Asturias, Patria Querida

Quickly: what are the first three words that come to your head the instant I say, “Spain”? Don’t think about it. Just do it.

Okay. Got your three words?

Great. Now, how many of them were anything like “green,” “mountains,” “farm,” “bagpipe,” “goats,” “rain,” or “natural paradise”? No? Huh, that’s weird.

Let me guess: you picked “siesta,” “bullfighting,” and “flamenco.” Does that sound about right?

Don’t worry, I don’t blame you for choosing that way. The fact is, you didn’t actually get it wrong, it’s just that your answers only covered maybe a quarter of the country.

Asturias, tucked away behind a smattering of mountains with its northern end descending out of sight into the cold Cantabrian Sea, isn’t your typical Spain. Though of course the better news is that there is no “typical Spain,” but that’s another story. Where bulls are more commonly seen sequestered in barns than in bullrings, where siestas are taken not because it’s too hot to leave the house but because the blasted rain hasn’t stopped, and where you’re more likely to hear a hearty drinking song over a round of sidra than the delicate plucking of a Spanish guitar, is where we’ve been spending the last four months of our lives. This weekend we went as a group to make what for most of us was a grand farewell trip, to immerse ourselves a bit more deeply in the culture that’s been surrounding us, in the monumental Picos de Europa.

Though only a 30-minute stop, our brief peak at Cangas de Onís was worth it just to see the tiny little mountain town that was once the capital of all of Spain.

For one of the provinces least trodden by the feet of tourists, Asturias lays claim to some of the most historically and culturally significant landmarks. Boasting the one-time record of “least-conquered place in Spain,” Asturias accumulated a great deal of items as they were moved there to be guarded while Muslim armies inhabited most of the rest of the country, like the cloth alleged to have covered part of Jesus Christ’s body which remains in the cathedral of our very own Oviedo. Also, the alleged largest piece of Christ’s cross just so happens to be kept in Santo Toribio de Liébana, which we appropriately saw on Sunday.

Though if pretty bridges and gilded wood aren’t your thing, then you might at least have liked the food. We spent our Saturday afternoon in the small pueblo of Cabrales, the unassuming birthplace of a world-famous cheese. The Ruta’l Quesu, or the “Cheese Tour” in Asturian, took us past farms and through caves under the direction of a guide who is also responsible, along with his brothers, for turning Cabrales into a tourist destination. After our walking lesson on the town, we were welcomed to a traditional Asturian meal called la espicha, which in English must mean “eat until you explode,” because that’s exactly what we did. An espicha is served in a succession of small plates to be shared in a manner somewhat similar to the definitively Spanish practice of tapas, but the kinds of foods placed before you are undeniably Asturian. Cabrales cheese, chorizo, wild boar, and hard-boiled eggs were just some of the dishes served to us amidst an endless supply of sidra cascading from the a pipe in the ceiling.

Notice how I said La Ruta’l Quesu isn’t Spanish? The surprising truth is that Spain is overflowing with other languages that aren’t Spanish. The sister languages of Basque, Galician, Catalán, Valencian, and of course, Asturian, can be found in their respective provinces. Rarely crossing territorial boundaries, these languages can add a touch of local pride to those who live in their native regions. In the case of Asturian, you won’t find it spoken too openly in the capital city of Oviedo, but in the mountains and smaller pueblos it still thrives.

After Cabrales we moved deeper into the Picos and closer to the province of Cantabria to pass the afternoon and evening in Potes. I often find it all too easy when soaking in a new location for the first time to note what feels familiar. Potes is the kind of comfortably small mountaineer-and-tourist’s paradise that could be swapped out with several towns in Colorado or Arizona without anyone noticing the difference. Couples walking briskly by with walking sticks and massive backpacks, earth-colored t-shirts in store windows, and more off-road vehicles than you can count (actually, fellow student Peter counted about 6 in an hour) all add up to something you think you might have seen before. That is, until you see something that draws you right back to your present location. Everything from the trees to the waterfront cafes reminded me that Potes doesn’t have to be compared to something I already know—it is its very own beast. The automatic tendency to search for something to which we can relate may keep us from feeling totally lost, but it’s observing the things that distinguish places that make each one more interesting.

For example, never in my life have I seen views like those from the mountain in Fuente Dé. Our last big stop, on Sunday afternoon, brought us up in a cable car to set our feet in snow once again. I’ll let the photo do the talking:

And then, for one final time, we came home to Oviedo. Our weekend immersion in Asturian culture will be the last for many of us, at least for awhile. With only a week left of classes, the return date to Philadelphia draws nearer for most. Some of us are staying, while still others will be on trains and planes for a week or two to tour and make one final desperate grab at European culture, but the “Study Abroad experience” is reaching its finale.

To my fellow Temple students: let’s make this last week count.

