The Great European Adventure

Friends and family,

I leave Friday to embark on an amazing journey throughout all of Europe. I am so incredibly blessed and thankful that I get to participate in such an amazing opportunity and I would like to thank everyone again for supporting me through my adventures. I cannot wait to come back to the United States and share everything that I have learned and experienced here this semester. Without further ado, here is my itinerary!!

1.       Sevilla – Paris: December 18^th – 20^th

2.       Paris – Reims – Geneva: Going to Reims on my way to Geneva on December 20^th and will be in Geneva until December 22^nd.

3.       Geneva – Interlaken: December 22^nd – 24^th

4.       Interlaken – Amsterdam: December 24^th – 27^th

5.       Amsterdam – Dublin: December 27^th – 29^th

6.       Dublin – Belfast: December 29^th – December 31^st

7.       Belfast – Cairnryan – Edinburgh: Taking a boat to Scotland from Ireland and a train to Edinburgh for New Year’s Eve.

8.       Edinburgh – Malaga: January 1^st – January 2^nd

9.       Malaga – Sevilla: January 3^rd – January 4^th

10.   Sevilla – Amsterdam: January 4^th – January 5^th (layover have to stay here)

11.   Amsterdam – Atlanta: January 5^th – January 6^th (layover have to stay here)

12.   Atlanta – El Paso: January 6^th @ 9:14pm

I have 16 days to travel across 7 different countries (including Spain and the US) along with 12 cities. I also get to see my favorite band of all time headline their own festival in Edinburgh, Scotland (their home country’s own capital). I am so stoked even if I am travelling by myself. This will pressure me into conversing and meeting new people at each hostel that I stay at. I cannot wait to have the best journey of my life and I will keep everyone updated as much as possible with pictures, videos, etc. I will also be posting the remainder of my pictures from Spain today so wait for those as well!! Thank you for everyone who has supported me. I hope I can be an inspiration to those that have considered making giant leap in their lives without knowing much about the future. This was one of my dreams and I followed it. I have figured it out along the way because that is how much I wanted this dream to come true. So for any of you that have dreams, keep working no matter far they seem because one day you may have the opportunity to make the leap of achieving your wildest dreams. Love you all!

Until next time!

Friends and family,

Here begins my last post of the semester which will consist of my stories from the end of the semester as well as talking about my trip that I will be taking here in a couple of days. This first part I will mainly focus on school and where I am at right now in my life currently.

This last portion of the semester has been very interesting. At around the middle of the semester, my anxiety had reached the worst point that it had since I found out that I have Anxiety Disorder this may. This pretty just means that overthink everything and sometimes cannot stop for hours, days, or weeks at a time. This makes decision making really hard sometimes, especially when trying to move on from someone that means a lot to you. I went through this in the middle of the semester and found solutions when sought out help. Needless to say, it was the hardest time in my life and I have so many friends and family back at home that I have to thank for helping me get through it. Since then, I have gradually been eliminating my anxiety every day. Today, I still have anxiety but have already worked through so many aspects of it due to this situation and experience I’ve had in Spain. I am currently so happy and very level headed. I have become more mature with how I handle confrontation and even those people that I generally don’t like. I have learned to take every experience, circumstance, and person with a grain of salt and have become more appreciative of the differences in people that everyone has to offer. Because of all of this, I have also become a lot more open minded to doing things that I normally wouldn’t. I feel free and independent and I have mainly been trying to focus on what makes me happy in order to be happy within myself again, and let me tell you it has been working. There is no reason  anyone in their right mind, should not follow their dreams because they are possible. This was one of mine since I was in Middle school and although I had to bust my butt to fund this trip as well as take out all of my loans, I don’t care because I would do that time tens more in order to have such a life changing experience again. For anyone that is considering studying abroad, look into it please. Because I never thought in a million that I would ever be here and I am so lucky that I did come. I was scared at first too of leaving all of my friends and family as well as everything I knew, in order to go to a country where I didn't even know the first language. I just kept telling myself to stop thinking about and just move forward in the process. I never believed that I would be here until about 2 weeks after being here. It was all so surreal and once I was here there was no going back. Sure, I was faced with challenges along the way, but if you don’t want to become a better or grow then yes you should stay inside everyday and not leave the country ever. But if you are like me, and wish to better yourself every single day that you wake up do not miss this once in a lifetime opportunity because will never be able to say how amazing this experience was in words. I’d also like to thank everyone who has helped fund my trip or help me in some way on this trip. As you can tell, I have really enjoyed it and would not traded it for anything and I have a lot of friends family to thank for making this possible for me.

