everyone keeps asking me,
“How was the experience? What was your favorite part? What’s your best story?”
For some reason, I find it really difficult to answer with anything other than,
“It was awesome: an incredibly worthwhile experience.” I can’t figure out how
to boil down 4 months into one sentence. How can I describe my multitude of
failures, triumphs, and self-discoveries in a few short phrases? I guess the
best way for me to review my semester in Buenos Aires is by reflecting on my
goals:

1.    
Achieve fluency. That didn’t happen, but I was
able to survive in a foreign country, conversing with locals on a daily basis,
AND I wrote multiple 4-8 page essays in Spanish, so I think I accomplished
something.

2.    
Learn to relax. I definitely think I’ve improved
in this department. I’m a planner, and I used to get very annoyed and upset
when my plans didn’t end up working out. Now, however, after living in a city
where my plans never worked out the way I wanted, I’ve learned to breathe,
laugh it off, and adapt. This skill is incredibly helpful, and I absolutely
notice a difference between my adjusted attitude and those of the rest of my
family and even strangers on the streets.

3.    
Let go. I did (a few times, at least). Tango
really helped me achieve this, but so did my beautiful surroundings. All the
hikes around the amazing landscapes and ruins inspired me to step outside
myself and appreciate the wonders before me. I let go of the minutiae of my
daily life, so that I could revel in the marvel of nature and the strength of
the human spirit.

 

I feel like I’ve now lived three separate lives: Jess before
B.A.; Argentine Jess; and Jess after B.A. In Argentina, I lived my life as a
foreigner, but it nonetheless had a daily rhythm. I went to school, had lunch
at a café, explored the city, ate dinner, did homework, and occasionally
explored the nightlife. It wasn’t a vacation. It was an entire semester of living in another country. Then, I came
home. I came back to my “old life,” but I could feel that there was something
different. My way of thinking has changed and I have definitely caught the
travel bug, the adventure bug. I got a taste of what my life could be in South
America, and I’m hungry for more. I want to spend the rest of my life seeing
the world and meeting people from all over. There are bound to be some
game-changers in the mix.

 

In Argentina, I made some new lifelong (I hope) friends,
tasted an array of exotic foods, ate a bit too much dulce, learned to tango,
and discovered things about myself and about my goals that the U.S. couldn’t
have taught me. I needed to step outside of my comfort zone, which I did.
Studying abroad has been an eye-opening experience, and I am so grateful to my
parents and to Penn State for the opportunity. I encourage anyone and everyone
to take a leap of faith and do it. Alright, brace yourself for my corny theatre
geek side courtesy of Wicked: “Who
can say if I’ve been changed for the better, but I have been changed for good.”


Location: North Wales, Pennsylvania

A Million Minutes in a Day

Arrival and Start of Orientation!

So once everyone arrived on Monday, we all realized that our rooms were organized by first name, so I was in a room with two girls named Hannah! At first we thought it was a coincidence but then the room of Emilys and the room of Ashleys, and the room of Amandas assured us otherwise.

Dinner was great, there were lots of fresh veggies and fruit, and some meat, which looked good – for those who would eat it.

After eating, everyone took some time to primp and then split up and go out for drinks and to walk around. I ended up with girls from the room of Ashleys and a bunch of kids from Penn State, so it was fun to sit around and talk Happy Valley with some new and some familiar faces. A few of us that had Spanish 3 together freshman year are planning to go to Ronda, where our professor for that class was from, at some point in the semester. Ronda is unique for its beautiful landscape of cliffs and mountains, many peoples’ homes are carved right into caves and the sides of cliffs! Worth the trip, and in your case, checking out some photos 😉


O'Neil's
 I’ve spoken to some of the other kids from PSU who have both been here for a a few days and still arriving. I hope I have the opportunity to spend some time with them, this will be such a great experience for all of us to have together and go back to State with memories! Funny enough, the bar we went to tonight was Irish. So much for acquainting with the Spanish culture!! I’m sure though, that we’ll get plenty of that over the course of the semester 🙂



Pretty much everyone got back the the hotel by about 1am, which is very early for a normal night out here. We had to get up pretty early the next morning and most people were very jet-lagged from just having arrived, so that was a good thing.