Lending a Second Hand

photo by Gabriel Wu

With “Thrift Shop” steadily riding the top spots on every European hit list since we arrived in January, you’d think the hand-me-down boutiques that the song glorifies would be a bit more popular, but we’ve only ever found one of note in Oviedo.

AIRA is the closest you can come to a literal meaning of a “hole in the wall” establishment. Nearly hidden from view on a side street near the Milan Campus sits this tiny, one-room market. Poke your head in and you’ll see that it’s no Buffalo Exchange. Upon entering, you’re greeted weakly by a half-dressed mannequin, trying desperately to appear fashionable in its red t-shirt, probably leftover from some free give-away, despite its taped-up broken leg. The only things that appear organized on any level deeper than basic category are the books—most items seem to have been hastily added wherever they fit upon arrival, and if you want a sweater you might have to dig through a cardboard box. It looks like the only thrift shop to have given up on the pretense of not being a garage sale.

But you’re unlikely to find anything for more than three euros, and most is cheaper than that. Several of us started coming here months ago, before I ever even knew what the place’s name was, to buy hats scarves, books, and one unbelievably fresh fur-lined coat. It also didn’t take us long to discover that the money we were spending wasn’t going to the store.

The reason the AIRA thrift shop looks like an afterthought is because it is one. AIRA stands for Asociación de Inmigrantes Residentes en Asturias (Association of Immigrants Residing in Asturias), and the offices are right next door to the shop.

Sometimes cultural deja vu is so pervasive that it feels like you never left home. Talk of immigrants as “thieves” robbing money from the country, reactionary xenophobia, and pure, virulent racism can be found here all the way in the north of Spain just as well as it can be found in any one of the United States. The people of AIRA are working against the same kinds of problems we’ve gotten accustomed to hearing about since our very own immigration debate started years ago. Dirty looks from people on the street, difficulty with the law, and the police doing everything just short of shutting the operation down have been obstacles for AIRA since the beginning.

But as in all places, there are people of every ideological stripe. A number of AIRA’s direly small work force are volunteers, and those who come to the store looking for books or even just for something cheap to wear have no illusions about the store’s intents and purposes—they spend knowing that they’re doing so to help out.

Since life is never colored in black and white, some of AIRA’s operations, though good-intentioned, remain in a moral and legal gray area. I learned that the men going about the streets selling CD’s and DVD’s procured through blatantly illegal means (mostly Senegalese immigrants) receive the bags to carry their wares from AIRA. Good move or no?

But if there were easy answers to these problems, then AIRA wouldn’t have to exist. The fight for immigrant’s rights will continue until AIRA sees its slogan repeated in the minds of the people:

“Ningun ser humano es ilegal.”

“No human being is illegal.”

Street Education

As if we hadn’t had enough time off from normal classes already after Semana Santa, last week the Casa de las Lenguas halted the typical schedule and gave us a week-long session of cultural workshops. These talleres, each taught by familiar professors and faculty members, took us out of the traditional classroom setting and into new and more challenging environments (especially if you took the dance class).

With none of my workshops starting before 3:00 in the afternoon, I wasn’t about to complain. I figured an easy week with a few fun, kindergarten-level activities were in store, but by noon on Tuesday morning I found myself busier than I had been any week since my arrival.

My workshops of choice were periodismo digital (digital journalism) and fotografía (photography). For the latter, the belovedly frank professor Concha tallied votes for a theme then told us to go take some photos and come back on Thursday. For something that seemed to mean so very little to the professor, you’d think I might have put in the corresponding amount of effort, but I and many other students wanted the photos to actually be good. Unfortunately, with just under a week to do so, I doubt most were satisfied with their results, but the practice of scouring Oviedo with a photographer’s eye was a nice refresher after four months of noticing the same.

One of my photos, which will never win any prize I can think of, at the very least reminded me of something important. Searching the city for desperfectos (imperfections), the week’s theme, I found a crippled man by Calle Uría. He was wandering in slow, small circles by a statue, with nothing but a plastic Alimerka bag and his supports. He may have been begging, but I am forced to assume that something about his actions were illegal, because the police were not long in arriving. Taking two cars might have been excessive.

Oviedo is known as the cleanest city in Spain, and it’s obvious that the city tries very hard to keep that title. We get a little spoiled here knowing that an army of street cleaners will come by every night to clean up after us, but looking nice and polished requires more than just picking up leftover trash. There’s a darker side to maintaining good face value, and that involves cleaning up people as well. As much as we love living in the “fairy-tale” city of Oviedo, every once in awhile it’s important to be reminded that it too is a real city, with real problems.

