So, here we are. In two days under three weeks from today, I will be home. These next couple of weeks will naturally fly by in the blink of an eye, seeing how this upcoming week is my last full week of class, followed by class the Monday next, followed by a 5-6 day trip to Italy, followed by finals the day after I get back, followed by my flight home that Friday. So yeah, the next few weeks are going to fly by.
So the week I got home from Ireland, I had yet another big paper due for that Thursday. Well, that was until Monday in class she told us we could send it in to her that Friday. Needless to say, having planned on starting that paper that night, I immediately lost all motivation, and therefore chose to start it the following day. Of course, this was fine, because I successfully completed and sent in my 10 page paper on the influence of the medieval-gothic style of architecture in the historical period of the works of Antoni Gaudi (which, funnily enough, it just took me 3 minutes to remember how to spell architecture in English, because it took me two minutes to realize why arquitectura kept coming up with a squiggly red line underneath it. That would be Spanish. Whoops). I rewarded myself my choosing to go out Friday night for a little bit for the first time in a while (in Salamanca…). I’d call it a successful night, up about to the point where I almost knocked out the guy in the Kebab place at 4 in the morning for not giving me my food and then telling me to speak to him in English because my Spanish wasn’t that great. This was mainly caused by the fact that I was a little flustered because he thought he already gave me my food, and then as we started arguing I started getting a little aggravated and well at that point I couldn’t think clearly enough and started tripping over words. And well after he said that to me, in his perfected English accent, and by that I mean I could neither fully understand him nor fully hear him because he knew less English than I knew Spanish, the prick, and so I ended up slightly pissed off and ended up arguing with him in a combination of English and Spanish. Hey, he wants me to speak to him in English, I’ll give him some English alright. After he finally gives me MY kebab, he proceeds to ask me for more money, and which point I kindly replied that I already paid for it when I first ordered, and he could go fuck off, which he would have understood in the first place if he wasn’t such an ass and would’ve let me finished my initial sentence in Spanish when I was calmly trying to tell him he never gave me my food. Don’t tell me my Spanish isn’t good when I can hardly understand you in English.
This probably wouldn’t have been as bad if I hadn’t been getting increasingly frustrated lately with trying to speak. I can read, write, and watch an entire movie in my cine class and understand just about everything, but when it comes to talking I’ve found that the more I seem to learn, the more crap gets all crazy in my head, and the stutter I have has reverted back to as bad as it was when I was in gradeschool almost. Although as I was realizing this I also came to realize that sometimes it’s really just that I talk. Spanish is a really fluid language and the problem is when I talk a little faster the next thing I know my head is five steps ahead of the rest of me and not only do I forget what I just said, I forget what I was going to say and my train of thought just dies on me. In English this is “ok” because, well, I’m not being judged on my ability to talk and so it’s become something I just sort of came to live with and not think about I guess. But here in Spain, any stutter, stammer, pause in thought, confused look on my face, etc., all give the inclination that I don’t know the language that well. So all this in Spanish has made me more aware of how I actually talk in English as well, which again just makes things more complicated. And of course the fact that now I’m overly conscious about the way I’m trying to talk just makes it worse, because the more I think about what I need to say the more I can’t spit the words out when I need to say it – which leads to some frustration, which leads to more stammering. You’d think after 20 years of that crap someone would be almost unaffected by it. So, needless to say, when the guy in the place decided to tell me that my Spanish wasn’t good, I almost reached across the counter and knocked him out. Lucky for him though, hunger > anger, so he was spared for the sake of finally getting my damn food.
Of course after this night, I woke up late the next day, had lunch, and then hung around the rest of the night because I had to get up the next day to actually work on things, since I had yet another big paper due for Thursday. All of these papers wouldn’t have been as bad, you see, if we weren’t also getting pounds of other work at the same time. And at least half of this work was just work for the sake of giving work, which just made it 100x worse. So, needless to say, the entire group of us was kind of a little aggravated with our program the past couple of weeks for planning things kind of poorly. We had almost nothing to do the first month and a half and then all of a sudden we’ve got 3942804983 million things to do. This obviously inhibits our ability to go out and do other things, like, I don’t know, learn more Spanish through experience. They encourage us to go out and do this or that, but there’s not really much time to if we’re all busy doing all the stuff we have to do for our classes. Needless to say, all this work, combined with frustration, combined with all the talk about Thanksgiving, but just about all of us in a little bit of a fight with Spain.