Another Long and Busy Day

Breakfast yesterday, which I’d missed the day before, was great! There were cheeses and prunes, olives, tomatoes with mozzarella and pesto, and a variety of hot dishes that I decided against when I saw all the fresh fruit! Our “guia,” or guide, Carmen, told us that this was not very traditional breakfast food, and more typical of a hotel than a morning spread at home.


After breakfast, we left for 4-5 hour tours of town. We walked around the area where O’Neil’s was to see part of the university, and try to get bus (which is really just a giant rail car that shares the  street with regular street cars) tickets, but as Carmen said, sometimes they’re just not available at the nearest kiosk. So we walked a little further, and then took it all the  way through the part of town where I’d had dinner on the first night, and into el Centro, where the Cathedral, tons of shops, the main bank, and university buildings are located. We saw so many things on the tour that day, it would be hard to  recount. I’m sure we’ll see them all again and I’ll write about and have photos of them in due time.

During orientation they reiterated a lot of things that we’d read or heard about prior, but some things were new. Things like warnings about the fact that everyone wears slippers in the house because most homes (apartments, in our cases) have tile floors that get very cold in the winter.  We finally found out about our homestays, most of which were with families. Mine was with a woman and her elderly mother in an area called Triana, where I would live within blocks of all of the girls from my orientation group, and walking distance across the bridge from the university. We also had some information sessions about our classes and homestays, between which (and through the start of the latter of the two) I slept because I was soo exhausted from the constant activity.  The same was true today between breakfast and our check out at noon, probably because we had such a late night last night.  We left the hotel after a short “descanso” (break), and headed for a flamenco show in town. The area we went to is called Barrio (neighborhood) de Santa Cruz, and used to be inhabited by the Jewish population of Sevilla. Now, there are some remnants of their presence, but mostly in the form of galleries and small pieces of Judaica in little glass cases. I saw one such case in La Casa de la Memoria de Al-Andalus (clearly more recently Moroccan-influenced), which was neat because everything else here is of very intensely Catholic, and/or Moorish roots – like the Catedral, which is a breathtaking mix of the two.

The flamenco itself was incredible. About 90 of us sat squeezed into a high-ceilinged room with a wide banner of ornate tile all the way around. There were old  deep red brick-tile floors  where the concrete underneath was partially exposed in one small spot from the continuous stomping of heels to a traditionally Spanish beat. After a routine, but comical advisory not to use cameras until the end, and that smoking and videos were prohibited, the show began. First, two men entered the room and sat in two chairs on the small stage. One played guitar while the other clapped, tapped his feet,  and sang. Next they moved off to sit behind the stage, and were joined by a dancer, who wowed the crowd with his sharp but flowing spins, stomps and turns. A woman eventually joined them to clap, and occasionally called out various phrases and words in time with the music. Later she danced while the male dancer did the same for her. It was when she was dancing that I remembered the profundity of the emotion behind this art. I was overcome with awe by the reality that flamenco begged of the dancer what I would expect to be a very deep emotional commitment, as well as a physical one. The man and woman then danced together, and made an abrupt exit before coming back in for a short encore and bows. That was when I started to truly feel like we were in Spain, when we saw this example of the dedication to the culture that has been so valued and well-preserved by its people.

After that, our half of the program (groups 1-9, 85 people + 9 guias), made our way down the street for tapas.  We ate so much, I didn’t know how I would walk home afterwards. Piles of potatoes with ketchup and mayonnaise, various roasted veggie, meat, and seafood dishes, and some interesting things I’d never seen before. For example, fried salsa balls, which were bite-sized spheres of pink salsa that tasted like gespacho, bread battered and deep fried. We didn’t get home until almost 1am, at which point some people were ready to (and some did) go out, while others hung around the bar until the lights went out and we figured it would be best to get some sleep.

Moving into the Homestay.

