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I am writing at random about my life in Spain thus far so I hope you can transcribe my thoughts into some type of meaning. I came on the 11th of January and will leave June 4th for the US. In my time here I hope to study, travel, and improve my Spanish considerably.

MY HOME - I live in apartment in city center of Santiago de Compostela with a host family. I have my own room here with leather furniture and a television. It’s a small and comfortable apartment and suits me well.

MY TEMPORARY FAMILY - I live with a family here and my host mom’s very nice. She is a widow and teaches at a school. She has three sons. I spent the weekend with one of them on the coast in a beach house. My first day here Pepita, my mom here, welcomed me with the customary kisses on the cheeks and even tucked me into bed. I haven’t had that in a long while. She does all of my laundry and cooks my meals. Other than my grandma, I have never met anyone that irons every piece of clothing. Ha!

SPANISH LIFE - Socially the typical life of a student is very different than in the US. Breakfast is a small meal or drink followed by lunch at 3:00 and supper around 9:00 or 10:00. The stores close for a couple hours in the afternoon for siestas and if you going to las discotecas you should plan to leave around 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning because nobody is there before then. My first weekend was a little hard, since I am not used to staying out till 7:00 in the morning. Call it culture or call it crazy, I don’t know!!!

FOOD - The guy that lived with my host mom last semester gained 20 pounds, cuz she likes to cook, but for the most part the food is relatively healthy and traditional, but since everyone walks everywhere there are no major weight problems here.

SCHOOL - My classes are all in Spanish, but my professors are all very good and have had American students in the past so they are pretty accommodating. I don’t think they’ll be too easy, but it’s part of my education, and nobody said it would be easy. Between the North and South campuses here there are 14,000 or so students at the University of Santiago de Compostela.

SANTIAGO - It is an extremely old city with a strong Catholic heritage. I think there are about 400,000 people living here. Santiago is Spanish for Saint James, an apostle. We went to the Cathedral Sunday for mass and saw where he was buried etc. The cathedral is one of 54 churches here and is amazingly huge. It is also the end of a pilgrimage that thousands of people trek each year in Spain. I think that I’m doing part of that pilgrimage in the spring. The streets and sidewalks here are made from different types of stones and some of the buildings are older then the United States itself. Roads are small and city layout is difficult to understand as there is very little order to the street system.

TRAVEL - I finish classes May 6th and then have time to travel and hopefully see some of you guys that are in Europe. I will be in touch with you shortly. I was able to spend last weekend in Portugal visiting Fatima, Sintra, and Lisbon via bus, train, metro, and taxis. It was a great weekend full of many beautiful castle tours, palaces, ocean views etc. Fatima was enlightening as it is the small village where Mary revealed herself 6 times in 1917 to three children and on her final revelation made the sun dance in front of 70, 000 people, unexplainable to astronomers today. The story is too long to explain but very interesting. Since we went during the off season it was not crazy but in peak season hundreds of thousands make the trip to Fatima.

The first week here was a little confusing, but it’s getting easier over time. I’ve had some interesting conversations with locals and they seem to be interested in the US and my experiences here etc. so it’s all good. However, George Bush = “no comment” in many cases…

In South Africa I was on my own a little more and didn’t have the cultural influences as much as I do living with a family. I also have the language barrier this time and have made a few funny mistakes already, but I just laugh and learn.

There are a lot of smokers here and smoking in public places is a bit of a shock to me.
Along that line, I joined a gym here and try to go for a little bit each day. I met a guy at the gym and we have been running together. He knows the city better than I do and that’s a big benefit for me.

Ok, so my thoughts may be random and lengthy, but now you know my life for this semester in a nutshell. Happy days and good health to everybody reading this.

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