Confessions of a Study Abroad Student...

Contrary to popular belief and to my own blissful expectations, studying abroad isn't always a walk in the park; it's quite the emotional roller coaster. This month has been a very interesting month to learn about myself and to see the side of studying abroad that everyone wants to avoid: pangs of homesickness. It's a typical part of being away, but what an undesirable thing to dwell on. I mean, I know what day I'm going home and that I only have a certain amount of time here to enjoy everything to the fullest, aprovechar as the Spanish love to say, but sometimes my brain is just going a million miles a minute and there's nothing I can do about it. When I think about it, I have experienced a lot in the last few years, and a lot of the time I haven't been home. All of my homesickness compiled and decided to overflow all at once. Not cool. I suppose there have been some triggers for it as I started to realize that time is going quickly...

It is very important to me to better my Spanish while I'm here, but I honestly haven't made enough of an effort to get it to the level it needs to be at. Sometimes I am wishing for some school work to help me out or one of my teachers to be a little more stern with us, but I know that they are just hoping we get the best experience possible of being in Spain without a lot of work to stress over. I'm beginning to take matters into my own hands at this point (yes, I realize this should have been done long ago :)) and have set up a regular intercambio with a Spanish student, make an effort to hang out with my Spanish friends more, and converse with my house mom a lot more.

I think my confusion this month is stemming from traveling to London, which was very much like America, and then coming back to Spain when it was almost time for Las Fallas. In London, I would always start to say things in Spanish or I would finish them with a "Gracias" or "Hasta luego". What a weird experience to understand everything completely and to finally put a real life experience to the things you hear about in London. It was an incredibly international city, and a lot of my friends' university friends were not Americans or Brits; however, they still spoke English perfectly. Learning another language haunts me constantly and throws me on a massive guilt trip that my language skills are not what they should be. I was ecstatic to be back in Spain and to see my house mom with a renewed vigor to speak Spanish and the anticipation of Fallas just around the corner.

The first Friday of Fallas finally arrived in a giant wave of overwhelming noise, people, and styrofoam. What an excellent, yet disturbing week! I saw children in the park playing with Class III (illegal!) fireworks and throwing them at each other near babies and their strangely approving and indifferent parents. Well, I thought, I will just avoid walking through the park this week. I couldn't have been more wrong. Every single person sets off fireworks for a week straight and it's even worse in the streets, especially around the Fallas (the actual giant displays of styrofoam that barrios spend tons of money and tons of time creating). I was also soon told that firework laws are suspended for the week of Las Fallas and maybe even the whole month of March. Valencia sounded like it was under seige for a whole week. I did, however, find myself wandering into a store asking the cashier if he happened to have some borrachos. Let me explain to you what these are...

Borrachos is the word for "drunks" in Spanish. These fireworks, once lit, spew and inferno of fire and sparks and spin around in the air and on the ground for about 30 long and terrifying seconds. It is a favorite custom of teenage Spaniards to throw these into crowds of people and off of bridges into the park. Not my kind of thing, but I had to get my hands on some of these normally illegal Class III fireworks. When I asked for them, the guy reached into this drawer under the counter and pulled out a heavy bag of about 10. He said, "15 Euro", and I was like "Well, I really only want one. I'm too clumsy for that whole bag." No go. Maybe it's for the better because the next day I saw people on the news that had had their clothes and body parts (ears and arms, etc.) burned by these borrachos. I did end up buying a lot of fireworks this week to set off in the park :)



Las Fallas, while beautiful, traditional, and constantly exciting, was exhausting and a little bit (really I meant A LOT bit) environmentally unfriendly. The coolest part is watching the Fallas burn, but think about what 350+ styrofoam towers burning will do to the ozone layer. I definitely thought my lungs were exploding, but it was a fantastic sight! It was strange to wake up on Friday and not have to watch the ground for explosions. We were basically dragged onto the bus on Friday morning for our trip to Granada. I wish so badly that I could have been half awake for Granada. This city is beautiful and has so much history, which we thankfully we explored a lot of. The Arab baths were my favorite! A few of us went, and there was Arab tea and then 3 different temperature pools: hot, lukewarm, and cold (sometimes there is exfoliation, but not at this one). There was also a steam room to top it all off and for 2 hours we just bathed away the noise of Las Fallas. On our return to the city, there was no sign of the past week of debauchery and we just wanted to be in our beds.

