Things I Actually Miss, and a Few I Don't

I've been back in the US a week now, and its finally setting in that I won't be going back to Segovia for a while. It's definitely a weird feeling, and I feel like I'm starting to annoy people with my stories. Which is to be expected, I'm not bitter about it or anything, it is how it is. At the same time, it's difficult to find things to talk about when I have spent the last four months in Spain, and all my friends here already know how I spent my summer.

There are definitely things I don't miss about Spain, that I'm incredibly excited about having here in the US that I never realized I would miss while away. For example, free water at restaurants. Did you get that? I don't miss having to pay for water everywhere. Water is a necessity to survival, and it shouldn't cost more than wine at a restaurant, that's just ridiculous. I don't care if it's tap, if I get it iced and on my table the second I get in to a restaurant, I'm happy. Plus, Oregon water is terrific.

There are a lot of food related things I don't miss about Spain. I don't miss Spanish ketchup. It's sweet and tastes like plastic. No, thank you, give me some Heinz. I don't miss having to pay for bread at restaurants, even if you don't eat it. I could probably go a few months years without another bocadillo - just give me the chorizo or calamari without the damn bread. I'm excited that avocados don't cost an absurd amount in the PNW. The lack of food variety in Segovia was also tough, especially coming from the land of immigrants where in any given strip mall, you can find at least three or four restaurants from around the world.

I could also do without the kalimoxo at Hook. I mean, it was fun while it lasted, but it might be time to go our separate ways. In fact, Spain has spoiled me with regards to alcohol. The wine there is just way better (and cheaper), so it sucks that I cannot drink here for another few months now that I am back. I'm so used to wine being everywhere that I now find the lack of it kind of striking.

I will absolutely not miss exchange rates. Getting money out is a pain in the butt. You think the exchange rate is going to be one thing, but then the ATM charges you an conversion fee, and the bank charges you a withdrawal fee, and suddenly your bank account looks a lot sadder. The fact that everywhere else in the world except North America uses cash way more often makes it difficult to live without constant trips to the ATM (sorry, cash machine). Also, that whole thing with our government closing and the dollar tanking did not help matters.


There are infinitely more things I miss about Spain, but here are just a few of the big ones.

I miss the culture. Spaniards work to live, Americans live to work. Here, our success is largely measured on the prestige of your job, the size of your house, the worth of your car, and how many cool, new knick-knacks you have accumulated. In Spain, it's more important to have enough money to go out to a bar with your friends. Apparently, if that requires eating beans and rice for a few meals, that's okay, as long as you can have a good time later for a few hours. And even though the unemployment level in Spain is a whopping 25%, people seem happier there. They're less stressed, they leave their houses more, and middle-aged people have friends. I feel like so many of my friends' parents don't have many friends here, and they just work all the time. No one leaves in the evenings unless its prearranged for some special event, and it's not typical to run into someone's parents at a nightclub. But why not? Life should be more about being happy, and less about proving you are happy based on how many things you own.

I miss the cadets. God, they made things so interesting. And I learned so much from them about Spanish culture, ideology, politics, everything. Did you know its common for young people in Spain to go out to clubs on Christmas Eve? Isn't that crazy?! This kind of stuff is fascinating to me, and I'm glad I am keeping in touch with the ones I was closest to.

I miss Segovia. I could walk everywhere I ever needed to go, and it wouldn't take more than 20 minutes. I miss running into my host mom or my friends, and I miss the smell of roasting chestnuts. I miss the cobblestones, and the frozen yogurt that tasted like soft serve, and the Christmas lights in the streets. I miss the cafe con leche at Farggi, the bartenders at La Tasquina who called us "the potato girls," and the views of the city from across the valleys.

I miss my host mom. She always made great paella, and her soup was so much better than anything I can cook up here. She always had some weird story to tell me, and her apartment was so cozy. I love that she would go out to the bars and come home later than I would some nights, and I admire how hard working she is with the thousand and one classes she is taking.

It's so bittersweet being back. Seeing my friends and family has been great, and I am excited for school to start soon, but I also feel a little weird about it. I just had this amazing, life-changing experience and now I'm back, essentially to where I was before I left, but I've grown and I've seen a lot more of the world. At times, it doesn't feel like Spain even happened - I've been back a week, and it seems like a year.

Studying abroad is hard. Not because the classes are difficult (they're not), and not because picking up the language is a trial (it's way easier in an immersion experience), but because you have to leave at the end, and no one else will ever understand how it was for you. But I absolutely recommend it to everyone who has the opportunity. Studying abroad is the best thing I ever decided for myself to do, and I wouldn't change my experience for anything.