My brief investigation into the world of the disenfranchised of Oviedo didn’t stop with a simple photograph. My story of choice for my journalism workshop was to speak with the owners of one of Oviedo’s few (read: I think maybe two) thrift shops, which is actually only a small extension of an organization called AIRA which works to help immigrants in Oviedo stay on their feet.

The immigration debate in Spain is practically identical to the conversation we’re having in the United States, but the tension is felt all over the country as immigrants are much more dispersed. All over this wonderful city of Oviedo are people walking on eggshells hoping to not only make enough money in an already unforgiving economy, but to hope that the police don’t look at them too closely either.

So I think the talleres actually worked. Their goal, to get us to think about and understand Spanish language and culture from another perspective, certainly found completion in me. Our education here is more about being outside the classroom than in, and sometimes all it takes for a good lesson is to walk around Oviedo with a camera and a notepad.

Llega la primavera

Gijón coastline – courtesy of Katy Brock

It only took three and a half months, but lovely weather has finally arrived in Asturias. After a long, rainy winter, many UniOvi students took the first sign of permanent sun as an excuse to don fewer clothes and head straight to the beach.

The coastline is but 30 minutes away, by car, in the city of Gijón. With it’s long stretches of coastline, abundance of public parks, and conspicuous availability of recreational supplements like demarcated bike paths, it makes sense that Asturias’ largest city attracts a different kind of people. With fur coats replaced by tracksuits, beanies supplanting grandpa hats, and any sort of real pants abandoned for bike shorts or swimsuits, I felt perfectly at home. I’d been once or twice before to meet my tandem partner (coincidentally in one of the most hipster cafes I’d visited in all of Spain), but never with such brilliantly fine weather.

Ask anyone from Gijón and they’ll tell you that certain “dedicated” types can be seen sunbathing even throughout the winter. Those of us who prefer to preserve our nerve endings came out in full force on Saturday to finally join them, lining the beach with towels, soccer balls, and a whole lot of skin. Seriously though, we saw somebody take a dip while only wearing a hat. The whole beach applauded. It was a beautiful moment.

Though the Cantabrian Sea is never anything but uncomfortably cold, we still felt it deserved an inaugural splash. After that terrible idea, we spent the rest of the afternoon scorching our sun-deprived skin and eating ice cream.

Once the sun finally began to set, many took their cue to head home to Oviedo, but a friend of mine from North Carolina, Chuck, decided there was no good reason not to stay. We went to the supermarket for a cheap dinner and then spent the next two hours walking up and down the coast in the dark, watching as the young culos mojados (literally “wet butts”, the playfully derogatory nickname Ovetenses have given their neighbors) slowly began to populate the beaches and bars yet again.

Around 11:00, when we were just beginning to convince ourselves that we might as well head back to Oviedo, Chuck turned to me with a better idea:

“Do you want to go talk to strangers?”

Two hours later, sitting in a bar that I had never seen before, in a city that I had never spent more than a few hours in, and talking amiably with a group of people I had only just met in Spanish without a hitch, it hit me for the first time in months: this isn’t normal.

The amount to which socializing has been reduced to a sink-or-swim level for us here is staggering. With no Spanish students in our classes, the only Spaniards placed naturally in our paths are our professors, cafeteria ladies, and host families. The rest is up to us. Finding a way into a new culture rests almost entirely on searching for even the smallest opening, and then hopelessly wriggling yourself into it until you fit. You have to stop yourself and ask the question Chuck asked me.

The stakes become lower when there’s a time limit on the experience. When you know that you have five months to either swallow your apprehensions and hope that a stranger won’t hate you for asking their name, or risk missing out, then the answer comes pretty clearly. But I wonder what might happen if we were to take this learned confidence back with us when we finally go home to Philadelphia. What happens when we poke our heads out of the nests of our classes, clubs, and our circle of best friends to ask that guy with the cool hat how his day is going?

The worst that can happen is you’re told to walk on, and that’s still never happened to me.

If it does, then that stranger is missing out on getting to hang out with you, and who in their right mind would want to do that?

Home is Where the Heart Is

Oviedo’s population of Americans plummeted to nearly zero in the past week-and-a-half, as students left home with their luggage at a nice, Ryanair-accepted size to visit their respective dream destinations in Europe during Semana Santa. With such a long stretch of free time, few stayed in Asturias, much less in Spain. The great tradition of the Eurotrip was in full swing.

Travel has come to mean very little to many of us. After having already set off to see many different parts of Spain and Europe, several hours on an ALSA bus or a two-and-a-half-hour flight are no big thing. But a week and a half is the longest many of us have spent away from Oviedo.

Fellow travelers are often in the business of trading biographies with one another, and so as usual my friends and I found ourselves explaining the ups and downs of Asturias’ capital city to hostel-mates. In our little discourses, the sweet often seemed to be closely followed by the sour.

