Sorry for the uninteresting post, but this is the best I can do for this post at this point, as I have to start studying for my last (5th) midterm tomorrow. Then it’s off to *gasp* Italia for Spring Break for a whole 9 days. Roma, Bolgona, Milano, Florence, Venice…here I come!
Sometimes I take walks just to look at signs to see if I understand them and to look at the way phrases are structured (because it’s not always a direct translation from English to Spanish for it to make complete sense). I like to see if I can get the gist of a conversation from only catching a few words as I walk past an elderly couple or group of friends. The same goes for cellphone conversations on the street or in stores. They’re all little games I play with myself to test my language skills and I do it more for something to be proud of than to be nosy. How much can I understand a Spaniard speaking Spanish normally and without having to slow their speech so a non-native can understand?
I am hoping that words and phrases I pick up in this inconspicuous manner will infiltrate into my brain and somehow make me smarter; perhaps even help me explain myself the next time I find myself waiting confusedly outside a gorgeous, must-see basilica with my big-old camera in hands when a funeral parade begins. (So much for trying to blend into the crowd and minding my own business.)
I have to post this article from Thursday’s New York Times. It’s right-on, down to the intimidating introductory classes and social drive to be active (or not) in web-communities. I didn’t realize how popular e-zines or designing graphics were for girls–especially teens–but it makes sense.
Historically, girls and women have been expected to be social, communal and skilled in decorative arts. “This would be called the feminization of the Internet,”[Pat Gill, the interim director for the Institute for Communications Research and an associate professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign] said. Boys, she added, are generally taught “to engage in ways that aren’t confessional, that aren’t emotional.”
I am all about people using technology in their daily lives, and thrilled to hear that it’s accessible and engaging to people even younger than me.
Amidst the cold (well, the 20s in comparison to Madrid’s balmy 40s-50s) and thoughts of Amelie and Ratatouille, I spent a long weekend exploring Paris with a class at SLU that was open for other students to join them. We were a small group of 5 students (2 actually in the class) and a professor that I really liked (and only partly because he was recently diagnosed with type 1 diabetes).
Some of the themes were food (crepes, Orangina, open-air markets on side streets, and even a well-established international scene with many Greek and Japanese restaurants), lights (mostly on buildings at night making for some awesome pictures), city planning (lots of open spaces and wide streets, which is especially visible from the top of the Eiffel Tower), bookstores (multiple on every corner, but maybe more salient because I was traveling with a literature class), water and bridges (the Seine River runs through the city inspiring interesting architecture and landscapes, the marsh contrasting with the arid land in Madrid and Spain), and art, art, and more art (There’s more art than places to exhibit it –galleries, museums, on the street…They were at least smart enough to devise a system to keep the works organized in the national museums such the the Louvre has the oldest pieces up to the 1890s, the Orsay has the impressionists and pieces from the 1890s to 1914 or so, and then the Pompidou has everything after 1914.).
I was on my feet from my early morning wandering (starting at 10am is for the weak!) to tours of assorted neighborhoods and museums (check out my itinerary) for about 12 hours a day Thursday, Friday, and Saturday–counting food breaks for fabulous crepes, salads, salmon, and as much soup as I could get my spoon on to fight the cold. Thank goodness for my running leggings and under armor because blue jeans with two sweaters and a sweatshirt underneath a jacket and scarf would not have been enough for me.
Once again, luck was on our side as we had a great hotel location (very nearby the Notre-Dame Cathedral, the Sorbonne French university, Luxembourg Gardens, the Pantheon, and the Latin Quarter), missed all the long lines with our group guided-tours of the museums and managed to catch all forms of public transportation before our fingers and toes fell off. Though we were definitely paying quite a bit more for all this “luck,” everything went smoothly throughout our super-saturated trip. As a means of contrast, my friend was also in Paris this weekend and her hostal located 20 minutes outside of the city on public transportation was too new to have hot water and waited in line at the Louvre and Eiffel Tower for a few hours.
Like my first days in Madrid, I was frustrated because I couldn’t communicate with the locals despite my yearning to do so–except it’s obviously a bit more extreme since I have never studied French. I wanted to ask the market-men where are you from?, what’s the best in season?, or even the stupidest question of how much? My stark independence and rabid curiosity were forced to be constrained. The Professor interacted with the locals and served the vital role in translating menus, so I didn’t suffer too badly nor find even one instance of the rude French stereotype. The only stereotype I got a whiff of was smelly French people; I kept thinking it was me and found myself checking my breath or recalling if I put on deodorant that morning.
