Getting into the swing of things

I've kept meaning to write another post, but somehow 2 weeks have flown by. In that time, I spent an amazing weekend with Laury and Ton in Holland, started classes, and probably wasted a lot of time doing nothing because I can't remember anything else at the moment.

One thing I've been doing a lot of is walking. Possibly not the best idea because my ankle is still not healed almost a month after I sprained it, but I really cannot help it. The best way to see the city is by walking. I've realized that I spend a lot of time sitting in my room and being unproductive so my solution is to walk somewhere new every chance I get and spend my time discovering new places. This past Saturday I rambled over the entire old city, from there headed towards the beach and then back to my dorm which took me about 3 hours. That walk in particular was empowering because my ankle hardly bothered me and what's more, I knew where I was the entire time! Maybe I hadn't been on the specific streets before, but I could locate myself in the scheme of things and that was very satisfying. I also ended up walking by the Sagrada Familia two nights in a row, once on purpose and once by chance. The church at night is even more magnificent than by day. The towers seem to loom into infinity and the old side is especially terrifying; the façade looks like the gaping mouth of a monster. Only by seeing it at night could I begin to grasp how ridiculous the church is going to be when completed. It looks surreal, unearthly and made me feel extremely insignificant. Trying to imagine the church standing twice as high as it does now only confounded me more. All I know is that to be alive to see this church completed would be one of the most amazing things I could think of. And that might happen, because apparently the projected date to have it finished by is 2026!

While I think I'm beginning to understand more about this city and can get around on my own and feel comfortable doing it, I still have a lot of trouble with feeling like I stick out like a sore thumb. I know there's nothing I can do about looking American but I feel like I aggravate the problem every time I open my mouth-- my language skills are a dead giveaway that I'm not from here. It's been 5 weeks since I got here, yet my Spanish has not improved as much as I'd hoped. I still feel awkward using the language, I know my accent is awful, and furthermore, my friends and I speak in English most of the time just because we find it hard to have meaningful conversations in Spanish. It's also really hard to understand lectures in Spanish when the professors speak fast and have different types of accents. I'm working on it though... Now I'll be in classes taught in Spanish 17 hours/ week and I'm starting a language exchange tomorrow with a Spanish girl named Emma who wants to practice her English. So we'll see, hopefully I can hone those Spanish skillz a little more before I have to leave.

So I think that the theme of my life now is just to really start learning the city, culture and language here. It's high time for me to start being proactive.