Elderly women party harder than I do.

*See title. 

Goodnight!!

Subjunctive is easy!

Subjunctive is easy! A la 1 hay verbos de G1, A las 2 los de G2, ... all the way around the clock and at each hour we have 1 punto punto, 2 punto punto, 3 punto punto, 4 punto punto, 5 punto punto...wtf??!

Spanish class is more like cryptography. WHAT'S WITH ALL THE NUMBERS?! oh wait, the numbers became animals, like thats any less confusing.

On another note, the teacher said that she likes the courtesy of american culture. Apparently we are polite. I actually think this is relatively true, although many would disagree.

Here, in spanish, things are pretty blunt and direct: 'Come here and do this.' In english, 'Could you come here and do this please?' I never really notice this when the spanish people speak in spanish. Its normal. But when spanish people speak english, they sometimes come off as rude. I found it funny that she acknowledged this. She also discussed how we americans are always apologizing for EVERYTHING. 'I'm sorry, but could you please explain that again?, I'm sorry, I didn't hear you. I'm sorry, but I have to go to the bathroom.' Non-english speakers are like WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU SO SORRY FOR? The whole concept of apologizing for non-offensive things doesn't translate very well.

My History professor didn't come to class today. I wasn't surprised.

But it was a lovely relaxing day none -the -less.

Since I hardly have class ever...

Observations:

Language is exhausting. I might be improving? I understand almost everything (except the church service) when I focus, and I am more comfortable speaking. Being around so many people who aren't speaking their native language is a good atmosphere for practice. However, I'm speaking English way too much, its confusing my brain.

It's cold. This might be a great beach/vacation town in the summer, but during the winter the humidity from the sea + low temperatures = chilled to the bone. When its not raining and the sun is shining, I am sooo happy.

I like siesta. From like 2-5 I have lunch, do some homework and rest a bit. Everything is closed from that time (except El Corte Ingles)

I dont like the "Day of Rest" quite as much. With all the siesta-ing, I dont need a whole day to rest. And it's kinda creepy on Sundays when there is literally no one in the streets or cars on the road. And considering the religious idea behind resting on Sunday, hardly anyone actually goes to church (well, we did, but I doubt that is going to become a habit).

Lots of people smoke here. (Already knew that, but I'll repeat. It's gross.) This causes 25 year old people to look middle aged, teeth to be brown, and it smells bad.)

But, there are not many fat people. (Also obvious). Personally, I attribute this to all of the stairs in Santander, because it certainly isn't that they don't eat/drink.

The school is disorganized, classes dont all start at the same time, they change rooms and schedules, theres no centralized system, no one speaks english (including the teachers who are teaching courses in english), and students rarely show up. School looks kinda like the city on a Sunday.

People seem to be fairly informed about current events and quite democratically involved, although the idea that a stable democratic political atmosphere is a component of sustainable development was rejected in my class.

"Rebajas" are awesome. Should have brought nothing and bought all of my stuff here. 15E boots, 20E coats, 3E scarves and shirts...

The food is ok. More fish than I would like, but I dont hate fish. I miss breakfast though. It has been reduced to coffee, yogurt and mango juice. Mango juice reminds me that I also miss Indian food. And Chinese food. And Thai food. And Italian food. 

My host family is great, but expensive. Im glad that I did it for the language experience and not having to worry about anything like food/laundry (I also get my exercise walking to class), but the apartment option seems perfectly awesome as the 'flats' are big, furnished, close to school, and wayyy cheaper than families.

The Spanish course is very grammar intensive. Actually, it is just very intense. I'm pissed I'm not getting credit for it because it is my hardest class.

Some courses have unspecified prerequisites.

Everyone is very nice. :D

¡No tengo frio...compré un abrigo!

Longest day ever. Thank god for sun and my new coat. Next purchase will be: shoes that I can walk 26.2 miles in and climb all the stairs to the top of the empire state building without feeling pain.

Success of the day: understanding almost all of Desarrollo Sostenible class.
Cost of that success: headache and a brain incapable of translating thoughts into words.

So, the end.

Sun on Sunday

Today is the second day in a row that I have seen the sun and I am very very happy about this. Yesterday was very nice. We went shopping in the centro and then to El Corte Ingles for some more shopping. Today however, everything is closed. There is nothing to do. There is no one in the streets. Such are Sundays in Spain. I might download a movie or something. Check out pics on facebook of my room and apartment!