It was so strange to me how I could be completely swept up in the emotion of Las Fallas, and then the next moment be praying for the end. After experiencing the festival once, It was easy for me to understand that Valencians typically leave the city for the week because the noise, litter, etc. is too much to handle. Our house mom's poor dog could finally leave the house for a walk without fear of petardos (the fireworks here) and noises. I felt guilty for feeling such high expectation for the week long event, and then being so unbelievably happy when it was over. Every one seems almost recovered now, and the city is getting a good bath from the rain that has been going on for 5 days. Thank goodness it's almost a new month and I will be able to aprovechar! :)

As you can see, Fallas are really clever! This is Obama beating G.W. Bush in a boxing ring. Castro and a few other world leaders are behind them!

Marzo, Marzo, Marzo...

Today is the first day of March, and it has ended a fantastic first half of the semester and is going to begin the a really exciting second half! In January and February, I saw Franz Ferdinand in concert for FREE, I have been to the beach numerous times, have gotten sunburn, and have attended a Valencian futbol game. I traveled through Madrid, Toledo, Valencia, Barcelona, Albufera, and the Sierra de Enguerra. I trekked through these mountains of Sierra de Enguerra for 9 miles with about 100+ Erasmus students, my professor from school, and a donkey (he apparently belonged to the hostel we stayed at :))

Erasmus is the European exchange program, and apparently Valencia is the second most popular Erasmus location with more than 5000 students! To make things more interesting, most of the people I met spoke more than 4 languages. It interesting to me how far behind Americans are with language skills. Some people in my program, including myself, have been studying Spanish for more than 5 years, but we still aren't fluent! There were people on this trip who spoke Dutch, English, Spanish, Italian, and German. Americans are the most far behind in languages, and it's going to become a problem very soon. Out of every student that has stayed with my house mom, she says Americans are the slowest to catch on to Spanish. Europeans rank first, Brits second, and us last. How depressing. A lot of people have said that Americans come to Spain and speak English and never Spanish. Plus, we are constantly told our geography is lacking quite a bit. I had a French guy tell me I had bad geography because I didn't know the small town in France he was from! But, who knows if a Spaniard, German, Italian, or anyone not from France would either?!


The new half of the semester includes London, Granada, FALLAS, Italy, Switzerland, France, and Basque Country. This Wednesday I will be heading to London. I feel really guilty to be excited to speak and hear English everywhere, but I'm certainly not going to take it for granted. I will be able to understand everything going on at once! I cannot wait :)
When I get back, FALLAS WILL BE ALMOST HERE! Fallas is the third largest festival in the world, placing behind Rio de Janeiro and Mardis Gras. The entire city has already started preparing for it by setting off mascletas (HUGE displays of bomb-like fireworks in the center of the city or in the park by my house which now happen every day at 2pm), hanging Valencian flags everywhere, wearing Fallas panuelos (scarf/handkerchief things) and dressing like Falleros/Falleras. Falleras are really interesting and wear costumes that cost around 3,000 euro. It's like any festival in that it chooses a representative; they choose one "Fallera Mayor" and one "Fallera Menor". There are parades of floats and ninots, but only one can win! What happens to the rest? They burn them at the end of the week! Way cool. Right after Fallas when we are all tired and dragging from the awesome festival, we are headed to Granada with the program!

When April arrives, I have around 8 actual days of class. Spain RULES. In the beginning of April, I'm meeting my friends to travel around Europe for Semana Santa and for our descanso (basically Spring Break in Spain). My host mom was saying how Spanish students have too many days of vacation and I agreed, but I certainly don't mind.

