Yesterday, we had our final “Hasta Luego” celebration at the University of Cádiz, where we shared Jamón Serrano, La Ina wine, and laughter-filled conversation. It was incredible to watch how delicately the jamón serrano, or thigh of the pig, was cut into thin slices or small pieces, and even more so how easy it was to eat! The jamón serrano almost melted in my mouth with each bite; I did not know ham could taste so good. Next, was the sherry wine (appearing as white wine) called La Ina. A wine barrel was raised on a stand with a hole at the top, where a woman looking like she was ready to dance flamenco used her years of experience to use an elongated tube-like ladle to scoop the wine out of the barrel and flawlessly pour the wine into the glass at such a great distance! I attempted to pour the wine just the same and could not seem to manage it; that takes a lot of skill! I am so happy to have been a part of such a respected Spanish tradition.

I have enjoyed my time in Cádiz and appreciate all of those who helped make this experience that much better. I would like to shout out to Maria and Patricia for constantly ensuring we had a safe and enjoyable experience. Their knowledge and experience in each subject and part of Spain was complimented by their great sense of humor. I would also like to thank my two professors, Alberto and Inés, who helped me create a strong foundation and structure of the Spanish language through activities that cater to my learning ability and laughter to break any anxiety. I am proud to wear a scarf of the fútbolistas with the colors of Cádiz. I have learned so much from such a small town in just a few weeks and I cannot thank UMass Lowell enough for this opportunity!

Brigadas Amarillas

Experta con La Ina

Intento con La Ina

Patricia y Maria en el medio

Una excursion (en El Puerto de Santa Maria)

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The fountain is from the Plaza de Flores just outside the Mercado.  Merchants, tapas, gelato and great companions.

The last few pictures are of my favorite park and fountain in Park Genoves.  The garden with its manicured trees and marbled walkways dates back to the 18^th century.  A small café is located just inside which makes it a great stop to relax with a café con leche while you soak in the view of the garden as well as the ocean.

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The last few pictures are of my favorite park and fountain in the Park Genoves.  The garden with its manicured trees and marbled walkways dates back to the 18^th century.  A small café is located just inside which makes it a great stop to relax with a café con leche while you soak in the view of the garden as well as the ocean.

What more could you ask for in Spain!?

I have included the sunrise on the ride to the airport leaving Cadiz and taking my great memories…..

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Free Time:
It may just be my Spanish family, but I find how the pass the time at home extremely strange. The watch YouTube. A lot. Occasionally they’ll have the news on, but most of the time they’re constantly on YouTube. They watch a lot of video reviews of amusement parks and rides, as well as a YouTuber playing a video game with the split screen set up. They also watch a lot of comedy club clips on YouTube. For the first week I was here, it was an endless list of YouTubers rating various amusement parks around the world all day every day. The whole family would sit around and never get bored of it.
They also play a lot of video games and play on their phones a lot. But, unlike my family, do not hide in their rooms to do so. They all sit in the living room (the only room with air conditioning) and have their individual head phones on. This is interesting to me, because they’re all doing separate things, but at the same time, all together.

Food:
I’m a picky eater, and among some of my most hated foods are tomatoes and onions. So, coming here, I made it my goal to try everything my host family served me. So far, some of the most notable new food items I’ve tried are: nectarines, peaches, pears, sangria, sherry, fish eggs, margaritas, whole fish, gazpacho, pirinaca de cebolla, tortilla, salmorep, and much, much more. Some I hated, some I love, but, overall, I’m proud of myself for fearlessly trying so many new and interesting things.

Leg Hair:

Nobody in Spain has leg hair. Nada. Even men, it’s common for their legs to be smooth as a baby’s bottom or only lightly feathered with a little very thin hair. Our showers here, specifically in my house, have to be under 5 minutes to conserve water. Mine are typically around 3 minutes. I had no clue how I was expected to shave my legs in 3 minutes, or how my house mom did. I have never ever seen one razor in my house either which makes things stranger. It’s a small and insignificant mystery for me, but a mystery nonetheless. Professor Matz later told us (6 weeks after this mystery began) that it’s extremely common here for everyone to wax. Entonces, the mystery is solved at last!