If u dont want to hear me bitching, you have permission to not read this post.

Woke up at 930, forgot about how my classes have all changed schedules so I had class at 10 today. RAN to class (which involves scaling a small mountain), and then waited 15 mintutes for my professor to show up. They told me that a) people would be late and b) no one goes to class. Both are true. The school is eerily empty. There were 6 people in my class. The prof thought  I was polish. Then spent 2 hours in a semi entertaining but utterly useless lecture (no wonder no one comes).

Then I discovered that my computer no longer likes to connect to wifi. It cant find any IP addresses. For any network. The rest of the problem I dont understand because tech help is in spanish. I gather that they think it is because of my operating system. But it has been working for days, and now isnt. The same as the wifi I was stealing in my apartment.

Theres a party tonight, because its Carnaval in Santander, and u are supposed to dress like a superhero. I clearly dont have a costume, and spent all day going to useless class and trying unsuccessfully to fix the computer so I didnt go costume hunting with friends.

And, as per usual I am hungry and cold. I would say that at least it isnt raining, but that will probably change before I leave this building.

Ok I think I am done complaining. I keep writing these posts before noon meal, when I am dying of hunger. Hopefully I will be less grumpy after eating.

It wasn't raining, but now it is.

Last night, tried to go out for valentines day with some friends. Went to a cafe and had a little chocolate pancake thing. It was delicious, and the guy tried to tell us it wouldn't make us fat. Right, a pancake in chocolate syrup with whipped cream is 'lite' hahaha. Then we discovered that only old people go out on Tuesday nights, so went home and went to sleep.

This morning I registered for my classes. So I now am IN my classes, but still no one knows where they are or what time. And some don't start until next week. Including my class right now. I'm in the library doing my homework for my Spanish course, which was a reading about Zara. Which made me want to go shopping. But since, like the title says, its raining, now isn't the best time to figure out where there's a Zara in Santander. If there is one. I assume there is. Also, I need to buy notebooks. Anyway, instead I have made a vocabulary list for yesterday's class.

How am I possibly tired?

Last night went to a bar near my house with amigas to chat about first day. I had pineapple juice and an egg sandwhich! Finally, real breakfast. At night, but oh well :)

My Statistics class doesnt start until next week, so i didnt have any class this morning. So i slept until noon, waking up only to have 'breakfast'. Then I went to check the results of my placement exam and I must have done better than I thought because I am in the highest level and have class from 6-8pm every day. Which conflicts slightly with my sustainable development class but oh well. I will be going to that in 2 hours, hope its good! 

It's still cold (maybe less cold) and rainy. I'm debating buying another sweater.

Hopefully I find my classes by next week.

WELL, here I am in an engineering building... so i think at the very least I am somewhere near my class? maybe? no one knows. The course coordinator was last seen exiting the building with an umbrella and bag, and no one is sure if he will return.
At least I got the wifi to work, and made a new friend doing so. And I found 2 of my classes. Mr. Secretary thought i was Italian, cool, but no.
I think the problem is that I am taking a mixture of classes from different disciplines, and there is no central office with all of the answers. I have civil engineering courses, industrial engineering courses, and a business course. which seems to be baffling everyone, including the other exchange students.
On another note, I am hungry.  I really want a breakfast combo ASAP. No wonder afternoon meal is so huge, they starve themselves all morning!
Ok in 10 mins, i can return to the secretary that was trying to help me. She needed a cafe break lol.
Later..
So all of the classes have changed times and some overlap. Perfect. :-D
Even later...
Pretty sure I am in the Spanish for dummies class after my placement exam lol

Stealing Wifi...

SO i have no internet again, hopefully i can fix that pronto. umm relaxing weekend, went shopping, ate food, slept, thats about it. tomorrow will be crazy though, trying to figure out which way is up. oh, and its still cold. chau chau for now. leave me comments!