“Oviedo’s nice,” someone might say, “but it’s really small.” Or perhaps: “The people are a little too bourgeois.” Maybe: “Too traditional for my tastes.”

Wow. Did we even like Oviedo?

I’d throw in a few jabs of my own, but they’d always come out tasting a bit foul. Of course the complaints were valid and true to a degree, but there was no good reason to focus on them. Too traditional? My host family is atheist. Too bourgeois? All the young Ovetenses we’re friends with are down to earth and sans fur coats. Too small? The only reason I don’t weigh 200 pounds right now is because I walk everywhere.

I get the same sticky feeling every time I participate in a conversation that becomes nothing more than a small group of Americans saying, “Have you noticed how Spanish people do x, y, and z?” I suppose it’s all well and good to decompress and immerse yourself in your own tribe this way every once in awhile, but it’s also a pretty dangerous defense mechanism. Those who, after only three months, have decided that they know just how Spain is and isn’t, have never let go of the idea of study abroad as an extended vacation. If you can give yourself up to the idea that rather than being a simple diversion, you might actually leave some of yourself in Spain, you’ll find that the differences become more complex and more familiar at the same time.

Finding things to complain about puts a clean, convenient distance between yourself and the experience. It’s a nice excuse to validate feeling homesick. Around the 3-month mark, a friend and I admitted to hitting a slump period. More than a delayed homesickness, it was a lingering, irritating feeling that the experience stopped being what it should be. I’d think about home, but that didn’t feel like where I wanted to be either. Surrounding myself with the familiar didn’t seem as if it could fix my problem. I was missing Spain and I hadn’t even left it yet.

So I left it. And while vacationing in Italy, I started to uncover the roots of my troubling thoughts. The odd complaints we recite to each other may be due less to the fact that we miss home, and more that we are afraid of missing Oviedo. Traveling a country that speaks a language I don’t know, I wanted nothing more than to hear and speak Spanish. I missed the quick, easy, and still socially-acceptable snack that is the bocadillo: essentially a bread sandwich with a small bit of meat tucked inside. After wandering around big cities, I couldn’t wait to get back to nights in which I knew that a gang of friends could be waiting at a table on Gascona just fifteen minutes’ walk from my apartment. How spoiled we were that after running around Europe for spring break, we’d get to go back to Spain, but even more incredibly: I was missing it like it was home.

The reason for the slump wasn’t that things had changed, it was that they had finally become normal. But a semester abroad shouldn’t feel like real life, right? It’s just part of a plan—it’s a semester you’ve blocked out for yourself to see a different country, and then when you return you’re going to continue like nothing happened. It was a way to satisfy some credits while having a good time, not something that might have the power to move your life in a different direction. Right?

Wrong.

The problem which faces us is that now that the experience is coming to its end, we’re tasked with the burden of remembering it. How can we find a place for this experience to fit in the progression of our lives when we can hardly take anything back with us? In five weeks, we’ll be forced to abandon a way of life that’s suddenly become our own, and will have hundreds of miles dropped between us and some very dear friends. You can’t enter into an environment so drastically out of sync with that which you’re used to and hope to come out unchanged. Now I worry that once the new environment is gone, the new person I feel I am will somehow go with it. It now feels dangerously important to ensure that what I’ve learned here will remain a functioning part of my life, and not a closed and impenetrable box in my memory, or worse, a black hole which can be overwritten and forgotten.

As we all begin to try and repress the realization that time is beginning to run out, the best we can do is to not start missing Spain while we’re still here and to take advantage of the remaining weeks. If anything, we can find solace in the fact that if when the end comes, readjusting to life in the States is hard and we miss Oviedo to the point of heartbreak, then that only means we did it right.

The “Falla” Burns Strong

If I had known a little bit more about the way Valencia celebrates it’s hallmark festival, I never would have set an alarm. Every morning, like clockwork, I was woken up by the sounds of the celebration starting again. Or, perhaps more accurately, continuing without end. Parade music leapt up from the street below and invited itself into the little rented apartment all the way on the 11th floor of my building before 10:00 rolled around. Many of these paraders would then continue to march all day past sunset. I’m still not sure if some of them ever truly took a break.

The festival of Las Fallas is not only special for Spain—it’s unlike anything you can find in any other country. Central to everything in the week-long celebration are the magnificent, brilliantly designed constructions from which the festival takes its name: las fallas. Each built by a different team of falleros, the fallas are “sculptures” made of wood and paper which are typically designed to communicate some sort of social commentary.

Most of them are satirical in nature, and so as you might imagine Rahoy was well-represented this year.

A play on a famous Velazquez painting: “The Surrender of La Breda”

In some, the message is quite clear and painfully obvious, like this falla that took a jab at tourists just like my friend and I:

Can you spot the irony in this picture?

