Kelli Pape - Week Eight

"Hay que aprovechar." One must take advantage. I swear it's one of those expressions I hear a Spaniard tell me nearly every day. I like it - it keeps me grounded, reminding me my summer is finite and a great experience that calls for looking beyond my own ego. A decent chunk of the beginning of my stay here was spent panicking about all the ways in which I'm different, and how without a flexible grammar and extensive vocabulary I had such obstacles in expressing myself without out-stressing myself. My attitude toward adaptation to a foreign working and living environment has made a paradigm shift since then. For example, once realizing and processing that speaking, reading, writing, or listening to anything in English while in Spain is not a sin, I was finally able to relax enough to enjoy the fact that now I can function in both languages back and forth all day long and not feel ashamed for not knowing some complex Spanish sentence. However, my level of comfort in speaking without thinking so much has improved drastically since I began watching Spanish movies and television, most notably my favorite show “Aqui no hay quien viva” on Youtube, as well as reading anything I can get my hands on. Attentive exposure is key. And a delicate balance of confidence and humility.

Some highlights of the most recent epoch include:

The Lumineers. I went with my host brother and a friend of his to the concert of one of my favorite bands from freshman year, for some reason expecting for the crowd to be full of other Americans. The moment that solidified that it indeed was not was when the band repeatedly told the crowd to "quiet down" and the decibel level remained constant. We had arrived about four hours early so as to get in the front row and meanwhile befriended a group of Spanish girls and played cards with them in line.

The Design Life. Still finding myself ever more grateful for the position I landed with DIMAD (Madrid Design Foundation) as the pace of events and activities continually picks up. As seen in the photo above with all the posters, we are hosting a month-long exhibition called "Agitadores de Conciencia". In fact, to find out more about the event, you could refer yourself to the recently published memo about it here on this Italian design news site, which I happen to have translated from its Spanish version. I also stayed after work the whole week to help strategically set up the posters, with a party for the associates and directors of DIMAD coinciding that Friday.

"Agitators of Awareness" - graphic design exposition aimed toward making people think about contemporary controversial political and social issues in society today, both in and out of Spain

Another this-just-inarticle from the nation's main newspaper El Pais (at least from March) is that my workplace, Matadero Madrid, supposedly comes in third place for the whole country after the two world-famous art museums the Prado and the Reina Sofia in terms of the cultural value it adds to the community. Seeing that makes me take my job pretty seriously, to contribute the best I can. Most of the time that's with the creating a graphic informational archive and website for an upcoming interior design exhibition, but I also help a lot with translations for articles or manuals and creating newsletters of local cultural events. I'm satisfied with the level of trust that they've put in me as an unpaid intern to properly do their translations without even having anyone else to double-check them. I’ve been much busier there lately and often stay a few hours longer than my supervisor does, just because I’ve adopted this website project baby and the work seems to be interminable, as we say in both English and Spanish. To my fortune, there are several other foreign students also doing summer internships there, as now we have two Italians and a guy from France. Although the Italians have an edge by their language being nearly grammatically identical and immediately fitting in with the Spanish, it still is nice to not be the only alien in the work environment. And there’s a startling amount of English vocabulary used in both technology and the design fields, because (a) plenty of things were invented in America anyhow and (b) it just sounds exotic and cool to them. The same with the clothing here. Oh my, is the majority of the printed clothing here in English and sometimes the phrases on them are just hilarious. I should probably devote an entire blog just to that topic. But the work I'm doing involves looking at interesting and innovative design products, and has indirectly inspired me to want to join some club related to publishing when I get back to the U-M campus. Although we'll gauge what I have time for. I've also changed my mind and will more than likely be minoring in Spanish when I get back, since I'm already close to having the credits for it anyhow and certainly want to continue practicing and exposing myself as much as feasibly possible in the Midwest.

My Office, while everyone else was out to lunch

The Almost-Made-It-To-San-Fermin Trip. Arguably my best weekend in Spain yet has been my trip with my fellow Michigander friend Laura to the countryside. At first we were planning on watching people get trampled by bulls, but didn't exactly feel like sleeping on bare dirt for two nights and hardly being able to see the festivities without paying for balcony access. That certainly would have been an unforgettable time, but we forewent it for the chance to have a huge old hostel practically to ourselves, which included all meals and free bikes to borrow! Therefore we went out Saturday with the destiny of Ubidera National Park in mind. Figuring we had only made it about two-thirds of the way, we ended up heading back to our host village of Estella so as to turn the bikes back in on time. Realistically it might have only been three miles there, we realized, since the return route was all downhill. We stopped in a village that could fit on the head of a pin, where we ate our canned clams, non-lion sausage, and dried corn kernels. That same night, we explored the town and walked to various sites along the Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage trail that extends several hundred miles through northern Spain where Catholics, hikers, and Catholic hikers from all over the world come to either hike or do Catholic things. The next morning I attended both my first Catholic mass in general and first religious service in Spanish, and it was fairly amusing to me that I understood everything they were talking about based on the Spanish I’ve acquired in the past two months and all the church stories I knew in English anyway from back home. We essentially had to climb a mountain to get to the regular Sunday service, but many of the elderly couples drove up it in their SUVs. What was so endearing to me was that even halfway across the world almost everyone in that Spanish Catholic service reminded me of the adults I know from my little hometown Methodist church in Mayville, Michigan. They greeted one another warmly, took a moment to stare at the ones who were obviously not regulars (a.k.a. me and Laura), yet still greeted us, listened attentively to the sermon, sang their hymns by memory without even books as an option, took their communion, filed out to go have Sunday afternoon lunch with their families and gossip in the parking lot. It was a beautiful experience to show me that the country is the country no matter where you go. The bus ride back to Madrid was dauntingly delayed by several hours as everyone was coming back from partying and bullfighting, but I was more than satisfied with our rural excursion. The next four-day weekend trip we’re thinking of doing will be to Morocco, as my boss has already given me permission to have those two days off work. Although realistically I should ask my mom first...

biking/hiking day!

The Catholic monastery in Estella, Spain

Laura on a bridge on the Camino de Santiago

-And as for posting photos of myself with Michigan gear, unfortunately I only brought a sweatshirt and it's been over 100 Fahrenheit here lately. I did, however, spot a cute old Spanish man sporting a Michigan Football jersey in my very own neighborhood, where I would least likely suspect it actually. I couldn't work up the courage to ask him for a picture with me. Just grinned at him knowingly. Though that comes off as creepily when the recipient is not in the mutual know.

Actually an oldie from Barcelona, but just found it and how often are Michigan squirrels represented in Barcelona cathedrals?

I may have gotten somewhat used to couples' frisky behavior in public, but my jaw won't ever stop dropping at the sight of public display of raw meat.