I came to realize, though, that no matter how much I may want to be a part of another culture–be it French, Spanish–I will always be an observer, never a member. I can’t look the part or speak with the native’s flair or even think and act instinctively in any of this rich cultures I have been visiting. No amount of studying, immersion, hair dye, or plastic surgery will ever do the trick. Part of me is saddened by this illusiveness, but it also makes each place and culture all the more beautiful and exotic because I know that it will never be and must remain at the level of a Platonic love affair.
Lots of excellent pictures and you can get a better sense of the chronology and reasoning of things by reading the captions like a story.
Today marks one-month in Spain. My does time fly! I’ve certainly learned a lot and experienced some beautiful moments, but there is still more to come! Some of it has been planned (and I’m not going to spoil the excitement of it by telling you about it now), but most of it is just the daily encounters and adventures of living abroad. So keep reading to find out more and, as always, I love all the comments and emails!
A few days ago I was in a small office supplies store looking for a gift for my host sister’s birthday. I explained to the clerk as best as I could what she liked and her role as an architecture college student to see what suggestions he could offer me. “Of course, but can you do me a favor first?” he humbly asks as he slides an order form across the glass display cabinet counter to me. “Can you help me translate this to English? The man is from Germany and can’t understand Spanish.”
Since it was only small words and notes as would be expected on an order form, I had no trouble translating it. There was just one key word that I double checked in my precious electronic dictionary to be sure that I didn’t write the wrong thing. He was very grateful and I felt very honored to help; it was one of those Good Samaritan moments. Of course, the rest of the interaction went well and she just opened her gift a few hours ago–loved it.
When he was writing my receipt I saw him take off 1.5€ which I wrongly assumed was for translating and almost waved my student discount away, but this still highlights the value of knowing English. We all are really lucky (it is luck because who gets to choose where they are born?) to know English, and better yet, it’s our first language so it was easy and “free” to learn. No matter where any of us travels in the world, we will be able to communicate with the people or find someone who can without much difficulty. If you can read, write, or speak English you’re set.
Part of it is due to our ignorance and refusal to learn more languages so the rest of the world has to adapt to us. English is the language used for politics and business, it makes the world go and is the key to many people’s livelihood in non-English speaking countries. Many countries (including Spain) start teaching English at a very young age, a subject taught and considered with as much importance as Math or Reading in the US–unlike the elective(read: excuse to have a party in light of the language’s cultural traditions) language classes I started taking in middle school. Though Mandarin may be spoken by more people, good luck trying to use those skills to decipher a Latin-based text. I’m jealous of their national attempt to make their citizens (children, specifically) at least bilingual.
What started out as using my host sister’s birthday as an excuse for family to get together to celebrate, eat Spanish food (e.g. tortilla espanola, creamy cheese that despite smelling strongly and distinctly of feet everyone but me adored, crusty bread, shrimp with heads and legs still attached, thinly sliced meat from some part of a pig), share some laughs, and drink, turned into singing old Spanish songs acapella and then a crazy dance party.
From 9pm to 2:30am we had either an iPod, computer playlist, CD, or latin/Spanish music videos blaring as we danced in their living room with all the chairs (there were about 15 of us) and table pushed aside. First it was the classic flamenco music, then modern flamenco, then to today’s dance music (thumpa-thumpa songs, as my dad calls them) and Spanish rap with a bit of Latin pop thrown in here and there. (I didn’t know the words to Bailamos it was ALL in Spanish.)
Computer speakers turned into an iPod speaker dock to some rig to get the surround-sound stereo speakers going. Don’t worry, we kind of turned it down a little bit at 12pm to respect the neighbors…but then some other song came on everyone loved and, well, we were all betting that one of the neighbors was going to call or come knocking. (We live in flat in an apartment-like building.) I was impressed some of the younger kids could sleep through it. My host dad was dancing like I don’t even know what, trying all night to reel in people still sitting down to dance with him and whomever else was boogying.
It took me a while to muster up the guts to join them, but once I was up I didn’t go back down. While the two other students also living with me left around 11:30/12 to go out to clubs, I stuck around with the aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins to dance the night away Spanish style.
