Instruction here in Spain

I've been taking classes here at Alcalingua, a division of the Univerity of Alcala, for a month and a half and have said close to nothing about it.  Well, the classes here are pretty amazing.  There you have it folks.

For one, the instruction in class in completely in Spanish.  No English at all.  Maybe once a class a professor might use an english word to look smart, but aside from that nothing.  This works well for a couple of different reasons.  There are students of many different nationalities in class and not all of them speak English.  In my class alone there are people from Korea, China, Saudi Arabia, and America.  The Koreans and the Saudi Arabean speak hardly any English.  You could see how using English to explain the material would be problematic.  More than just the language problem, a Spanish only classroom means that everyone is immersed in Spanish.  You cannot escape it.  It is like being sucked into a black hole.  Of Spanish.

This black hole is fairly representative of the
immersion experience at Alcalingua.

By the way, the multicultural classroom makes everything a whole lot more fun.  I have learned a lot about different cultures just through talking to people around class.  Very awesome.  Did you know that Alchohol is illegal in Saudi Arabia?  I didn't before my classes.  Needless to say the Saudi Arabian students are very glad to be in Spain.  I also didn't know that many people moved from China to Spain either.  I thought I was just being random when I took Chinese and Spanish as foreign languages at MSU.  I never thought that there would be such a huge Chinese immigrant population in China.  Thanks Alcalingua!

Saudi Arabians enjoying being able to
buy alcohol legally in Spain

We take two classes a day five days a week.  The first is from 9-11 and the second is from 11:30-1:30.  The first class is strictly grammar while the second is conversation.  The grammar class is generally boring. I think that just goes without saying.  We mainly do worksheets during grammar class.  Conversational class is fairly exciting.  We discuss whatever.  By whatever, I mean anything is up for discussion.  We have discussed everything from our family lives to past drug experiences.  I was once asked how I flirted.  I was quite at a loss with how to proceed on that one.  The craziest class discussion happened the other day when we were talking about the word enrollarse.  This word means to bore someone by talking too much.  In typical conversational class fashion, we got side trekked onto something else.  Today's something was the word rollito, which means make out with someone for a night and then never acknowledge the person ever again.  In America, we would probably not discuss this word at all.  In Alcalingua we had one hour of class devoted to this very singular word.  After explaining what this word meant, the teacher went around to every student in class and asked how many times they have enrollado in their lives and in Spain.  This wasn't just a walk quickly around the room asking people to say you did it kind of thing.  It was a bit more like the inquisition: the teacher took a lot of time with each student and inquired until the person confessed to the correct amount.  There was one girl in class who very guiltily said that she had never had a rollito before.  The teacher was not convinced.  Another girl in class, out of nowhere, said that girl 1 had had two rollitos in Spain.  Girl 1 was ridiculously embarrassed to have the whole class find that out.  Later, when it was girl 2's turn to confess, girl 1 brought out fotos of girl 2's rollito.  Girl 2 was as mad as I have seen anybody in my life.  To ease the tension in the room, the teacher showed the picture to the whole class and had us judge how hot the girl's rollito was.  He was a 7.5, in case you were wondering.  It was the best class in my life.

Sonia: the face of the inquisition

Spain is a whole lot more open to discussing taboo topics than America.  Two seperate teachers on two seperate occasions have went around the class and asked each of us individually what our religions are.  This would never, ever happen in America.  In Spain, it happens quite frequently.  It is just something you discuss here, nothing more.  I really like that.  One day, I shared about my faith in Christ to the class.  To the teacher, this was just conversation class.  Nothing out of the ordinary.

One amazing fact about Spanish class is that it never starts on time.  If the teacher says that the break is 10 minutes long, you can be sure that class will start 15 minutes later. Everyday our 9am class starts at 9:10 and our breaks are always 5 to 10 minutes too long.  And the teachers don't mind it at all.  It is just a part of life here in Spain.  I wish my 9am teachers had the same easy going classroom philosophy.

For the past 2 weeks, I have also been learning Hebrew as well.  I met my teacher, Alonso, in Church 3 weeks ago.  We were just talking about the Bible, and it came up that Alonso knew Hebrew.  He then told me that he would like to teach me a bit of it.