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Breakfast: I wake up up around 8:30, then have my breakfast. Exactly one piece of toast with peach marmalade, and a cafe con leche. Within the first week, I absolutely despised peach marmalade, but didn’t have much of a choice. After 3 weeks, when I got my roommate Kritsina, Nutella was added to the mix. I could’ve cried with joy I was so happy to see something just a little different. So, for the next 3 weeks, I had one piece of toast with Nutella every day. I leave for class between 9:05 and 9:10. Get to class around 9:20. Once I woke up early and arrived at class around 9:10. That was a very exciting day in my life.

Snack: In school, we have a set lunch break from 11:30 until 11:20, but our professor usually lets us out about 10 minutes early so we can beat the lunch rush. I’ll usually try to avoid getting a snack, they’re cheap but they do add up, but when I do indulge, I never regret it. For a snack, I always get a toastado con jamon y olive oil, a glass of orange juice, and a café con leche. The toastado and jamon are always amazing, and the orange juice here is a spiritual experience.

Lunch: Lunch is the most important meal here in Spain, and so it’s always the largest. It’s not always the most grand or fancy meal, but it gets the job done: the job being keeping you filled until around 10:00pm when dinner is served. Lunch is usually pretty varied, from lentil stew to whole fish and potatoes to pasta and marinara sauce. In my family, this is the meal that the mother makes, and the meal that gets the most time and effort put into it.

Dinner: If I’m being honest, dinner is my favorite meal (besides snack time). The mother of my host family doesn’t get home from work until late, so it’s up to the father to provide the food. Dinner is usually simple, but delicious. From hot dogs, to grilled ham and cheeses, to strange dishes involving eggs, I can always count on dinner to be something to look forward to. This meal, in Spain, is middle sized one. Breakfast is by far the smallest, lunch is by far the largest, and then you have dinner. Like Goldilocks, I’ve found my favorite meal that’s just right.

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Ever since that night, I have recognized that the people of Cádiz accept others for who they are, not what they can be. It is not about who looks or dresses the best, as much of the media of the United States enjoys to promote, instead the vast majority Spaniards I have met focus on personality with appearance as secondary. This can especially be recognized on the beach, where women of all body types will wear just as much (or as little) as men. The human body, mostly that of women, is not objectified; it is just another part of life.

With a few that skew from standard, Cádiz has displayed an example of unification and acceptance that I believe the United States should highlight. If a vast population of people can come together to watch a game and celebrate a victory by splashing around in the city’s largest fountain at night, singing and dancing alongside a moving double decker bus with the fútbolistas (soccer team) on top, and sharing the excitement in the streets without violence or excessive intervention from the police, I believe people can live in peace and love each other anywhere. Thank you Cádiz for being such a great role model…finally.

Bienvenido fútbolistas! con mis hermanos de España

Mi primera noche en Cádiz con mis hermanos de España

Clase y profesora de Flamenco

Mi familia, vecinos, y yo

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We visited the Oratory of the Santa Cueva which displayed different types of architecture from the prayer chamber to the church.  The prayer chamber was beautiful in its simplicity and oh what an echo!

The took the ferry to el Puerto de Santa Maria to explore and learn about the city.  We had a tour of the Bodegas Caballero and a great wine / sherry tasting at the end.  Only a short walk to tour a the Castillo de San Marcos.  Our guide shared the interesting and painful history on how prisoners lived and worked at the castle.

The Regatta de Cadiz 2016, the tall ship races, came to Cadiz for 4 days.   Beautiful these vessels are masterpieces The event happens every 4 years so it was great timing to be here and enjoy.  Great night of festivities with music, fireworks and oh so many people!

Originally 3 weeks seemed like a long time to explore Cadiz.  Now as we count down the final few days I find myself wishing for one more week!

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Aside from that I loved the excursion to the winery at Santa Maria as I was at the place where the Santa Maria ship sailed out to the new world. I have never imagined I would ever be where everything started for us latin Americans. I feel lucky to be able here. The wine was exquisite too! I’m very thankful to my teacher for facilitating this amazing once in a lifetime oportunity to experience Spain in such depth.

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Our host family lived on Calle Arboli, right off of the Plaza de Flores. Everyday we were able to walk through this beautiful plaza and smell all the fresh flowers picked for sale. Once at the plaza we turn right onto Calle Columela, this street is definitely a great place to start if you’re looking for all the trendy clothes, shoes, and home decor. Today we stopped into Kiko, Mango, Zara, Sfera, and a few more to get some last minute sale deals while the “rebajas” were still going on. Throughout the month of July almost all shops do their summer blowout sales so we really lucked out on timing of the trip.

