Paella in your Nightmares: the Spain Quest

noreply@blogger.com (renzy) — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 15:55:00 +0000

Art by Gaudi, my favorite artist who got ran over by a trolley.

noreply@blogger.com (renzy) — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 02:28:00 +0000

It's official; I can't sue the school if I die in Spain. If that happens, all I ask is that I be buried next to Gaudi. He died by getting ran over by a trolley, which I think is the ultimate way to go. A lot of people who went to get their visas over Thanksgiving break had to wait for hours to turn in their paperwork. I'm very glad I went when I did. And I didn't get any of the department scholarships. I was saddened. But it's alright, my parents and I have saved up enough money to cover the costs. If we don't, there are always loans. My loan tally isn't really high thanks to bonds and former scholarship winnings, so it's not like an extra one would kill me. Getting another loan would in truth make me feel safer. I think my parents will cave in and get one once they see how expensive this is going to be. Anyway, I found out tonight that Liza and Amy are also leaving a day early and will be staying overnight in Madrid. I think they'll be in a hostel though. A hotel room came with my flight package, so I am definately staying there. But it'll be nice not to be alone.
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noreply@blogger.com (renzy) — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 02:56:00 +0000

Oh man...my poor conversation partners and I have trouble coming up with topics to talk about. For awhile, we just sat around and reviewed the vosotros command forms. That's not a bad thing, but it's not really conversation either. The big bad vosotros is going to throw us all for a loop when we get over to Spain. We're not used to hearing it over here with American-Spanish. We simply use ustedes for you all. But I shouldn't complain much. At least Spain and Latin American countries all use the metric system, arrange their dates in the same way, and call soccor football, which makes more sense. I seriously have no idea why the U.S. thinks football is a sport where a bunch of huge guys pass a ball around with their hands. That's just like why I have no idea why American-Chinese and -Japanese restaurants give out fortune cookies. Why is the U.S. such a crazy-ass place? What made us all such fucknuts? I personally believe its roots lie within McDonald's cheese burgers, hippies, and televangelists.
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noreply@blogger.com (renzy) — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 00:04:00 +0000

Suddenly last Thursday we finally got assigned language partners. A fellow traveler, Liz, and I got paired up with a nice guy from Peru. We have to converse with each other for five hours every week. That doesn't sound like much except that we had to plan our hours in bulk: two hours Tuesday, three hours Friday. It's hard to find something to talk about for three hours straight no matter what language you're speaking. Anyway, we met up on Friday at the coffeehouse. I was the only one who actually bought a drink. We talked about everything from alcohol to politics to how loud Americans can be without realizing it. We truly are a race of screaming wackos. But it was fun. I think Liz and I are going to get along really well while we're both studying in Spain. There are only two men going to Spain this time and they're brothers, which is kinda funny. I can't imagine traveling abroad with my brother. My parents would make me babysit him the whole time. They did that while we were both in marching band too, as if the little bastard can't take care of himself. But, yes. Reviewing the subjunctive a little bit. This is the hardest part for English speakers learning Spanish, this foreign subjunctive tense. I've been getting a feel for it over the years, but I still screw it up sometimes.
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noreply@blogger.com (renzy) — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 05:17:00 +0000

Ever since the meeting, I've been freaking out a little bit over money, the spending kind. I do plan on traveling around, at least to Barcelona and the Canary Islands if nowhere else. I'm trying to coax my parents into agreeing to take out another loan because I know that they don't have $5,000 extra dollars lying around. I plan on taking nicer clothes so I won't be too tempted to buy everything in sight. I won't develop film there. I'm not going to travel outside of Spain's territories. When I go out, one coffee/beer. I want to try to be financially conservative like I am here. It's that I was told that people go out every day while they're there. Why does going out mean that you have to buy stuff? There has to be a loophole in that statement. Spain isn't exactly the cheapest place to live in the world.
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noreply@blogger.com (renzy) — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 02:43:00 +0000

