Finalmente en Madrid!
Saludos amigos!
I arrived in Madrid, safe and sound, this past Friday, and I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT HERE. My host family is absolutely amazing, the food is so delicious and flavorful, the city is STUNNING, and having a glass of sangria with lunch is not too shabby :p
I don't have a lot of time to write (I'm going out for tapas tonight!), but I had to share something that I was not expecting but I'm so very pleasantly surprised with since my arrival in Madrid. I've been here for two days and I have fallen IN LOVE with a bunch of Jumbos on my program.
Jumbos, for the most part, are a quirky, fun, intelligent breed of awesome people. But by junior year, it seems like most, if not all, of us get a severe case of tunnel vision in which we ignore 90% of the people we don't know or completely ignore everyone outside of our circle of close-ish friends. We do this under the assumption that everyone outside of this circle either sucks or simply won't connect with us.
That mentality is COMPLETELY...
Un Mes!
Hola hola hola!
It's been about a month since I've been here and it's been CRAYYYYY! Though I now feel comfortable saying VALE (the Spanish "okay"--an expression my Peruvian Castilian was not accustomed to), I'm still getting lost on the Metro and need help when choosing what to eat at restaurants. So far, I've tried (CHECK IT, DAN GRAYSON) paella, churros and chocolate, CROQUETAS, torta española, bull's tail, and baby pig to name a few. I've hit the culture shock wall as Spaniards laughed and stared at me when I told my friend Phil he should "amarrar" his shoes instead of "atar" and while walking down the street smiling at people who instead of returning the smile, stared me up and down and kept walking.
I've cried, been frustrated, wandered on my own, and found Spain rubbing off on me in the most beautiful ways! Spain is all about enjoying life: from the food to the work ethic... everything. And as a crazed workaholic who lost all balance last semester, I've suddenly found myself...
Mi Familia Española
When picking a study abroad program, most people are either really turned on or really turned off by the idea of living with a family. Personally, I was pretty indifferent, but now that I'm in Madrid, I cannot imagine study abroad without my host 'rents. Seriously.
I remember meeting with my study abroad director and going over my housing questionnaire with her, which I filled out in a moment of complete study/sleep depravation delirium while fantasizing my future abroad and romanticizing the host family experience. I wrote something along the lines of, "And I imagine us going to church together and them being very understanding of all of the changes and things I'm going through while in Madrid." I know, I'm adorable. Surprisingly, upon reading my romanticized description, Susan Sanchez Casal did not laugh. She did not mock. She understood exactly what I meant and worked with it.
Then we were placed in families. And I found out about mine earlier because my busybody mom just HAD to...
Fa11: We Grew Up
After a semester everyone came to know as my personal “semester from hell,” I can honestly say I’ve never been happier to be home!
Excuse the negativity, but this semester… it was a trying one. Not just for me, but for most people I know. My closest friends and I were all dealing with deep dark things we’d never experienced before: getting over a love, handling a long-distance relationship when a significant other goes abroad, and thinking of the future (scary!). Within that, I feel like this semester, we all awoke to the reality of college. When I mean “the reality of college,” I’m talking about how we all have a hyped idea of what college is, whether we envision a deep intellectual environment or a party overflowing with red solo cups, we have an expectation. Freshman and sophomore year, I feel, we lived those expectations, and this year, we came to see how our ideas of college match up with reality once the shiny newness of college went away.
But beyond that, we realized the necessity...
EDIs Unite!
EDI decisions come out tomorrow, and though I'm going crazy with (late) papers, performances, and end of the year to-do's, I had to take a second and reflect on the decisions that will come out tomorrow. As the title implies, I was an EDI kid, and I remember the day I got into Tufts like it was yesterday.
I think I may have mentioned before that I didn't exactly fit in my high school. Blonde, tan, and incompetent has never been my flavor, and that's all my high school offered. It didn't help that by some freak accident I beat a tan, blonde, and questionably incompetent girl from my high school in an election and became class president our senior year. All of her friends, who were the only people involved in the activities I ran and also happened to be in all of my classes, made sure that I had the worst possible senior year. It was awesome (not). And I still don't understand why people would go through so much effort to make someone else unhappy--or why they still hang on to those feelings...