Dealing with visas, churronomics, and language politics.

So things in Spain continue to be good. I recently wrote the test I mentioned in my last entry. I found it fairly difficult but when I went for my oral exam my professor told me that I had done well on it and had nothing to worry about. She even commented that she thought that I knew more than I realized and that I had made excellent progress over the course of the class. She did, however, note that when I speak Spanish I have a strong North American accent and that that might be something I should think about working on. That notwithstanding, I was flattered by her comments.

In other news I had to go to a place called the "extranjeria" on Monday to get a study permit/student ID card. Apparently if you intend on moving to Spain to study you not only need a visa but also a special study permit from the government. I had not known this prior to arriving. The woman who I talked with from the Spanish consulate in Toronto had only told me that I needed a "student card" which, in my mind, meant a student card from the university. I only discovered that I needed a study permit from the extranjeria after I was informed of  this by Sonia's daughter, who apparently used at the extranjeria herself. I went Monday with Sonia and my roommate Sonya, who also needed a study permit, but unfortunately I couldn't get one as I didn't have a copy of my medical insurance with me (I didn't really have a good idea of what I was supposed to bring). I ended up returning on Friday just before the oral exam, with a copy of my medical insurance in hand this time, and was promptly seen by a man who stamped all of my papers and gave me a form with my foreigner ID number on it as well as a card indicating the time I had to come back to get the physical card made. Even though I still have to go back, I'm glad that I now have a foreigner ID number and hence will not have to worry about getting deported from the country.

In other news, I have, since coming to Spain, gained a great love of churros. For those of you who don't know, a churro is a long, thin, sometimes straight/sometimes spiral shaped, deep-fried Spanish donut which is generally served with thick hot chocolate for dipping. They are horrible for you and hence I've been making a point of only eating them on the weekends. In the process of doing this I have tried a number of different churros places. Most recently (re: today) I went to a churreria (every institution, shop or restaurant of any kind in Spain ends with "-ria") nearby Camino de Ronda, the part of town that I'm living in, and ordered churros con chocolate and a cafe con leche. The amount of churros I got was huge and yet the bill only came up to €3.70!(!) This is remarkable because the other churrerias I have gone to have charged me about twice that much, often for skimpier proportions. Hence, I think that I have found my go-to place for churros.

I went back to the fiesta de intercambio last week. Fortunately this time I ended up talking to a guy named Alejandro who spoke only Spanish to me, despite his being able to speak English, which was a nice change of pace from the week before when I ended up talking to someone who only spoke English back to me. We mostly talked about travel, where we were from and why were studying Spanish and English respectively. Apparently he's going to Cork, Ireland for three weeks to study English.

A funny story from that night; in Spain a common summertime drink is "vino tinto de verano". What this is is red wine mixed with fresca. It's sort of similar to a sangria but the alcohol content is usually much lower. Usually. I have had them on several occasions, and never felt the effects before but that night I had two and immediately started to feel tipsy. My first thought when this occurred was "What the hell? How am I at all drunk off of vino tinto de verano"? Since then I have come up with two theories about why this may have happened. The first is that I had not eaten dinner that night, which a friend told me can get you make you more susceptible to the effects of alcohol, and the other is that because the bar I was at catered mostly to locals and not tourists the alcohol content in the drinks was higher. Whatever the case, I ended up leaving at around 11pm, shortly after Alejandro had left and I had talked to some other people for about a half hour.

In other news, I had an intercambio partner for a short while but that has now ended. This was a program separate and apart from the weekly mixer mentioned above. What it is is a program set up by the Centro de Lenguas Modernas itself. You give the secretary's office some personal details: your e-mail address, likes/dislikes, etc which they pass along to Spanish students who are learning English. They get in contact with you and from then on, the two of you get together to teach one another each other's language. A girl named Isabel e-mailed and we met a couple times, but the other day she sent me an e-mail saying that she was too busy to keep meeting up. This is understandable because she's a med student, has just started classes again and on top of that is also taking French, so I don't think that she's just blowing me off. Nevertheless it's disheartening because although the situation has improved moderately, I still don't have many Spanish friends and hence don't know many native speakers that I can practice with. I'm thinking that next week I'll go back to the secretary's office so that I can get the deets on some other Spanish students myself. Taking initiative is the solution to most problems, after all.

