Why I am here...

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Sabado 31 Enero 2009—I arose around 10:30 to meet Johan at the train stations so that we could go to the outdoor market. This week, the market was huge, filling about 400 parking spaces if not more with fruit/vegetable, belts, shirts, purses, shoes, and other vendors. Although the stuff is really cheap, it is low quality, so we stuck with just getting fruit. We ended up getting four narajas (oranges) that were seriously bigger than grapefruit for 50 cents. I think that they were the best oranges that I have ever had. After the market, we met up with two other people from the program and explored the neighborhood a little before we all had to head back for lunch with our host familias. After a siesta, I had planned to go to Benidorm, a city near to Alicante for the night, but unfortunately, it looked like it could rain on Sunday, so I just met up with some friends for the evening.


Domingo 1 Febro 2009—I slept in late today, but mi abuela still had a breakfast for me when I woke up. She was over because mis padres had gone hiking in the mountains for the day. Although, my two host hermanos, ages 26 and 15 were still home, its Spanish culture that the mother/grandmother to always be there to serve/prepare meals. It is nice to always have home cooked meals and the place cleaned, but you’d think that for one day, we could manage getting our own lunch. Today was also the first gloomy day in Alicante with it being overcast and damp. I say damp because the mountains to the west of the city block most of the rain, so it’s more of a slight drizzle when it does rain. This meant that it was a perfect day to spend sleeping and searching for places to visit. Being in Europe, there are so many things that I want to do and see, but my weekends are filling up fast and I do have a limited budget. However, I know that I will be back to Europe in the future numerous times, so I am going to use this time here as my introductory tour of Europe to figure out what I like to do here, where to stay and what countries/cities I want to return to.

Just because I am in Spain, doesn’t mean I don’t still enjoy American sports. First, I listened to the Marquette verse Georgetown game on my computer. I really enjoyed this because not only did I get to listen to the game, but also to my roommate from Marquette because he was one of the broadcasters, but also to the pep band in the background. I miss numerous things at Marquette, but I really wish I could go to a Marquette game and play my trumpet for 19,000 fans again. I guess I’ll have to wait until next year for that wish to come true. I also got to see the Super Bowl, but it was a late game for me seeing that it started at 12:30 am my time. We knew that some pub downtown would have the game on, so we went downtown to find one. The first place was packed, so some of us headed to another one that only had a few people in it. This ended up being the perfect place. The pub was pretty chill, and the people there were 15 English guys in Spain for a guy only weekend. They were in their late twenties and early thirties, so a good group to watch the Super Bowl with. However, they knew nothing about American football, meaning that we had to do some educating. Unfortunately, the pub could only get the Spanish broadcast, so there were no commercials and all the commentary was in Spanish. Instead of listening to awful Spanish broadcasters that we didn’t understand, we just played music that was fun to sing/dance to whenever the game got a little boring. The two guys that I talked to the most were Lee Johnson (can you have much more of an English name) and a guy named Lewis (just like my middle name). It was a fun time, but I left with some of my friends at halftime because it was 3:30am and I had to get up for school the next day at 7:00.


Lunes 2 Febero 2009—I fixed my lack of sleep this morning with some coffee on campus. One thing that I would like to note is that I miss American coffee. Here, the coffee taste amazing, but it is basically good tasting espresso, it’s that strong and about the same size. I was at a café with friends the other day and one of them got Café Americano, which is a normal Spanish size cup of coffee with about a cup of water added to it. Even my host Madre has commented that American coffee is watered down, but I don’t care, I really enjoy drinking 30+ oz of coffee. But back on topic, my language class now is only 2 hours a day because we have started the normal class schedule. I got back my exam and homework from the week before and saw that I had got a “B” on both of them, which I was excited about seeing because I had studied hard to get caught up with the other students in this higher level class. After, my two hour Spanish language class, I headed to my Camino de Santiago class. This class has only three other students in it and is taught by the same teacher as my language class. She is an amazing professor that is really passionate and lived in London for five years, so she speaks English with a British accent. However, in this class she teaches it in a combination of English and Spanish, which sounds scary, but is actually really cool to see how my brain can switch between the two languages. I’m really excited for this class because we spend three months learning about the folklore, legends, food, music and the cultural/religious history of the pilgrimage. Basically, St. John, one of the disciples came to preach in northern Spain and when he was killed; his body was buried in Northwest Spain. Centuries later, a Cathedral was built over his grave and in the 10th threw 12th centuries; the pilgrimage to this cathedral was the most popular in Europe. Today, it is the third most popular Christian pilgrimage in the world after pilgrimages to Rome and the Holy Land. Also, during my spring break, my class with the 21 other kids in the Spanish version of this class actually get to do the last 62 miles of this pilgrimage over a week. (There are numerous different routes to this cathedral and can be found as faraway as in Russia, England, and Italy, but all of these routes converge on the same last few hundred miles)