Things I've learned, and things I'll miss.

I'm so grateful for what I've experienced here in Spain, and my upcoming departure is incredibly bittersweet. I do miss America, and all my friends back home, and the food variety available in an immigrant country, but I will leave a little bit of my heart here, and hopefully someday soon I will come back to reclaim it.

There are a million and one things I have learned and observed, and many are too small or too difficult to put into writing, but I will attempt to transcribe some things here, more for my own sake than anyone else's. I learned about vineyards, and castles, and kings, but I also learned about the experience of a late Mediterranean night, and Spanish pride, and cobblestone streets.

I learned to hold my tongue. There are times to speak up, and other's when it's not worth the effort, even when it would be good Spanish practice. My host mom, bless her soul, is notoriously talkative and such a great example of how stubborn Spaniards can be. That's not necessarily a bad thing - it's useful to observe, and it's a lesson in patience. I've had conversations with her where she talks for half an hour straight without letting anyone get a word in edgewise. She's told me, definitively, that al-Qaeda never claimed responsibility for 9/11, there were three bullets at the JFK assassination, US involvement in Latin America in the 60s and 70s was some massive revelation people are denying in the US, and she's even tried to convince me that there's some kind of really popular condiment in America called "golf sauce", even when I tell her I've literally never heard of it.

It's not worth it, arguing with her. I practice listening, and I acknowledge that other cultures have different backgrounds. Spaniards are proud, and hey, good for them! Sure, it can be frustrating when we grow up learning to be aware of other opinions and keep an open mind always, but it's also refreshing to see that not everyone is the same. And not all Spaniards are like that, either. My boss at my internship loves to ask my opinion on certain issues, and I like hearing what he has to say.

I learned that wine is not an alcoholic beverage. It is it's own food group. Wine is an imperative part of social culture here. You drink it with your meal, at all times of the day, and you drink it whenever you meet up with friends. Inviting people over to your home is not common, nor very socially acceptable except for very close friends, so everyone goes out for a drink and some tapas in the evenings to see their friends. I tried wine a few times back home when my parents would offer it to me at dinner parties, but I never enjoyed it until I came to Spain. Maybe it's just that Spanish wine is better (and incredibly cheap here), or maybe its the atmosphere, but it's definitely grown on me.

I learned that men act very, very differently here with regards to women. They say chivalry is dead in America, but it seems to be doing okay out here in Europe. It's common, nay - expected, that men hold doors open, squeeze through at the bar to order your drink, and whatnot. It doesn't come off macho or chauvinistic either, the way it might seem. Sure, Spain has a history as an incredibly macho culture (having male and female nouns with all the power words dedicated as male doesn't help matters), but this is just - dare I say it? - polite. It's different, for sure, especially coming from a university town where things are vaguely similar, as one of my new Spanish friends believes, to American Pie. There's a level of respect men are expected to have, and American guys would do well learning a bit of that. Also, they wear peacoats here. It helps.

I learned cheating on your significant other is apparently totally casual here. I know this contradicts what I said above, but it is what it is. Apparently its not only less taboo, its more like "ugh, again?" So there's that.

I learned I can eat a lot of ham and still be alive, but I can probably never eat another bocadillo ever again. Good lord, Spaniards practically live off ham here. When is the last time I had beef? I don't even remember. It's almost impressive, if I didn't miss steak so much. It really is good here, though, and chorizo will always have a special place in my heart and my stomach. Also, bocadillos (bo-ka-dee-yos) are the type of sandwiches they have in Spain, usually made with a small baguette sliced down like a sub and made with chorizo, or jamon serrano and the Spanish version of Kraft cheese slices. There are fancier bocadillos made with calamari, or shrimp, but those obviously don't keep as well and our host mom's wouldn't make those for our lunches on excursion days.

The problem with bocadillos is that they are 80% bread, and since the host mom's usually leave them out for a while for you before you eat them, they stink up the bus, your purse, and your clothes. I mean, I'll take some chorizo any day, and I do have a strange appreciation for that weirdly plastic-y Spanish cheese, but if I see another tinfoil-wrapped footlong, I might slap a ho. Kidding. Kind of.

