| Across the Pond
By Andrew Chase-Ziolek
Staff Writer
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I like cities. And quite frankly, even though Grand Rapids is a city, living at Calvin doesn’t quite cut it. But in Denia, Spain, it actually feels like I’m living in a city -- or, I suppose, on top of one. A foreigner (such as myself) may suspect that they first built Denia and then, pondering where people would live, built the residential district on top of the commercial one. But that’s just one of many phenomena which, as strange as it may have been to us students from Calvin at the beginning of interim, is slowly starting to make sense.
I’m one of thirty Calvin students who flew over to Spain this January to study Spanish language, history, culture and art (albeit to differing amounts) at the Universidad Nacional de Educaciঁn a Distancia (UNED). For me, personally, the most intimidating thing about the whole process wasn’t that we would be studying at a Spanish university, but rather that we were to be staying with Spanish families. It’s one thing to be able to retreat to the safety of dorms. It’s much more challenging to speak Spanish more-or-less 24/7 (yes, we do get together in a big group and speak English more than our professors would like), and to be added to the list of entities which interact in very complicated and culturally conditioned ways to make up a family. And the fact that I started out the experience with a “hablo muy muy muy pocito espanol” only made the experience more humbling.
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But things are coming along. All of us, in between working on our tans (por supuesto), are exploring this small city into which we’ve been plopped. And when the city of Denia isn’t interesting enough, or we just get tired of the pastel green colors of the universidad and the squeaky tile floors (and that does happen occasionally), we travel to other cities. So far, we’re gone to Madrid and Barcelona (remember that these aren’t just cities, but autonomias - roughly equivalent to our states), along with a brief trip to Javea – a quaint town a bit down the road with a beautiful mostly-gothic church. Riding the bus through rural spain comes with a beautiful view – mountains and orange and almond trees. In contrast Barcelona and Madrid are bustling metropolises – what else could you call a place that has discotecas with seven floors of dancing goodness?
One might wonder a bit about the languages here. I personally thought, arriving in Spain, that everything would be in, well, Spanish. But, alas, no. Spain is a country of many dialects and the result is that depending on the autonomous region of Spain in which one is located, one may run into one of a number of dialects of Spanish. Here in Denia, the predominant strain is Valenciano – a dialect of Spanish closely related to Catalan, the coloquial language of Barcelona. There are TV channels in Valenciano, and for those of us without host parents who speak Valenciano, all we can do is hope for loan words.
Now, as it happens, the whole city is getting ready for “las Fallas,” the celebration of the day of Saint Joseph, which involves seting alight huge paper mache statues (ranked number 12 in the world by World-party.com). These statues, which take months to construct, represent objects of local, national and world-wide critique, will undoubtedly feature the less-than-entirely-beloved president of Spain, Jose Maria Aznar, and likely President George W. Bush as well. Those of you who know that Spain officially supports U.S. plans for Iraq might or might not be surprised to learn that the Spanish are some of the most anti-war people in Europe.
But international political issues aside, living in Spain is pretty fun. Denia, besides being covered in dog poop, is beautiful, with a mountain at its back and the Mediterranean in its front. The sun is a mostly-constant companion and the people are pretty pleasant (save some of the younger children.) Anyone who wants to experience culture and learn about being a good guest could do much worse than spending a semester in Denia, Spain.
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