Alonso, my Hebrew teacher

Did you know that Hebrew is ridiculously hard?  Ancient Israelites had a knack for creating super-difficult alfabets.  Although it is nothing as difficult as Chinese, it is still pretty rough.  I am grateful for his help in understanding this difficult but beautiful language.

By the way, it has been really cool to have real relationships with Spanish speaking people.  I took Spanish classes for the purpose of being able to communicate with and build relationships with people who speak Spanish but not English.  It has been so cool to be able to sit down on the bus with a complete stranger who only speaks Spanish and build a relationship with them.  I came here to Alcala to be able to do that better, and now I am beginning to see it happen.  Don't be afraid to take risks and talk to people you don't know.  All your best friends were once strangers. I would never have gotten to meet Alonso and many, many others if I had not gone up and started talking to them.  There, I'm through preaching.

Until next time,
Ottpocket

Madrid and Segovia

This happened June 28 and 29.  Sorry for the ridiculous lateness.  


The school had a long weekend due to this national holdiay.  Wasn't quite sure what to do, so I decided to go to Madrid.  The only time I had been there was the wild night of partying that happened last weekend (sarcasm about the wild partying bit).    Madrid wasn't too bad.  I had a really good time enjoying myself with Emily over in Madrid.  We visited the Reina Sophia museum and the Prado.   Absolutely gorgeous.

Although the Prado did not allow pictures, I did manage
to find this picture.  It almost makes up for the lack of art pictures.  

They had a whole exhibit dedicated to Polka dotted
bouncy balls in he Reina Sophia museam.  I'm
not even being sarcastic here.

The next day we went to Segovia.  The Roman aquaducts were pretty gorgeous over there.  Mostly just walked around.  It was good to walk around with no definite plans.  Good times were had by all.

Me and Emily by the Aqueducts 

It was quite unfortunate that Democracy died in Segovia.
Oh well.  I guess it just happens sometimes.

Pokemon Cards

Time moves a bit slower here in Spain.  If you tell people to meet you at 5, they will show up at 5:20.  Stores are closed everyday from 2 to 4 because of siestas.  Clubs still play Gettin' Jiggy Wit It.  You get the point. 

Although I was well aware of this fact, I was still pretty surprised when I saw people playing Pokemon cards the other day.  Yes, you heard me right: Pokemon cards.  I saw them when Margrett, Malcolm, and I were in Pollo de Alcala (Alcala chicken) looking around.  I don't know who saw it first, but we definitely spotted people playing Pokemon cards in the restaurant.  And not just in the corner.  They were in plain sight proudly showing their cards to the world.  I was pretty taken aback, as I hadn't seen Pokemon cards in over 10 years.  The only explanation I could come up for seeing this was that Spain had been taking a 12 year siesta in coolness.  

Pollo de Alcala: Nerd capital of Alcala

Then the next day I went to the gas station and saw that they were selling Pokemon cards.  At this point it finally clicked that Pokemon was a big thing over here.  If not big, then at least it was a thing over here.  I was so delighted that I ended up buying a pack.  

And for all you wondering, I got a star Machamp and a holographic Pidgiotto.  Yeah, be jealous.

Although I was pretty excited to get the cards, the experience was a bit sobering to me.  I didn't know three of the Pokemon in the deck I bought.  Sharpedo?  Mamoswine?  Bronzong?  If I don't step up my nerdiness, pretty soon I will be wearing polos and shaving regularly.      

Ok, so I told Daniel to pose for the picture.  But I'm
sure that some Spaniards would react like
this to a pack of unopened Pokemon cards.

My host home brothers talked a lot of trash to me because of the cards.  Daniel asked me if I was 7 years old.  I think he just jealous that he didn't get a holographic Pidgiotto.    

Hasta Banana

Cuenca

So this happened June 18-20.  It's a bit late.  Sorry foks.

Two weekends ago, my group and I had decided to go to Granada to spend the weekend.  Everybody had been talking about how amazing Granada is, so why not?  We packed our bags and headed out for the train station in Madrid to catch our 2am train.  Everything was going well up until we found out that they had sold out of train tickets to Granada.  Yep you heard right, we forgot to get the tickets beforehand and couldn't find any the day of.  Even worse, it was after 12am, and the trains stopped going out to Alcala.  We were stuck in Madrid for the night.