Day 2

Went to picos de europa, the mountains, it was cold. again. but the scenery was lovely. Learned some French, registered for spanish class and talked to Conchi a bit. Party tonight... but have to be at the uni tomorrow at 830 again so i wont be staying out very late. Oh and if you are reading this, leave a comment, so that I actually feel motivated to continue blogging. Gracias! :P

Day 1

Found the university this morning without problem, but I do not remember how I arrived, so I will have to figure it out again tomorrow. Orientation is in Spanish, but most of the students speak English even though they are from all over Europe. It seems that many people either speak Spanish very well, or hardly at all, so it is hard to practice. We had a tour of the university, and a bus tour of the city. Both were fine and I met many people from all over, having small conversations in Spanish now and then. Though I did not meet too many of the Americans because they have formed a large group and seem to mostly keep to themselves. Also it was cold and rainy and I didn’t really eat anything all day so I am quite hungry. Counting the minutes until la cena. We have a meeting at a bar later for all of the Erasmus students, so that should be fun to meet more people.

Later…

Went to bar, spoke lots of Spanish but didn’t really meet anyone new. Oh well--here's a pic.

Lost? I'm not lost!

And I’m not. Really. I just took the long way.

Hmm trying to remember this morning. I woke at 5:45 when the little devilish alarm clock beside my bed went off. Then I went back to sleep til 9. With my blinds closed my room is pitch dark, even when the sun is bright and shining. Well, it wasn’t really shining. It was raining. But u get the picture- it was dark even though it was morning. Tried to do something with my hair, that didn’t turn out so well without a hairdryer. Went out and said hi to Conchi, who was making something delicious smelling. Breakfast?! No, food for Ramon’s birthday party later in the day. But I did have coffee and some galletas, which are supposedly cookies but more like graham crackers. I then got ready and went in search of a bank, a place to buy a cell and modem, and the university to pay for my orientation program. I found the bank quite easily but realized that I forgot to bring my dollars to exchange for Euros. Oops. At least I know where the bank is. Then I stopped in Movistar to try to get a phone and she said that I needed a residency card, that I couldn’t prepay things with only a passport. Since I have no idea how pre-paid anything works, I didn’t really question this. However, it seems to me that u should be able to pre-pay whatever u want, regardless of where u live or how long u are living there, because you are only using services that you have already paid for. But whatever. Then I happened across the tourism office and thought hmm they probably have a map and maybe speak English so that I can find my university. Well they did have a map, but did not speak English.

(FYI, no one speaks English. And my Spanish is just barely good enough to get by. So dear Penn, when you tell people that they need not speak Spanish for this program—lies, all lies. If I didn’t speak Spanish I would probably still be in Bilbao.)

Anyway, I followed the path on the map. Which was the aforementioned ‘long way’. I walked about a mile and then found a tunnel. I walked another 20 minutes through the tunnel, don’t worry, there’s a sidewalk. At the end of the tunnel, I took the long way around the back of the university. Not because I can’t read a map of course, but I just wanted to wander through a parking lot, follow a bike path and climb a random gigantic set of stairs through an un-kept field.  When I finally found the actual university buildings, I asked inside for the office of international relations and she told me it was the building farthest away. Of course. So I walk to that building, and ask for the ORI and they tell me to go outside, in the bank and up the stairs. Now, since banks are everywhere, I went outside, across the street, and into the bank. There were no stairs. Since this was the second time I entered Banco Santander looking like an idiot (the first without dollars to change, and the second time looking for a university office that didn’t exist) I felt pretty retarded. Anyway there was another bank and I went to that one and in fact, you could go upstairs. SO I finally found the ORI. Now, you would think that at the very least, someone in the office of international relations would be bilingual. Not so. (I’m telling you, you MUST KNOW SPANISH). I managed to register and get the information for my orientation. Then I went downstairs to the bank and paid for it. Then back up. And met a group of other exchange students. They were speaking English and one had an American accent. So I asked him where he was from. In English, in my own American accent. And he responded “I’m from the United States of America.” Duh, dude, so am I. So I said, “haha yea, what state?” He said “Florida, where are you from?” Me: Pennsylvania. Him: OH so you are American too?! Me: (facepalm)how do u not recognize the ENGLISH accents of your fellow countrymen? I knew he was American from across the room. But he turned out to be relatively nice and was with a group of people who invited me for coffee. So I went with them and everyone was nice. I forget their names. There was a British guy, a Slovakian guy, two Spanish guys and a Slovenian girl, Alexandria, I think. Many of them still didn’t have places to live and were ‘couch surfing’ which made me very glad for my cozy little room. They all said that I was very lucky to live on ‘calle del sol’ because there’s lots of great bars and stuff nearby. Awesome. Turns out one of the Spanish guys was in charge of the whole Erasmus club thing and the orientation, and he offered to drive those of us who had homes to our respective places. Since Alexandria and 2 of the other guys were going and seemed like decent people, I decided it was probably safer to go with him than to take another long stroll around the city by myself without knowing the way. So he dropped me off. When I arrived, preparations had been made for the aforementioned birthday party. Ramon turned 4 today! He is a very adorable child, and has a precious 6 day old new sister, Julia. His parents are also nice. Laura also came, and we had a VERY GOOD lunch. Don’t remember what it was called, but it might be my new favorite food. There was also cake, and a piñata, which Ramon failed to break, but was valiant in his attempts. I talked a bit with Laura, who seems very friendly, and did nothing for a few hours. Then I left to figure out the cell/modem thing. I talked to Ramons dad, who helped me figure out what to ask for, and went to a different Movistar place than this morning, just in case. However, that girl told me the same, that I need this residency card. So I came back and Ramons dad called and talked to the other phone place and they said I didn’t need the card. But I had to walk there. Another long walk later, and a slightly nonfunctional conversation with the sales girl and I now have a cell and internet. But I don’t know how long the internet will last as it is only 1 GB, and that means nothing to me. Hopefully for a good while because it was kind of expensive. Now I am just waiting for dinner, and looking forward to orientation tomorrow, which I had assumed would be in English, but since my schedule is in Spanish, I really don’t know. So while I am mildly confused most of the time, I think my Spanish will improve a lot, necessarily. However, I am kind of sad that all of the exchange students seemed to prefer English.

