El comienzo

As usual, I planned to begin writing much earlier, before I left for Spain, but instead I wrote a few drafts and never finished or posted them. And now the thoughts are a bit outdated! Oh well. This is my fourth day in Toledo, and I am already overwhelmed with what to say and how to say it, but here is a little piece about traveling and the first few days:

After a long day of travelling on Thursday from Minneapolis to Chicago to Madrid to Toledo, I arrived with about half of the other Notre Dame students at the Fundación Ortega y Gasset, a university for students studying abroad in Toledo. After a short tour (the Fund is not very big-- it could probably fit inside my tiny elementary school) and an orientation, we waited in the lobby for our host families. Half of the families were scheduled to come at noon, and the other half to come later in the day. I was told that my family would arrive at noon, but after waiting for an hour, there were still two of us without families, so we returned to the cafeteria with the rest of the students. At around 3, the second wave of families began arriving, but as the group of students remaining grew smaller and smaller, I began to worry that I had no family! There had been a mix-up! I had been forgotten! At this point, we were all very tired. I fell asleep in the computer lab, and then tried to stay awake in the small waiting room. Finally, one of the staff members at the Fund told two of us that our families had been confused about the date-- they thought we were arriving on Sunday, not Friday-- but both of them were on their way now. At about 5:00 my host mother arrived. She greeted me with a kiss on each cheek, and called me a "probrecita rubia" (poor little blonde girl), and apologized over and over for being late.

We took a taxi to her apartment, and after she showed me around, I put my suitcases in the third bedroom, and fell asleep. I woke up in time for dinner (in Spain, the "cena" is very late, so we ate around 9:00). I needed to be at the Fund for a language test in the morning, so my host mother showed me how to take the bus to Zocodover Plaza in the Casgo (the old part of Toledo). From there, it is a very short walk to the Fund, if you know where you are going. (This morning, I wandered around for a very long time, because a lot of the streets are beginning to look familiar, and it is hard to remember which is the correct familiar-looking street). We walked back to the apartment, which I will not be able to do alone at night, but will be nice for walks in the afternoon.

Saturday, after the test and a meeting about classes, we spent a lot of time wandering around Toledo, taking pictures and looking into little shops. I went back to the apartment for lunch, which is also very late here (around 2:00). We made a pact to speak only in Spanish, but of course this was broken several times since we are so used to speaking English to one another! It was easier yesterday, when we walked around with some of the students from the University of Minnesota because there were more basic things that we could talk about (Where are you from? What's your name? Much easier vocabulary!) And of course it helps to just listen too.

Right now, the language is the most overwhelming part of being here. I am used to writing and reading Spanish, where I have time to stop and look up words and think, but speaking and listening is much more difficult. It is difficult remembering words that I do know, and there are so many words that I don't know! It is already becoming a little easier, but still, when I was going to sleep last night, I kept thinking about studying abroad in an English-speaking country and how much easier it would all be-- all of the fun with none of the obligation to speak Spanish all the time, none of the stumbling over words with friends trying to say the simplest things! It is confusing too, to go from speaking Spanish to reading a book in English or even writing in English. My head is filled up with Spanglish, which I suppose is good, but it makes thinking exhausting!

But classes start tomorrow, so not thinking is probably a bad idea. So I will continue thinking my jumbled little thoughts, wandering Toledo, and fumbling with the Spanish language.