Is Spain just a country where students slack off? Maybe Americans have more of an opportunity for that in Spain than Spaniards! Students here have exams for a month in January and in June. These basically determine their grades, and, from what I hear, are impossible. However, it may be the same throughout Europe because Polish students were having exams when I arrived there last June. A student's life ceases to exist during this month, but afterwards it seemed that the population of Valencia doubled! I can't imagine having so much pressure put on me at the end of my semesters, and I thought midterms and finals were bad!

In one of my classes the other day we stumbled onto the topic of health care and education. A Spanish student only pays around 700 EURO for school per year! Right now, that's around $900. We pay more than that for our MEAL PLAN! Our educational system in America would not function with this method, mainly because we are capitalists. Spain's government is still a little confusing to me, but, according to the news (the little of it that I can grasp) and my house mom, Spain has two presidents: one from the Socialist Party and one from the Popular Party. Spain's educational system functions this way because they are a pretty socialist society. EVERYONE has the right to health care. 60% or more is paid by the government and your contribution starts at 40%. Along with this, emergencies are free. My professor says that the only doctors that are wealthy are dentists because that's really the only privatized practice. What a foreign idea to me, as well as most Americans. However, America has some fantastic medical care, and honestly, I dig it.

American Love <3

Valentine's Day marked a month of me being in Spain. It feels like the longest and shortest month of my entire life! Thinking back on the incredible amounts of things I have seen and places I have visited it seems like 3 months have passed, but at the same time it made 30 days just fly by. I'm completely saddened by it to say the least. Something I am completely not ready to do is leave Spain. There is so much to learn still, so much language to practice, and so many places I still need to see!

It's hard to describe in a blog the things that happen to you while you are abroad. Lately, I've been thinking about how fortunate I am to be an American, how lucky I am to have the people at home waiting for me to come home to, and how wonderful it is that I have had so many opportunities to learn about myself and the world through traveling. It's not that Spaniards have a terrible quality of life AT ALL, I just feel so happy to know that there are still opportunities awaiting when I get home and that this isn't my last hurrah. Many people in the U.S. are disappointed with the country and losing their patriotism, but I wonder why? Yes, we have had quite a rocky few years, but is it really that easy to lose faith in a country and a government that provides us with so much? We came from nothing, and worked hard to be one of the strongest countries in the world. I feel sometimes people are sad because they lack the cohesive cultural roots that, say, a Spaniard would share with all other Spaniards, but what is overlooked is that we have all come from struggle of Native Americans, the first Pilgrims, the open ports of Ellis Island, and from many soldiers giving their lives for us to continue being a country where a person is entitled to human rights and happiness.

Think of our opportunities and our freedoms: our large country with it's wide range of climates that we are always free to travel to and from, our society that values hard work and upward movement. We are born into the chance of lifetime. While people throughout the world are proud of where they came from, many will comment to me that they love the States and want to come back, visit just once in their lives, or want to live there. We can travel almost anywhere and still have all the benefits of being an American, we can even vote abroad! It's frequently overlooked. My friends here say sometimes about how awesome it would be to be European, Spanish, etc., and while I realize that it would be fantastic, being an American is something that is so often taken for granted.

Returning to the States has been on my mind a lot lately. I am caught up living the Spanish life and I definitely don't want to leave right now, but going back to America is something that I can't take for granted. May 9th (the last day of my program and my 21st birthday) will most likely be the most depressing day of my life, but I can't forget where I come from :)


This is a picture of Christopher Columbus that is one of the largest monuments in Barcelona, Spain. While he is not actually pointing to America (he is pointing East towards Italy across the Mediterranean, which I thought was hilarious) he is a symbol of the beginning of the Golden Age in Spain, as well as the very beginning of our American history. He stands on top of a globe as a way of showing his desire for discovery and the opportunities for travel that King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella gave him in 1492.

Spain and the EU: The New Melting Pot?

While some would say that immigration should be seen as flattering, I'm not so sure that is the general opinion. To quote some graffiti in the river park in Valencia, "La imigracion es una triste lacra", meaning the immigration problem in Spain is sad and a mark (or scar) on the Spanish people. In what I have learned in the past and as well as living here in Spain, immigration is seen as a sort of invasion. The EU is becoming more of a melting pot similar to the United States. The borders of each country in the EU are becoming more liquid, making it easier for citizens to move from country to country. In effect, this creates a huge mixture of races, cultures, and backgrounds in the countries, taking away from each their authenticity and individual history.

