Hola from Granada! (Spanish is Hard.)

In Toledo, Spain, near Madrid. 15 June 2016.

Hola from Granada!

The last few days have been so hectic. I finished the program in Rennes on Tuesday and said goodbye to my host family, which was pretty tough to do – I really enjoyed being there with them, it was a fantastic place, and I already miss France so much. We spent Tuesday night in Paris, in the same hotel we started in, so it felt very full-circle and complete, but I’m just astounded at how fast the time flew by. Four weeks in France was nothing close to enough for me, and I actually felt like I was becoming decent at the language – so, here’s to the fall semester in Paris!

"La Alhambra" (ink), Granada, Spain. 17 June 2016.

Spain was completely incredible, it’s a spectacular country, but it was honestly the most challenging part of being abroad that I’ve experienced, because my Spanish skills are definitely not 100%. I flew into Madrid on Wednesday and immediately hit problems – the information lady at the airport spoke English, but no one (and I mean no one) else spoke English after that. I hopped around three different buses trying to get to my Airbnb apartment and not a single driver spoke English, so I very awkwardly and painfully tried to figure out where they were going and how much it cost. It cost me several hours and a lot of panic moments when I didn’t know where I was (hardcore wanted to give up and take a taxi) but I did finally make it to the apartment by metro (with my 49.8 lb duffel and extremely heavy backpack in tow), and finally found a few moments of sanity. I spent the afternoon in Madrid and the evening in Toledo, after missing two trains in a row (Spanish is hard) – but shoutout to Leta for showing me around! REMS reunions in Spain rock! I actually enjoyed Toledo almost more than Madrid, it’s a spectacular town, very picturesque, I’ll have to be visiting again, one day was not enough for either city.

La Alhambra, from Mirador San Nicolas, Albaicín, Granada, Spain. 17 June 2016.

I left for Granada on Thursday morning (nearly missed my bus – highly stressful – I’m telling you SPANISH IS HARD), but I made it there by the afternoon! Granada is also very beautiful, it’s a much bigger city than I had imagined! The Sierras are so beautiful, and the entire city is surrounded by them. The Alhambra (an 1100-year-old fortress/palace) dominates the skyline, and the views from the top of the neighborhood behind it (the Albaicín) are incredible. I met up with Lauren, Chris, Cory, and Emma there, so it was a real Rochester reunion! And Lauren gave me this tour of Parque García Lorca (named for a famous Spanish playwright/poet who was from Granada), which was really cool and fascinating, especially in the evening. It really made me appreciate the history of the place, and it was really highlighted when I saw it again the day after. Granada was an amazing time, and the awesomeness of the tapas life is not exaggerated in the slightest. The hardest part (again) was the Spanish, because the place I was staying (another Airbnb), while very nice, had the omnipresent issue: my host spoke exclusively Spanish, so for two days I survived in a place where I was more than light-years out of my league. I’ve taken a sum total of two years of Spanish in my life, those being in 4^th and 5^th grade, where we sang the little colors song and made little chants about the months of the year. My vague memories of that (it has since been nine years) were literally all I had to survive – alone – in this country, and no, Google Translate wasn’t available because the internet was too slow.

How did I survive? Lots of gesturing. Lots of smiling, saying por favor, and gushing muchas gracias. It’s astonishing to me how quickly I began to pick up the language. I was only in Spain for three days, but by the end, I could order food, ask for directions, have a modest conversation, and communicate what I needed from people. My Spanish was still somewhat fragmented, but being able to pull together the bare necessities from ancient memories of the language was really a remarkable experience for me, and it gives me hope for the future crazy endeavors I want to do (watch me try this in Mandarin or in Greek). I had thought that French immersion was challenging, but it’s completely incomparable to being somewhere where you don’t even know how to conjugate a verb. I picked up everything by listening to everything, and honestly by being forced to learn because you literally don’t have another choice if you want to sleep for the night. It was really challenging, but an incredibly rewarding experience, and I’m honestly so pumped that it happened – here’s to more like it! It really gives you confidence that you can be independent and survive in this crazy multicultural world of ours, and that alone gives the experience an enormous amount of worth. The greater the challenge, and the rougher the first steps are, the more rewarding it the experience is and the more incredible the memories will be – my life’s motto, especially in this past month.

But most of all during my little Spanish tour, it was great to see friends again before the next leg of the journey, and it’s experiences like this that make life worth living (in my humble opinion, anyway). Anyway: I’m off to America again until July 2^nd for my visa errand – I’m amazed it’s upon me so soon. I’ll be in New Jersey, then New York, then Newport (Rhode Island), and then Washington DC before the next big leg – London, United Kingdom!

Hasta Luego!

Granada, Spain. 18 June, 2016.