Arrival and Orientation Part 1

Thursday January 5

~Los Angeles, New York City, Madrid~

            I began the day leaving the house at 4am on my way to LAX. I boarded the 6:30am plane from LAX to JFK and had a pleasantly uneventful five-hour flight to New York. Once there, I killed time during a long layover and took the 8pm flight to Madrid. This plane was full of Spaniards speaking Spanish and for the first time today, I really felt like I was traveling to Spain. I fell asleep near the beginning of the flight, and when I woke up, I was in Madrid!

viernes el 8 de enero

~Madrid, Andalucía~

            I met Lindsay, whose flight arrived earlier, outside customs and we had a quick snack (bocadillo de jamón) and hopped a taxi to el Instituto Internacional in Madrid. Here, the Stanford program has about 2/3 of the top floor, which is where we will be taking our classes. But today, we dropped off our luggage and rearranged its contents so that we had clothes for four days in our small suitcase. This was a necessary preparation for our orientation trip…which began tonight! I arrived in the morning, and little by little more Stanford students arrived until all thirty of us were seated in the main room on the first floor, small suitcases packed and ready for the trip. We had a quick orientation, where the program directors introduced themselves and we re-signed the Spanish-only language pledge. You can probably figure out what we were pledging when we signed, but it is interesting that the Madrid program is the only BOSP (Bing Overseas Studies Program) program with a local language-only pledge. I would like to point out that I am not breaking this pledge now first of all because I can type without speaking and more importantly because communicating with friends and family is one of the three exceptions to the pledge, the other two being an emergency situation or if your internship required is (such as teaching English).

Today is el Día de los Tres Reyes, or Day of the Three Kings. It is a national holiday, and as such most stores in Madrid are closed. This is not a problem for madrileños, however, because today everyone opens their Christmas presents, families gather together in their homes to eat, drink and celebrate, and children play with their new toys all day. Also, many eat a traditional cake, called a roscón. Our program directors decided to share this tradition with us, so after the short orientation and before boarding our bus, we each had a slice of the Spanish version of a Mardi Gras king’s cake. The roscón is still in a ring shape, but it is more of a sweet bread sliced in half and filled with flavored cream in the middle. We had three cakes: one vanilla, one chocolate y nata (just the cream flavor). Like in a king’s cake, there is a plastic toy (instead of a baby) hidden in one slice of the cake, and whoever gets this toy has good luck. I didn’t get the toy…but I think I’m still pretty lucky.

We then embarked on a four-hour bus ride south, to a hotel about 45 minutes outside of Granada. At the beginning of the ride (before everyone passed out from jet lag and general lack of sleep due to traveling), Santi (the program director) taught us a really cute song in Spanish that you can sing in your head to help you fall asleep (like counting sheep):

Un elefante se balanceaba

En una tela de araña

Como veía que resistía

Fue a buscar otro elefante

Dos elefantes…

Around eleven, we arrived at Hotel Oasis and immediately had dinner. Pan (bread), ensaladilla (salad with tomatoes, egg, onions, bell peppers and olives shared by the table without individual plates), espinacas (sautéed spinach), somadillo (a pork dish with sides of French fries and veggies), and flan. And, of course, red wine. I was exhausted and incredibly full by the end of the meal, and was relieved to get up to my room, use the WiFi (weefee) for a bit, take a shower (finally!) and go to sleep in a real bed.