When I cam to Valencia after being in other areas of Spain, I noticed the people here were very dark skinned. It wasn't until recently that I realized they were all immigrants from South America. People come from Colombia, Bolivia, Africa, Asia, etc. and they are living in Spain now. What I learned from talking to my house mother is that they come here and get paid less and are not respected like people should be. She was expressing to me how upset she was with the outsourcing of jobs to China. "Todos los cosas estan hecho en China ahora (Everything is made in China now)," says my host mom with a look of worry on her face. She then began explaining to me what happened in Alicante. Alicante is a coastal city an hour and 1/2 South of Valencia that used to have good toy and shoe factories. Then, all of the jobs were moved to China and now the factories are abandoned and those Spaniards can no longer work there. However, my house mother and others still see immigration as a good thing. From what I understand, there is opportunity for Spaniards to learn from immigrants and to fill jobs that Spaniards won't take (sound familiar?). For example, last Monday I woke up to a stranger in my house. Her name is Laura and she is the maid. Laura is a Colombian living in Valencia. According to many of my friends in the program, they have had a similar experience to waking up to find a South American girl doing their laundry. Why is it necessary to have a maid for 3 people living in a small apartment? Couldn't they just do their own chores?


In Poland, the problem was reversed. The NGO that I worked for was becoming increasingly aware of the problem with migration FROM the small villages all around Poland. They were trying to encourage the development jobs in making traditional goods to restore the populations in these areas. The Poles were very concerned with their children growing up and moving to the city or to another country. Many Poles are in London and Chicago, which has the second largest population of Poles in the world besides Poland. As I said before, more Poles spoke English than Spaniards, making it appear that they were more open to and encouraging of immigration/foreigners into their country. The only thing I could think of was that it is because Spain's economy is better.

In the US, we have a similar situation with Cuba or Mexico as Spain has with Morocco/Africa. Many immigrants pass through the southern border of Spain that is just 8 miles from the tip of Africa! It's the illegality of the matter that makes the difference in America, but is that the case in Spain? Of course it accounts for some of the problem, but not all of it.





This picture on the left is of the gate that protects the entrance to the old part of downtown Valencia. It was meant to keep intruders out. On the right is the bell they rang to warn everyone of an invasion.

Mi Vida Española

After being in 3 cities this week throughout Spain, my love for this country grows daily, hourly, minutely..if that's even a word. I have visited Madrid, Toledo, and finally VALENCIA! I have seen paintings by El Greco, Velazquez, Dali, and Picasso's "Guernica". I have devoured tapas, soups, olives, ice creams, wines, churrizo (a type of sausage and my favorite :)) and have become completely engrossed in the culture. One of my favorite places was El Valle de los Caidos (Valley of the Fallen) outside of Madrid near El Escorial. This is high up in the Sierras and was built after the Spanish Civil War. Franco forced the prisoners of war to build a memorial in the mountains to the fallen Spaniards from 1936-1939. It also doubles as his tomb. I am a little crazy about Spanish history and especially the Spanish Civil War, so, to me, this place was an absolute gold mine. However, Spaniards hate it. They despise Franco and all he stood for, which makes sense to me. He was a symbol of oppression and was the main reason for the 3 years of turmoil that ripped their country apart. Only tourists visit El Valle de los Caidos. Hearing this, I thought my program leaders were completely lying and expected to see lots of Spaniards wandering around the place. I was 100% wrong. I saw 3 people while we were there, and they were most likely tourists. It still strikes me as strange. My house mom showed such disgust when we told her we visited it. In the states, we love memorials; just think of Washington D.C.! We make them for wars, deaths, accomplishments, leaders, and records, but, then again, America definitely hasn't had a Fascist dictator like Franco take over our country, so it is very understandable that Spaniards would feel this way.

