Jesus the Thirsty and Stefanie the Jewish

Jesus the Thirsty. That’s the name of a street I walk on often. It’s just a side street that happens to connect my avenue (Cruz del Campo, probably named after the giant brewery at the end of it…). On the corner of 

Cruz del Campo and Jesus the Thirsty (Cristo el Sed), there’s a decently large church.

I get that Spain is a Catholic country. I understand that there is no chance of me eating meat in the next 4 months. But beyond that, I didn’t think about religion here too much after that. Then I got to my house and was greeted by La Virgen who looks down on me when I come home at 4 am. She’s a mosaic in the driveway. The Jesus mosaic is on the patio, naturally. My senora says that her Mary mosaic is the only one with blue eyes in all of Sevilla. What a curious thing to brag about.

My host parents never pushed me on explaining why I was that vegetarian who ate fish but not squid. Spaniards generally aren’t too nosey about others. Sure, they gossip from one house, each woven to the next by a clothesline and audible by a decibal above a whisper. But, they are not pushy (except for the gypsies by the Cathedral, but sevillanos don’t seem to love gypsies really). Even with that buggy 25% unemployment (“paro” is an important vocab word here), there are very few beggers. They just don’t get up in your business.

Until you’re calmly eating your third fishstick and your roommate isn’t around for dinner and you find yourself under a Spanish inquisition of the inquisitive type: “So, you don’t eat meat because you’re Jewish. Are pigs holy? Did you know they are actually really clean animals?”

And then the big one, “So what do you think of Jesucristo?”

Uhhh. Awkward spoon drop here. Glass clinks. The news reporter on TV even seems to be quiet, waiting for the perfect diplomatic and valid answer, automatically invalidated by an indoctrinated country.

I explain that I see Jesus as more of a holy man, a prophet, but not the end-all-be-all of messianic thought. And for me, religion is about values, community, and heritage.

But I explain that in Spanish. So it was probably translated as “He’s like, a great guy, maybe a ‘prophet,’ but not really, como se dice, ‘the messiah’? Anyway, I like Judaism for community also past and traditional experience so, I’ll pass on the pork, but thank you. Really for me, it’s about being a good person, that’s what’s important.”

Grammatic flawlessness. Wow. I should probably run the UN’s interfaith communications committee - I’m basically a religious diplomacy experta.

Ha. More awkward glass clinking noises. Luis Manuel: “Estefania, eres una buena chica.”

Maybe he was thinking “but you’re not going to be saved ever,” but I doubt it. I think he’s a good person too.

Two days later, I’m spending my afternoon in a cathedral and hotdamn, it’s sparkly in there. Glimmering altars, gilded chairs, marble columns extending to skylit domes of shining stained glass in a million colors. A baptism fountain the size of a birdbath for an ostrich. More than 3000 pieces of artwork from Goya, Velazquez, and all the Spanish greats. The altar the princess of Spain was married on, right next to the confirmed ruins of Cristobal Colon (how we call him Christopher Columbus? No se.)

I’m undoubtedly stunned, awed, marveling at the wonder that Catholicism has done at physical manifestations of higher power. This cathedral is miraculously stunning, historically significant, and majorly enormous.

With ceilings appearing about as close to heaven as it gets, the Cathedral has me feeling incredibly tiny in Sevilla.   And again, thrilled.

While I may have chicken in New York, no state has this historic level of beauty. No state also has free sangria until one a.m. the night before and churros open until 6 on the same block. This city amazes me nonstop.

Garden of Sevilleden

I'm feeling a tad overwhelmed. In a good way. Maybe.

I'm taking classes at three different programs at once - I think. But there are so many options (all in Spanish) for picking classes on the website of Universidad de Sevilla (US) that I can't navigate it  pa' nada. So, like every quarter, I emailed my advisors and then called my mom. We (Stef on) Skyped for a half hour, trying to figure out classes and discussing how US is actually really far from the US and here they call that the EEUU not to be confused with the UE which we know as the EU which I'm taking a class about Spanish relations to through Sweet Briar College which is in Virginia but I'm spending time at its office in Paseo de las Delicias which has a delicious view of a large river named Guadalquivir. Say that 10 times fast - How's that for a name game. If you followed that at all, 10 points.