Today was the long-awaited second meeting. A girl who did the program last year came in to talk to us about her experience and what to expect, some differences in culture. The thing I feel I'll have the hardest time adjusting to is dressing up a notch for every day crap. In all honesty, I don't think we live long enough to bother wearing anything but comfortable, leisure clothing. My ultimate goal in life is to become rich enough that I can walk the streets in my pajamas and not be bothered. But, the thing that worries me the most is having enough spending money. I've always been pretty frugal, but I'll be expected to go out more. I don't know. Maybe I'm over reacting. I think where people lose a lot of money is shopping, so I'm going to bring dressier clothing from home so I won't feel so out of place that I'll want to buy them there. And for internships, I definately want to do stuff with the Red Cross. Apparently, we worry more about that in Spain, so I'm going to let that slip in the back of my mind for now. Everything seems to be falling into place well. I've been warned against the bird flu, however. Maybe I'll get a flu shot at my doctor's appointment.
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noreply@blogger.com (renzy) — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 05:48:00 +0000

Valladolid's flag

noreply@blogger.com (renzy) — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 04:48:00 +0000

Thinking about scholarships. Only one that I've come across is based solely on academic performance. It's not like I don't have the money for the program, because I do. It would be nice, however, to not always feel like I'm leeching off of my family. Working helps, but they still pay for a good chunk of it. I do well in school (I just found out that I stepped up from a dean to a provost scholar, a name which makes me think of a meat store and not academia), and it'd be nice for the university to show a little gratitude for making it look good. Gotta write a convincing essay. Anyway, no big news travel-wise. Just waiting for the meeting on Thursday.
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noreply@blogger.com (renzy) — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 01:11:00 +0000

Sorry about that. Break just ended and labs are closing earlier than usual. Anyway, nothing big happnened for the rest of the night. We went to bed around 8 and got up at 5:45 am. The breakfast wasn't too bad. I had a biscuit, some fruit, and yogurt. Dad had all kinds of eggy junk and sausage, which is way too heavy for me in the morning. I wasn't sure what was going to happen at the consulate, so I wore a dress-suit thing. We had to go to the airport to hop on a monorail to get to Amtrak where we found out that we had to take a different company, NJ transit. All in all, it's the same thing. We got a great view of the area near the tracks. It looked like something out of Stephen King's Dark Tower series. But at least rent would be cheap. If I can find good ear plugs and an alarm clock that'll zap me awake, I could live by the train tracks. So, we got off at Penn Station and confusingly went out to stalk down the nearest post office for the special envelope to sent the visa home. The directions the hotel gave us were wrong, so we stopped in what looked like a private men's club's doorway and asked for a location. We got there finally, but there was a long line and only one table open. There were lots of people in the background drinking coffee, but only one person visibly working. This is why I want a federal job. A rather large woman behind us started to yell at the workers while they casually ignored her and continued to drink coffee, and by the time we got to the table and Dad calmed down enough to realize that all we needed was a regular Express envelope, we had spent an hour in there. We then proceeded to walk 20 or so blocks to 58th street. We wanted to look around the city, but I was wearing dressy shoes and they dug blisters into my heels. So I bled for this cause. Anyway, the Spanish consulate was located on the 30th floor of a building owned by a real estate company which is kind of funny because a lot of Spanish people complain about finding places to live. The office was small with a few bilingual workers processing papers. We waited around a bunch of people applying for student visas as well for about 45 minutes and then my number was called. We simply handed the papers to some peon-looking guy who sorted them, stamped a few things, and gave us directions on what to do with them upon entering the country. I felt really cheated. I guesss I had this vision of an embassy in mind, so silly me. But at least we had completed the task. We took a taxi back to the train station, bought some sandwiches, and drove home. I slept again until we were around Berwick. All of the preparation and tension has now piddled into the great smoothie of memory, and it has a tropical-swirl flavor.
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noreply@blogger.com (renzy) — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 00:41:00 +0000

