Student Stories: Spain 2004
Study Abroad in Granada Spain: One Student's Experience
Each person who studies abroad has their own goals. While some go for a break from the academic rigors, others like me went to learn another language and culture. I can’t deny though the other benefits: traveling, less work, new friends, amazing experiences, and a new perspective on life. They call it a viaje in Spanish, a trip in which you return as a different person from the one you left as; a better person, with a new breadth to view the world.
Below is an excerpt from some of my travel writings. It gives a perspective on how you think and react in a new culture. The time I spent in Granada, Spain was the best of my life. Somebody important should make studying abroad a general requirement.
An excerpt from my writings:
January 4, 2004
Granada is the kind of city where you can walk anywhere. From the chores of life, shopping for groceries and cashing your check at the bank, all the way to the joys of life, having a coffee with a friend and drinking beers at the bar—just about everything is within a strolling distance. Buses and cars still parade the main streets, while mopeds zoom everywhere with their crazy drivers and dangerously annoying engine buzz.
My commute to school was a pretty good walk. I’d say the first weeks it took forty minutes, but by the middle of the semester, I had whittled my time down to thirty-five: five minutes to la Caleta, where I met my walking buddy Amy, and the other half-hour from there to school. Although I had the longest walk out of anybody from the group, I loved it because Amy was one of my friends with whom I only spoke Spanish. We became really good at conversing in the past tense, due to the fact that each morning’s discourse consisted of what we did the night before.
Walking that much every day yielded a variety of things in addition to new language skills. First, despite the excessive liters that I guzzled during my stay, my walk to school, synergistically with the Spanish diet, shed fourteen pounds of something from my body. I think that’s why the Granainos are so lean.
For many, their only means of transport is by foot. Plus, from this population, there is another high percentage who smoke, so you can imagine the combination of these components. But my fourteen pounds were easily replenished upon my return to the United States, with the help from the Christmas and New Year holidays—damn peanut butter blossoms. Pero bueno, no pasa na’.
Walking in a city’s streets also transforms you into one of its citizens, or ciudadano (if you can indulge in my Spanish lessons). You learn the fastest roads to take, the best places to eat, and the interesting lives of shop owners who wash their front steps religiously every morning… It strikes me weird too, washing the asphalt or cobblestone just before the entrance of their business. They take a hose and simply wash the concrete down thoroughly, like watering a crop of recently sewed marigolds. And yet, seconds later, thousands of feet, mostly “euro” shoes, trounce all over the newly washed surface. What did it accomplish? Perhaps, it only created a new sleek surface for some elder señora to negotiate with her tall-awkward heels. Nevertheless, they continue doing it, and it makes them happy and smile.
I asked Raquel, one of our directors, why they habitually did the clean, “Por que lavan la calle enfrente sus puertas?” She couldn’t believe I had the gall to question it. It was as if I had betrayed some sacrificial scroll written by a Spanish conquistador years ago. The answer, a beautiful response, turned out to be a rationale of pride and dignity. I offended her and felt awkward. From that day on, I thought twice before probing into a cultural practice I knew nothing about.
The Granada walk is not only for the purposes of transport. It also serves as an activity of pleasure. There are two good times for the paseo. From what I noticed, the hours right before dinner, usually 7:00-9:00PM, and any weekend morning seemed to be the most populated hours. I rarely saw anybody walking alone. I walked alone quite often, but never would encounter a Spaniard simply taking to the streets solo. Everybody, it seemed, had somebody.
Families were always dressed up (in American standards): men with nice slacks and a buttoned shirt and women, perhaps in a skirt and blouse, with the necessary mulberry scarf circumventing her neck. The kids were cheeky and obedient, with attire too cute to be coincidental. No one of the older generations stepped out of the house in scrubby raiment. I witnessed this first hand with Julia. She hung around the house in sweats, but always put on a dressy outfit for the street.
Baby strollers would come too. From what I noticed, it was usually the husband who operated the stroller, as opposed to the wife in American society. The image that sticks most in my mind is of a husband pushing and not talking, while the wife carries on a chatty conversation with her friend. Quite a great a thing, eh? However, the truth is that the American woman still realizes a better equality than her Spanish counterpart, la mujer.
It’s not often you find someone in the US who goes on a walk for kicks. There are some—for those of you boiling at my generalization—that do it, but to me the American walk always has other motives. When was the last time you saw, in the United States, an entire family on a Sunday morning holding hands and parading through the streets? It’s not necessarily the fault of the American family either. US towns are just not designed for walking; they’re designed for minivans and therefore, that is how we go.
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