If not, here's a different tangent: Spain is confusing. I walked 5 miles today - 2.5 to class and 2.5 getting lost in the most idiotically designed but eerily Alice-in-Wonderland-esque city skinny streets. If you added all the streets in El Centro (downtown) together, you could wrap them around the world 7 times. I completely made that statistic up. So, what's cool about the streets in Santa Cruz People have gardens INSIDE their houses in those skinny streets. You look to your side and you feel like you just had Alice's drinkme/shrinkme potion because there are immense Viking-esque doors with huge gold caps (pictures to follow). Some of the doors are open and I won't publicly announce that I may have trespassed to peak into the incredible interior of these antiquated citymansions. Imagine the Garden of Eden, on steroids, in your foyer. That's what these ricos have. If I stick around these ginormous doors enough, maybe I'll find a giant novio who lives in one of these houses and I can just sit in those gardens and feel settled and peaceful.

Right now, I just feel really tiny. Happy, though. Sevilla is a very happy place.

First Daze

How was your first day of school? Fine. Exhausting. A lot of syllabi. A lot of Spanish.  Nothing new.

Except I’m in a whole other country. Right. That.

School in Spain: you have to go until you’re 16, there are some vocational programs, there are some catholic schools, etc. At 16 though, junior and senior year become some intensive college prep and then you try to get in to a public college because they are better than the private ones. They also cost less than 10% of what Northwestern costs. Bueno.

(There's a fascinating social problem with almost what you could call 'overeducation' here. Everyone has a degree, most a masters, but unemployment is at 25%ish and no one can find a job simply because they don't exist. However, we've met multiple engineers with jobs. Moral: don't study Journalism, especially not if you're contemplating living here forever. Note to self, change my major. Now.)

Now orientation has commenced – three weeks of many grammar worksheets, cute little ‘I Spy’ assignments around the city, and a whole bunch of Youtube videos about Spanish culture. Much to the American student’s surprise, there is music in Spanish besides “Gasolina” and Juanes’ collection. We’re practicing how to lisp and mispronounce words so we fit in with the Andaluz culture here in the south – it’s sort of like the South in America – Northern people treat it with strong air of condescension compensated for by a global love for our weather and Costa del Sol beaches. And Cruzcampo beer, brewed on my street. 

Our program’s office is on Paseo de las Delicias, in the same building as a McDonalds (pronounced: Mahkh Doughnelds) were they have free Wifi (pronounced: weefee).  Here we have access to printing, internet, walls of books, and some people to help us figure out why my Vodafone prepago plan is costing me a trillion euro and what the difference is between ser and estar and where the catalogue of cursos for the School  of Filologia is.

Philology. That’s our home department en la Universidad de Sevilla. None of us have ever heard of philology. I’m pretty sure now that it’s an intensive pursuit of language backed by linguistics and cultural history. This is nice for me because I very much like history and culture and I’m here to learn Spanish. It also means I can take a class of Spanish cine and watch movies for the next few months and get a 300-level Spanish credit for it!

But, picking courses is near impossible when the website is in Spanish and most of the words are like ‘filologia’… If I can’t read the website, how am I going to understand a professor, with his silly Andaluz accento, in a class of Spaniards? Somehow, I will, apparently.

Once you see these pictures of the building though, you’ll understand why it’s all worth it, and why my school is cooler than yours. Mucho cooler than yours. Perdoname for not being able to take any foto at a right angle. 

Just your average castle school

Does the King of Spain live here too?

One of a thousand plazas. Why bother even photographing  it.

Just meet me by the fountain

A stained glass ceiling, on a Moorish indoor terrace, looking into yet another Plaza

How fun would it be to A. Sing operatically to one another from these, B. Spiderman across, C. Go to school here? 

The Vista from my Terraza

Living 2 miles away from school has a few benefits. My blistered, bruised, calloused, tired feet disagree. But a few bandages and some ibuprofen make that okay. When standing on a rooftop around sunrise, you can't complain when everything you see is a strange union in urban tranquility. How poetic. But really, I hope this seems half as beautiful to you as it does to me.