It started out pretty fun though.  I mean, instead of an all night 7 hour train ride, we got an all night party in the biggest city in Spain.  What's not to like about that?

Madrid, 1am.  Still good times. (L to R)
Me, Sarkaut, Mimi (behind), Laci, Dani, Margret, Malcom

It was still pretty fun until we hit the first club.  Have you ever tried dancing with luggage before?  It's rather difficult.  It was the saddest clubbing experience in my whole life.  We just hung around the corner and wished that we had somewhere to put our luggage.  Looking back on it, it was absolutely hilarious, although it was very painful at the time.  After deciding that hanging around in  the corning of a club was pretty lame, we headed out to an Irish pub to hang out.

Me and the crew hanging out in the corner
of this club.  Observe the hand in the pocket for a clear indication of how good a time
I was having.

At around 3:30 the pub closed and kicked us out.  We went to this tiny park and through a frisbee around until around 4:30.  There is just something about playing frisbee while lost in a foreign country at 4:30am that is fairly magical.  We were so tired at this point, that everything was fairly hilarious.  I fell asleep on a park bench for about an hour while the others talked.

Us at 4:30.  A bit more dead than alive at this point.

There were a lot of firsts that night.  It was my first time to stay in a bar until closing time.  It was my first time to be in Madrid.  It was also my first time to be homeless in Madrid or anywhere.  Needless to say, it was a fairly eventful night.  We all went to the station at 6am and tried again to purchase tickets to Granada.  We just wanted to get out of Madrid, and fast.  More bad news: the earliest train to Madrid leaves at 12pm.  More hours in Madrid.  We were too fed up to stay any longer.  We decided to try somewhere else.  How about Sevilla?  No tickets.  Barcelona? same thing.  In an act of frustration, asked the teller for any train tickets leaving for anywhere at 8am.  He said that one left for Cuenca.  Sarkaut said he had heard of Cuenca before, so we just decided to go.

I was fairly apprehensive on the bus ride down there.  Here I was leaving for a city after getting 1 hour of sleep the previous night.  The only reason we went was because we were too mad to admit defeat and go back to Alcala.  Only Sarkaut had heard of this place, and aside from that he didn't even know anything more.  When we went to the tourist bureau of Cuenca, we asked why Cuenca was famous.  The cashier had to pause to think what was great about it before saying that it was 'a medieval city.'  Wonderful.  We were going to spend the weekend in a crappier version of Toledo.  Just what I wanted.

Except I was dead wrong.  Cuenca was absolutely gorgeous.  Not only could one see the beautiful medieval aspects of the city, the surrounding countryside was gorgeous.

The city was built on a hill so that it would be harder to attack.  By the bridge in Cuenca, you can see many houses built into the face of a cliff.  Very pretty.

Houses built into the cliff

We were taking pictures when these guys just came up to try to
panhandle. Everyone but Mimi thought it was hilarious.
Mimi was pretty freaked out by them, as you might be able to see.

The first day we walked around the city and enjoyed the views.  We got to see part of a heavy metal band that came to town.  They were called 'Total Death.'  Best band name ever.  English was their second language, in case you were wondering.

The second day we set out to traverse the wilderness around Cuenca.  We each went and bought bags of fruit before heading out.  Pretty much all the fruit sold in Spain is raised in Spain.  This makes it 1) really cheap and 2) really fresh.  The first stop was a mountain close by that had a giant Jesus statue on top.  We then visited a spring nearby and wandered around in the wilderness for a while.  Absolutely gorgeous.

Me in the wilderness outside of Cuenca.  You can see
Cuenca in the distance.

All of us were sad to leave Cuenca on Sunday.   We came to the city knowing nothing and left wishing we could spend more time there.  By the end of the trip, Cuenca became a byword for unexpected surprises.  Like if you got an 'A' on a test you thought you failed, we would say that it was a Cuenca.  Not ever making that up.  One of the most awesome weekends I've had ever.