Today has been a very emotional day for me. For some reason, when I woke up, everything seemed to go wrong. I was getting a gazillion text messages from all my friends trying to figure out how to get tickets for our trip tomorrow and then my phone said i needed to buy more minutes already! it´s so frusterating because talking only by text messages is so difficult and nobody can seen to figure things out when they are together... there are too many people to coordinate. on top of that, i just wasn´t understanding anythign in spanish that my family was telling me. it´s like, sometimes, i get so exhausted that i just don´t have the energy to really listen to them. it takes this intense concentration, and i swear, there has not been a day that i have been in spain that i am not completely and utterly exhausted by the middle of the day. when i go to sleep, i can´t even sleep. it´s like this never-ending spell. i am so preoccupied with thoughts and dreams of being in the u.s. and worries about the next day and a bazillion other things.
last night i had a dream that my whole family - aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins and all were here in spain. i don´t know where in spain but we were in this huge white room with a huge table for everyone. we were all eating this cake with apples that my sister here, amaela (i still can´t spell her name cuz it´s a basque name and i get the letters confused!), made and it was huge! she really made a cake (un pastel) in real life, but it was like 1/10 the size of the one in my dream. and then my aunt jill started speaking to me in rapid-fire spanish and i was so confused. i think that´s when i woke up.
i keep having these really realistic dreams that really weird me out because i feel like they are real and i´m reallly there. it´s probably cuz this is the only way i can really see the people that i love... in my dreams. maybe that sounds cheesy, but i think that´s why it keeps happening.
anyhow, back to my crazy day. so the morning was just horrific. and then i found out that i had to recharge the minutes on my phone already. i have to pay 10 or 20 euros (between 15 and 30 dollars) each time to get more time/text messages on the phone and i feel like i´m gonna spend like a gazillion dollars! ugh. i was frusterated.
plus, i had to figure out how to purchase bus tickets to san sebastian, another part of northern spain that my friends and i are gonna travel to tomorrow. (it should be really cool! there´s a special festival going on tomorrow where all the niños (kids) will be in the street in costumes, playing instruments, etc. 2,000 of them! and san sebastian is a city by the water... many beaches, should be beautiful because the weather here has still been in the 60´s every day. we figured it would be better to see the beaches before it starts snowing).
anyhow, back to the frustration. so my phone wasn´t working, a billion people were messaging me, and i couldn´t understand a single word my family here was saying. and then... i didn´t realize this, but i was supposed to go to school to eat today even though i don´t have friday classes. i guess my family is only required to provide me with lunches on saturday and sunday. i didn´t realize this. my mom here said it was fine and there was enough food for me. but i felt bad cuz i was kinda imposing... and i vowed to remember that friday is a day that i need to take the bus to school to eat there (even though the food there is like salty paradise and i want to puke it all up. it´s pretty much the most unhealthy food... especially compared to the super-healthy food my family here eats).
so after all this stuff, i was just about ready to crack. i just felt so frustrated with myself for being in this new country, not being able to communicate with others, understand anything... and i was really feeling the horrible bad culture shock results. they warned us that after the first week, the novelty would wear off and we would get frusterated with everything. i didn´t think it would happen cuz i was so happy at first, but i see how this is possible. it´s like this: i have been here a week, and i seriously think my spanish has gotten a hundred times worse. every day i try and try again but much of the time, it´s very easy to regress back to english when my friends and i are struggling.
i think the icing on the cake was yesterday. i met my intercambio. an intercambio is a spanish student that the program here pairs you up with... they help us learn spanish and we help them learn english. we are supposed to meet once a week for an hour each time and switch back and forth between spanish and english at every section. well, i met mine yesterday. he´s 32, took me to a bar, and i felt like i was on a freakish, awkward blind date. it´s not like he did anything to make me feel uncomfortable. bars are very normal places to hang out here in spain... and it wasn´t really date-like. but i felt really weird in the first place, with a random man in a random bar without anyone i knew. he was a very nice guy. but i expected to be gone maybe an hour or an hour and a half... and we were there for 4 hours! he then asked me if i wanted to go to another bar to talk longer and i said, very awkwardly... trying not to be rude... that i needed to go home. we probably talked one hour in spanish and 3 in english and that made me upset because i just think he was being selfish. he explained to me that he really just wanted to practice english as much as possible... and i understand that. but i want to practice spanish as much as possible, so next time i need to speak up more and tell him that. it was really interesting to talk to someone who lived in spain all his life, but it was exhausting. trying to understand semi-broken english, fast spanish, and thinking of responses that would be simple-enough english for him to understand, or correct-enough spanish for him to understand really really took it out of me. i just wanted to go home and sleep.
but of course i didn´t. i needed to see my friends who i could vent to in english. because sometimes you just need to speak in english.
my intercambio, fernando, wants to meet as often as possible. i told him once per week was enough for me. because, honestly, i would rather spend time talking to my family here... i feel more comfortable in the house, and here i know i will be getting practice at spanish.
so there. that´s my bad attitude stuff. now onto the good.
so i finally met my friend meghan and we spoke in english and ate food in a bakery and went shopping and all was good again. i got my bus ticket, i recharged my phone, and i filled my belly. i felt like a billion dollars. because i just needed to talk to someone... someone who knew exactly how i was feeling. we are both going through the same frustrations.
we decided something. it´s just impossible to study abroad without a sense of humor. every day you are going to make these horrible, terrible, embarrassing mistakes. people are going to laugh at you. (like the time i ran to the bus cuz i thought i was gonna miss it and everyone was laughing at me cuz that was definitely not the case) people are going to look at you funny. (like when they see that i´m moreno - brown hair and eyes - talk to me, and then realize i don´t speak spanish very well) people are going to get frustrated with you. YOU are gonna get frustrated with YOURSELF. because that´s just how you learn. you learn through mistakes, through social faux paus (did i even spell that right ?!?), through some of the funniest experiences. and the thing is... you just have to take it with a grain of salt. or else you will just fall apart. just shatter on the ground like a sheet of glass. and it´s all just ok because this is life and life is about learning and adapting and being able to change.
and i am. i have never faced so many challenges in my life. yes. i have had challenges. but this is one constant challenge. this is the challenge to top all challenges. everyone should do this. i finally understand how it is for someone to move to another country and learn the language and the culture and everything about the people and the politics and the land and the way things are done. and it´s hard... but i think it´s gonna be worth it.
so maybe i speak too much in english with my program-mates. and maybe i´m not reading my books for school enough. and maybe i´m not getting enough sleep. whatever. it doesn´t matter what i´m doing... watching tv, looking at my surroundings... this is all learning.
alright, i need to stop thinking i´m a philosopher here. haha i probably sound so corny. but yea, i can deal with corny after all the stupid things i have done in the past week with a billion spanish people laughing at me.
i just had so much fun... talking to amaela and her boyfriend ikur. we were cooking pizzas and ikur was teaching me about the languages in spain (there are 4 of them!). and i just really like them. i feel really lucky to be in their company. because, i tihnk this is why, they are just different than anyone i have ever met. these artsy, spanish young adults, so in love, so adorable, and so interesting. and i might not understand a lot of what they are saying, but they have a good sense of humor with me about it. i can read their emotions because that´s something universal i think. i can understand that when they laugh... it´s not something mean. they aren´t laughing at me, they are just amused by the fact that i have such a hard time understanding them. i can´t really explain the connection me and amaela have. i think it´s just something so cool because we like each other so much despite the fact that we have really only been able to say so little.
i think i´ll stay in tonight. i feel like i need some time to catch up on sleep, homework, blogging, emailing, etc. it´s just nice to relax.
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