There are so many plazas in Cadiz and by now, surprisingly, I am very familiar with most of them. My favorite plazas to stop through were Plaza de La Catedral, Plaza de Flores, Plaza Candelaría, Plaza Mina, and Plaza de San Antonio. Plaza de La Catedral certainly held a special place in my heart since that was where we spent a lot of our time hanging out and doing work. The Cathedral steps are a great place to stop and relax and eat some helado. Plaza Mina has several restaurants that were worth taking the time for good tapas. Today we stopped in to the Mediterranean restaurant and had “Gambas Al Ajillo” which is shrimp in a garlic wine sauce. It is so good we needed extra bread just to soak up all the oil. At the end of the day, exploring any of these plazas will be worth the time for a new and fun experience.

It is certainly smart to end a good night at the Mercado Central. The Mercado is right off the Plaza de Flores so once again this is very convenient for our location. During the day time, from about 9 to 2, the market is entirely open with seafood and vegetable vendors in the center. At night, one side is open from 8-12 for evening snacks and fun. Here is where you will find the most amazing sushi around. I am an avid sushi eater so I made sure to locate this place. It is called Gadisushi and it is worth the time to stop by. The fish is so fresh and makes for a great evening treat. What could be better than surrounding yourself with friends and food?

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Today we visited El Puerto de Santa Maria and the Bodega. The Bodega was very interesting because we saw how the wine was stored and saw many prized wines. Also we learned about the history of the wines that we saw and how they were aged. The most interesting part for me was learning about the aging process and how the wines are made. Later we learned some more history about El Puerto de Santa Maria and saw the Castle of San Marcos. It was very informative learning about the intricate details of how the castle was used and seeing the preserved relics of past eras. We finished the tour by sampling the wines. They all had different tastes but I personally liked the sweeter ones better.

The arches of the oratorio create an echo.

The markings of the top row describes the period of time and ruler of Spain and the bottom describes the awards won.

The Altar created by a prison inmate.

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The way the Professors present themselves is far different than I’ve seen before. Granted, we do have an incredibly small class, but nonetheless. They are friendly and kind, always willing to detour the conversations, but silently keeping track of time in their heads. Alberto told us on the first time that he specifically sets time aside to get off track and converse about random things. Ines once gave us an assignment that consisted of all of us sending her our baby pictures then everyone guess who’s who.

This seems to be a trend in classes about languages in general: being able to converse and speak the language is just as important as the grammar. The only linguistic experience I have is three years of Latin in high school, where it was all grammar. Latin is a dead language, so occasionally we would attempt to read ancient texts, but being able to hold a conversation was no even on our “to do” list.

The grading system in Spain is also very different. There’s much less pressure on getting good grades and just learning for the exam. We have nothing graded except our final on the second to last day of the course. The European grading system in general is also much gentler, I believe, but I do not know the exact differences. Unfortunately, I would not know this blessing because we’re still graded by the UMass Lowell grading system here. From what Ines has told us, they have a scale from 1-10. Any final grade above a 5 is passing, and below is a suspension. Getting a 7 or 8 is really good here, and only one or two people receive 9s.

The first time Alberto gave us an exercise to see where we were, we all worriedly inquired if it was graded (it wasn’t). The first time Alberto gave us homework, I spent hours on the simple assignment, trying to Google and check with the other girls in the class and see what they got because I didn’t want me getting an answer wrong on the homework to negatively affect my grade. Spoiler alert: the homework was not graded and just for us to learn, I got way more out of the second homework assignment when I just did it based on what I knew and made mistakes. The first time Alberto did a small quiz with us (once again, not graded), I allowed myself to get some answers incorrect, and when I did, I inquired about why they were not correct until I understood. I felt no shame or disapproval from being confused. The next quiz, I did not make any of the same mistakes.

I’ve always been extremely concerned about grades, needing a certain GPA for one thing, another higher GPA for something else, and a competitive GPA for a third thing. I can calculate my current grade and hat grades I need to get whatever for a final grade blindfolded at this point. But, with this far more laid back style of learning, focused less on memorization and testing and more on understanding and actual comprehension.

I’ve learned more in these weeks than I have years in the US. I miss a lot of things about home, but, sadly, I think I prefer the Spanish university. Also, the view from my classroom looks like something from a movie. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.

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