An English Paper

Below I will place a copy of a paper I wrote during my time in Seville: I feel it is a good reflection of my time in Spain.

 

 

 

 

 

The Misadventures of Shane y Kane

By: Shannon Clay

 

Life as a Spanish girl… to be continued.

Allow me first to translate my name to Spanish for you. It’s Shane. My host mother, Carmen, as well as practically every Spaniard I have come into contact with has been unable to pronounce the names of both my roommate and me. What was once Shannon and Kati has now become Shane y Kane. Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? Like Abbott and Costello. Martin and Lewis. Cheech and Chong.

            What I miss most about home is the confidence I had in food. Preparing myself for a meal is exhausting, and I am literally nervous when I go to set the table. My roommate is anything but discrete in her complaints. I assure Kane that “Eww, gross” is probably the same in every language, but for her English is our “secret code.” She is also sometimes a little underhanded with her disposal of unwanted food, and she takes advantage of the fact that it’s hard for me to say, “no me gusta” more than once a day. “¡Oh! ¿Te gusta? Aquí, yo tengo más para Shane.” Pork meatballs covered in a brown sauce matching the texture, appearance, and probably the taste of cow saliva. I am forced to hide my disgust, fight back gags, and become an actress. Carmen was fooled. I have mastered a few underhanded tricks of my own. Based on my analysis of our many dishes from their appearance, smell, and my previous experience I will usually place an extra napkin or two near my plate at the table. If need be, they make an excellent hiding spot. It’s like a magic trick. First you see the food and then you don’t. The thing is Carmen has to leave the room for that disappearing part to come into play. Then the challenge is getting rid of the napkin(s). My preferred method of liberating myself from these loaded tissues is to stuff it in to my purse and the next time I leave home I find a city trash, and just like that I have disposed of the body. After the pork saliva meatballs we made an executive decision that we couldn’t both always be “full.” This is now a scheduled pre-meal event. Who gets to be “full?”  One day we were served an ice cold pasta mixed with crab meat, eggs, pineapple, and a mystery white sauce that is solely a mystery due to my lack of Spanish. I asked Mama. She told me. I asked that she repeat it. She told me. That was the end of that. After the second repetition Kane and I will typically just say “Si,” act out clarity as if we were silent film actresses from the 1920s, and continue on. It’s been working out rather fine for us with the exception of the day we were asked to keep an eye on the stove. Those that paid the price for our ignorance: a couple of potatoes, our noses, and our pride.

            Effective communication has been something I’ve missed while living in Spain. I can remember it clearly. It was the day that Carmen served raw fish on an oversized cracker, but I suppose any sized cracker is an oversized cracker if it’s being forced to house raw salmon. Kane, Shane, and Carmen. Out for a facial. Sounds splendid doesn’t it? Well, you’ve been had. Ideally yes, it would have been splendid, but the minute we walked in the door there was a transformation to anxiety. My perception of the room:

 

Pros	Cons
The waiting room was mostly full.	We made up half of the waiting room.
All of the employees were very amicable.	No one in the building spoke English.
The prices were extremely reasonable with a two hour facial running at around fourteen Euro.	This wasn’t a salon, it was a beauty school.

 

 As the facial began there was another con to add to my list. When getting a facial one must apparently have bare shoulders. Learning this was no easy task. She pointed to a small box and told me it was for my clothing. Alright, I removed my jacket and purse and placed them in the designated area. She giggled. “Yes, of course,” I thought. How could I have been so foolish? She probably wanted me to remove my scarf and sweater as well. She giggled again. At that moment I look over to see two women removing the dress of my companion leaving her very exposed and revealing her leopard spotted, neon pink over the shoulder boulder holder. So material. So American. She had been giggling because she wanted everything off. I reluctantly filled the box.

            Minutes later I was lying there. Uncomfortable. My white skin glowing in the unflattering rays of power saving artificial light listening to an American song playing from an unknown source in the streets below, Twist and Shout. I pictured myself joining the cast of Ferris Beuller´s Day Off for the big parade scene. Then suddenly my carefree mind snaps back to full attention as my facial-ista does her best to speak a little English. “I´m going to remove your eyebrows.” My hands race to my face, the protectors of my facial hair. What the lady had meant to say was, “I´m going to remove your eye-makeup.” It was not the most relaxing of facials to begin with, and from that point forward I sat at full attention like an Olympic runner waiting for the gun to sound. If I could not feel her two hands on my person I had at least one eye open. I would not be the victim of miscommunication.

 

            There are, however, times when I like my inability to converse effectively. For instance the time that Kane and I attended a Catholic Mass. By accident. I was continuously told prior to landing in Seville that the people here were very personal with their homes. It is not common practice for Spaniards to have friends over, but rather to go out instead. If this is true then perhaps I should tell my mama that she is breaking all the rules. She often has her good friend María José over to chat, watch tv, and eat with us. During one of these meals, the day we had fried cauliflower, lemon garlic fish that was also fried, and an egg over easy, María José invited us to a choir concert. Kane and I took turns patting each other on the back after collecting all the necessary information on the event, all in Spanish. Our gathered information: The dress, casual. The hour, early. The occasion, a choir concert. The day, well we hadn´t taken that into consideration. It was Sunday.

