I'm in Spain!
Monday, January 7th, 2019
It feels a little surreal that right now I'm typing this sitting on my bed in my room at my host mom's house in Oviedo, Spain. Right now everything about this place feels foreign and strange, like I'm tiptoeing around somewhere I don't belong. I'm a naturally acutely conscientious person who will do anything to not be a burden or someone people talk/think badly of. But that's hard to do when you can only understand 50% of what your host mom is saying and when your responses are so grammatically riddled with errors they hardly make any sense at all. I'm sure she thinks I'm so so dumb. She makes me so nervous and everything I've learned flees from my brain as soon as she starts speaking. She couldn't be nicer though; she keeps calling me dear and telling me that this is my house and asking me if I'm hungry or need to take a nap and that it's normal to be nervous about speaking Spanish, etc.
This past week has been good, but I was definitely starting to get tired of living out of my suitcase and sharing a hotel room with two other people (even though they were super sweet). Also, going on excursions every day was fun but incredibly exhausting. We were up early every morning and up late every night. I also wasn't sleeping (either during the day, or at night. For some reason jet lag gave me insomnia this time around) so I was a little bit of a mess. I still have no idea how people went out drinking and clubbing after our 11pm dinners. Between Wednesday and Saturday we went to El Escorial, the Prado museum, Palacio Real, and Toledo. Sunday I was sick in bed, having done my characteristic S.E. vomiting episode at 8:30am (in the hotel bathroom, not on the bus which everyone else was on (one time vomiting on public transportation is plenty enough for me)), while everyone else was visiting Avila and Segovia. I was soooo glad I didn't go (besides the fact that if I had gone I would've thrown up on the bus) because I slept for pretty much the rest of the day and it felt so good to finally sleep after not sleeping for so long. I still felt a little queasy at dinner and only managed to drink two glasses of water and eat half a piece of bread, but by this morning I was back to normal. And thank goodness too, because I did not want to show up sick as a dog to my host mom's house.
Tomorrow we are meeting at the university library at 10am to get our schedules but other than that, I have zero clue what's going on. I really pray that this semester goes by as quickly as last semester because if not...it might be a little bit painful. Not that I think I won't enjoy it here or that every second will be pure misery, but just that this week has lasted a literal century and I don't think I can bear for every week to be quite so long. Part of it is probably just that I've been awake for so much of it...time tends to go slower when you're conscious. Anyway, my only goals for this week are:
A) get more comfortable with my host mom so that I'm not terrified of her
B) attend all of my classes (ie, don't get sick again, find them, go to the right ones, etc.)
C) go to some kind of church service on Sunday (I don't care if it's Catholic, Protestant, I just need some Jesus time)
D) take a stroll through the gorgeous park near campus
Okay, time to go give my host mom the gift I picked out for her. Let's get ready for more awkward encounters in which S.E. can't speak Spanish!!! Dear Jesus, master of all languages, help ur girl out, amen.
Friday, January 11th, 2019
I made it through my first five days here in Oviedo! Communicating with my host mom has gotten easier every day and no longer gives me anxiety. My apartment and room already feel like home. I love that everything is kind of dated (like circa 1985), that there are three shelves in the bathroom dedicated solely to bottles of perfume (almost all in orange bottles), that the bright red toilet seat and lid do not match the rest of the toilet or anything else in the peach-pink-and-cream bathroom, that there's a radiator under my desk so I don't freeze when I sit there like I did at my apartment in Philly, and that my room has two plants (okay, the orchid is fake, but still). I've been trying to explore Oviedo little by little, but I haven't wandered far from my apartment or campus, so I'll have to do that this weekend. I'm hoping to go to the beach tomorrow, weather and transportation permitting.
So far my classes have been interesting, my professors good, and no homework! I think I can do a couple more months here. :)
-SE Wagner
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| Orientation |
This past week has been good, but I was definitely starting to get tired of living out of my suitcase and sharing a hotel room with two other people (even though they were super sweet). Also, going on excursions every day was fun but incredibly exhausting. We were up early every morning and up late every night. I also wasn't sleeping (either during the day, or at night. For some reason jet lag gave me insomnia this time around) so I was a little bit of a mess. I still have no idea how people went out drinking and clubbing after our 11pm dinners. Between Wednesday and Saturday we went to El Escorial, the Prado museum, Palacio Real, and Toledo. Sunday I was sick in bed, having done my characteristic S.E. vomiting episode at 8:30am (in the hotel bathroom, not on the bus which everyone else was on (one time vomiting on public transportation is plenty enough for me)), while everyone else was visiting Avila and Segovia. I was soooo glad I didn't go (besides the fact that if I had gone I would've thrown up on the bus) because I slept for pretty much the rest of the day and it felt so good to finally sleep after not sleeping for so long. I still felt a little queasy at dinner and only managed to drink two glasses of water and eat half a piece of bread, but by this morning I was back to normal. And thank goodness too, because I did not want to show up sick as a dog to my host mom's house.
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| From Orientation to Oviedo! |
A) get more comfortable with my host mom so that I'm not terrified of her
B) attend all of my classes (ie, don't get sick again, find them, go to the right ones, etc.)
C) go to some kind of church service on Sunday (I don't care if it's Catholic, Protestant, I just need some Jesus time)
D) take a stroll through the gorgeous park near campus
Okay, time to go give my host mom the gift I picked out for her. Let's get ready for more awkward encounters in which S.E. can't speak Spanish!!! Dear Jesus, master of all languages, help ur girl out, amen.
Friday, January 11th, 2019
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| Oviedo! |
So far my classes have been interesting, my professors good, and no homework! I think I can do a couple more months here. :)
-SE Wagner
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