Following the Sun across the Sea

When I left Philadelphia about 24 hours ago, the sun was setting, and when I arrived to Frankfort 8 hours later, the sun was dawning in the German sky. So pretty, and appropriate in a corny symbolic way. I slept little on the transcontinental flight even though I had a whole row of seats to myself and was moderately comfortable. I believe this was because of the ‘chicken or pasta?’ dilemma that they let us think about for 2 hours before dinner was served. I chose chicken. It was decent but I still wondered if the pasta was better. However, I managed to rest enough to be awake and alert for my 3-hour layover in Frankfort. Then I passed out on the plane to Bilbao.  When I finally woke up, we were beginning our decent into Spain and the old man with a cane next to me said, ‘española’? To which I of course replied ‘no’ and we had a semi-successful conversation in Spanish. Since he was from Bilbao, I figured I would ask if he knew how to take the bus to Santander. He advised me that taking a taxi to the bus station would be the easiest way, and helped me to do so. My suitcase also arrived without a problem and I was able to withdraw euros with my ATM card. My taxi driver wanted to practice his English, so I spent the 15-minute cab ride saying ‘mhmm’ and pretending to understand him. The lady selling bus tickets also wanted to practice her English and caused me to panic when she told me it would be 72. It was actually 7.20 and I would appreciate if the Spanish would speak to me in Spanish! I took another cab to my homestay and suddenly everyone was indeed speaking to me in Spanish. I understood enough to make it through introductions and engage in polite small talk, and she gave me soup and eggs and ham for lunch, which was good, but way too much for me to eat. I have a tiny blue room that is quite cute, the apartment is nice and clean, and the water pressure is good in the shower. I slept most of the afternoon, and woke up for dinner around 9. We had salad and hot dogs and mashed potatoes, which was good but too much again. My only minor issue is that there is about 1 square foot of space with internet access (stolen from a neighbor) in the apartment. I’m going to look into getting a modem. It is a bit of an issue that I cannot look up maps or anything since I need to find my way to the office of international relations tomorrow to pay for my orientation. But I’m sure I will find it somehow. I just hope that I can sleep tonight, considering all of my napping today.

Well, I'm Here

I'll do a better post tomorrow. The place where Im stealing wifi is not very comfortable. But yay I'm in Spain and didn't die-get lost-lose suitcase-get robbed- on the way :)

Obsessive Packing

As the title of this post suggests, I have become obsessive about packing. I am losing sleep at night because I'm pretty sure that I am taking too much stuff, will forget something I actually need, will have to pay for an overweight suitcase, will lose something important... or some other such 'tragedy'. I've also become convinced that I need to buy black leather boots.

OH,
Other big question:
will I actually work out?

If so, must take workout clothes. But where to put them?