Lastly, I finished my finals this week and in two days I head out on my last trip of the semester. I nailed my Spanish oral exam and my professor and I just talked for 10 minutes. I also did really well on my Spanish Culture final where I had to choose between writing an essay about the political revolution of Spain or Spanish cultural norms etc. I chose to write about the political evolution of Spain because that was my favorite topic that we covered throughout the semester. I wrote 4 pages fully handwritten and did really well on it! If anyone is interested in listening to me talk about the political revolution let me know I will post a blog explaining the entire thing. I gave a speech for my online comm final and ended with an A in that class. I studied for 10 hours on the day of my Ochem final and believe that I did well but I am still waiting for confirmation on that. Anyways that wraps up my semester. Stay tuned for my next one talking about my travels as well to Facebook during the next 14 days as I will be blogging about my travels as well. 

Spanish Culture (part 3 of 3): Cultural Exposure in Europe

In today’s society, we are going through a major time of differences and war. Now, there are many reasons for this in my opinion but it mainly comes from a a general misunderstanding of cultures due to the lack of exposure as well as language barriers. I have seen this first hand here in Spain and have actually faced racism several times from different Spaniards because I am American. I’m going to focus this last post on how to start moving toward a more sustainable society through the use of cultural exposure.

So, again, my opinion is that if everyone was more culturally exposed throughout the world, we would have less conflict. This is not to say that you can achieve world peace through this, but it is a concept of mine that could be a stepping stone. Before I left to come here this semester, I was a fairly open minded person and I loved the Hispanic culture. Although this was true, I also learned that I was fairly ignorant when it came to Spain’s culture. I expected it to be similar to the US, even in the way their communities acted and their general temperaments. I was very wrong in all of those regards. If you want to hear more examples check out my previous two blogs that go into detail about this. But anyways, through this semester, I have learned to become even more open minded to due exposure of different cultures and eradication of cultural ignorance within me. I have interacted this whole with many Spaniards as well others from around the world and am now open minded to learning about the norms an cultures of all cultures from around the world, whereas before, I tended write off other cultures without them another chance. In my opinion, this is one reason the world is at war, is because they are afraid of the fact that there are other major cultures in the world that are just as amazing as their own. It boils down to pride. Before I came here I was more proud of New Mexico than I was of Spain and was hesitant to try their new foods. Norms, etc. Now, I feel like a Spaniard and can’t wait to experience all of the different cultures of the different countries that I am visiting here soon. This is all due to my exposure to other cultures during my time over here. I have learned that every culture has something new and intriguing to offer. I’ve also learned that you have to take it with a grain of salt as well because of things that could be bad differences between different cultures such as racism.

I have experienced Spanish racism against Americans twice since I have been here and I will explain those stories now. There is a tradition here in Spain called “Botellon” which translates to “big bottle”. This is a tradition where Spaniards go to parks and local areas to drink beer with their friends before going out to the bars. My friends and I were doing this while sitting next to the river one night and a couple of Spaniards that were our age came up to us and started talking to us in Spanish. I told them that we were studying here but not from here and their attitudes changed immediately. They started coming at us aggressively and cursing at us in Spanish while continuously saying “If you are not from here, you need to get out of here because we don’t like people like you. Eventually, we deescalated the situation and both groups ended up leaving. Later, I discussed this with my Spanish Culture professor and he told me that this is a general view of many Spaniards and as I said in a previous blog this is also due to our view of the rest of the world being so close minded. So this is why Spaniards generally do not like Americans (almost more than anyone in Europe). Also, if you considered the size of Europe and thought of it as a country, in comparison to the United States, travelling between massively different with generally different languages etc. is much easier here in Europe. Therefore, genereally, Europeans are more culturally exposed and open minded to other cultures, whereas in America it is harder for us to travel between such largely different cultures os easily so we are less culturally exposed and more close minded to learning about other cultures.

Again, this concept does not world but it is an idea. I think that all students in the US should be required to study abroad for one semester no matter what your major is. In the ideal world, this experience could be added to the FAFSA application for your senior year in order to be supplemented for your travels (since people cannot afford to do study abroad). I think our generation would become vastly more culturally aware and it would also begin to eliminate the stigma of close mindedness in the US. If you have any thoughts about this please email me at ryanmaki@nmsu.edu or Facebook message me anytime! I’d love to hear your thoughts! That does it for Spanish culture!

Until next time!

Spanish Culture (part 2 of 3) : New Mexico and Spain

Spanish Culture (part 2 of 3): New Mexico and Spain

As many of my friends and family in New Mexico would think that Spain is very similar, you are wrong but not entirely. Spain and New Mexico have several differences between each other but they also have many similarities I will start with the differences and move to the similarities.

