Firsts

Today´s a lot of firsts. First day at a new job. First day living with a new Spanish señora. First time eating snails. First blog entry. You find yourself dealing with a lot of firsts in a foreign country. For me, the firsts are the best part of traveling. I love trying something new everyday!

The first week in a foreign culture is always the hardest. You´re bombarded by so much new information your head spins! When I first came to Sevilla, I felt like Alice in Wonderland, falling headfirst down the rabbit hole into a world where nothing made sense. Figuring out how to use the ATM, which bars are the best, or even just how to find my house again felt like an Olympic endeavor. But after a couple weeks I learned how to navigate my new city, and everything got easier to handle.

When it comes to integrating into your Spanish family, I confess I´m cheating a little bit. This is actually my second time living with a señora. I stayed with a señora this past semester while studying abroad, and I have another señora now that I've started my summer internship with CC-CS. So when I walked into my new house and was greeted by kisses on both cheeks and a stream of unintelligible Spanish, I wasn´t too surprised. This time it has been much easier for me to adjust to my new household. I know what time dinner is (10:00 pm), that I should expect my laundry done in days rather than hours, and that there is nothing more important than soccer in a Spanish household.

My first señora was a little elderly woman who took in American students so that she wouldn´t be lonely. She always said she had more energy when she had someone to take care of. She was very patient with me as I struggled to learn Spanish and got lost on my way home. She repeated everything she said multiple times to make sure I understood. She used to cook huge amounts of delicious food, so much that I could never eat it all, despite her best efforts to put more meat on my bones. I still miss watching her work around the house humming traditional Spanish tunes.

My new señora is a middle-aged woman with a husband and a teeange daughter. Like any busy family, they run back and forth balancing work, school, volleyball practice and aerobics classes. Thus, sit-down dinners sometimes take a back seat to daily demands, though they go out of their way to make sure I at least get home-cooked meals. The house is gorgeous. The picture on the left is what it looks like from the street. It´s only two streets away from Calle Betis, a street that´s popular as a nighttime hotspot with locals and foreigners alike.

All in all, I´d say I lucked out. Both of my Spanish señoras have been fantastic!

The hardest thing about living in Spain is definitely the language. Unless you´re a native speaker, communicating in Spanish all the time is quite a shock. And on top of that, there's the accent. Sevillanos talk very fast and drop a lot of consonants, so it can be very difficult for foreigners to understand them. But with patience and practice, you quickly get accustomed to it. After being here for several months, I´ve come to love it!

Getting used to the firsts takes a lot of time and patience. But eventually, everything that´s strange and new becomes a familiar habit. The greatest first of all is when you finally become bicultural. When that happens, you know you´ve truly integrated into your new life in Spain.