The Spanish Apartment

Sorry that it has been so long since my last post. I have been really busy, and the last few days at the hostel the Internet gave up working at all so it was pretty much like living in the dark ages for a few days.

Now I have officially moved into the apartment! We were supposed to move in on Friday, but we missed the noon check out and wound up spending another night at the hostel (who could really pass up a free breakfast and long, hot free showers?) at the program’s expense. Moving was anything but easy. So we were all prepared for things to be different in apartment living – water costing more so taking shorter showers, having smaller appliances, never being able to walk around without shoes – but no one prepared us for the keys. I was stuck outside of my apartment for a whole hour before the landlady/roommate finally woke up to let me in and discovered that I had a key that didn’t work. Kate and Hannah (they live in the same apartment, which is really just a hallway with rooms) got five keys to their apartment but only three of them actually open anything.

Here are some pictures of the apartment.

The entry way/the German's room...

a more detailed picture of the candles in the entry way. I think it is really neat.

One of the best parts...wireless internet. Here they call it "wee-fee"!


The hallway. The kitchen is the first (closest) door, mine is the second, Gabriel's is the third, and the door at the end is my/Mila's/the German's bathroom.


The bathroom. The best part - instant hot water! (you think this would be a given, but some people in our group have apartments where you have to turn on the hot water two hours before you want to take a shower.)

The kitchen, which is also our only common area.



The washing machine. Yes, it is supposed to be for clothes. No, there is not a dryer. No, I am not kidding. I don't actually plan on using it, there are places where you can take your clothes and they will wash/dry/iron them for you and that is how my clothes will be cleaned.


My shelf in the pantry (the top one, I need to go buy some groceries)


My shelf in the fridge (the one I am pointing to)


My room!!

My room, another view. It is small but I don't really need anything bigger than this. The only thing that I wish I had is somewhere to put my suitcases, but I will survive.

The heater. There is another one next to my bed, but oh how I miss central heating.

I love, love, love my roommates. I live with Mila who is a journalism student from Brazil, Gabriel who is studying medicine and is from Italy, Christina is our dueña who is also a student, but much older and from Spain. (Come to find out, she’s really not the landlady per say, she is just in charge of the apartment.) Manuel is a student from Germany, but he doesn’t move in until next Tuesday. I’ll have pictures of them later J They are all so fun, nice, and patient with me. My first day here Gabriel was making real Italian pizza and had his webcam set up so his mom could talk him through it. I helped a little before Mila came home with her friend Jefferson and we went into her room and talked. Gabriel came into join us and we talked about Santiago, student life, and futbol. After a few minutes I could get used to their Spanish and not only was able to keep up but I made a few jokes as well. They laughed, I laughed, and I felt like I had really found a home not just an apartment. Gabriel asked Mila what these ribbons were that she had on her dresser and she explained that it was a Brazilian custom to have someone tie them on your wrist and before each of the three knots were tied to make a wish and when the bracelet eventually fell off your wishes would come true. We all tied them on each other, and so now it is like we all have friendship bracelets. Gabriel had to go tend to his pizza again, and Mila and Jefferson came into my room and I showed them pictures. Mila offered to take me around Santiago to see where the cheapest place to get things are, and I very excitedly accepted. Jefferson kept asking me questions about the Wizard of Oz, so I had to show him the pink luggage tag that Tyra got me. He just about died when he saw it, and put it on the outside of my door. (every time I look at it, I think about you Tyra!! I miss you!!) I feel so grateful and lucky to have gotten the chance to live here.

I am having a good time here, but it is hard. Nothing is easy. I don’t know where anything is, and half the time I don’t know how to say what I want to say. I feel stunted. In English, I always have a million things to say – thoughts, opinions, observations, jokes. Here I still am the same person with the same thoughts, but I can’t show that as easily as I could in English. It is not impossible, it is getting somewhat easier, but it is frustrating. It feels like learning to walk all over again. Things that I took so for granted – how to buy groceries, how to ask people for help, where to buy shampoo, how to do laundry, how to buy things in a store – are suddenly huge undertakings with a steep learning curve. I know that I have really accomplished a lot in my only week of being here but it is frustrating because I am really not doing anything more beyond simply getting around.

People here are for the most part nice, but there are those occasional people who aren’t sensitive to the fact that you are a student learning Spanish and get irritated when they have to keep repeating things. Students are more sympathetic, and they are who we mostly hang out with. I want to learn as much as I can here, and I have come to the conclusion that you learn a lot more when you fit in – you don’t have to keep constantly fighting the system and you get an entirely different perspective. I keep thinking about a lesson I learned in one of my early Spanish classes. Our teacher, Paulo, was from Argentina and one day he told us how he got really mad watching Oprah one day because the show was where she had a bunch of women from other countries come talk about what they thought about the United States. He was mad because, in his opinion, Americans are obsessed with themselves and no wonder they have such a bad international reputation. While I don’t agree with him completely, it has helped me a lot in interacting with people. When someone is talking about Santiago or their country it is very easy to chime in what the same thing is like in the United States. However, if the person didn’t specifically ask about the United States it most likely because they don’t care. Unlike how I have been taught, the United States is not the center of the universe and not everyone envies my citizenship. I am not an Ambassador to Spain invited here to educate about our culture. I am a student here in Spain to learn the language and the culture. They are two different things, and I think it is important to remember the difference.