T-Minus Four Days

We leave for Spain in a scant four days. While I can’t say that Spain has been a huge designation of mine historically, I’m definitely excited. I mean, why wouldn’t I be? I’m headed to a new country. I will land on the shores of Spain and plant my flag into it’s soil, declaring it for my own.

Or something like that.

We fly into Madrid and then plan on splitting our time between Sergovia and Barcelona, with a quick day trip to Toledo mixed in at some point, I’m a bit fuzzy on the details.

My own knowledge of Spain itself sadly is limited to bullfighting, the running of the bulls in Pamplona and that one town where they have a huge tomato fight every year. Oh yeah, and they pronouce their “c’s” as “th’s.” Therveca. Barthelona. A variety of books on Spain are at my disposal, some of which may even get perused during our flight over (although I’ll probably be watching some crappy in-flight movie). I’ll at least check out the Spain Wikipedia page.

The last time Sara and I went overseas, it was to a country that I had studied inside and out, Norway. By the time we left, I felt very much at home. While that was nice, I’m looking forward to being off my guard, to reacting on the fly to the flood of new experiences. The things that are much closer to home than I assumed that they would be and those that are so different that I end up ruminating on them for hours afterward. All of it.

I briefly considered refreshing my Spanish before we left. Maybe getting a phrasebook or subscribing to a podcast on Spanish to re-learn to conjugate my verbs and perfect my tenses. Partially out of laziness and partially out of curiosity, I decided against it. For one, no matter how hard I studied, I’d never get fluent before we left, which would leave me in that weird limbo where I’m not confident enough to carry on entire conversations, yet not inept enough to pretend like I can’t. As it stands, I remember snippets- key phrases that will allow me to purchase things, find a bathroom and tell people I meet that my Spanish is awful. I can figure out more printed word than anything else at this point, which should be fine. I mean, were we planning on being there for more than nine days, I would have taken a class or something. But such a short amount of time, it’s not really worth it. Muddling through will work just fine.

For those of you actually interested in following along on our trip, I’ll be setting up a blog where we will post photos and short journal-type posts about our experiences on our Spanish adventure. I’ll post the link here before we leave. I know you’re on the edge of your seats. Please calm down. We’ll see each other again all too soon.