First Week

It has been about a week since I got here in beautiful Alcala.  I have learned so much more than I can say, but since it's my blog I guess I will give it a shot.  Here is a list of some of the things I have learned here in Spain.

Mississippi State goes to Alcala

1.  Navigation is pretty hard.  For those who know me, I have a pretty hard time with directions.  The record right now for times getting lost in a single day is now at 3 times.  I found out the hard way that I my map wouldn't help me out too much if I leave it in my room.  On a more positive note, as my house is about 1 kilometer away from school, I will be pretty fit by the end of this trip if I keep getting lost all the time
2.  The mountains are beautiful.  A group of us decided to go up to the mountains and hike a couple days back.  The mountains are located in the Cerros national park, only about a twenty minute walk away from my house.  The trail we took was a 10 kilometer (6 mile) trek to the top of the highest mountain in the park.  About half way up the trail, I got separated from my group.  My phone had ran out of minutes, so I could not call my group and get any of their water.  I figured that I would see them on top of the mountain, so I kept pressing on until I was there.  Except they weren't there.  I had missed a trail and had accidentally climbed the second tallest mountain.  I was pretty freaked out at this point because I had no group or water.  I knew there was water at the base of the park, so I headed down to find it.

Me on top of the second tallest mountain in Alcala  

Going down the mountain, I was mostly sure I knew where I was going.  Mostly sure is not that reassuring when it means you might might have a heat stroke because you were almost on the right trail.  Fortunately, there were other hikers on the trail to guide me down.  In particular, I was helped by a man named Lino.  Lino is about 60 years old and was running and walking up the mountain.  He knew were the water was, so we run walked towards it.  I am to God for people like Lino who helped me out on the mountain that day.  I might not have made it out otherwise.  Next time, I will not get separated from the group.

Me and Lino

3.  Don't greet people you don't know on the street.  You are walking towards a stranger who is in turn walking towards you.  Once you get about 5 feet away, you wave and say hi as you pass, right?  Nope.  In Alcala, people consider it very strange when some random person just greets them when they pass by on the street.  I am still reeling from the culture shock on this one.  I've gotten a lot a weird stares for this one.


4.  Some times you get to use the words you never thought you would use.  One of my favorite Spanish words is fregadero.  It is Spanish for 'kitchen sink.'  In grade school, I laughed when my brother told me he needed to know this word for a test.  It seemed fairly pointless to me.  That is, until  two days ago.  I was in a restaurant and I wanted some tap water.  I started to think about how to say it.  After a while, the answer hit me: agua(water) de fregadero!  I asked the waiter for agua de fregadero, and he gave me tap water.  Bam! Just that easy.  As it turns out, I wasn't exactly right about what agua de fregadero meant.  It really means dishwater, but I did get my (clean) water.
5.  You don't learn Spanish by magic.  I came to Spain with the interesting misconception that I would just pick up Spanish by osmosis.  By hearing a whole lot of people talking Spanish, I would somehow apprehend it perfectly after a while.  That has in no way described my experiences in Spain.  It has taken me a lot of work to improve my Spanish here in Spain.  I have to constantly be thinking about grammar as I speak to people around me.  As I walk down the city streets, I have to train my mind to think in Spanish.  Constantly, I am fighting to keep my thoughts in Spanish.  Although the constant feedback from native Spanish speakers makes learning Spanish faster, I still have to work pretty hard to not sound like an ignoramus.  That coming from a man who's taken 8 years of school Spanish.

6.  The graffiti is everywhere.  Graffiti is common and highly visible in Alcala.  If there is a store that has been vacated, it will have graffiti, guaranteed.

Just business as usual here in Spain

 

While most of the graffiti is done on walls or abandoned buildings, many live businesses have graffiti-like artwork on them.  Many businesses have paid for artists to spraypaint murals on their doors.  I am glad they did, as it makes the city look amazing.

On the door of a bike shop

Jimi Hendrix a la Che Guevara.
On the Louisianna Rock Cafe

7.  Planning trips is pretty hard.  It takes a lot of work to get trips off the ground.  Malcolm, Margrett, and I decided we wanted to go to Toledo.  It would be a day trip so we would only need to buy bus tickets.  All three of us looked for hours on the internet and in the train stations for any information about this stuff to no avail.  Not even on the official government site.  We each decided that we would show up together at 8 tomorrow and hope that the magic happens.  By magic I refer to us actually making it to Toledo and back.  I gotta admit that it would be quite comical for us to make it to Toledo and not be able to make it back.  It would make for some pretty great stories.  Thankfully, my host my set me straight on a lot of the things.  In about 20 minutes, she did what we couldn't do in 3 hours.


Well I got to stop now.  It is 4:15 in the morning here in Spain, and more importantly, I have run out of original interjections to add in my paper.  I wake up in 2 hours to figure out some last minute Toledo stuff.  If I survive it, I might just have some pictures for you.  Just saying.

Me and my bros Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

Hasta banana!

-Ottpocket