This morning, we had to be up by 9 am for breakfast, and downstairs at 10:30 for orientation activities and Spanish “entrevistas” (interviews), to confirm our language placement. Between the two I took a much needed nap, and afterwards brought down my bags to prepare to leave the hotel and move into my homestay at 11:30. Upon meeting my se�ora, or host mother, we exchanged a kiss on each cheek (always starting with the left), made fun of how much stuff I had (along with the other 20 se�oras standing around us), and caught a taxi to Triana. When we first got there, my host mom introduced me to her daughter and talked with some friends, and then helped me schlep those two deadweight bags up the 3 flights of steps to the 3rd floor. This is another thing about Spain that continually confuses me, despite the fact that I was educated about it in high school: the numbering of the stories in a building. The ground floor is considered Planta 0 (referred to as the “Planta baja”); the one above that, the primera (“1a”) Planta; and what we would call the third floor is la segunda (“2a”) Planta, and so on. In North American counting, we live on the 4th floor, which I prefer, mostly because 4 is my lucky number 🙂

When we finally got all of my stuff in, my host mom asked if I wanted to go for a walk with her daughter and grandson. I wanted to see some of town, so this was a perfect opportunity to do so. We walked around with her new born baby, Ivan, in a stroller, talked about Spain, where she lives now (outside the city in a place called Alcal�), and soaked up the warm afternoon sun. Another thing we learned from Carmen – which I witnessed again on this walk – was that it is perfectly normal for people to take a break in the middle of the day for tapas and a beer. The streets are always full of people sitting or walking around, enjoying the company of one another and the day. I love this aspect of the culture, and think it’s a healthy way to interact, get exercise, and some fresh air.

We had our first meal at about 2:30. It was a plate of potatoes, garbanzos, spinach, and pinto beans that had been cooked with pork (my fears of misunderstanding “red meat” became as real as i’d anticipated they might).  I had a little and simply explained that I include “cerdo” in the list of animals I don’t eat.

I had a quick Skype chat with my dad to update him on how things were going – it was nice to see him and hear his voice 🙂 My host mom then took me to meet up with my group at 4:15 in a plaza nearby. We walked from there to the university for more orientation meetings and info sessions. On the way, i realized that the main road between our neighborhood and the other side if the river, where we were headed, was Calle Betis! It’s one of the most popular strips of shops and tapas bars in town, which I’d heard about before I got here, and mentioned in a pre-trip post. Anyways, this time we walked into a large building where hundreds of students were studying for final exams, which are taking place in the next few weeks. After a grueling two hours of trying to keep our eyes open, and then waiting for who knows what, we found the guides that had been holding us up and made our way into town near the Catedral for tapas.

I went with two girls that I’ve been spending a lot of time with, Ronda and Hannah (Childs – who was my roommate at the hotel), to have some desert while everyone else had drinks at an outdoor bar with our guides afterwards. Ronda and I split a “postre” (dessert) de chocolate y galletas (chocolate and cookies – really more like “rich, soft, cream and choco-layer slice”) and each had coffee. This was delicious.


Finally, we made our way back towards our end of town with 3 other girls. Hannah and I were looking for my apartment after dropping Ronda off at hers, which actually happens to be part of the same building that I live in, and got a little lost. We walked into the wrong number apartment section simply because it was opened, and locked ourselves in by closing it behind us. Hannah was afraid we’d be there all night, but I assured her we’d find a way out in the next 5 minutes.  Without hesitation, I knocked on a door in the third floor, where I could hear loud voices, and a friendly looking man answered. I asked him in Spanish how we could get out, and if he would come down and unlock the door. He responded in English, and of course, it was much simpler than we’d realized. We just had to buzz ourselves out with a button that looks like the light switches on the way up the steps.

At last, Hannah and I made it into my apartment, when I realized that I had my address on my homestay assignment paper. She came in and I introduced her to everyone and then said goodnight. I just took my first shower in the apartment, which was great, considering the small quarters, relative to what I’m used to. I’ve already grown accustomed to asking to use anything that belongs to my host family, and using Spanish to communicate everything. I love Spain, and can’t wait to become better acquainted with my family and the area we live in 🙂

When do we eat? A cultural lesson.

Adjusting to the eating schedule has  been a bit of the challenge, but I like that we have a lot of time between meals, it means we’re hungry when we eat and we really appreciate the food! Breakfast is what ever time you get up, lunch is some time between 1pm and 3pm (or even later some times), and dinner usually consists of tapas any time from 8:30pm to 10ish. Eating late has never really worked well for me, but it helps that we walk around so much and have the opportunity to digest that way.


PS: Because the photo situation here totally sucks, and I’m going to be posting most things on my FaceBook anyways, I’d suggest checking that out. I have an album called Instagram Photos, which has edited versions of all my favorite photography, and will soon upload an album of all of my Spain photos 🙂

Location: Triana. Sevilla, Spain.