I learned people don't trust or respect the military in Spain the way they do in America. This makes me sad, because I've always learned that dedicating your life to your country is honorable and admirable, and I don't think people do it just for the glory, because that's a huge commitment to make. Unfortunately, the military here seems to be associated still with the Franco regime, and with the poor decisions of some politicians with regards to some Middle East invasions. It's almost like post-Vietnam US, but definitely not as bad. Still, I've made some great friends here who are in the military, and they deserve better, especially from their peers, who they have made a life-time commitment to protect.

I learned Castellano is completely different from Spanish. For one, the verb "coger" here is not a swear word, but "joder" is. Better not mix that up when I go back to the US. The accent is different, there are so many words that are different, and most importantly, the slang is different. Maybe it wasn't such a great idea to learn Spanish (sorry, Castellano) in a country where the language is so far off form what is spoken in the US, but I sure did have a great time.



I learned a thousand and one other things, as well, but I hardly have the patience to write them all down. I made amazing friends, I saw incredible things, I improved my language skills, and I had a terrific time. The worst part is leaving, and knowing I will never have these same people in the same place again.

It's the people who make the party, and what a great party it has been.

Andalucía, La Granja, Valladolid, Amsterdam, Madrid & a Month of Segovia Adventures

I suck, I'm sorry. I know it's been a month. Way too long, and I can hardly remember everything I've done since the last time a posted which was so freaking long ago. God, fall break seems like a lifetime, but it's also crazy to think so much time has passed. Really, where has the time gone? I have two weeks left before my parents come, and then adios, España! It's funny how time seems to move faster when you just want things to stop.

Anyway, the weekend after break, we had a group excursion to Andalusia in the south of Spain for the whole weekend. Spelling it like "Andalusia" looks wrong to me, so I'm spelling it the Spanish way from now on. We went to Córdoba and Granada, some pretty dang famous locales in the south. Oh, here's another thing about Spain: I feel like we all think Spain is sunny and warm all the time, but that's really just the south and the coast. It's beyond freezing here in Segovia right now, up in the mountains, but Andalucía was a nice and warm and balmy 75 degrees at the beginning of November.

We saw La Mezquita, which is the third largest mosque in the world and actually has a cathedral built inside of it. It's so bizarre to think that Spain was ruled by Muslims for 800 years and they built all these architectural wonders long before the US was even an idea in the back of someone's mind. The building is huge and has something like a thousand stone pillars inside, made to look like a forest of stone.

The cathedral part

We also saw the Alcazar of Córdoba and the gardens before heading back to the hotel, but it was getting dark so I don't have many nice pictures from there. The next day, we went to Granada, which was the last outpost of the Muslims in Spain. La Alhambra is in Granada, and it's apparently the most visited tourist location in Spain, which I totally believe. It's something of a mix between a military fort, a palace, and a walled village. It was very sunny and fairly warm, so I wore the least amount of layers I had in a long time and we had a good time walking around. 

ALSO WE MET AARON PAUL. I saw him when we were walking around early on the excursion, and no one believed me it was him and I was just saying "I swear to god, that's the guy from Breaking Bad" but everyone looked at me like I was crazy. Later though, two of the guys took pictures with him and everyone was like "Oh, I guess you were right." Suck on that. Anyway, later I was waiting with my friend Hannah for our friends using the bathroom, and I had a popsicle because it was pretty hot out, and Aaron Paul walked by and was like "I want that!" and we ended up talking to him and we got a picture and he was really kind and courteous! 

Killer views of Granada

Aaron Paul, in case you weren't sure.

We went back to Córdoba that night and saw some more pretty things Sunday morning, like the Barrio Judío, among other things. Overall, solid excursion and Andalucía was really cool! We even stayed in a hotel, which was like the height of luxury since I've been staying in hostels everywhere I went. I mean, they had towels. That's like gold for an American college student in Europe. 

The next week, we went to La Granja with our group. I went there with some friends back in September, so I've talked about it a little, but it was very different this time around. Last time, it was still summer, but this time it was so damn cold, and all the leaves were beautiful shades of red and yellow and orange. This time, we also saw the palace which is really pretty and had a bazillion tapestries inside. As a reminder to those who care about history, the palace at La Granja was the old summer palace of the monarchy. So it was definitely not built for habitation in winter, and it was like being inside a refrigerator with less food and more pretty things. 

Let's see, what did we do next? This is what I get for procrastinating for a month on blog entries. Oh yeah! That Saturday we woke up to snow in Segovia! It was so beautiful and so exciting because snow in Portland is a once in a blue moon event. It was like two inches, maybe, and it all melted by the afternoon but it was still awesome. 

