A que estoy escuchando - Thanksgiving edition!

Living in a country that doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving has not stopped me from being in the Holiday Spirit. I even have a Thanksgiving playlist on my Ipod.  So this week I'm sharing what I'm listening to for the holiday.  All these songs are American so you aren't learning much about what music Spaniards listen to this week.

Give Thanks and Praises - Bob Marely

The Thanksgiving Song - Adam Sandler

I've got Plenty to be Thankful for - Bing Crosby

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!!!

Thanksgiving in Spain

Thanksgiving is kind of an awkward time being in a foreign country thousands of miles away from your family and home. It’s really easy to complain about not being able to go home and not being able to spend the holiday with your family and friends. In my opinion, that is completely pointless. Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful for what you have and not a time to complain about what you don’t have or what you can’t do. So instead of wishing you could be with your family, be thankful you have a family missing you, loving you, supporting you and waiting for you to come home. There are many people in the world who don’t have that. When I signed up to be in Spain for a year, I knew that I would be missing out on birthdays and holidays and I decide that it would be worth it and, honestly, so far it is worth it. I am so fortunate to be where I am, with the people I’m with and I am very thankful for this opportunity. Here is what I’m thankful for this year:

A comer mi nina!

Calabazin Relleno

The first time we had this meal, I thought it was a chili relleno so I was really excited to be having something spicy.  Well, it’s a zucchini and we’re in Spain so it was definitely not spicy.  For anyone out there who might think Spanish food is the same as Mexican food, there is one HUGE difference.  Spicy food does not exist in Spain. Even when Carmen makes Mexican food (she makes fajitas about once a week) it’s not even as spicy as the mildest Mexican food I’ve had.  I had never even heard of anyone stuffing a zucchini before, but once you get use to the idea of it being a zucchini and get over the disappointment of it not being spicy, it’s actually very good.  It’s another one of my favorites (I think I say that about everything Carmen cooks).  It’s stuffed with ground pork, tomato, more zucchini and lots of cheese.

Las Alpujarras

This past weekend I went on an ISA trip to La Alpujarras.  Las Alpujarras are cluster of small towns in the Sierra Nevadas.  We left on Saturday morning and as soon as we got to the town we were staying at we left for a hike.  I can't tell you how far we hiked but it was a good 5 or 6 hours.  The mountains where gorgeous but it was a little wet and slippery and with my like of balance (my mom must have some sense of humor naming me Grace) I fell a few times.  But the few bruises I have are definitely worth it.  Besides the hike, we just had free time to walk around the town or hang out in the hotel.  The town really was extremely tiny.  It took about 10 minutes to walk from one side of the town to the other. 

Exams

This past 2 weeks I’ve had midterms. I only had three tests and I feel like they all went pretty well.  I had a test in Literature, History of Art and Grammar.  The only grade I’ve gotten back so far is my Literature test.  The grading is a little different here.  You get a grade form 1 – 10 so you would think it would be like 10 is perfect, 9 is an A, 8 is a B, 7- C, 6-D and anything below that is an F, but it doesn’t sound like that’s the way it works.  A 5 and above is passing and apparently a 7 is equal to a B in the States. I got an 8 on my test so apparently that’s pretty good. The next round of exams is a little less than a month away, the week of the 12-16 of December.

Para Practicar

I’ve always been pretty good at finding “free time” to do things I enjoy, but here, I actually have a lot of free time.  Outside of being in class for a minimum of 20 hours a week, there isn’t a lot I have to do for school.  The only consistent homework I have is Grammar and Italian which combined takes no more than 30 minutes. Every once in a while, I’ll have to write a one page paper about my personality or something easy like that, or I’ll have to read something for my Literature class.  Other than that, I have a lot of free time to decide what to do with, so I’ve been trying to find things that I’ll enjoy but can also help me improve my Spanish.  I’ve been reading Twilight in Spanish and I just finished that. Now don’t be too impressed.  I’ve already read Twilight in English so I already knew the story pretty well.  And also, it’s Twilight. It’s not exactly the hardest Spanish to understand.  It was interesting reading an English book translated into Spanish because I actually found a few mistakes in the translation.  There are quite a few phrases in both English and Spanish that, if translated directly, make absolutely no sense.  Like “I’m sick of it” if translate to Spanish is “Estoy enferma de esto” and if you say that to a Spaniard they will literally think you are sick with something.  The way you say “I’m sick of it” in Spanish is “Estoy hasta la nariz” which translated to English is “I’m up to the nose”.  There were quite a few little mistakes like this in the Twilight.

