After two brief hours on the road from Madrid, the Cal Poly bus abruptly came to a standstill at the station in Valladolid, and as I peeked out of the tinted bus windows, I saw that our padres were already lively positioned around the vehicle to take each of us to our new homes. Our week stay as a unit in Madrid had come to an end; it was now time for us to split apart. All of our preparations were over.
Scene—As our names were called one by one, each of us were to leap out of the comfort of the group and into the welcoming arms of an authentic Spanish family. But this was in no way a gloomy time; it felt exciting and amusing, but a bit overwhelming. When the time finally came when the Spanish woman, who was reading off our names in her thick Spanish accent, said, “Nicholas Larson” (phonetically sounding more like [Nēk ō ləs] [Lär sən]), I marched off the bus to find Carmen and Pepe standing at the entrance with smiles. After a brief embrace, Carmen directed me to hop into the back seat of their car, a four-door, mid 1980s French compact. The new family unit then headed home for their first meal together.
Home/my street address: Lepanto 5, floor four, apartment B (which is actually floor five in the US because Spain calls floor two, floor one).
While Carmen prepared lunch, I began unpacking in what will be my bedroom for the next three months, a cozy room with childhood pictures of Carmen’s two daughters, a wall-mounted bookshelf, wooden desk, and two twin-sized beds. As I sat at the foot of my squeaky bed, I had so many questions floating around in my head. Then Carmen entered and told me that I would soon have a roommate once he reached Valladolid on Sunday. “So lunch will just be the three of us today?” No, no, there would be lunch for four, Carmen, Pepe, Fernando, and me. “Fernando?” I thought curiously to myself; that’s a very Spanish name. With such a Spanish name, I would probably expect a student from South America or maybe from California with Mexican heritage. But nope, that would be too damn predictable; I would soon realize that Fernando was not predictable at all. Fernando is from China; Fernando is full-blooded Chinese. To make things a bit more unusual, Fernando knows almost no Spanish, and he knows but a few words in English. But if you are like me, you will soon be in love with Fernando.
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| This is a picture I got from Fernando that he took of himself |
Of course Fernando is not his birth name; he chose it before he came to Spain because his real name is 原毅, which I am still having a bit of trouble trying to pronounce. Fernando moved to Spain with less that three months of Spanish classes under his belt, and if I understood him correctly, he will be living in Spain for the next three years to learn Spanish and then to go to graduate school to study Architecture, but I also could be completely wrong. Every day, he gets a little bit better at Spanish, or at least a little bit better at using his Chinese to Spanish hand-held translator, so we have managed to communicate pretty well. On the floor below us lives Monica, Fernando’s Chinese friend from China who also speaks very little Spanish and English.
And if we fast-forward a couple of days, I now know Fernando and Monica to be incredibly friendly, funny, and generous friends. Monica is very nice, but culturally, she is unlike any girl I’ve met in the US. The best way I can explain her is to compare her to a small infant-baby-child, but not in the sense that she cries a lot, rather she is fragile, tiny, doesn’t like the sun or any type of physical activity, and her preferred hobby is sleeping. It is remarkable how culturally dissimilar she is to American girls; if anything she is more similar to a historic British monarch in the sense that she believes that her skin should be as light as possible, thus she avoids direct exposure to the sun, while American girls (and boys) spend hours outside for the exact purpose of darkening the skin.
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| Monica, Me, my favorite turtle shirt, and Fernando. I absolutely love these two. |
Unfortunately Fernando will only be living with us for two weeks, and then he will be moving into an apartment with his three Chinese friends, Monica, Maria, and Spanish-Name Chinese Girl #3 (because I can’t remember her name), but the only name that you, the reader should remember is Monica because she is likely to resurface later in El Blog.
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| The clock tower of the Cathedral in Valladolid |
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| Fernando took this picture of Nick and me while we were playing in a field in Valladolid. Notice that I am wearing an American Flag tank-top... Coincidentally, later that day I found out that American tourists in Europe have been attacked recently for various reasons. I imagine that wearing an American Flag tank-top has got to be one of those reasons. |
These past eleven days or so, I have found myself spending copious amounts of time with Fernando. The second day I knew him, I invited him to meet up with Jackson (one of the guys from the Cal Poly group), Nicogrande (other Nick) and me in the main plaza, and since then, we tend to do just about everything together. He has truly become one of the guys. But I’m now realizing that Fernando is far too complex for me to break down in words. Basically, I know for certain that he is absolutely friendly and genuine, although I have not really had a significant conversation with him; I can see how great we would get along if we could properly communicate with each other. But nonetheless, we can converse enough to share simple ideas and to make each other laugh. The best thing Fernando every said to me was when we were leaving a Flamenco concert and I asked him if he enjoyed it, and he gave me a thumbs up and said in his thick Chinese accent, “super-buenissimo” (note: the suffix ‘-issimo’ is like the English word ‘very’ to add emphasis to an adjective). Fernando is truly a character; I could go on for days talking about him, but there are more personas in my Spanish life that I must describe.