Después.... We finally went and saw the castle in Segovia from inside that week during class. The tower was closed though, which was too bad, but I'll probably go back with my parents.

Fun fact: you can tell this is gothic architecture because of the point on the arches.

Fun fact: the artillery academy used to be inside the castle, until it partially burned down in the 1800s. The next day, it moved to the convent where it is now and no one even got a day off. Bummer. 

That next week, we had two birthdays in our group so we went out to celebrate. Look mom, I have friends!

Happy birthday, Garrett!

Happy birthday, Laura! Nice photobomb, Jen!

When most of the group went to the Canary Islands for the weekend, I went to Valladolid with the rest of the girls who didn't fly away toward Africa. The Canaries belong to Spain, are west of Africa, by the equator, perpetually hot, and are volcanic islands with an active volcano still pumping around. Valladolid is the capital city of the province of Castilla y León, where Segovia is located. It doesn't have many monuments to see because they were mostly all destroyed in various wars and battles over the years, but it does have a lot of shopping and some very pretty parks. Also, we found this playground for adults which had exercise equipment and was one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen, but actually so fun. 

Jen, me, Katie, and Adaleni in front of the Cavalry 

Plaza Mayor

Churches in Spain are ridiculous 

Lol adult playground 

Our program did a really cool thing for us Americans and organized a Thanksgiving lunch with all the students and teachers. Since a lot of us were going to travel on Thanksgiving though, we had our lunch on Tuesday, and there was a real turkey. In SPAIN. I was expecting like turkey breast sliced up for everyone, but it was a pleasant surprise. 

The least Thanksgiving-y meal, but one I'm most grateful for

Marian, our program director 

Andrew looking like a Von Trapp child, with Alyssa 

Post-meal lethargy with Adaleni

And then I went to Amsterdam on Wednesday after classes, until Saturday. It's a fascinating city, but I'm too sick of writing to explain much. We saw the Anne Frank Museum, and the Reijksmuseum and the I Amsterdam letters and a bunch of other things. There are some great street markets where we ate a lot of our meals (mmm stroopwaffles!), and we checked out the red light district which was fascinating and bizarre. I spent an hour afterward googling prostitution in the Netherlands on my phone, because the economics there are ridiculously interesting. 

In front of the Reijks

Qué pasa, Van Gogh? 

Katie and I failing at cute tourist photos

I know this is stupid long, but I'm not done yet, sorry! Just a little more. I got back from Amsterdam on Saturday and I went to get a drink with two other people on our program who had their birthday, and this time they were both born on the same day, same year, same state. What a coincidence, that of 13 people, we have so many freaking birthdays within three months! Anyway, all these Irish people showed up, many of whom I had never seen before, but they were friends of the birthday girl from her internship here. It was really weird to hang out with English speakers other than my AHA friends, but it was cool to meet new people. The cadets had a big party at the academy in honor of their patron saint, Santa Barbara, and I could hear the music from all the way down the street when I was walking home in the morning. I even saw cadets in full dress uniform inside a club. This is so crazy to me because if that happened in America, I'm pretty sure you'd get kicked out of the army. I didn't get much sleep, because I had to wake up early for an excursion to Madrid to see the museums, but it was a fun night. 

Madrid on Sunday was beautiful. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and it was at least 10 degrees warmer than in Segovia. We went to the Reina Sofia, which is a modern art museum, and the Prado, the big classic art museum in Spain. I really don't get modern art, so that was kind of boring for me except for Picasso's Guernica. That said, I think I like the history of the Guernica more than the painting itself. The Dalí paintings were kind of cool, but they look what I would imagine a bad trip on drugs would look like. 

The Prado was much cooler. There were way more paintings in one room, and it was set up nicely so you could see everything pretty quickly. Less walking, more seeing - I approve. We only had about an hour before we had to go to catch our bus back to Segovia, but I feel like I saw way more than I could have in another museum like the Reijks or the British. The most important was obviously Velasquez' Las Meninas, and I liked it more after my friend Alison explained the meaning behind it. That said, I am so not an art person so I feel like others could have appreciated all that a lot more than me. 

Outside the Reina Sofia

Retiro park in Madrid

By the Prado

And, well, that's it. Football season is closing down, so... Yeah. I have less than two weeks left on my program, and it's very bittersweet. I miss my friends and family, I miss American food and my mom's cooking, but I'm going to miss Spain so much. I've made so many great friends here and seen so many amazing things, and it breaks my heart that I'll never have them all in the same place again. But this has been an amazing experience and I wouldn't change it for anything.

See you all soon.