I finally make it to Santander, Spain and I’m completely exhausted but am too excited to care. My host mom was waiting for me in the airport, but because of all my last minute delays she ended up having to leave for work, so I am left to fend for myself in a place I’ve never been, where no one speaks English…I get a calamari bocadillo (sandwich basically) at the airport and immediately feel like I can do anything. So freaking delicious.
I start walking toward the bus station, which was like 2 km away…very far considering I have ALL my luggage for the next six weeks. I’m basically walking along the highway with a huge ass suitcase, backpack and very little sleep. I couldn’t take a cab even if I had an abundance of money, because this is kind of a small town and cabs are not easy to come by. Plus I have no internet on my phone and I’m basically walking blind toward what I hope is the bus station. Once I finally reach what I think is the bus station I try to ask a local woman which line I need to take to get to my street. She cannot understand a word I’m saying, nor I her. I was speaking in Spanish but my first day I was especially rusty, plus I just don’t know as much as I probably should. Her daughter pulls up in her car to pick her up and she speaks some English! I ask her which bus I should take and she doesn’t know. Sad that she can’t help me she says “Get in, I’ll just take you”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHAT!?! Thank God for nice people in this world. It was one of the coolest ways to be introduced to a city. The people here are for the most part really nice and helpful. It was so amazing. She drove me right up to my door for free and said “Welcome to Santander”. If she hadn’t done this I would probably be in a ditch right now by the airport cooking beans on a fire, homeless-guy-in-Dennis-the-Menace style. I said “if you ever find yourself in NYC look me up and I’ll show you around or help you with whatever you need”. She was all “sure”, but I bet she was thinking “can you just get out of my car so I can go on with my day” lol.
I wait outside the apartment for my host mom. She gets home from work, shows me the apartment and I pass out for like four hours. I wake up and decide to walk to the school so I have some idea what is going on here. The school is cool. It’s about a twenty minute walk from where I am staying, which is kind of perfect. Just long enough to feel like I’ve gotten some decent exercise everyday especially since the whole city consists of hills.
I head home and sleep through the night until the next day when I go to class. I meet up with the other students from UM and feel a lot better after speaking to some of them about how intimidated they were by all the communication barriers. School is good, but I have more trouble than most of the other students understanding people. It has been YEARS since I have taken a Spanish class and though I studied a lot on my own before coming to Spain it takes your ear a while to get used to the accent and the incredibly fast speaking. Besides the fact that I can tell it will be challenging, I like both my professors and I go to a local restaurant with one of the girls in my class. We get traditional Spanish tortillas and drink white wine for stupid cheap. All the wine by the glass in Santander is like $2.20 and it’s actually really good. We drink, people-watch and talk about how a day ago we were surrounded by chain restaurants, lot’s of obese people and multi-tasking galore. If everyday is like this, we might never leave Spain!
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