The other day I had an interesting discussion with Sonia. A couple of her friends were visiting her from Malaga and England respectively, and during lunch it came up that many times in the past Sonia has hosted students from the US who, despite being of Hispanic parentage, cannot speak Spanish. She said that she thinks this is a shame and that more Hispanic/Latino parents in the US should raise their children to be bilingual, noting that she wishes that she had had that kind of opportunity herself. I found this remark curious because Sonia is from Galicia (a region in north-western Spain near the border with Portugal) and in addition to Spanish speaks Galician. When I pointed this out she noted that although she thinks that Galician should be preserved and used at home, she doesn't think that it's a language that will it do anyone much good to know. This sort of surprised me because all of the other times the topic of her being Galician came up she seemed to be very proud of it and even once commented that "mi lengua es Gallega" (my language is Galician). She also noted that her father had been very anti-Galician and had made a point of speaking Spanish instead as much as possible, but admitted that this was largely to the negative feelings towards minority languages engendered by their prohibition in education and print under Franco.  Her opinion reminded me of the comments of one of my professors made. The professor had been talking about how it annoyed her that so many English (as in British) people move to southern Spain, especially the Costa del Sol area, and make no effort to learn Spanish. I agreed that this was unacceptable, but proceeded to ask her what her thoughts were on Spaniards from the rest of Spain who moved to Catalonia (another part of Spain with its own distinct language) but didn't bother to learn Catalan. She said that she thought that this was acceptable because Catalan is a minority language and not the national language. In both my discussion with her and in my discussion with Sonia I asserted that this kind of attitude would never fly in Canada. To illustrate this point I explained the linguistic situation in Quebec and asserted that if you ever suggested to a Quebecer that they should be required to learn English because French is a minority language you would get slapped and rightly so. I explained that in Quebec there is legislation which prohibits the use of any language other than French in the public sphere. It makes for an interesting case in comparative language politics. In my opinion the Canadian approach is better, not only because it's more respectful, but also because it seems to have kept separatism at bay to greater extent than in Spain. While it is true, as any Canadian will tell you, that Quebec does have a strong separatist movement, it has never (except briefly in the case of the FLQ) turned violent as in the case of the Basque terrorist group ETA nor has it ever gained the popular support of the Catalan independence movement. Recently a poll was held in several parts of Catalonia which discovered that if a referendum were held that day Catalan independence would gain over 90% approval from the province's population. Food for thought.

And that's most of what has happened of note since my last entry. My intensive course is officially over and I don't start regular classes until next Thursday. To celebrate/have something to do with my free time, I'm heading out to Almeria tomorrow. Almeria is a sea-side town about two hours outside of Granada. It doesn't look there's as much there as there is in other parts of Andalucia, but they have a beach, a cathedral, a Moorish fortress, and an archaeology museum which should be enough to keep me occupied for two days. I was originally planning on going to Seville, which is home to the world's third largest cathedral and purportedly the best bull-fighting in Spain but apparently you have to book well in advance to see either the bullfighting or the cathedral. Hence, to Almeria I go. Right now I'm thinking that I might head to Seville the weekend after next as I'll have three-day weekends, making travel around the country fairly easy. Plus, I want to go there before the bullfighting season is over (it ends at the end of this month).

In any event, I'll do another post either Thursday or Friday to let you guys know how my trip to Almeria and first day of classes went.

Until then,
Graham.

Belated first entry.

So I realize that I'm starting this late and my apologies for that. Because of that this entry will be very cursory and will basically summarize some of the more major events which have occurred since I got here.

I arrived in Spain at the end of last month after having been in Vancouver for four days visiting my friend Alee and meeting up with my friend Diane from Florida. The flight from Vancouver to Spain was long and included a stopover in Germany, but it was surprisingly non-brutal. I was flying with Lufthansa and hence attribute my comparable comfort (compared to the flight I took last year to Scotland with Air France) to the remarkable efficiency of the German people. Say what you will about them, but never doubt that the Germans run a good airline.

After a couple days in Madrid I took the train to Granada, which was about a seven hour ride. After arriving here my jetlag STILL had not gone away and I ended up staying up the entire night prior to taking my entrance test at the CLM (Centro de Lenguas Modernas or Modern Languages Centre in English). To my elation, and despite my lack of sleep, I scored level 6 or advanced on the entrance test (I had previously thought I would score intermediate) and got placed in the corresponding intensive Spanish class. The intensive class is what I am doing right now and is meant to prepare us for regular class which begin during the second week of next month. Because I scored advanced rather than intermediate that means that, provided I pass the final exam next week, I can take classes in the Hispanic Studies program in October rather than classes in the Spanish Languages and Culture program, the latter being targeted at intermediate speakers. The difference between the two courses is that the Spanish Language and Culture program is targeted more at teaching people who don't already have a firm grounding in Spanish about the language itself, whereas Hispanic Studies is more like regular university courses which are taught in Spanish. The Hispanic Studies courses also usually related to Spanish/Latin American topics. Examples of Hispanic Studies classes are 19th century Spanish literature, Spanish history, Latin American Civilization and Culture, etc.

As far as my living situation goes I'm living with a Spanish lady in her 60s named Sonia as well as two other international students who are also here to study Spanish. Both of them are from the states, one is a girl named Bridgette from Chicago and the other is a girl from New Mexico named Sonya. What I'm doing is called a "home stay" and was arranged for me by the accommodation service at the university. It's a pretty sweet setup as Sonia cooks and cleans for both me and my roommates.

So far my classes have been intense review of Spanish grammar and conversation. Almost all of my classmates are from the states with the key exceptions of one Dutch guy, one French guy, a German guy and a girl from Australia. I like them but have had few opportunities to meet many Spaniards aside from Sonia. Last week one of my classmates, Liana, and I went to a "fiesta de intercambio" which is basically a mixer for Spaniards who want to learn English and foreigners who want to learn Spanish and met a few, but nevertheless I have yet to really become close friends with any. Liana myself and now the Australian girl (Katia) intend to keep going until that happens.

I have no idea what else to say but no idea how to end this. Check back in the near future for a more substantive entry.

Seeya,

Graham.