Now that I’m done with Twilight, I’m reading this book called La Celestina.  I read a little bit of it for my Literature class and I really liked it so I thought it would be cool to read the whole thing.  I’ve only gotten through the prologue so far.  It’s going to be a little hard to understand then Twilight was.  I have to keep my Spanish dictionary out while I’m reading because I pretty much have to look up every other word.

A que estoy escuchando!

Granada

There is this opera song about Granada. My History of Art professor plays it for us at the beginning of every class and printed of the lyrics for us and has us sing along. By the time this class is over I should be able to sing the whole song.

A comer mi nina!

Lentejas

Ok, I cannot believe I haven’t blogged about this one yet.  This is one of my absolute favorite things Carmen cooks for us.  It’s a lentil stew sort of thing with potatoes, carrots, spinach and chorizo.  It’s so delicious and it is even better now that it’s getting cold.  

A que estoy escuchando

Bebe y Los Delinquentes - Despues

This is a song we listened to in my grammar class because it has a lot of examples of a certain type of verb conjugation that we are working on in class right now.  The way these people sing is a perfect example of how hard it is to understand Spanish people from Andalucia. The Andalucia accent is like the Southern accent of Spain. The band, Los Delinquentes, is fromCadiz and they are almost impossible to understand.  The first time I listened to this song, I could barely pick out a single word.

Another month done

Well, another month has gone by. It feels like it was just a week ago when I wrote the blog recapping the first month, but it has in fact been a whole month!

I’m still waiting for “culture shock”.  I have a feeling that if it’s been 2 months and I haven’t had any problems with it, then it probably just isn’t going to happen for me, and I am fine with that.  I know quite a few people have had problems with not adapting to the culture very well.  But I’ve always been a person who just adapts to different situations pretty fast.  Another thing I think helped me a lot in avoiding culture shock is that I already knew a lot about Spanish culture before I got here.  From talking to other people, I get the idea that my high school did a much better job teaching us about the culture of Spain and other Spanish speaking countries then a lot of other high schools did.  Most people only learned about Spanish artists, and I’m all for learning about art, but being able to list off 10 of Pablo Picasso’s most famous paintings isn’t going to help you when you are living in Spain.  What will help you is knowing typical foods, meal times and mannerisms. It surprises me a lot that other students didn’t know this kind of stuff before, because I spent so much time learning all that in high school.

After being here for 2 months, I am a much more active person.  We walk everywhere here.  Last year, I complained about having to walk 20 minutes, 2 times a week, for 1 class.  This year, all my classes are in the same building which is at least a 20 if not 30 minute walk from where I live and I usually walk to and from class 2 times a day.  That’s 2 hours of walking right there.  If I decide to go out later, that’s another hour or two. And on top of all that I’ve been running 3 times a week for 30 minutes and that would NEVER happen in Lexington.

Probably the biggest change I’ve made is my reliance on technology.  In the State, I could literally be on the internet for 1-4 hours.  Yes, hours.  Now, I can barely figure out what to do for 10 minutes.  Not having internet access at home has made me completely forget how to waste time on line, and that’s probably a good thing.  Now, when I do get internet access, I’m like sitting there with a stop watch like “Facebook, email, blog. TIME! New high score, fastest time yet!” I’ve also gotten a lot less attached to my cell phone.   In October, I only sent like 6 text messages. If I was in America, I probably would have sent 6 texts every day in October. The thing is, I’m paying the bill on this phone, and international text messages are expensive.  When I first got my phone, the way I would control how many texts I sent was to ask myself “Is this text message important enough that I am willing to spend the money it takes to send?” If the answer was yes, I would send it.  If the answer was no, and it pretty much always was no, I wouldn’t.  Now I don’t even think about texting, I just don’t do it.