First Adventures in Valencia

Since a few people have asked for a play by play of us foreigners navigating our first and future steps in Valencia… not to mention I like to write, but never actually do it… here goes my first attempt at a blog!  Please enjoy my relishing, rambling, and possibly ranting about our year long stay in the beautiful Valencia, Spain.   I’ve titled this blog Morning Wonder since my favorite time of day is in the morning when everything feels fresh, my mind is clear, and I seem to have a sweet sensitivity to the world’s wonders.  Probably the best time to write. 

It’s been one week since we arrived in Valencia, and we are just settling down.  Jake is starting classes tomorrow and many exciting new things to write about will soon overshadow what I’ve failed to yet record.  So bear with me as I (hopefully) briefly reveal the happenings and highlights of the last week.

Travel Day: If you’ve ever been on an overseas flight… it was like that.   Three legs to our trip.  The personal TV’s on the long flight were lovely as ever.  I did have an interesting conversation with a gentleman from India about religion and spirituality.  (He wasn’t Hindu , Buddhist, or Christian if you were wondering.)   Interesting to hear someone who does not believe in God or religion, share about who they sense as their higher power, who they pray to, and what they consider spirituality.  It’s always eye opening when the terms you normally use to express your ideas on faith and religion do not translate to someone who does not share your views or who has not grown up in your world!   It made me realize how lazy I’ve gotten in remembering and studying why I believe what I believe.  If you can’t express your faith outside of regurgitated terms and phrases, then I think someone has some homework to do!  Thanks, guy on the plane, for the interesting and revealing conversation.

Day 1: We arrived.  Took a cab to our hotel, which to our surprise was actually a hostel.  My sweet cost conscious husband reserved us 6 days in the cheapest “hotel” in the area months ago.  It was actually great.  Room to ourselves, internet, none of our stuff was stolen … perfect.  We walked around town for a bit that evening looking for dinner (this was about 7:30-8pm).  I was so hungry, and quite discouraged when it appeared that all the shops had closed down for the night!  To our surprise… these people don’t even start dinner until 9:00pm!  Every restaurant was booming by 10pm! 

Day 2:  Planned to get up and go to a church service that started at 11am.  At 2pm, I hear housekeeping services knocking on our room door.  She was as surprised as I was when I opened the door in my nightwear (and night-hair) and asked for the time!  We missed church.   We finally got out and about and set out on foot looking for apartments to rent.  We quickly realized the difficulty of communicating with Spanish speaking real estate agents and landlords over the phone.   After a few seconds of trying to communicate they just gave up on us and hung up.   The day was a bust, but luckily we were invited over to another Berklee-married-couple’s place for dinner.   We had a fabulous time and didn’t return back to our place until after midnight. Just knowing someone who was all settled in was super comforting.   IT CAN BE DONE!

Day 3:  Monday… more apartment searching… same story as before.  Phones in the face.  Ok, we actually got to see 3 places (with only one English speaking landlord)… but none worked for us.  I’ll spare the boring details of why.

Days 4-7:  Jake had a week long orientation, Tuesday-Friday.  Get this… 10:00am-8:00pm each day!   On Tuesday morning, I felt the separation anxiety of a shy kindergartner on their first day of school!  I had to hold back the tears and the lump in my throat while sending him off that morning.   What was I going to do all by myself in this foreign place?  I had a pity party for about 20 minutes in our room.  Then I soon got out and realized “I’m a free woman!”  Just kidding, I missed him every second, but also found the joy of wandering the town, rollerblading through the park (I brought them from home), uncovering things to get involved in this year, taking care of some business items and remembering that I can function by myself.

On Wednesday night, I met up a local contact.  Well, in actuality she was really a contact of a contact of a contact of a contact of a contact!  But hey, with e-mail and facebook these days, connections can be so accessible.  My contact (to the 5^th power) is named MariEli, and she invited me along that night to a birthday get together with all her friends.  I was actually pretty nervous at first because I didn’t want to be the bump on a log just sitting there while everyone spoke Spanish around me.  But all her friends were so gracious and welcoming.  They actually were pretty interested in practicing their English on me, and they were super encouraging to me in practicing my Spanish.  It was the first time I didn’t feel stupid trying communicate anything in my less-than-broken Spanish.   I had such a great time over beers and sangria, feeling almost like a local.   I came home to Jake around 10pm on my socialite high, having forgotten all about our apartment searching woes. 

That night, realizing that we only had 2 nights left in our hostel before we had to figure something else out, we decided to once again to bring it to God.  Lo and behold, I got a phone call from one of MariEli’s friends at 11pm.  Apologizing that it was so late, Boni said that her parents had just moved out the country a couple days ago.  After she got home, she called them and mentioned she met a girl that was looking for a place to rent.   Though they hadn’t intended on renting it out, they were willing to rent it if it was for a friend or someone they could trust.  Boni invited us to come see the place the next day (Thursday).  It was THE PERFECT place for us, and at the rate we were looking for.  Boni even went and cleaned it for us Friday morning, and then picked me up to help me move our stuff over there since Jake was at orientation all day again.   She has been so incredibly gracious and a gift from God.

The one catch is that Boni’s grandfather is living with us for a month and he doesn’t speak English.  But he is so kind, and I actually love the fact that he is living with us.  I need every chance I can get to practice my Spanish.

Day 8:  Orientation is over!  It’s Saturday, and I have my husband back!  Well, for 2 days until the actual marathon begins.  Jake and I had an adorably sweet day checking out the city, taking pictures together like we are honeymooners again, and socializing with our many new Berklee friends.  Life is good, and I am trying to soak up every free moment with my hubby while I can.  It’s my recharge  time as I try to prepare myself for a seemingly “single” life while he’s hitting the studio night and day for the next year.  

Day 9:  Sunday morning… we made it to church!!  Though we got up earlier than 2pm this week, we still had it a little rough getting to service.  Because we do not know the metro system or bus system well enough yet to be confident on the actual time it will take to wait for the transit to come, make the necessary transfers without getting lost, and walking to and fro… we decided to use the public transport we know best… BIKES!  There is this cool thing called, Valenbisi!  It’s a public biking system where you rent bikes and drop them off and a bike station when you have gotten to your destination.  These bike stations are everywhere.  It’s the coolest thing ever.  So we biked to church.  What was said to be, according to GoogleMaps, a 1 hour and 16 minute walk, turned into a 40 minute bike ride.  We only gave ourselves 35 minutes to get to church so we were booking it.  However, fully dressed in church clothes on a bright, sunny, HOT day, while racing across town on bikes…we’ll just say we weren’t looking or smelling too pretty by the time we got there.  Amazingly, the church was well air conditioned so we recovered nicely.  Listening to the whole service in Spanish, I finally felt like I was grasping concepts and actually able to differentiate one word from another when it feels like the person is speaking a mile a minute!  So, I was proudly engaged the whole time.  I look forward to next week. 

To end our blissful honeymoon weekend, we rode bikes to the beach… a 5 minute ride or a 10 minute walk from our new casa!!   Walking along the beach hand in hand with my love… a great end to our first adventures in Valencia, and a great beginning of the year to come.