This also made me a little bit more nervous for the presentation I had to give in my one USAL class, where my two friends and I are the only non-Spanish students. And again, while for any person it’s completely acceptable and OK to be a little nervous for something like that, I can’t, because as soon as I get nervous the stutter almost comes in full-blown. To combat that as much as I could I decided to do my presentation on the topic I did for my art history class, since after writing ten pages on it I knew I could talk about it pretty confidently. I also hopped on the chance to go first.
The funny thing is, I was less nervous giving this presentation than I was when I had to give on in my IES class with my fellow classmates from the US. Why? Maybe because a part of me knew I wasn’t actually being graded on how well I could speak Spanish, just on my ability to give a presentation. What’s the best way to combat a weakness? – Make it a strength. Over the years I’ve found that I’m actually come to be one of the calmer people in regards to giving presentations, because, well, I had to be. My professor in my drawing class is also, well, great. My two friends and I are the first three students in our program to actually take classes in the Fine Arts faculty, and that always leads to some doubt about it because our program usually pushes us towards classes with professors who have dealt with foreigners before. So, we were sort of the three pioneers in this, building the first bridge between the two. We probably ended up getting really lucky with our professor, because he’s been awesome. Usually in class when we’re all drawing he’ll come over and ask us how his “three Americans” are doing (Y como estan mis americanos hoy?) So, needless to say, before the presentation he comes over to me, tells me to take my time, relax, and don’t think about it. I started off by just lightening the air a bit by telling everyone to please feel free to ask me to repeat anything if they don’t understand me. And from that point on, I just gave my presentation, like I would any other presentation.
My other two friends also gave their presentations as well this past Thursday. I think the best part about all of this was what our professor came over and told us after class. He felt we all “taught the Spanish students a lesson,” because a lot of them have been “taking the presentation like a joke.” He told us (pretty much word for word, translated of course) that this obviously wasn’t the easiest thing to do, but we showed a lot of effort, that we had a lot of information, and most importantly that we showed a mastery of a language that wasn’t our first, and that he was very happy with all three of us. Needless to say, we stood there slightly glowing, speechless, and extremely happy. It was probably the first time since I’ve been here that I actually felt like I had accomplished something.
What was even better was that after this class, we had our Thanksgiving dinner at this one restaurant that our program had set up for us. It was actually awesome, and not a letdown in the least. I was pretty surprised by this because I thought I was getting hopes up way too high. The only thing that was a little different was the pumpkin pie – it was a lot heavier in the pumpkin than it normally is in the states, but this is probably because it was more like, actually pie made from a pumpkin. So not exactly the same, but still good, and since I wasn’t expecting it to be as good as it was in general, I was completely content with it. So content that I had three plates of turkey and mashed potatoes and then had to help some of the girls eat their pie, after eating my own piece.
Afterwards, a few of us went out for a little bit and chilled at a bar. I did not have to get up the next day to do anything for once, and so I slept like a baby for the first time in quite a few weeks. Also, Spain and I have repaired our relationship a bit, and I’m confident that we can get along for the next couple weeks before heading home.
Friday night we went to see “El Gato con Botas,” aka, Puss in Boots, at the movies. It was a cute movie and really funny, and unlike typical US movies turned Spanish movies that are dubbed over, since it was animated it actually looked/sounded a lot better. Plus we understood everything which is awesome. Afterwards we grabbed tapas, and then pizza, and then headed out for a bit.
Saturday was a late start, but I managed to be a little productive. Have the rest of my Italy trip booked, so I’m excited. I’ll actually be leaving the night before my flight since it’s at 630 in the morning, and so I’m just going to sleep in the airport to save on money. I will also have to do the same thing on the way back from Milan, so I’ll have a couple hours to check some of the city out before taking a bus to their airport and leaving the following morning. However this is good, since when trying to book a hostel in Siena I couldn’t find anything with a shared room so I had to go with a private single, which obviously costs a little bit more. That night, I wasn’t planning on doing much. A few of us went out to eat at this one Mexican restaurant for dinner, and then went to this place called Valor afterwards, which is like a place with all this types of chocolates and whatnot. And then as we were on the way to chill at this one bar afterwards, we ran into a few other friends of ours, went to a different bar, and well the night just kind of progressed from there.
I woke up at 2:10 today after going to bed at 6:00AM, my host mom knocking on my door asking me if I was going to eat lunch. She’s so proud of me…
I also went for a 40 min run, so go me. It’s also really foggy out and was getting dark when I went out, and I still managed to not get hit by a car. Bonus points.
“If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.”
— Thomas Alva Edison
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