sabado el 7 de enero

~Granada, Nerja~

            Today we met for a quick breakfast of a coffee (hot chocolate for me, of course) and pan tostado topped with a tomato-based spread and olive oil. Then, we loaded all of our luggage and ourselves back on the bus around nine and drove to Granada. Granada, which is in Andalucía, the region in the south of Spain, was the last stronghold of the Ottomans in Spain. The Ottomans spent a total of eight centuries in Spain, so there is a strong Arabic influence on Andalucía which is particularly evident in the architecture style of Granada, especially the typically Arabic horseshoe arch. Granada was conquered by los reyes católicos, Ferdinand and Isabella, in 1492 (big year for Spain, and the rest of the Western world), so there are few modern Arabic influences and few Muslims living there today. First we walked through the barrio Albycín, which is one of the oldest regions of the city and has the typical white houses (called carmenes) that many people think of when they imagine Spain. Pomegranates are pictures or carved all over this region and others because “Granada” means pomegranate in Spanish.  I had a few moments of nostalgia while walking through the city when we passed points I remembered well from my three week study abroad in Granada four years ago. The plaza with the statue of Christopher Columbus kneeling at the feet of King Ferdinand, the artful graffiti on the walls, the street in the Albycín where every door is a tea and hookah bar, the black and once-white tile squares covering the sidewalks and plazas in the city center, the river Rhonda and Calle Rhonda: a main street in Granada two blocks away from my Spanish host family’s house…I knew that I would recognize much of the city, but I was surprised by the strength of the emotions the city evoked. I can’t help but wonder how I will feel about Madrid when I come back after having lived there for three months!

            After our walk around the city, we visited the Alhambra. It was my second visit, and I could go another twenty times and still not be tired of it. The Alhambra (the Spanish version of the Arabic phrase “the red”, which likely described not the modern-day reddish color of the exterior walls—in its day the Alhambra was painted white—but for a particular rey—the Ottoman ruler in the Alhambra elected to use the Spanish title for king rather than a more typical Arabic title of sultan—who, by some fluke, was a redhead) was like a city within (on the border of) the city of Granada. The Arabs who ruled the area for 800 years constructed the Alhambra in their Iberian capital Granada as a living place for the king and his family, as an administrative center for government, and as a military base and easily-defendable (as it is located on top of a hill) fortress. So, the Alhambra has different regions (basically a progressively more private series of buildings with courtyards between) with very different styles and levels of detail, as fitting for their respective purposes. The most impressive by far were the private areas for the royal family. Following Arabic (Islamic) tradition, all the decoration on the walls consists of geometric or floral patterns and Arabic calligraphy. The lower halves of most of these walls were covered in brilliantly colored tiles in geometric patterns, and my favorite design feature by far of the Alhambra (while the others are still fantastic) are what look like marble relief carvings, but were actually made by grinding marble to make a paste and pouring it into mold the size of the entire upper section of the wall to make a beautiful and incredibly impressive decoration. For a culture accustomed to the desert, water and greenery are images of paradise, and the Alhambra reflects this belief. Each courtyard has fountains, reflecting pools, fragrant flowers, herbs, and fruit trees, and shrubs and trees gardened carefully by the current Alhambra staff to create walls of green leaves. One of the most striking is the courtyard of the lions, which was closed the last time I was here, and was under construction when I came and was still beautiful. The Alhambra also has expansive gardens, which were quite abundant and green even though it’s winter…I would love to see them in the spring.

            From the Alhambra (especially the highest tower in the fortress section) you can see the entire city of Granada and the Sierra Nevada mountain range (the original one), and today it was covered in snow. Although Granada is in the warmer south of Spain, its altitude is much greater than that of Madrid, so it gets cold in the winter. Also, on the top of the highest tower, there is a bell. There is a legend that says the woman who climbs the tower and rings the bell will get married within a year, and while there were many furtive glances at the bell, nobody tried to scale the tower while I was there J

            After the Alhambra, we boarded the bus and began our drive to Nerja, a popular beach destination on the Mediterranean for tourists. Especially, as we discovered once we arrived, for old British tourists. The views of the ocean from our hotel were fantastic, and if I left my balcony (yes, balcony) door open, I could lay in bed and listen to the waves crashing on the beach. We ate dinner in the hotel, and afterwards some friends and I went to a bar and had tinto de verano (a kind of sparkling sangria, very tasty) and made friends with the bartender, who gave us all free shots of a mystery (but thankfully yummy and not highly alcoholic) liqueur.

Also, since writing this blog is the only time I have been “speaking” English, I actually find myself thinking the some of the things I write in Spanish before I write them in English. I haven’t started dreaming in Spanish yet…but it can only be a matter of time!