Frustration / Adaptation / Growth

Its been a really difficult few days for me here. Me being the frugal-never-spend-my-money-unless-its-necessary type of a girl doesn't exactly mesh well with the traveling-goingoutallthetime-european life style. I also have to buy a new camera and ipod, two essentials for a semester of travel in Europe. Because of all this worrying about spending my money, I've been incredibly stressed out. Possibly because of all this stress or as a side affect of being thrown into another world, I got a nasty stomach flu type thing today. So needless to say, I am homesick and missing the US an insane amount. Its funny the things that we don't even realize we have in the US until its lacking elsewhere. Heres what I miss the most:

1. The people I love back home, i.e. YOU!
2. Free water at restaurants
3. Stores being open at predicable hours
4. The freedom to do what I want, dress how I want, be who I want, without feeling like I'm offending an entire culture.
5. The sun (it rains ALL the time. I am considering going to a tanning salon just to get fake rays. Radical, I know!)
6. Accesibility to post offices, mailboxes, stamps
7. Simple black coffee
8. The idea that, the culture of the US is that there is NO culture whatsover. Its a wonderful idea... Anyone is welcome and can make a life. For example, Santiago is absolutely and totally inaccesible to people in wheel chairs. They simply would not be able to get around town because of all the stairs.
9. Concerts- Lawrence has such a wonderful music scene. I have yet to find one here.
10. American washers and dryers!

What I don't miss:
1. Drinking age
2. Having to drive everywhere
.... Lots more I'm sure. For now, that works.

Even though I'm stressed out, stomach sick and homesick, I am taking advice from my dad and looking at these tough times as times where I can grow the most. I may wish nothing more than to go home back to my comfort zone, but if I just power through and try and experience and adapt as much as I can here, I will be a stonger person for it.

A Coruña, Spain

Today 5 friends and I took a train ride to A Coruña, which is a city of about 250,000 on the northern coast of Spain. It was wonderfully beautiful, with the city built around the coast. The water was incredibly choppy because there was a bad storm the night before. We all got soaked from standing too close to the ocean atleast 2 times, and got soaked another few times by the unpredictable downpours. My bag with my camera and ipod got soaked too.. The first casualties of the trip. Regardless, A Coruña is a spectacular town. I'm excited to go back and hopefully get more pictures of the fantastic coast, the lighthouse and the city in general.
Architecture of A Coruña.


The coastline


Another view of the coastline.

I am going to Vigo, Spain (another coast town and the biggest rival of A Coruña next week...) so expect another post. I love you all!

Planning trips!

I am trying to figure out all the traveling I am going to do during the semester. So far I have:

A Coruña- The second largst city in Galicia (the region we live in Spain) that is on the Atlantic Ocean coastline. We are going next weekend for a few days.. Its only a 5 euro train ride and I really want to see the ocean!

Andalucia- We have a group excursion to the southernmost region of Spain for a week in early March.

Dublin, Ireland- A few friends and I are going to Dublin for a few days the weekend before Saint Patrick's Day in mid March. I am incredibly excited to see Ireland!

Barcelona- We have a few days off so 5 or 6 friends and I are heading out to Barcelona for 5 days in late March (March is going to be an insane month!).

Possibly Paris or Rome- early April with CJ (who is coming for 2 weeks in April)

Possibly Zurich, Switzerland with my friend Helen who has family there.

Possibly Amsterdam for Queen's Day in April, which is a big party day there.

Possibly the south of France because my friend Fattin and I have a friend there.

Possibly Wales and London because my friend Abby is there.

Before all these March trips, hopefully we are going to go to Portugal (I really want to see Libson) and explore the rest of Spain itself.

During my month of traveling in May with hopefully brother Ben, we are going to see much of Germany, hopefully the Netherlands, Amsterdam, Italy... The possiblitlies are endless!

Europe is wonderful!

Settling in Spain

Santiago!

So after lots of stress and walking around the city trying to find apartments to live in, I was finally successful. I really wanted to live in the Zona Vieja, which is the old zone, but just couldn't find anything that suited me. I am living now in the Zona Moderna, the new zone, which is where basically all of the students in Santiago live. I am sharing an apartment with Alfredo, a spanish student, Romain, a french student, and Fattin, who is a wonderful girl from KU. My room is a decent size and has a good window, and the apartment itself is nice enough. I think I will like it here... Except Romain seems to be very.. social. And my room is next to his. I think I am going to have to buy some spanish earplugs.