Others are, shall we say, rather dense. Several fallas appeared to be more of a collection of random gripes rather than a cohesive story or statement. If you were to ask me, I’d be sorry to say that no, I can not in fact find a way to find a relation between a large woman falling out of her dress while standing on a dragon, and the witch, cave-woman, balding old man in makeup, and many other characters that surround her.

And you thought I was joking.

Confounding or no, not a single falla ceased to impress me. On practically every corner of the city was one of these monumental structures, each with their own cheeky allure. Although made by different teams, every falla is done in an exaggerated, cartoonish style that gives them all a common charm. Some are for kids, and thus appropriately “kid-sized,” and some are unbelievably massive. Each falla is a work of art unto itself.

It’s a shame they burn them all in the end.

On the final night of the festival, which unfortunately took place after I had to leave Valencia, the town goes up in flames. Every falla save one (the most popular, which is preserved in a museum), is sentenced to immolation by way of firecrackers. Not only is this an efficient way to get these hulking structures off the street, but it’s also a grand symbolic gesture. The fallas are designed always with this fate in mind. They are representations of all things that the people might wish they could literally burn in real life. Some show a desire to move on, others to draw attention to hidden problems, and some even to take a run at religion:

Not even the old Pope is safe from the falleros.

But apart from the custom, which is already widely known, I found the true brilliance of Las Fallas in all the little things in between. When I say that the festival has no equal anywhere else in the world, I mean that if you tried to have it at least in the United States, you’d be shut down on the first night. The phone lines would collapse due to a flood of noise complaints, the eyes of children everywhere would be fussily covered as they approached the “inappropriate” fallas, and don’t even get me started on the concept of “fire hazard.” It’s hard to catch a moment’s piece when there are young kids running around at all hours of the day setting off some pretty heavy-duty fireworks. At times it felt like I was in the middle of a war-zone, but to the people of Valencia it didn’t seem to matter because the whole town is in on it.

From parents proudly cheering their daughters as they march in full traditional dress throughout the city…

to groups of friends cooking immense pans of paella in the street…

nobody is left out in this grand celebration.

So your son says he wants to say out late to see the fireworks on Saturday (easily the best display I’ve ever seen in my life). Why would you stop him? At 2:00 in the morning, even on Sunday night, it was just as common to see teenagers gearing up to go out, as it was to see adults sitting and sharing a drink, as it was to see kids playing soccer in the street.

And this goes on for several days.

Las Fallas carries with it a great sense of something shared, unlike any other holiday or festival in which I’ve ever taken part. My advice? If you ever have a chance, you simply have to go.

The 8 Steps of Learning Spanish in Spain

To understand and correctly use a new language is a lengthy, tumultuous process. Unless you’re that one guy who got Icelandic down pat in just 10 days, the trial and error period of learning to fully restructure the mental machinery you use every day to interpret your environment and respond accordingly can be a bit of a struggle. Though if you do it our way, and plunge right into a culture that functions on the language you’re trying to learn, you’ll learn faster than you think. I actually had the opportunity to step out and survey my progress more clearly this weekend after a brief trip to Ireland. Once the plane landed in Dublin, I spent the next day and a half doing double-takes when I heard English—albeit a different species thereof—being spoken by passerby. And then I did more double-takes when I caught myself doing the initial double-takes. When I finally re-entered Spain, I was so comfortable with my Spanish that I hardly realized how much things had changed since the first time we landed in Madrid. And so I began to retrace my steps…

1. “Could you please repeat that?”

For some, this first stage is also known as the “Did I ever actually learn Spanish?” stage. Passing conversation sounds like a chaotic exchange of arbitrary mouth-sounds, and you hope that nobody on the street will ever stop to talk to you. At the least, you can feign deafness, or get by with a simple, “Sí,” and hope that you didn’t just agree to something unseemly. Conversation is difficult when many of your responses are delayed by weighing your two options of either 1) replying to what you think was said, or 2) feel like an incredible nuisance and ask the other person to repeat what they said for the third time. If you’re constantly surrounded by Spanish-speakers, you might go awhile without hearing the sound of your own voice, or at least without constructing a full sentence. This can be the most overwhelming stage, but hang in there.

2. “How do you say that?”

Little by little, your conversation skills improve. Even though it’s still essentially impossible to find your best friend in a Spanish-speaker at this point, as it’s difficult to get to know someone when you only understand the gist of what they say, you’re confident enough to start laying the groundwork. A bit of sidra can help with that. The biggest problem is, however, that you quickly run out of stuff to say. You have a reliable piggy bank of useful phrases, and you can conjugate the most common verb tenses, but your vocabulary is still lacking. Conversations may end too soon; sometimes you can get no farther than giving your basic biography. You’ll find yourself suddenly in conversational territory that you’re ill-equipped to traverse. You want to dig into the stuff that you and your friends talk about in the States, but you aren’t sure how to say “feminist theory” in Spanish. You’d describe it to the other person so maybe they could help you out, but unfortunately you lack the words to do that, too. The important things is, though, that you’re talking and improving.