The biggest and main difference in culture here for me is: THEY DON’T LIKE SPICY FOOD!!!! There is not chile or anything like that over here. Generally, Spaniards eat very wholesome and balanced meals; cooking vegetables, rice, bread, and there is always some sort of meat. Some typical meals are “Juevos Rotos” and “Cerdo” which means broken eggs and pig. The first meal is rice cooked with tomato sauce and topped with fried eggs. This is also served with bread along with all of their other meals. Cerdo is like pork and we have this every day without a doubt. This is similar to some areas in the US but when talking about New Mexico and the culture of food, there is no good Mexican food here and there is nothing close at all. I have tried to go to a couple of their Mexican restaurants and have fallen short each time. Their salsa tastes like tomato juice and they think that it is incredibly spicy! If they ate Sadie’s Salsa, they would be dying. Needless to says their food here is very different than the food in New Mexico. It is also way less diverse, because just like in New Mexico we generally cook a lot of Mexican food, here they mainly cook a lot of Spanish. So in that sense, it is also different than the US because in my household while we do cook a lot of Mexican food we also cook Chinese, Japanese, and Italian as well. Another thing that is different here is the music. New Mexico has Mariachi and Spain has Flamenco. This type of music was actually developed in the province that I am living in currently (Andalucia). These shows consist of dancers, guitarists, and singers. It has a gypsy vibe to it because this music was developed by gypsies living in southern Spain. Even though they are both speaking Spanish, If you listen to Mariachi and Flamenco you can hear the differences between the two.

One similarity between New Mexico and Spain is the artwork. It does not simply come down to paintings but mostly the tile work and mosaics that I have seen here in Spain. These tiles are extremely similar to the ones that you can find in every day local markets in New Mexico. They have a very distinct style but are exactly similar to the ones that you can find in New Mexico. I will attach a picture so you can see what I mean. Another thing is their sense of community over here. Generally, Spaniards spend most of their time outside of the house. Other than midday, there are Spaniards with their entire families out even until around 1:00 am in the morning!! I think it is crazy. Now this is not a similarity but the similarity is in the views of our cultures. Spainiards spend a lot of time outside because they have a giant sense of community, just like Las Cruces does. This is a bigger city than Cruces, but the people here live for each other and are all very genuine and nice. They genuinely care about the next person the street even if they don’t know. I see this back Cruces as well, where many people are proud to be from New Mexico, so much so that we go out of our way to make sure that our communities thriving. I see much of the same culture in here in Spain. I have reasons for this that I will be discussing in my next blog concerning cultural ignorance and exposure so please stay tuned!

Until next time!

Spanish Culture (part 1 of 3)

Although many people are aware that there are differences between cultures when travelling between countries, since I have lived here my mind has been opened to so much more culture than I could ever begin to imagine. Culture does not just encompass the obvious differences between differing cultures (aka food, music, etc.) but this also boils down to a lot of things that you would not be able to witness unless living in a different culture’s environment for an extended period of time. Luckily, I have been able to do that this semester! So, I’m going to talk a little about the differences between the United ‘s States and Spain’s cultures, as well as the differences and similarities between New Mexico and Spain, and finally the differences and impacts of cultures in Europe (this may take a couple of posts so stay tuned for the next couple as well).

So the differences between the United States and Spain… Let’s start off with a more obvious and exciting topic; politics. The politics scene in Spain is also very undergoing a presidential election. Their system is a democratic monarchy, which means that King Filipe VII, presides over the entire government as commander in chief but also has limited power when it comes to overruling decisions. In this sense, that responsibility lies on the President and Congress of Spain. They also have two major parties: the People’s Party (PP) and Partido Socialista Obrero Espanol (PSOE). The PP party is a moderate version of the conservative party in the US and PSOE is very similar to the liberal party in the US. While these are the main parties for Spain, just like the United States they also have many other parties that are generally not as popular. This year, the general consensus is that Spaniards do not like any of the candidates from the popular parties and are seeing a surge in candidates from smaller parties. And even though their country is not undergoing as controversial of a race as we are, it is actually quite revolutionary. I’ve talked about this a bit with my host family who seems to stay fairly independent and they agree that they do not like any of the candidates running from the popular parties. It has also been interesting watching Spanish news covering the presidential race in America. Every time it comes on Trump is on the TV. It has been really hard because either way that you see Donald Trump (agree/disagree) he has become our face of international politics around the world. Every European has told me that this is why they have a general opinion that Americans are racist; because we align with views that contradict our ideas of freedom and liberty. I thought it was interesting to hear that from at least 7 different Europeans from a couple different countries.

