Well first of all I’m sorry about the long silence! I fully intended to post right after I got to Spain and tell the story of the travel experience and my first days here- but in a perfect example of the culture shock I’ve been experiencing over the last week, I was not able to charge my computer until today because I hadn’t brought the right electrical converter with me to Spain. That’s all been sorted out now, thankfully, and so here I am with so much to say!

The traveling itself was easy and seamless, though utterly exhausting. The route went like this:

2:30 am: wake up in Portland and get in the car to drive to Seattle

8:30 am: fly out of SeaTac to Chicago

2:30 pm: Arrive in Chicago, change dollars for euros, observe the interesting collection of people gathering at the gate for my flight to Madrid, including some adorable nuns. 

4:40 pm: fly out of O’Hare to Madrid

-insert unknown number of hours in which I did not sleep at all but did try to read the Spanish magazine, and eat the semi-okay airplane food-

9:00 am: arrival in Madrid! I go though another security line to get into another terminal, eat breakfast, and use a payphone-like computer to tell my family I’d made it safely to Europe.

11:30 am: 40 minute flight to Alicante, by which time I am so delirious from lack of sleep that I hardly notice being on the plane at all

2:00 pm: Meet up with most of my program-mates and some staff members from CIEE, my program, at the Alicante airport and bus to our orientation hotel, which is the same building where some students will live in dorms during the school year.

I was horrifically jet lagged after the trip, but I’ve been catching up and today, five days later, I think I have just about adjusted totally. In the meantime, my days have been absolutely jam-packed of orientation activities and new experiences. It’s been so much that it’s easier for me to organize into concrete subjects, so to start with the most important:

SPANISH

Language immersion and speaking Spanish is one of the most central things to my program and also one of the thing I was most nervous about. When I arrived, as I expected, I spoke to all of the other American students in English and understood the program directors (who are all extremely nice and helpful) perfectly because they are used to working with American students and speak slowly and carefully, like a professor would. However, this comfort level was tested pretty quickly because on the first night we went out to a restaurant for some traditional Spanish tapas and several Spanish students who attend the Universidad de Alicante came with us, in order to answer our questions, talk to us, etc. I spent the evening, sleep deprived as I was, talking to one of the girls, Ana, and a few other people on my program, about everything from American TV to tumblr to linguistics, all in Spanish. Sure, I felt like an idiot pretty much the whole time, but on the other hand we were actually having a conversation and I was actually understanding what she was saying and I was actually sort of contributing. I felt a lot better about my Spanish after that- less terrified and more excited. A few days later, on Sunday afternoon, we all got picked up by our host families. Here is me and my host mom, Carmela, a mere 30 seconds after meeting each other (and a greeting of “dos besos,” more on that later).

From that moment on, my brain has been racing a million miles a minute trying to keep up with so much Spanish. Carmela does not speak one word of English, and in addition is very talkative. (She told me she hosts students because she likes to talk and if she’s alone in her apartment she’ll just talk to her TV). We (or rather, she) have talked about nutrition, politics, marriage and divorce, travel and the places I should visit while I’m in Europe, and lots of other things. She is a fascinating person and I love talking to her, which is good because it makes me want to speak Spanish instead of being frustrated by it. I think at this point I’m catching about eighty percent of what Carmela says to me, and I am able to respond somewhat even though I keep correcting my verb usage every five seconds. She says that of the five students she’s had (me being the fifth) I speak the best Spanish upon arriving, which is really encouraging even though I feel like I’m not very good! Already I sometimes find myself trying to think in Spanish. It is easier in the evenings, when I’ve been talking to Carmela all day, to understand than it is in the mornings right after I wake up. I feel like I am running forwards each day and then sliding back while I sleep. It feels like constant brain exercise- like it is perpetually crunch time during finals week in my head. I can really understand why CIEE requires us to take two weeks of intensive Spanish language before we start regular classes, because I feel like there physically no more space in my head for anything but Spanish.

I can already tell, though, that all this work is going to be worth it. If my goal was a language intensive that is exactly what I got, and honestly I spent way more time worrying about it and being afraid of it than I needed to. It is absolutely difficult, one of the most mentally exhausting things I’ve ever done. But it’s not scary. Communication is simply nessecary, and because almost no Spaniards speak English, I have no choice- so it bypasses scary because I don’t have time to be afraid, I just have to talk.

Coming soon…. “GETTING AROUND.”