El Shock Cultural and a Discourse on Lentils

They don't have a word for shock here, at least not one that I've heard. Likely because nothing really shocks Sevillanos - they're way too relaxed to be taken aback by anything. Though they're relaxed, they're also bold.

Por ejemplo, when a girl is walking down the street, she'll hear catcalls. And then the dudes here will actually get up in her face yelling QUE BONITA, QUE BONITA or something else dumb. After so many seasons of American students here, you'd think someone might realize this is not at all an effective pick-up line, but actually just makes us more uncomfortable in our first few days - or very complemented. Not sure.

The second style of Spanish pick-up artistry is wildly more effective, though arguably just as tasteless. Girls go to a discoteca known as 'that place where the American girls go' by Spaniards, who come for cheap thrills (1 euro cover, sometimes free) as long as you aren't wearing shorts or sandals. In said club, American girls dance like frat parties in movies and eurofolk just stand around, bobbing and watching. You make eye contact and since Don Juan and Jane Student don't have a language in common, eye contact is as good as "let's go." And you go until 6 AM, easily. (Note: Don't worry, Mom and Dad: I'm not Jane Student, la americana estupida, so far.)

So these are cross-cultural comparisons that are important for the American girl studying in Spain. A full cross cultural tendency is more sociologically interesting. Americans sugarcoat EVERYTHING. Spaniards don't. So you can't introduce a girl as your friend and badmouth her two minutes later because Luis and Carlos have actually been friends since birth and still live with their parents, next door to each other. They won't understand what you're saying if you can even get that far in Spanish. They value words, they value friends, and they keep both limited and deeply meaningful. Americans don't. This greatly confuses Spaniards. Also, even though I really liked the chickpeas, I've since been served artichoke and lentil, two other vegetables I really strongly don't like. If I were Spanish, I would probably just say "I don't like lentils and artichokes (in Spanish)." But, I'm too weird-American-polite (which doesn't make sense because I'm way cynical and New York brusque for this place) so I just kind of ate parts and pushed some to the side and said everything was good. I didn't say delicious though, because I'm practicing not sugar-coating. Or less sugar-coating.

Not everything I see gets analyzed into absurd and obtuse cultural observation - I'm actually learning from the Spanishmen more than just Spanish. Today at lunch, my host dad (who I think is named Luis but I really haven't the slightest clue) told us that during the end of the Guerra Civil/beginning of Franco's dictatorship, many people ate lentils because they were very cheap, and now lentils remind some people of tumultuous times and Franco. I hate lentils and dictatorship, so I guess I fit right in? It was a funfact and I'm really interested in the dictatorship so I was glad he brought that up randomly.

Point being, there is an intense history to this culture, this microcosmic dream I'm living in. There is nothing I really dislike yet (except lentils) because it feels so foreign - because it is. Everywhere we go feels like a thousand+ years of people and events are with us. I almost cried at a wedding on the steps of a church because it was just so fascinating - people are happier here. So even if some clubs are sketchy and some men are rude and not everyone is automatic best friends, there are aspects of this Sevilla life that are definitely the way things should be...

Or maybe I'm still just incepting into someone else's dream - that's what it feels like most of the time.

But, classes start tomorrow - back to some kind of reality.

La Comida de Espana

Hola

I am perpetually full here. Maybe its the jetlag or the fact that it's too early to turn down food I don't want to eat or maybe I just keep trying things because I'm curious. Also, they were so not kidding about a radically different eating schedule.

Wake up, get the best coffee ever.
Go to class, and then come home for lunch. Which is huge. Also, thankfully my host mom/personal chef totally gets the vegetarian thing and accepts my roomie's no-fish policy. So I got fish with rice and spinach and chickpeas. She had chicken. Everyone was happy.