3. The Muddling

I’m going to try and relate photos of some graffiti I’ve seen to the topic at hand. You tell me if I’m stretching things.

Prepare for a very brief, but very weird trip into psychological badlands. It starts by forgetting how to say certain phrases in English, which is a problem when there are many things you still don’t know how to say in Spanish. You’re doing your best to think only in Spanish, but since you’re knowledge of the language only extends so far, you’ve effectively limited your own range of possibilities for thought. Your head is empty but for thoughts that translate to: “I am walking to my house right now. I have to study. Later, I’m going to meet my friends at a cafe.” There’s the occasional vague English mental background noise, but you do your best to keep it at bay. Then, when you go to speak to your American friends in English, you’re so used to attempting to avoid the language that you find yourself tongue-tied. You feel like your identity is in limbo, but The Muddling only comes in brief episodes. Think of it as the growing pains of learning a language.

4. The Plateau

You’re language skills aren’t where they were when you first started, that’s for sure. You know you’ve made leaps and bounds in improving your Spanish, but somehow you can’t fully convince yourself of this fact. There are whole worlds of grammar and vocab you want to learn, but you don’t know how to make it happen. “Stagnant” is the best word you can think of to describe your situation, and coincidentally also a word you don’t know how to say in Spanish. It feels like you’ve stopped improving, and you worry things won’t pick up again. The Plateau never happens only once. You hit them at intervals throughout your journey, even in the most advanced stages. Usually, the Plateau is a good warning sign that you’ve gotten too comfortable. Remedy the situation by getting out and talking to new people.

5. “Espera… ¡Estoy pensando en español!”

When you first got off the plane, thinking in Spanish was a chore. At times mentally taxing, it always required conscious intention. It’s the only place to truly begin the process of mastering a language, but the problem is that at the start, you can only really think in translated Spanish. That is to say, you were probably thinking: “I’m thinking in Spanish,” in English. What makes the moment when thinking in Spanish stops being a dissociative experience is that you won’t even realize it at first. Thought is automatic, but people are also specially gifted with the ability to stop and think about what they’re thinking about. The day that the lightning bolt strikes, and you find that what was once a “foreign language” is now your part-time inner monologue, you’ll feel like you won the lottery.

6. Interchangeability

Confidence was a long time coming, but it’s finally arrived. You still make plenty of mistakes—words are forgotten and people are misheard—but that’s only because you’re talking more. You can switch between Spanish and English at the drop of a hat, and you’ve realized it’s now possible to eavesdrop on Spanish-speakers (careful with this new power). You might even feel brave enough to step up and help that English tourist understand what the bus driver is trying to tell him. You might be so convincing that passing acquaintances may not ever realize that you aren’t actually from Spain.

7. The Spanish Dream

This is the Holy Grail for any language student. The Spanish Dream is that monumental moment when the language has made itself so at home in the wrinkles of your brain that it knows it’s way around without having to consciously consult you. Strangely enough, the first I can recall having was during my first night in Dublin. This doesn’t make you fluent—you can still speak incorrect Spanish while dreaming—but it does mean you’ve made such a habit of thinking and practicing that you can literally do it “in your sleep.”

8. Fluency

Anything I say about fluency would be pure guesswork. I’m not there yet. And I’m sure there are plenty of other steps between 6 and 7, too. Some experts say fluency may only be attainable for those who begin learning a language before the age of six, and so I, who was not so lucky as to have my infant brain molded by the Spanish language, may not be so lucky. But who knows? What’s important is that fluency is something much more complex that only comes after much more hard work than I originally thought. Before coming to Spain, five months sounded like a long time. Now it’s clear that five months is probably not enough if fluency is on your agenda. But the truth is that fluency isn’t even necessary to do all the things that you might need language to do for you. It’s just as well to be able to speak Spanish at a level that allows you to have a conversation, to understand the culture, and to make friends. Fluency is great and all, but as with any language, these things aren’t so fixed. Show me two English-speaking people with exactly the same vocabulary and attention to grammar, and then tell me what exactly it means to be fluent. To speak Spanish at an operational level, as I’m proud to say many of us are already doing, is a feat in itself, and at the end of the day may be all that we ever really wanted.

The Mid-Term Progress Report

While the snow still remains on the mountains in the distance, as it may always do, the undeniably spring-like smell of freshly cut grass now permeates the green spaces of Oviedo. The weather is warming up a bit. The suggestion to sit outside at cafes is not routinely met with scowls and incredulity. All these and more are signs that yes indeed, time is in fact progressing, and we aren’t going to stay here forever.

