Stateside

The roommate and I -one of our last nights in Salamanca

Well, I’m stateside again. My last few weeks in Spain were wonderful. I loved Salamanca and I made so many good friends. As a result, it was super easy to leave. NOT. My roommate left a day before me, so I had the last evening to spend packing by myself in my big, empty room. Dark times. Then at 1:30AM Saturday morning, most of the ISA kids got on a bus to Madrid. We had to leave that early because one person in our group had a flight at 6AM, so we all had to go super early, even though some people didn’t fly out until late that evening. Luckily my flight was at 11AM, so I only had a few hours to kill in the airport. After a few dream-like hours of listening to music and dozing in my little spot on the floor against the wall surrounded by all my luggage (the Madrid airport doesn’t have chairs until you get to the gates, once you’ve gone through security. It’s really quite poorly planned, because there are people sitting all over the floor everywhere and everyone who is walking or running through the airport to get to their check-in counter trips over sleeping travelers sprawled out across the floor), I got on a plane to Washington Dulles Airport. So that was a 9 hour flight, then I had a 4-ish hour flight to Phoenix, and then a 1.5 hour flight to Reno. Everything went surprisingly smoothly. I hadn’t slept the night before because we left at 1:30AM, but I had planned to stay up anyways so it would be easier to adjust back to Reno time once I got back. So as a result I was really tired the whole day of traveling and slept a little on each flight, which made everything go by much quicker. So when I finally got home at 8ish Reno time, I had dinner and hung out with my family a bit before going to bed at a regular time. Jet lag averted, boom. It was kind of rough to travel backwards in time though. I would leave at 11, and end up in the next city still in the afternoon, and by the time I got to the next city only an hour or two had passed by the time I adjusted to the new city’s time, so it was like the never-ending day. But I did it, and I woke up the next morning totally rested and fine. Jet lag is for weaklings. Just kidding, I probably just got lucky but I'm going to pretend I avoided jet lag due to my skillful planning and superhuman strength.

Airport reunion with my brother. Presh.

Alright, so maybe I'm having some trouble unpacking. But that's only because
unpacking means it's really over :(

So I’m home, that’s that. I don’t know if I’d go and label myself as someone experiencing ‘reverse culture shock’- if you’ve read my blog since the beginning you know my thoughts on culture shock. Some things about being home were a little weird to me at first, but nothing major. I must say that I LOVE being able to make my own food, and I like to be back on the American schedule of eating, lunch at 12 or 1, dinner at 6 instead of lunch at 2:30 or 3 and dinner at 9 or 9:30.

Ohhhhh yeeeaaahhhh. Making my own lunch - a toasted whole wheat pita with marinara sauce,
grilled chicken, bell peppers and onion, a sprinkle of cheese and some basil. It was a DELIGHT.

Sorry Spainiards, but you do NOT know how to make sandwiches. This is where it's at.

 I’m also happy to see my family of course, I missed them more than I had realized. There are a few things that are a bit weird to me that I’ve noticed; I’ll make you a tiny little list:

• Driving. I haven’t driven yet because my license expired while I was gone and I haven’t gotten around to renewing it yet, but I’ve been in the car with other people and I freaked out a little. It just seemed like everyone was going ridiculously fast and driving ridiculously close, and the cars were so much bigger than I’m used to. I was kind of a wreck the first few times I was in a car here.
• Not walking everywhere. It’s strange to me now how spread out everything is. I’d like to keep walking everywhere, but it’s kind of impractical now because everything is so far away.
• Lights and water. I’m still used to using the smallest amount of water possible, and turning off the lights when I’m not in the room even for a minute. It’s not that my family wastes energy, but compared to what I got used to living in a homestay, it’s a little strange to me how much water and energy we use here daily.
• Babies. This one is a little dumb, but whatever. I love babies and kids, and I noticed in Spain that if I would smile or wave at a little baby in a stroller or being carried by its mother, the mother would give me kind of a glare and walk a little faster. I don’t know why that is. But when I got off my plane in Reno and was walking towards baggage claim, a mother was walking in front of me carrying an adorable little baby, so the baby was facing me, and he was smiling and giggling at me as I made faces and waved at him. The mom turned around and smiled at me, and I told her how cute her baby was, and she thanked me and smiled instead of shielding her baby like I was about to steal it.
• Stores. I went to Target for a few things when I got home, and I was a little overwhelmed with all the choices. There’s just such a huge selection of things to buy, and it’s just not like that in Europe.
• Money. I gave a cashier a euro coin by accident the first time I paid for something. :)