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| Campo Grande |
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| The City Hall building located within Plaza Mayor. There is a Plaza Mayor in every city in Spain, but the one in Valladolid was the first! It was built in the 16th Century. |
CARMEN
Carmen is a pleasant, kind, yet strong woman of medium build, who carries an indomitable spirit. She prides herself on her hospitality and abilities as a cook, and she continuously reassures me not to worry about being a vegetarian (in Spanish: “No te preocupes, Hijo”) because she has absolutely no problem accommodating for me. Of course, I feel so fortunate and grateful to be in her house. Oddly, she occasionally serves me something that has fish in it and either chops it up and doesn’t tell me there is fish in it or she gives me something like squid because she considers fish to be vegetarian, but I just laugh to myself, tough it out, and eat it anyways. She has a very strong personality, but she is also light hearted, so conversations are always very entertaining. I always feel comfortable talking to her, but I still can’t bring myself to insult her cooking.
Carmen calls me Nico, Hijo (son), Majo (which roughly translates to ‘charming’), or Nicotito (but only when Nicogrande and I are being referenced in the same conversation).
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| Valladolid |
Pepe
Pepe is a bit more reserved; he does not participate in much chatter, but this is understandable because he suffered two strokes in the last few years, which has forced him to retire after owning his own small business for most of his life. But he still comes off as a man full of wisdom; everyday he tells me a new valuable Spanish proverb that I want to carry with me for the rest of my life.
Example: He told me that if a man works his whole life and some other able-body does not, then the worker not only has to work for himself but also for the unemployed able-body, thus lowering his own quality of life and chances at improvement. He says that all people must do their own part if the world is ever going to improve. This led to one of the proverbs that he told me, and I translate, “The ant spends his time in the ground, and the bird spends his in the air, but still, we all have our work to do.”
Pepe may not be as quick-witted as he used to be, but every time he opens his mouth, I take it as an opportune time to learn something valuable. Occasionally, we join in together and give Carmen a hard time about something like her addiction to the telephone.
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| Campo Grande |
Juan
For those of you who don’t really know me all that well, Ian is the name of my closest friend at home in Sacramento; he is like my brother. When my roommate arrived midday on Sunday, he introduced himself as Ian; Carmen told me to think of him as my brother for the next three months, so now I have two brothers with identical names. But for some reason, Carmen can’t pronounce Ian’s name, so we all refer to him as Juan in the house, and for the sake of clarity, I’ll refer to him as Juan in El Blog as well.
Juan is easy going and friendly; he is nineteen, studying Criminal Justice, and hopes to someday find employment within the FBI or CIA. Like all of the other foreign students here with Spanish names, Juan looks nothing like a Juan; he has light brown hair and hails from Wisconsin. To his credit, his Spanish is much better than the other students’ who had to adopt Spanish names. In fact, we agreed the day we met to only speak Spanish to each other. He is also officially "one of the guys."
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| From left: Spanish-Name Chinese Girl #3, Maria, Fernando, Monica, and Juan at Campo Grande, the main park in Valladolid |
Escuela
Unfortunately, this Spanish life is not all fun and games; on October 4th, classes began at the Centro de Idiomas (Center of Languages). Every morning at 9:00, I put on as many layers as I brought with me to Spain, and Juan and I walk for fifteen minutes through the piercing cold air alongside a river to campus, but from Juan’s perspective, the weather is like a cool spring day in Wisconsin—he will usually wear short sleeves. This is one of the many times in my life when I feel like a wittle cupcake.
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| Hey but this wittle cupcake has made plenty of Spanish friends like this dog here. |
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| ...Or this peacock. I've got a million friends. |
On our first day, we took a placement test to determine which of the four groups we belonged in—elementary, intermediate, advanced, or bilingual; to my amazement, Juan and I were placed in the bilingual group. This test was obviously incredibly inaccurate, but I guess it just means that we get to learn more Spanish.
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| Madre dressed me in my Sunday's best for my first day of school . "Back to school, back to school to prove to Dad that I'm not a fool. I got my lunch packed up, my boots tied tight, I hope I don't get in a fight. Oh, back to school..." -Billy Madison |
From Monday through Friday, I have school until 2:00pm, and throughout the week I take classes in Grammar, Oral Expression, Spanish Culture, Art History, and the History of Spain—all of which are taught in Spanish by Spanish natives. To say the least, I am incredibly pleased with my classes, and I have classmates from all over the world including Brazil, China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Austria. So while I’m learning about Spain and it’s culture, I am also learning about various other countries around the world.
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| Plaza Mayor |
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| The Royal Palace in Valladolid |
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| Two Chinese friends and a few Californians at the beach in Valladolid. This is not an ocean beach, but rather a river beach, but it gets the job done. And plus, you can find a wide selection of nudists at this beach on any sunny day. I hate to make promises that I can't keep, but I'm gonna do my best to post another blog within the next few days. This next one will be full of adventure!!!!! |