Classes started and they are great; its going to be a really relaxing semester. We have classes in the morning at the north campus in the Zona Vieja, which is about a 30 minute walk from where we are. Its an incredibly beautiful walk though. In the picture to the left is one of the streets in the Zona Vieja we walk through to get to class, and you can see the amazing cathedral we pass by too. After morning classes we have a break in the middle of the day for siesta, and then go back to class in the afternoon at the south campus, a five minute walk from here.

Last night was the first night we really went out on the town. We went to this wonderful bar called Momo and at about 3, we headed to a discoteca called Gabbana. It wasn't quite as hopping as I thought it was going to be, but I figure the crowd wouldn't really come until 5 or 6. We left about 4:30. It was a good night. Yesterday as well, me and a few friends booked our first traveling journey. We are going to Barcelona for 5 days in mid March. Other than that trip, we are going to Andalucia in early March, hopefully to France eventually, a trip to Amsterdam and Dublin are in the works as well.

Here are some other pictures of the enchanting city I now live in.

More views on the way to class...

Miss you all!

First week in Santiago...

We finally made it to Santiago, and after 2 days of being here without our luggage (a few people STILL don't have their luggage because the airport in Madrid lost it). We have settled in a bit and are living in a hostel/ hotel thing. We are searching for apartments currently which is one of the most stressful things I've done. The program basically just gave us a list of landlords who we had to call and attempt to talk to in our fractured spanish and set up appointments with (they don't speak any english...). I am still not sure where I am living. I want to live in the old zone, which is where the Cathedral is, but apartments (pisos to the Spanish), are slim pickings. Basically the pisos having anywhere from 4 - 20 people living in them and are generally small, run down, and cheap. They aren't what I expected. The city is though; it is absolutely enchanting. We probably have walked 5 miles a day since we've gotten here because even though the city is small, to get from one side to the other takes about 30 minutes. We will have to do this walk every day from the north campus where our morning classes are to the south campus where our afternoon classes are.

Learning about culture here is intense... For example, no one is overweight, and everyone is dressed up incredibly well (which may have something to do with how cheap nice clothes are.. its heaven). Even old ladies wear dresses and high heels. Also, no one yawns or stretches in public because its seen as uneducated, everyone smokes everywhere, no one smiles on the street, grades don't matter in Spanish education.. Meals are weird too. For breakfast, its just a roll or piece of bread at like 9 or so, lunch, along with siesta are from 2-4, and dinner starts about 9:30 and ends around 11:30- 12 (we started our dinner tonight about 9 and finally left at 11:30). Its a wonderful way of life, very relaxed. The Spanish like to enjoy their dinners and drinks and friends, and like to take care of their appearance. I am trying to adopt as many of their good habits as I can while I am here (none of their bad). Hopefully I will get some pictures up and write of more of my adventures in this fantastic city! (Adventures including getting stuck in a tiny tiny elevator for 30 minutes..)

Snow in Spain = virtual end of the world.

I got into Madrid, Spain at about 9:30amFriday (Spanish time, 2:30am central time)after leaving Kansas City 3:00pm central time on Thursday, and after a long and exhausting couple of flights, we saw that there was a huge amount of snow (!) outside in Madrid. According to people we've talked to, it NEVER snows in Madrid. We had a nine hour layover, so we were planning on going to the Reina Sophia Museum in Madrid, but our buss driver (along with all other Spainards) had no idea how to drive in snow. As a result, the entire city shut down, and there were over 400 accidents throughout the city. And we were forced to stay at the airport. The airport, because of the snow, closed down completely and many Spanish tempers came out... Not so fun. So our flight, along with hundreds of others, were cancelled, and after standing in lines all day trying to get the situation figured out, we decided to just suck it up and stay the night.... Our flight to Santiago (supposed to be at 7:45pm Friday local time) is now at 7:45am Saturday local time, and we have the joy of drinking wine and beer all night and sleeping in the airport. (Drinking with our teacher is always fun). There are about 20 of us, and because none of us had slept in about 24 hours, we passed out for much of the day on the main floor of the airport. I think the Spainards thought we were insane, so much so, that a Spanish journalist took a ton of pictures of us and interviewed us for the paper. I don't remember ever being so tired or so sick of airports. Hopefully tomorrow will be the end of airports for a while... Keep you fingers crossed.