I made it back from Manhattan to now tell you a tale. I was going to just use AudioBlogger but then I lost the number to call. So we left on Sunday morning around 9:00 am. I shortly fell asleep and woke up again around 11, somewhere past Harrisburg and before Philadelphia. We stopped for coffee and gas, which is cheaper in the east probably because it's closer to the sea ports, and I also bought some spicy peanuts because I wasn't sure whether we were going to stop for lunch or not. The coffee I got was toffee flavored which I found not only amusing for its phonetic fun, but tasty. I did some reading for school in the car and listened to Jeff Foxworthy talk about weird smells. Some time around 1, we made it to Newark but couldn't find the ramp to take us to Elizabeth where our hotel was, so we stopped in a Jersey McDonald's and had grilled chicken sandwiches while a local who talked much too fast for my boondock ears gave us directions. But, we made it. We stayed in a Hampton Inn. We really needed to find a post office in Manhattan the next morning, so we asked the desk people if they could just call and find out, but they went through this whole crazy ordeal of using a computer and printing out maps instead of calling the other hotels. It took about an hour and we watched opera while we waited. Then we ate dinner at another hotel called the Hilton and we had wraps with hummus in them, which were also tasty. The walk there wass trecherous though, because there was no sidewalk and lots of traffic and glass glittering all over the dirt path we took like little remote galaxies. Well, I'll finish in a little while since the computer lab I'm in is shutting down.

noreply@blogger.com (renzy) — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 14:32:00 +0000

Let's hear it for Iberia!

noreply@blogger.com (renzy) — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 03:58:00 +0000

Princeton Junction, NJ (PJC)7:24 am20-OCT-05
New York, NYPenn Station (NYP)8:20 am20-OCT-05
0h 56m
Non- Smoking
2 Unreserved Coach Seats
$74.00

Damn, this is the earliest time available for Amtrak. I hope my dad reserved tickets before now. I think he did. And can you believe that they want $37.00 per person to ride that train? It's hardly worth my grandpa's dentures let alone money. I'm not exaggerating, Amtrak really is horrible but I have no choice in order to get to New York without killing myself or my dad from exhaustion. Maybe we'll run into some neurotic homeless person who lives on the train to entertain us and possibly hold us at gunpoint. I'm always up for dangerously exciting situations.
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noreply@blogger.com (renzy) — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 04:50:00 +0000

The Basque Country

noreply@blogger.com (renzy) — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 00:33:00 +0000

There's a nice lull before the storm always. Right now, all I have to really do for the trip is fill out some scholarship forms but that is going to change soon. Very quick. Like raping-deity quick. I got my special PIN number to plug into the system so that I can register for the Valladolid's classes. I have a direct deposit sheet, but I'm not going to fill it out because I rarely get any extra money. My biggest concern is still the internship. I haven't heard anyone ever talk about it and I'm wondering if there's some kind of human sacrifice somewhere in the process. Are six credits worth a human life? Yeah, I think so. I also think the ticket plans have been finalized. I really don't care how I get to Valladolid as long as I'm on time. I'd build a damn raft and float across the ocean if I knew that I'd get there. But, with every day that passes by I become more excited, more worried that I don't have all of the paperwork done, more worried that Amtrack will fall off of the rails and we'll have to hike to New York. One area I really want to visit but is not a part of our trips is the Basque Country because I'm doing a paper on it. I may not be allowed because of the political upheaval, but I may just sneak over. For a country that screams very loudly at the U.S. for its war atrocities, it sure causes its own neighbors a lot of hell without even a squeak. If you haven't been keeping up, the problem isn't just about ETA anymore. The Spanish government is pretty much trying to repress an entire identity, a nation of people older than itself. Sadly, thanks to the terror hype, it is easily disguised as a fight against terrorism. This reminds me much of our own government and its reasons for war in Iraq, an excuse. It's quite ironic, really, and interesting because it makes me wonder whether the international community actually cares about the true war, death, and sovereignty aspects of our fucking around in Iraq or is it because it's the U.S. that's doing it? If Zimbabwe went to war with Iraq and wanted to make it into a quasi-colony, would anyone care nearly as much? I don't know, I don't know. Maybe they would since that's where the oil is. But yeah, that is only beef with the Spanish government/propaganda. I'll probably avoid political debates while I'm there, though hard it will be!
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noreply@blogger.com (renzy) — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 02:42:00 +0000