Somehow, we have arrived at the halfway point. Despite what some students’ brains are telling them, no, we did not just step off the plane in Madrid yesterday. On the other hand, some are wondering how this lifetime that we’ve spent in Spain has only lasted two months.

For me, it feels like “New Year’s Eve: The Sequel.” Suddenly it feels appropriate to take stock of the experience so far, and to decide what’s been going well, what’s been left out, and what still needs to happen.

The experience hasn’t been the same for everybody. Outside of the few hours we share each weekday morning in class, no two days are the same. Some of us have built a veritable family here, and not just with our madres de Oviedo. The greater part of our group has opened up and embraced a circle of Ovetenses with whom some genuine friendships are forming. We go out with them. We watch fútbol. We’ve even got that one special place we’ve been to so frequently that we know the name of the bartender.

Others have been slowly turning their host families into real families. Some spend afternoons with “younger siblings”, or travel to nearby sites with their host mothers.

The common thread that runs through all the various schedules that rule our lives is the one thing that I least expected coming into the experience: routine.

Moments when I’m suddenly reminded of the fact that I don’t actually live in this city are those that make me think I must be doing something right. It’s a strange sort of bittersweet realization that as things become commonplace or mundane, the experience as a whole becomes more extraordinary. The fact that I can now forge my own shortcuts through the city, or that I can be invited without a second’s hesitation to my host brother’s birthday party, shows that in some way, I must be achieving the immersion that was the ultimate intent of the experience.

So does routine mean no adventure? Certainly not. In fact, it’s an opportunity to climb out of another comfort zone.

Knowing you’ve only got five months to do something right is an easy way to keep you on your toes. Now that we’ve hit that halfway milestone, it’s time to make sure we’re doing all that we hoped to do, and all that’s been newly added to our to-do lists.

Scrambling to make Semana Santa plans, to make sure everyone gets to hit their dreamed-of slice of Europe, is only a small part. If we really wanted to, we could fill our five months just exploring every inch of Asturias. Apart from the adventures and Euro-tripping, there’s plenty still untapped here in Oviedo. Perhaps the richest goldmine I can think of is right under our noses, right where we spend most of our mornings: The Casa de las Lenguas cafeteria.

Pictured: the most international club in Oviedo

If you want to know where to find the most international spot in all of Oviedo, swing by the Campus Milan cafe for a pincho and be pleasantly surprised. At any hour of the day, you can find students from all over the United States and Europe. The only problem is that there’s little mixing. More often than not, Temple students sit with Temple students, and the UniOvi students sit with the UniOvi students. The easiest way to meet more Spaniards is just a table away, but so far nobody has taken much advantage of the opportunity.

In the spirit of “New Year’s: The Sequel,” I propose a resolution. I’d like to see all of us, myself included, take the leap from our little island of English and venture out a bit. I think we’ll be pleasantly surprised at what we find.

What’s Not to Love?

Oviedo is so used to using umbrellas that they’ve dedicated an entire plaza to them.

Nothing good ever comes without at least a little bit of something bad. The point of our semester abroad is that we’re not here on vacation—five months is allowing us to do a lot more than simply scratch the surface of Spanish life. Inevitably, we’re going to discover a few things about the day-to-day that might be less than preferable. Things like…

The Rain

I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: it rains a lot in Asturias, and often unexpectedly. The umbrella is a way of life. It’s used so often that some have gotten accustomed to treating it as a serious accessory. My apartment, for example, contains more umbrellas than it does people. If you’re going to need an umbrella for half the week, why be without one that goes with your outfit? It seems that maybe the weather has improved as of late, or maybe we’re just accustomed to the capitulant climate, though in any case I could really do without another afternoon of wet socks.

Spanish Breakfast

I’ll give Spain credit for getting coffee right, but they really need to stop and think about what they’re doing with the rest of their breakfast. At home, I only ever eat toast as a last resort, when food supply levels have hit emergency lows. Here, I have it every morning paired with coffee and cookies (though said cookies are closer akin to thick crackers). I realize that breakfast holds little importance here, and it’s only meant as a light, brief pick-me-up before work or school, but I rush through breakfast all the time in the States and I still have time for five bowls of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

A Bit Too Energy Conservative

The Crisis is a very real thing, and I understand you have to cut corners everywhere you can to save money, but it’s a bit uncomfortable when the light goes off on you in the bathroom and you can’t find the switch.

False Cognates

One afternoon, my host mom told me that she was constipada. Turns out that only meant her nose was congested, but I was too scared to ask right then and there.

Store Hours

Many businesses in Spain close around mid-day (2:00-4:00) for siesta time. This is also when many of us get out of class for the day, so it’s sometimes impossible to pick up something you need on the way home for lunch. Hours get even stranger on the weekends. The worst that I ever encountered was on a Saturday when I discovered my phone needed to be repaid 30 minutes after the Vodafone store closed for the day… which was at 2:00. Like many other stores, it wouldn’t reopen again until Monday. At least the cafes and bars are always open.