That’s about it. Like I said, nothing major. Just little things that remind me that I’m not in Europe anymore. They’re such minor things that my time in Europe seems kind of like a dream, because I fell back into step with the pace of life here so easily. I guess that means I need to make another trip there soon to remind me of how it is…

So although I'm happy to see my family and some of the everyday conveniences are nice to have again, I miss almost everything about Spain. I ESPECIALLY miss the language. I’m afraid I’m going to lose the language abilities I acquired abroad because I hardly use my Spanish when I’m at home. Although, the second night I was at home my dad got a business call from a guy who didn’t speak English and he handed me the phone – I didn’t really have time to be nervous, I just said ‘hola’ and went from there. And, surprise, it went really well. I understood him just fine, and I was able to reply and tell him what he needed to know. I think I may have confused him a bit with my Spain-isms though. For example, like a good Spaniard, I used vale every other word to get my point across, which is definitely a Spain thing. But I got the message across and everything went fine, so I felt good about the whole thing. I’m anxious to get back to school in the fall, back to Spanish classes and friends who speak Spanish so I can keep practicing.

Living up the summer at the lake with the brother

So that’s it, I’m home safe and sound. This marks the end of my blog, sad day. Thanks to all of you guys who have been reading since the beginning. I really mean that, because I read some of my first few blogs the other day and I was like dude, how did anyone ever read this? I was quite whiney in those days. So if you have been reading since then, well done! If this is the only post you read, it’s really not my best work and you should read some of my other ones so you don’t think this is as good as it gets, but thanks anyways! So that’s that. I really do appreciate everyone who kept up with my travels; it gave me motivation to keep blogging when I knew there were people out there reading. So I don’t have details yet, but keep an eye out for my next blog when I go on my next whirlwind adventure across the world….¡hasta pronto!

FYI

Hellooo all- so I'm officially back in the States as of a few days ago. I have one final wrapping-up kind of post all ready to go, but before I put that out there I thought I'd do a quick little FYI type of post. I just thought I'd share a couple of things I've realized or learned about studying abroad or traveling in general, if anyone is interested, because this is supposed to be an informative study abroad blog. If not, go ahead and skip to the next (and last!) post and that will be that.

I guess I'll do this list-style, I think that would work best. I'll just jump right into it then- here goes.

