Volcanoooooo!

If you haven't already heard, a volcano erupted in Iceland (This is probably the only news item that us USAC students knew/cared about before you people over in the USA...we feel pretty isolated news-wise). Why this is important news: almost all air travel in Western Europe has stopped. Yes, that's right...even dinky airplanes like RyanAir are cancelled.

I had plans to go to London this past weekend, but I couldn't go due to all the travel cancellations.

Of course, that was also the last few days of our Spring Break, which means USAC students are stranded all over Europe! One even in Iceland...although I heard that those Icelandic people aren't too affected...it's only the ash-laden lands over in my direction that are affected.

That being said, of 60 students in the program, 30 are MIA. Good thing Luis kept tabs on where everyone went before they left.

Yesterday in my Seminar class, only 2 were missing...but today in Business, 4 out of 9 were present. And Lourdes, my Business professor, who is also Carly's grammar teacher, said that the grammar class had 2 of 15 students present. It stinks because we have to still go to class, even though we are clearly passing the time doing nada as people get back.

I have a friend stuck in London, a couple in Berlin, a couple in Amsterdam, one near Milan, a few in Athens, and several others sprinkled around. Of course, their Spring Break is extended indefinitely...until flights start to go up again. Some have caught buses back home (35 hour bus rides or longer), but others are choosing to stick it out and see when they can take the next flight. Many airlines say they will start up tomorrow, but others say that they won't until Thursday. We'll have to see.


What sucks the most is that with all this time off, all I want to do is use it to travel. But there's a catch-22 with that...

Who cuts the cod 'round here?

"Quien corta el bacalao aqui?"=My new favorite Spanish colloquialism, both for its use of my favorite Spanish word: bacalao, and it's odd meaning.

Significance: Who is in charge.

Literal translation: Who cuts the cod around here?!

On the radio

I signed up this semester to do an internship with USAC.

How it works is I fill out an extensive list of things I like to do, I write a letter about what I like to do, then submit a resume.

On my list of things I like to do/interests, I wrote a mountain of things:
-work with kids
-art
-music
-TV
-radio
-cooking

This was back in November or so.


Then, once I got here (and as Luis promised in a previous email) we got to talk about the details. He chatted with a person at the nearby radio station and he was pretty sure he could get me an internship there. He told me this two weeks ago (the day before classes started, on Tuesday), and I got excited.

THEN, on Thursday, he secured it. For SURE I will be doing this internship, he said. I just had to work out the schedule. I could choose to get 1, 2, or 3 credits for the class, and since I didn't want to take this boring narrative class I was enrolled in, I chose to take the 3 credits for the internship. To do that, I needed to work 9 or 10 hours a week.

I planned it all out with a woman in the foreign language office that USAC is located in, and she was all happy about it. Luis was all happy about it, too. Apparently he has been telling Larissa (admin. asst. in the USAC office) how great it is. And I was happy too, of course!

So I figure that it is an internship, which typically means "being in the professional environment" and "filing" and "attending meetings" and whatnot. Basically, pretty boring stuff.



But the first day of the internship, which was last Monday, Luis got a cab with me to the station to show me where it was. He introduced me to Loly, the program director. Then I got to meet the staff, which was about only 6 people, and watch the soundboard guy record an interview that the other program director was doing with someone over the phone.
Loly got to explaining, and she was like "you can do whatever you want here! Just let me know what you want to do, and we can make it happen. Do you write? Yes? You want to write a program to air? How about a program about a girl from Chicago in Spain, and all the cultural differences?"

Thus, my radio show was born! Yes, MY RADIO SHOW. How is it so simple for me to secure a FANTASTIC internship here in SPAIN, when I have to go through an interview process and nervousness and anxiety of doing the same thing back in America? Apparently, you just need to go to a country where you don't speak the language in order to do something AWESOME.

So Monday was just a basic overview of what I was doing, and Loly took down my contact info. Tuesday is when the "real work" began. I wrote my first entry, which could be on WHATEVER I WANTED, so I chose food. I wrote about differences in food, restaurant culture, portions, etc. I only work 2 hours on Tuesdays, so I basically used the whole time to write it.

Wednesday I came in and made some corrections. Then I printed it and went over it with Loly for grammatical errors. There were TONS. But it seems like she knows English, since she was able to figure out what I was trying to say by my word-for-word translations. I learned that I need to re-read my work a billion times over before going to Loly with it (she was totally nice, don't get me wrong, but I felt like a fool when I was going over stuff that I should have caught myself).
After I corrected what I hoped was all that needed to be fixed, I got in the studio to record it. Yes, that's right, I am one of those people who can say "I got into the studio to record it" now. And I recorded it. It was terrible. The essay I wrote was in Spanish, by the way. And I have to read it, in Spanish of course. First of all, I figured out that I can't read numbers correctly. Two hundred becomes two thousand. Milliliters becomes something completely unrecognizable.

But I recorded it once through, then I listened to it 5 or 6 times, reread the script, etc etc. Then I recorded it again. Still not up to Lin Brehmer's style. I don't know how I sound in a foreign language (other than bad)! Loly recorded herself reading it, so I could listen to her excellent Spanish and try to fix mine.

Meanwhile, when Loly read my comments about how I thought there wasn't bacon-wrapped dates here, even though they are in the Spanish restaurants in the states, she was like "um, they totally ARE here" and I was shocked. My family in San sebastian LIED TO ME. Then, one of the soundboard guys ran to get food and bought me some! And they were DELICIOUS.

And when I was eating bacon-wrapped dates and re-reading my writing a hundred times over, I also was peeking over to the studio, where 5 or 6 University students were recording a segment called Generation E (or something like that) where they just sit around and chat about current events and whatnot. Loly saw my wandering eye and said "you could record with them in that segment, if you want. Wanna do it next week?" I was like "whoa there sally, let's hold our horses. Clearly I can't write coherently in a foreign language, yet you expect me to record a live conversation of me confusing some words for others, as well as giving 'can you repeat that' responses to everything? I don't think so." But it came out more like "maybe I'll watch, then try next week!"

I am so excited to do that, though, because then I will get to meet kids my age who go to my school, and who are SPANIARDS!

Seriously folks...why should I stay in the states when the dream internship was here all along!?