New things abound every day, just like today. I went to a meeting about doing an internship in Orlando, but alas, I'll be in Spain when it is taking place. Ah well, I wouldn't've gone anyway because it runs into school and those southern people freak me out. Mrrm. But, my parents and I have been hounding travel agencies to find a good route and price to get me to Valladolid by noon on the 7th of January. I know, I know, that's Epiphany time, but it's essential that I arrive on that date before or on that time. Jeez, why do people have to have different holidays? America demands that you conform! I'm joking. No, really I am. I think it's good that we celebrate at different times. I wonder if they have an Epiphany Rush like we have a Christmas Rush. Epiphany Rush sounds much cooler. Anyway, onto Spain processing. Right now, I've got a good flight lineup out of New York, to Madrid, to Barcelona, and to Valladolid by 10:30 am. Looks good to me. I've been eating away at my advisor to get him to tell me my PIN number so I can sign up for my classes over there. He's all disorganized like me. We're a great team because we both know what's going on but we can't find the proper shit to do anything about it because it's buried underneath our desks somewhere between here and Cthulhu's third tentacle. If he can get a doctorate, I can. The next meeting with Jose Carranza will be on the 27th and we'll meet our conversation partners. I'm excited because I haven't run into any new native Spanish speakers yet. We'll also be discussing internships. The one with Congress isn't really being offered now, so I think I'll do something with the Red Cross over there this summer. That'll look spiffy on a resume. If things don't quiet down in the Basque Country, the Red Cross may be very busy in Spain.
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noreply@blogger.com (renzy) — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 04:31:00 +0000

Yum!

noreply@blogger.com (renzy) — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 00:21:00 +0000

The visa: a euphanism to describe an unholy set of trials to obtain the right to travel outside one's own country for more than three months. Well, in the case of people from Pennsylvania, USA, at least. Not so long ago, Madrid called up the Spanish Consulate in New York City and questioned them, with their strange, lispy, yet revered Spanish accent; "hey, our people have to travel all the damn way to Madrid to get their visas while yours can just send in a mail application. That's not very fair. Change it." And New York complied, forgetting that the Consulate juristiction included people who live in the friggin' boondocks of the Appalacian Mountains in Pennsylvania. It's a ten hour drive to New York City, even longer if your take a bus or decide to brave Amtrack. I have a right to complain because while the Spanish have a much more sophisticated system of public transportation and can get to Madrid in two hours or less, I have to be stuck on Amtrack, which is never on time and is just horrible all around, plus sit in a car until my ass goes numb. So I'm miffed. I'm hurt. But mostly I'm annoyed that such a big country has such shitty transportation systems.
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So, the big visa journey begins for me on October 22nd, driving with my dad to Princeton, NJ, staying over night, praying we don't get eaten by the New Jerseians (I've read that they prize human flesh over any other meat), and then on to an Amtrack station around five in the morning because the Consulate opens at nine and Amtrack will be at least an hour late. I wish I could just give a blood sacrifice of some kind as proof of my loyalty to the state instead. It would be so much easier and less painful. But it'll be worth it. This study abroad experience is going to eat up the majority of my major, leaving only a few 400 level classes to wrap it up my senior year. I'll be staying with a host family in Valladolid and get to eat paella once again. I miss it like a lost lover, washed away by the Atlantic Sea and pre-packaged airplane food. It's all about being prepared for the ordeal ahead, not just in a few months but for the rest of my life, teaching me that paperwork is indeed America's favorite lubrication.