I had the honor of experiencing Picasso’s great Guernica Friday at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. I haven’t taken any art classes since middle school, so I didn’t have quite the same appreciation and infatuation for the Picasso exhibit as the two other people I went with. (One girl nearly peed her pants from a mix of delight and disbelief of where she was.) It was a good thing, though, that I didn’t have such an extensive background with Picasso or know the controversy surrounding the piece because I could appreciate it all for what it was instead of getting bogged down by all its baggage.
The Guernica part of the exhibit was nicely laid out, showing the development of the piece with all his studies and practice sketches for certain parts. Thanks to x-ray technology, there was also a projection of the Guernica at different points in its construction so you could see how it looked after, say, 10 months, 20 months, etc. to get the full history and thought behind the piece’s progression. Seeing all these ‘doodles’ made him and the painting seem less godly to me because I’ve always had this idea of a painter walking up to a canvas and just working until poof we have Guernica or what-have-you. Even geniuses have to practice!
Now I’m playing a part in this aura surrounding the piece by not addressing the other 3.5 floors of his works in the exhibit. The Reina Sofia has a few other Picassos besides the Guernica, but many are on loan from a Picasso museum in Paris. Overall, the exhibit highlighted how talented he was. He wasn’t just a painter; he also sculpted wood and bronze, made collages/multi-medium pieces, and other ‘objects’ that I don’t quite know how to categorize.
I was a big fan of all the collage and multi-medium pieces just because they have more depth and I guess symbolic meaning to me than a drawing or painting. He had a musical instrument phase, too, so I held up the other two canvas-oriented people I was with while lingering over these. I was pretending that the violins were violas…
The exhibition evoked conversations ranging from what is real art to pondering all the what-if-someone-did…to the Guernica. I’ll let your imagination fill in all the possible profanities we the other two discussed. Although I wouldn’t cut off my leg to own a Picasso (as the friend who was on the verge of crying and peeing her pants the entire time), it was a very neat exhibit. You have to be a genius to represent all angles of an object on a flat plane (pretend you are walking around the object and you will see all those views in his one representation of it) and to include the bare minimum needed to get an emotion across; forget about art representing what you see, it’s about what you feel.
The museum has made a really nice website and you can practically view the whole exhibit online. Of course, these images are nothing like seeing it in person, where the oil paint has its own dimension and the colors are not orange instead of brilliant yellow.
Use the left-to-right scrollbar below the images to see select works from Room 1, Room 2, Room 3, and Room 4. They go in chronological order so you can get a sense of how he developed as an artist. Now I have to go back and see the rest of the Reina Sofia…
See how her face has all the angles represented in it? And her orange-y skin tone was bright, almost Big Bird yellow. I swear!
As a result of my terminal business I’m just going to say about my trip to Cordoba and Granada in southern Spain (province of Andalucia), checkout my pictures and use the captions plus my updated Where I’ve Traveled as your guide.
Since we left early on Friday morning and returned at 10pm on Sunday, I really didn’t get much work done. Plus, we had all of our walking tours in Spanish so my head was ready for a break at the end of the day, not ready to hit the books (that I didn’t bring…). We also had this packet of questions and activities to complete since it was an ‘educational’ trip that hung over all of our heads as we explored the various sites. I was not happy with it because I felt like we were obligated to have our noses shoved in a paper rather than experiencing the scenery; I ignored the packet as a result and scrambled to fill in all the responses on the 7-hour bus ride back. To top that off, when we met again for class the next day (Monday). we were supposed to have continued with the readings and assignments as if we hadn’t already invested enough time in the class over the weekend. …off to work I go…
Somehow I got the idea in my head that studying abroad would be all fun and games, that classes and life outside of Penn would be less complicated and less stressful. WRONG. I didn’t formally think of it this way, but in the back of my head I had conceived a bit of this idea.
I have still managed to be just as busy, if not more so than at school. Things that I never thought would take up time constantly butt their way into my life. Staying in contact with friends and family with the time change, homework (which I, of course, always find some way to put it off or get too absorbed in the assignment and spend an unnecessary amount of time on a small thing). exploring Madrid, planning other adventures (bane of my existence right now), meeting new people, finishing up summer applications (why didn’t I do them before I left like I promised myself), spending time with my host family, discovering new foods and neighborhoods, still working at my job at school via the internet, and overall navigation in a foreign (in all senses of the word) world–it is truly exhausting, not to mention the little mishaps from not being able to understand everything people say to you (and, boy, is it mentally draining focusing on Spanish-talk for more than an hour or two).
Why must I have the desire to do it all?