Spain is an interesting place that I thought would be very similar to America, but it seems that this country is proud of their history and nationality and choose to remain simply Spain. Barely anyone speaks English, most have never been to America, and EVERYONE loves Obama. I swear, Obama is going to be a god in Europe soon. In Poland, people would constantly tell me to vote for Obama after a heated debate because he isn't that "horrible man George Bush" and he will turn the US economy around and, in fact, solve all of Europe's problems. In Spain, I have already encountered this fanaticism for Obama. Everyone watched the inauguration yesterday. I had class from 5, 15 to 7 but my professor actually stopped class to watch it with us. After the inaguration, the Spanish news channel played that movie made about George Bush called "W.", and all the while my house mother tsk-tsked at his drinking and apparent lack of qualification for the office of president. It's scary how much they hate him here. I mean he has been the face of American and our relationship with Spain for the passed 8 years and they couldn't be happier to send him off.

Some of you have asked about the different areas of Spain and whether or not they differ from each other. So far, I have been in 3 different Comunidades autonomas(Spain is divided into 18 different areas kind of like our New England, Midwest, or Eas Coast, etc.). I visited Madrid, which is in the Madrid comunidad, and it was very busy. I was jet-lagged and rushed through the city, but it was very similar to most any city you go to, only full of priceless masterpieces and history. In Toledo, one of the most beautiful and historical cities in the world, I was in Castilla y Leon of the largest comunidades. It was very old and the Muslim and Jewish influence in the region was obvious. In Valencia (located in the Valencia comunidad) life is slow and everyone walks everywhere. I walk to and from school everyday, which is 30 minutes each way maybe 2-3 times per day. Not the usual walk to class for Marietta! The difference between the comunidades isn't very obvious, but the coast is always different from life in the mountains simply because of geography. People in Madrid will still eat lunch at 2 and dinner at 9pm, as well as the people in Valencia. From what I noticed, the comunidades divide Spain like the U.S. is divided into geographic regions, but really all that is different between them are some special types of food or dishes, historical languages, and accents.

I have not had to sacrifice hot water for wireless or anything like that. I use someone else's internet in my apartment building, and there is hot water, but I can only take 5 minute showers and have to turn the water off during my shower. Spain has been experiencing a huge drought because apparently it only rains at the most 50 days out of the year and they need to conserve as much water as possible. My classes are really interesting and it is surprisingly easy to understand the fast Spanish that my professors are speaking. I don't get nervous to speak Spanish anymore like I was the first few days. It is crazy that after only one week I can can completely understand Spanish songs, converse better with my house mom, and understand conversations on the street. It won't be long until I feel completely at home with the language :)

BRB AMERICA!

Today begins my wonderful and beautiful journey through Spain. I will be heading to Madrid to spend a few days in Spanish bliss, soaking in everything from the language and culture to delicious wine and tapas. I will be in Valencia at the beginning of next week meeting my host mother and my other roommate (named Anna!). My classes will start soon afterward and I am absolutely terrified. I won't be in my normal routine of walking into a classroom of 15-20 students where every face is familiar. The University of Valencia has about 50,000 students, which is bigger than my ENTIRE hometown! 50,000!? Correct me if I'm wrong, but this sounds bigger than OSU, and even if it isn't, I will still assume it is because it's in a foreign country making it seem a million times larger. Here's hoping I don't get lost.

I am quite nervous to speak Spanish, but I can't figure out why. I love the idea of being able to communicate and learn in a completely new language on another continent across the world. When I was in Poland this summer, it absolutely infuriated me that I couldn't speak more than 10 words of their language. American students are not often in Warsaw, and I felt like we were being rude and that everyone resented us for not speaking Polish. This time, I am able to speak the language, and if I ever catch myself holding back from speaking Spanish, I will remember how I felt last summer. Well that, the millions of hours of Spanish I have taken, and Dr. Danford being in the back of my mind telling me, "Anita, being immersed in the language and culture is the best way to learn!" :) Thanks Dr. D.

I cannot wait to enjoy every single part of this semester/vacation abroad, and even if I don't like something at first, I will force myself to! You only live once, and, for sure, only get to experience Spain like this once.