Another interesting difference between the US and Spain is the times and types of meals that they eat over here. In Spain, breakfast is at around 10 or 11am. I generally don’t have breakfast so this has not entirely been a factor in my eating patterns other than the fact that I have to wait longer for lunch. Lunch is always the biggest meal over here and we always eat at around 3:30pm or 4:00pm. Dinner happens at around 10:00pm every night. Also, there are smaller meals in between (similar to brunch in the US). After breakfast and before lunch, you can go out into the streets and get “tapas” which is a small portioned version of a full meal. It is pretty much like going and getting a cooked snack with your friends on the streets of Spain. The word tapas mainly describes the size of the portion (smaller meant for snack) but has also come to represent the meal and time they eat at as well. Tapas can also be had in the evening after 5:30pm. This meal time is called merienda and is mostly meant for kids when they are coming home for school and are hungry before dinner. One meal that I have had since I have been here is called “Tortilla de Espana” or “Tortilla de Patatas”. This is a giant omelet made of eggs, onions, cheese, potatoes, and other typical Spanish spices. You can also get this as a tapa! Finally, since Spaniards eat dinner so late they also go out very late. They tend to leave the house at midnight and come back at around 6am or 7am from dancing. It has been a very interesting adjustment for me to say the least!

Stay tuned for my next blog on comparisons between Spain and New Mexico!! 

Madrid

Madrid

This weekend was one of the most insane weekends since I've been here. I have a friend currently studying abroad in Madrid and I had plans to go see her this weekend. Her name is Espi and I knew her in high school but haven't seen her in years. So, I bought a bus ticket to leave from Sevilla at 8am on Friday. I was unable to fall asleep until around 4:30am. Sometimes you just toss and turn and find no sleep. I woke up at around 11:30am and quickly realized I had missed my bus. Instead of just not going I looked into alternatives. There is a company that is very popular here in Europe called Bla Bla car. The idea is this: if you are traveling by car to another city you can offer your other seats to people needing to go to the same city for a certain cost. So I bought a spot in a car leaving from Sevilla at 3pm going to Madrid. Using my host brothers phone I was able to call the lady that was picking me up in order to make plans for a meet up spot. I went to this spot half an hour early and stayed there until I had waited for an hour and a half. She never came... So I go back to my house, defeated. When I got back Ale (my host brother) was on the phone with her. She claims that I was never there but Ale went to the spot I was supposed to meet her at when I was supposed to meet her and saw me there. Needless to say I was destined to not go to Madrid. Ale then proceeds to give me a jarring and inspirational speech. I will keep what he said to myself but I was no longer defeated, I was determined. I went to my room and bought another bus ticket that left for Madrid at 6pm. I bought the ticket and made it on the bus fine (shockingly haha). The buses are high class here and cheap. I was hesitant to ride the bus with New Mexico's level of bus safety in mind but this was way different. I ended up making friends with a Columbian lady that was sitting next to me and talked about pretty much everything we could for 2 hours. I then made it to Madrid at 12:30am. My new Colombian friend was able to point me in the direction of the metro as well as which lines to take in order to get to my hostel. I switched metro lines a couple of times and made it to my hostel at around 1am (with the help of about 5 other people along the way). I was supposed to meet Espi at a club at 12 so I got dressed and left the hostel almost as soon as I got there. I got to the club and told the bouncer the name for our table but they didn't have it on the list. This was a 7 story club so I was not sure how I was going to find her at this point. I got inside and was going up and down the floors in hopes of running into her. Between the 4th and 5th floors, I ran into her and her boyfriend miraculously and had a great night after that. I was just relieved to be in Madrid at that point.

The next day, we made plans to meet in Plaza del Sol so that Espi could show me around Madrid. We had planned to meet at a bakery that she said was a very popular one although she couldn’t quite remember the name. I also don’t have service over here in Spain so I can only contact other when I have wifi. I went to the plaza and waited at the only bakery I could find for an hour and a half. I couldn’t find them so I decided to buy a map and explore Madrid on my own. On my way to the first monument I was visiting, I ran into Espi and her boyfriend again miraculously! We were all so excited that we went immediately to start walking around Madrid. They showed me everywhere and also took me to a great Chinese restaurant  where I had duck for the first time (I promise, it was not mallard). I had an amazing experience from then on in Madrid and was so happy that I was able to see my friends.

I caught the bus home the next day and it was a monumental effort to find the correct bus station, but once I found it, everything was fine. I rode the bus for 6 hours and walked about 40 minutes from the bus station to get home. It was a long trip but it was also one of my favorite. My friends and I are currently trying to plan our next trip and we are thinking of either going to Barcelona or Bilbao but haven’t decided yet. Funds are running low so we will have to see!

Until my next one!

-Ryan