I must say, I am impressed with my analogical skills considering those tests were nixed from the SATs before I took them. The aforementioned comparison is a true representation of my location here in Spain. According to Javier, a professor at the university and our excellent tour guide (and most importantly, muy guapo), Alcalá de Henares has one of the best universities in the system (the other being la Universidad de Salamanca).

It has its own downtown area of stores, bars and restaurants, but in this arena Alcalá completely wipes out good ole’ CP– considering we’ve gone from a five to a two-bar town and there are about four crime alerts resting unread in my inbox. There are so many places to go and the cobblestone streets, while narrow and sometimes crowded, feel so safe. The archbishop’s palace, the cathedrals and the monuments in the Plaza de Cervantes are so beautiful. One side of the plaza is lined by completely antiquated buildings while those on the other side are all restored, so you can truly see how far the city has come, but also where it has been. La Universidad de Alcalá is the oldest university in Spain, and the city has a lot to show for it. Another similarity? We are only a 30-minute train ride into the main city. Sound familiar, Terps?

My residencia is about a 15 minute bus ride from Alcalingua, but if we keep up with the College Park analogy, then the buildings around the Plaza are more like the Shady Grove campus, and CRUSA is on the main campus. It’s where my Spanish roommates take their science classes for pharmacy and such. There is also a sports club complete with pilates and yoga, study rooms, and our own bar. We have four Spanish roommates that are really nice, one even gave me an extra hairdryer and diffuser she had lying around, a savior for a curly girl. I watched TV with one of them and her friend, and he incredulously asked me if I even understood the show. I said no, and he reassured me that he barely understands American shows either. He wouldn’t oblige to share his grasp of English, but in time I will get him to I guess. The Spanish girls have finals for the whole month (after las vacaciones navidades, una lastima!) so we haven’t seen them leave their rooms much, which are up the little yellow spiral stairs (by our rooftop terraces). The two other Terps and I are downstairs in the doubles, by the kitchen and living room. It’s spacious but there is a suspicious smell coming from the kitchen, no matter how clean it looks nor how much Febreeze I spray.

Each day after class the kids in the residencia and I find a new place to eat for lunch. We get the menú del día to get the most bang for our Euro. I have tried so many new foods, whether I realized it or not, because we share the appetizers and tapas at night even if we don’t know the exact translation for one of the ingredients. The teachers are so friendly and funny, they love to poke fun at the things we say and they create such a light atmosphere. A lot of our conversations are about relationships.

The most interesting part of Alcalingua, however, is that more than half the students are from China. Before we arrived we had heard that it is very popular for Chinese students to come to Spain and learn Spanish, but in my class of around 18 only five of us are American. I personally cannot imagine having to learn an entire new alphabet, but for those who know English I guess they are already on their way. There are other Americans and Europeans at the school, as well as a couple of students from Australia and Brazil, but my entire class is Chinese or from Maryland*. 

After our placement exam, the first night before classes started, we went out downtown to celebrate a Terp’s 22^nd birthday. We started to walk around only to realize that most taperias were closing, or shut down for the night. We went back to our favorite (read: only) regular spot, where the waiter let us in with a half hour left. We stayed for another hour and half and the CRUSA kids had to take taxis since the buses don’t run after midnight on weeknights. You know, because no one but the stupid Americans were out. Still not up to par with a regular night out in Europe; I believe we still had a good three hours left to party. Let’s just say we started off classes with a fizzle that felt like bang.

The director of our trip, and professor of my Hispanic civilization and culture class, is, in a word, awesome. Her true expertise is in Latin American civilization, having spent years in the Amazon getting her anthropological doctorate, but she plans to not only take us to the important sites like El Prado y La Alhambra but she wants us to hike up in the Bosque area. We may also get to go on a trip to Toledo next week with Alcalingua–hopefully the hot Brazilian boy a few classes down the hall will go! But this weekend’s first stop? Madrid!

*Today we had a new student in class, Micah, from South Carolina. He’s here with his wife and we met up with him at lunch where they told us so much about life here in Alcala and Madrid. A good find indeed! They also told us a hilarious story about a woman they met who never bothers to adopt a Spanish accent while speaking. Every single storefront is splashed with Rebajas signs, (read= sales, read= someone writing this blog is going shopping soon), and this lady instead would marvel at the number of “reeba-jazz.” I can’t un-hear that pronunciation, and I can’t help but chuckle every time.