Attitudes About Race

And now we move deeper into the territory of cultural norms. It’s only fair to first point out that in no place will you find a population that thinks 100% alike, and there are always people who will believe or behave differently from those who surround them. That said, sensitivity to race is, generally speaking, a bit different here. Spain hasn’t experienced the melting pot that we have—yet. It’s not uncommon to hear very broad, sometimes unfair generalizations about people of another skin color, nationality, etc. And these comments can come from a waiter, your host mom, or even your professor. Remarks are rarely made with bad intentions, but that’s often what’ll make you cringe even more.

Brusqueness

Finally, we come to that famous “Spanish Politeness,” by which I mean that which can often seem to be lacking. The Spanish culture is one with few pleasantries. The people speak directly and honestly, even when you may not want to hear the truth. At a restaurant, don’t ask, “Could I please have…?” Just tell them: “Quiero…” (“I want…”). You’ll only get the same in return. Rarely will you be asked: “Do you think you could…?” It’s always, “Toma,” (Take this), “Come,” (Eat), or “Escuchame” (“Listen to me”). The most common way of answering the phone in Spain is to say “Dime,” (“Tell me”) or, “Diga” (literally, “Speak”).

On the upside, everyone’s got a slightly thicker skin. Instead of everyone being concerned with their “personal bubble” as in the States, brushing against a stranger on the street is just a small casualty of life—nothing to be concerned about. In fact, if you apologize for it, you’re likely to be told to calm down.

It’s admirable in some ways, the Spanish bluntness. Everyone’s on the same page with it, and so there’s no need to waste time on empty apologies or beating around the bush. It never hurts to be honest…

Okay, maybe sometimes.

Oviedo on Parade

It seems that nary a week passes by here without celebrating some kind of a holiday. Mostly, this consists of simply not going to class for a day or two, but the uncommonly lively and distinctively Spanish festivities we’ve been patiently awaiting finally arrived in the form of Carnaval.

Carnaval is a celebration that, just like Mardi Gras and Fat Tuesday, is meant to kick off the season of Lent. Although Carnaval necessarily begins six weeks before Easter, no two nearby cities will celebrate Carnaval on the same day, or even the same weekend. So, if you’re feeling especially ambitious, you can hop from Gijon, to Ávilez, to Oviedo, and catch the fiesta in every city.

Oviedo’s turn came this past Saturday, and not a day too late. Without even the threat of rain, and an unobstructed sun that might actually make you feel warm in its path (in February!), the city was experiencing incredible luck with conditions for the holiday.

The tradition of Carnaval is to go about the city in full costume. Unlike Halloween, many opt to shun the cover of night and strut shamelessly around town dressed in some such ridiculous get-up—especially the kids. I, for one, decided to hold off a bit and attend the afternoon parade dressed as Tyler Horst.

The kids still often have the best costumes.

Working its way up Calle Uría, straight through the heart of the city, Oviedo’s Carnaval parade was a great display of the elaborate, the inane, and in some ways, the enlightening. To become part of the parade, one only needs a good idea and the ability to follow-through. Anyone from civic groups to family and friends can gain approval from the Town Hall to participate, and the result is an interesting mix of costumes and floats that can say a lot about the town that watches them stroll by.

“…”

Or maybe not.

Carnaval is often not much more than a time for the people to let their hair down and blow off a bit of steam—a festival that hasn’t strayed far from its origins as a pagan romp. In the midst of an economic crisis that’s a burden on the minds of many, people still say: “The least we can do is have a good time!”

And so, to reflect the more hedonistic sentiments of Carnaval, several costumes in the parade were of the “What the hell is that exactly?” variety.

cupcakes?

also this

Some took their opportunity to be briefly in the public eye to make grand political jokes, but surprisingly the float that took the cake for most parade-goers was not anything that had its roots in Spain. Turn on the radio or the television any time of the day and it is impossible to miss the world-wide conquest of American pop culture. It’s penetrated so deeply that some of the crowd favorites for the Carnaval parade was none other than a Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” float, complete with graveyard and dancing zombies, and a Big Daddy from the Bioshock videogame.

Big Daddy

It was strange to see Michael alive and well in Oviedo, of all places, and a concrete reminder of how our art and culture go before us and often serve as our primary ambassadors, for better or for worse.

Whether weird, comical, or just plain fun, the amount of dedication put into many floats was impressive. Sure, all those man-hours may have ultimately gone into a one-time gag, but people don’t always do things that make sense. The aim was to have a good time and put a smile on the faces of as many people as possible, and where’s the harm in that?