1. Choosing a study abroad program. I did RESEARCH. It's not something to just jump into. These past six months have been the most formative, most fun, and most amazing months of my entire life, so I suggest putting a little thought into the program and location of your study abroad semester. There are actually a lot of good reviews of programs online, and you can do tons of research on different cities and countries. People are a great resource too - if you know anyone who has used the program you're looking at or has been to your country of choice, give them the third degree to get your information. If you're interested in Spain, especially Valencia or Salamanca, and/or if you're looking at ISA (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED), I'm your girl, feel free to shoot me an email: angelaskowronek223@pointloma.edu
2. Month vs. Semester. After doing both a semester and a month program in Spain, my advice on which to choose is very clear in my mind: SEMESTER. I know sometimes that's not always possible, but if the debate is just that you're nervous about spending an entire semester abroad because you think you won't like it or it's too long to be away - PLEASE go for the entire semester if you can. My month in Salamanca absolutely flew by, I swear time went faster for that month. My semester in Valencia even passed in hyper-speed. So if you study abroad for just a month, be prepared to aprovechar el día even more than normal so you can get the most out of the experience.
3. Traveling Europe with RyanAir. Anyone who has traveled with RyanAir probably has a love-hate relationship with them. For one thing, they are ridiculously cheap. I probably flew RyanAir a dozen times over the past six months, and I got some really great deals, like round trip Valencia-London for 70 euro, or Valencia-Mallorca for 8 euro. So that's awesome, but there are 3 main catches that you should be prepared for. So be aware of them, but overall RyanAir is worth it if you follow all the rules and are prepared for what it's like.
1. The dreaded carry-on. RyanAir is super strict on their carry-on rules. You can look up the dimensions of allowable carry-ons online- that's how I bought my backpack that I always used for travel (be careful with backpacks though, as you have to account for how they expand once you have stuff in them). Most people use little rolly suitcases, but that's not always ideal for student travelers because you have to run around cities with all your stuff before hostel check-in times and stuff like that. Sometimes a backpack is easier. Anyways, you have to fit your carry-on into a little blue metal box thing 'easily' at the gate, or they'll make you check it for a cool 60 euro. So make sure your carry-on is going to fit FOR SURE, because they can be really picky about that.
2. RyanAir airports aren't always in the city. In fact, for most of the places we flew to with RyanAir, we had to take a bus into our destination city. In other words, once you get there, you're still not there. There are almost always bus companies that go from the airports into the city, but be careful if you ever fly in on a Sunday, because the buses don't always run, and be careful if you fly in really late, as the buses may not run any more. Usually it's not a problem, just kind of a pain and a little extra cost.
3. The actual flight- bring headphones! Bless those poor souls who have to learn this lesson the hard way. The flight attendant people sell stuff the ENTIRE time on every flight - lottery tickets, perfume, purses, food, wine, etc. Basically, they're just talking the whole time and you'll be happy if you can crank up your music to drown them out.
4. Packing. I packed with the skill of a 3 year old - I didn't plan very well at all and ended up having to throw away a bunch of stuff. So to avoid this, I would suggest not bringing anything you don't plan on using about every week. Or maybe, only bring things you would theoretically be able to part with, if you had to. Maybe that's a bit extreme, but I guess I'm trying to say, don't bring 10 different colors of nail polish for a semester study abroad program, eh? Not that I did that or anything, I'm just saying...don't let yourself fall too far into the "what-if" packing mode.
5. Travel-size shampoo. I highly recommend buying a travel-sized shampoo (and conditioner, body wash, contact solution, etc.) in the US before you go. I couldn't find travel-sized toiletries like these in Spain besides toothpaste, and they were super handy to have when I was traveling in between my two programs, because you can just keep refilling them, and they don't take up so much room and are light (and carry-on friendly).
6. Stuff to bring. There were a few things we found to be very helpful while traveling, things you should always have on you. These include: a reusable water bottle, a pen and paper, a watch, and an iPod or some other wi-fi enabled device. The reusable water bottle for obvious reasons - you can fill them up even at sinks wherever you are, and you save money on buying water all the time. The pen and paper were useful to us in a million different situations - taking down directions, writing out addresses we couldn't pronounce for taxi drivers in foreign countries, taking down Facebook names of new friends we made, having people draw us little maps on how to get places, etc. It's just a good idea. A watch, also for obvious reasons. And finally, the iPod. I have an iPod touch and it saved my life traveling more times than I can count, especially when none of us had cell phones. If you look hard enough, you can always find wifi in any city- we became professionals at picking up free signals. It was how we got in contact with our couchsurfing hosts, how we emailed our parents or friends to tell us we made it to our next country safely, how we looked up hours or addresses or directions to different places, how we figured out train schedules and ticket information, etc.

That's all I can think of at the moment, but like I said, if you're thinking of studying abroad and have some questions, I'd love to help you if I can, so feel free to send me an email: angelaskowronek223@pointloma.edu. Otherwise, pop back here in a day or two for my last blog post.