After two hours of this class, I went to my History of Spain class, which was also in English. This class looks to be very interesting because Spain has had a very colorful past, especial in the last century as it went through a civil war, a 40 year dictatorship and now becoming a socialist government. In this class, the professor asked us why each of the eight of us why were had come to Spain. It was interesting to hear each other’s responses, so I thought that I would put mine up here for people like my dad who didn’t understand why I wanted to study abroad. Although it sounds like I am applying for a job, this is basically what I said, “I knew that I wanted to study abroad because what other time in your life can you go and experience another culture. Also, college is an amazing time in a person’s life because you are learning academically, about yourself and about the world around you, why not do these in a foreign country. I choose Spain because the Hispanic influence in the United States is becoming larger every year and understanding some of it will not only make me a better citizen but will allow me to be a better physician assistant. I realized that at the end of my time here I will not be even close to fluent, but I will be able to calm down a Hispanic patient when I am treating them. I choose CIEE-Alicante because Marquette won’t let me go through any of their programs because I didn’t know enough Spanish.” After six hours of straight class on little sleep, I was hungry and tired, so it took the bus home from campus and quickly ate lunch so I could catch a nap.
Before I went to my dance class, I met up with some friends to go to this chill vino bar that one of them had discovered. Now, I’m not a big drinker, but a glass of wine with some bread and jamon serono seemed to be a great idea before learning how to dance. This Latin dance class was a lot of fun because it was all CIEE students who can’t dance being taught how to do the salsa and morango (or something like that) by this Spanish woman. Also, although the class cost 55 Euros for the 4 times we meet, CIEE picked up 45 Euros of it, so it’s really cheap. However, don’t expect be to show you what I learned because I can’t dance, even after lessons.


Martes 3 Febero 2009—Today, like every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, I only had my two hour language class, so I was done by eleven. Seeing that I didn’t want to go home quite yet, I explored a nearby mall and grocery store where I found some really cheap clothes. After returning home for lunch and a nap, I met up with CIEE back downtown to go tour a fee museum of paper macha. Every year in June, the city has a festival where about twenty 35-40 foot paper macha statues are made in the street and then burned. After the best one is voted on, a small section is saved and kept in this museum. This was really cool to look at because they had sections and pictures going back to the early 1900s. After this, we all went to get churros con chocolate, which is basically fried dough that you dip in hot chocolate pudding. For you chocoholics out there, this was amazing.


Miercoles 4 Febero 2009—Today, like Monday, I had six hours of class. I am still really excited for all my classes, but my history one is scaring me with all the work he is requiring. Like a 12 single space page research paper along with 2 exams, even for Monday I have a 1.5 page mini research paper due, but I’ll live. I also met up with friends for the vino bar and then went to the dance class again. I think I improved a little, but I really didn’t care if I did because it was a blast.

--Sorry this got so long; I had a busy week and didn’t have time to do this earlier.
-- If you survived reading this and want to know when I post other entries, subscribe to my blog and you will receive an email every time I post something, that way you don’t have to kept checking the blog to see if I have posted something.
--Also, the pictures look a little blurry on the blog, I don’t know how to fix this.

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Photos

Mi Familia
From left to right, Luis, Mi Padre, Mi Madre, Mi Abuela. My older brother Alejadro is not pictured. We are eating paella for lunch on Saturday.

Super Bowl
The view of the pub from the loft.

Super Bowl
Go Steelers

Super Bowl
Americanos that are glad to be watching the game.

Museum
Yes, they build huge works of art just to burn them. This is one tiny secgion that was saved.

Museum
Here is another section from a different year.

Comments

[Christy]

host family
Your host family looks so cute, and friendly. I hope you don't get too use to someone always cooking for you bc I don't think that will fly with your mom...HAHA!!! o and by the way eat one of those chocolate things for me they sound good. Keep on having fun!!!