Sunday came and we went. Carmen walked us to the concert and it was only a few minutes from our apartment. She pulled open what looked like an iron door and lead us in. It was obvious; I was in a Catholic Church. The building had more than enough room overhead to make three additional stories, but instead it was spent to appeal more to the eye than to practicality. There was so much intricacy from the floor to the tip of the ceiling. Three very religious very elaborate statues. The Crucifixion, The Virgin Mary and baby Jesus, as well as a saint. A visual overload of blooming red carnations that appeared to be growing from all of the swirling designs carved into the wood that lined the room. Anywhere that was lacking red carnations was abundant in gold and silver vases and decorative religious pieces holding candles whose purpose is beyond my understanding. The room was filled with people. A beautiful place for a choir concert.

We found our seats and the choir filed in in their uniforms of floor length white skirts and blue ruffled sweaters. They positioned themselves on the far right side of the church not in the center. Before Kane and I were able to solve the mystery of why the choir was standing in such an awkward place, making it difficult for many of the people in attendance to see them, a procession of what appeared to be royalty began walking down the aisle at the pace of a bride on her wedding day. A few boys trailing in the back had ornaments swinging from their hands. Glistening silver lamps producing a smoke. Incense. The smell so overpowering to match the red, silver, and gold. The choir started up. Kane whispers in my ear, “I think we’re in church.”

It was Sunday, and we were in church. With the predominant religion here being Catholicism it was something I had planned and wanted to experience. This wasn’t planned. What I thought was a choir concert in a church turned out to be a Catholic Mass featuring a choir. María José’s choir. Kane and I spent the entire service trying, unsuccessfully to fit in. Watching every move of the pew in front of us so as to kneel, speak, sit, and listen at all the right times. Attend a Catholic Mass…check!

Allow me to translate.

Life as a Spanish girl. I’m still not sure I can affectively answer that question, not yet. Thus far on my journey I feel very much like the black spot on the white side of a yin yang. It’s true; I have successfully accomplished the first step to becoming a Spanish girl—I’m living in Spain. All I lack now is a white coat so that I can disguise my black color in the white that surrounds me. Perhaps I’ll be able to find one at Banana Republic?

A day in Spain

When asked what I miss most about Spain I find that even I am surprised by the answer I give. I miss Carmen. Carmen was my host mother. I  miss the way of life I had with her. She is a woman of 69 living alone in Spain. Her husband as well as one of her daughters passed away. Leaving her with only one daughter who is married with two kids. During my semester with Carmen I never met her daughter, but I did eat lunch practically every day with Carmen's two grandkids. I grew to be very comfortable there, which is something I didn't think possible. A typical day there for me would be to wake up and prepare for school and eat the breakfast Carmen would leave for me: A couple of pieces of bread to toast, as well as a coffee. Then my roommate and I would take a 15 minute walk to school down on Recaredo. I would remain there for about three to four hours for class where we would occasionally go on a field trip out and about Seville. Following class I'd return for lunch which was never earlier than about 2:30 or 3. Carmen was an absolutely amazing cook. We practically had something different for every meal during my time there. I learned so many different recipes from her. I have a book full. I loved watching Carmen cook. Following lunch it was customary to take a "siesta" which Carmen said was really more of a thirty minute rest time accompanied by family bonding time. You see during the hours of lunch and siesta the city closes down. There was really very little open, if anything, during the hours of two to five in the afternoon. So during this time I would watch tv with Carmen and get some homework done and then I would occasionally go and take a walk around the city so that I could get to know it better. I miss those long walks around the city, especially to the Plaza de Espana. I would usually go to a cafe pretty close to the school that I greatly miss visiting, they loved helping me improve my spanish. I typically would find somewhere to go and something to do until dinner time which fell at around ten to eleven every night. I'd watch/help Carmen prepare dinner and record her recipes then we'd all eat, talk, and watch tv together. Our program of choice... Pasapalabra. Some things that were very routine for us as well as all Spaniards were that for every meal the tv would remain on, we rarely ate outside of the home, and our meals were always comprised of several courses and always some sort of dessert. I can specifically recall Carmen, "Tu quieres yogur?" to which my roommate and I would reply, "Claaaaaaro!" My day always ended with skype dates and emails to/with family.

How was it all possible...

There is absolutely no way I could have gone where I did and that I could have done what I did without the help of those back home. I had wanted to study abroad for quite some time, but what always stood in my way, apart from winning the approval of my parents, was the financial aspect. I was defeated when I got to thinking about how I could ever raise all that money, because the answer.... it is impossible.... is what always seemed to surface. Then I got to thinking about the possibility of student loans. Prior to my semester in Spain I always did my best to apply for every grant and scholarship possible, and along with the support of my family I was able to stay debt free. So when I started debating whether I wanted to rack up some debt, I cringed. That is not the route I wanted to take, but if need be I would do it. Then I started to explore some other scholarship and grant options for study abroad students. That's when I discovered, with the help of one of my advisors, the Benjamin A. Gilman Scholarship. It was a scholarship that could offer up to $5000 for students studying abroad. I was overwhelmingly happy at this discovery. I immediately started working on the application and essays instantly which gave me about a month and a half to complete everything before the due date. A couple of months later I received an email reporting to me that of thousands of applicants mine was one of those chosen to receive $4500. To cover the rest of the necessary funds (totaling around $17,000) I received from the Texas Tech Study Abroad Scholarship, Government grants, good ol' fashioned hard work, as well as a scholarship I received from my hometown church in Amarillo Texas. As for spending money.... well I received all of that as gifts from family and friends for Christmas as well as a birthday gift package in the form of money that I received from my parents while abroad. It was hard to make all of these numbers finally add up, but thanks to the generosity of many such as the Benjamin A. Gilman Scholarship I was able to accomplish my dreams and finally study abroad and go global with my education.