Before Spain, I HATED chickpeas. But, I was too nervous to pick them out so I tried one (I'm supposed to be open-minded here...) and it was DELICIOSO. So, as a new chickpea enthusiast, I was superhappy to have more at lunch. Oddly, after eating this main course type dish, we had salad, with tuna in it. I got TWO kinds of fish and three things with tomato. A kosher-in-a-foreign-land banquet. I'm thrilled.

We go back to school, have a merienda (snack) with our classmates which was more coffee (still so much better than America - averaging 3 cups per diem so far) and baklava (so mediterranean right now. Also hated that like chickpeas, now a big fan) along with tiny cakes, which were a disappointment but the coffee and baklava made it a-okay.

We come home after wandering through amazing winding cobblestone palaces in the center of the city (took an hour to go home, second time being lost today) and then we had our 9:30 PM dinner - earlyish here.

Mom's not home. Manueluis (still not sure if his name is Manuel or Luis) makes us a salad. A pasta salad. With hard-boiled eggs, pineapple, raisins, vinegar, tomatoes, and of course olive oil. Is this food even Spanish? Would they ever put this on a menu en los Estados Unidos?

We're about to go out which will be far more blogworthy but I'm so not going to be able to write when I get home. From exhuastion, of course. Not botellon/tapas/club/disco... (Hi, mom and dad!)

'ta luego. 

Stef in Spain!

I can't even say I'm in culture shock. I feel just distanced from reality, glazing over the intensity of how my life just changed.

Yesterday, I was on summer vacation in New York fighting over how to fill a suitcase with my mother. Now, she's 6 hours behind me and an ocean away. I've boarded an overnight flight, landed in Madrid, switched planes, and floated down to Sevilla. I don't feel like we landed and boom, estoy aqui, ready to take on the challenge.

I make small talk with my host mother, Ana, and my roommate Courteney. By three seconds, its established that my name is actually Estefania, and Courteney, she'll have to get a new name too (picked at lunch - Maria. Classic.). Truth is, I have no clue what she is telling me - I think her friend went to her beach and her neighbor just kissed me on both cheeks and took my bag. (Now, I know her 'neighbor' is her son and his name is Manuel not Miguel and he speak a good English he learn in Inglaterra and Florida.)

It was raining when we landed. In fact, it's still raining. Funny, because I was told it NEVER rains here. And Mom Ana and Manuel also say it never rains here. But, it's wet.

So, while I have now thoroughly discussed the fact that its raining, I'm from Nueva York, and I am 'vegeteriana,' I'm really become some OCD space cadet. I'm counting street signs through the car window and mosaic tiles in the driveway.  This out-of-it mode started from the packing but I noticed how weird I felt when all I could think about on the plane was how cool the clouds looked. Air looks different here. You can see it and taste it and smell it and on a humid day like this, you can touch it.

I'm a thousand miles from home doing something so totally awesome and all I can think about is air? At lunch, we were watching the news while enjoying a spinach and chickpea dish with spanish omelette and the never-ending orange soda, and the only sentence I could say was "Libya doesn't look very fun." Great conversationalist, I am. The Spaniards seem to think all Americans have a fascination with and an adoration of McDonalds. Which is most severely butchered by the Andalusian lisp.

There are an insane amount of details I could share. Tiny stories that make up this 'experience' so far. Like how I battled the hot water heater in the shower and how great brushing my teeth felt after a million plane hours. Or how I fell onto some girl's suitcase because I, at 5'2.75" cannot carry 5 bags at once. Or how conveniently euros fit in my wallet. Or how I still don't know if Manuel is that guy's name and where his bedroom is. Or how incredibly happy I am to be here. Or how nothing has hit me still. It just seems like a really weird dream.

All I know is its all a blur and this blog is the closest way to capture at least snippets of it.

The pictures are tiny bits of home sweet home, the cutest little most beautifulest house of ornate decor of clutter, but tidy. One day when it doesn't rain, you'll get a better view. Maybe I'll even know what street I live on by then. The only thing that makes this feel like home is a wretched dog screeching to the rain. Basically Irene all over again. Except now I have power - if I can just figure out how these adapters work...

Stairs to our mini-apartment

Front Door

Off to orientation - the name makes sense, since I'm so disoriented right now.