CIEE Blog

In addition to this blog over the next couple months I'll be writing some entries for the CIEE (my study abroad program) blog. They're directed at potential study abroad students. Here is my first little entry about climbing and Spain adventures:

Being a second semester student means that the first few weeks of this semester have been rather different than the first few weeks of last semester. No hours walking around lost. No more ordering “huevos”. No calling every single person “usted” trying to be respectful. No looking at a 3 oz cafe Americanos and wondering where I would find the remaining 29 oz for my daily fix (now I wonder in milliliters). Being a second semester student also means new students usually ask for some bit of advice, or at least for a bar recommendation. I can never remember bar names or where they’re located, so I opt for giving some advice. “Just do what you always do,” I say. Now that might sound like the worst advice ever, but bear with me. I’m not saying you should speak English and keep listening to that Rick Astley album on repeat. What I’m saying is that you should find a way to do what you love doing in Spain. Shoot hoops? Join a basketball team. Like doing good? Volunteer in Barcelona. As a rock climber I immediately joined a local climbing gym and have been fortunate to climb with a group of dedicated locals nearly every weekend. In addition to strengthening my fingers, weeknights in the gym gave me the chance to pick up the Spanish climbing lingo and learn how to properly swear when I fall. Weekends started at 9am in Plaza Espanya where a good friend would pick me up and together we would head off to one of the numerous world class climbing areas surrounding Barcelona. I originally hoped that climbing would give me the chance to improve my Spanish and my climbing skills, and it has, but I have come to realize that more importantly climbing has introduced me to incredible friends and has allowed me to experience Spain as few do.

9 am Plaza Espanya, and I’m still not sure where we’re going. Borja pulls up exactly ten minutes late, which is on time in Spain. I find out we’re off to Montgrony, a limestone cliff above Gombrén, about an hour and a half away. We chatted about climbing, Spain, the US, and anything else that came to mind. Somewhere along the way we stopped at a bakery to pick up some food for the weekend. Later on, Borja offered me some morcilla pizza, which looked like a dark sausage pizza. Not one to reject food, I took a bite and loved it. Borja then informed me that it was a traditional Spanish sausage made of pig’s blood, rice, and onion. Apparently it was good fuel too because I ended up climbing really well that day. That night introduced me to another local tradition: mushroom picking. Actually, I didn’t see the mushroom picking, but I did experience the pre-mushroom picking party. After climbing we went to a hermita, a small abandoned church, to cook dinner and camp. The local wine supplemented dinner, and finally with aching backs and stiff forearms we were off to sleep, or so we thought. That’s when the mushroom picking crew showed up.

Just after midnight I was getting into my sleeping bag, thinking about how happy I was to be sleeping inside instead of outside in the mist and rain. Two large thuds signaled the arrival of the mushroom pickers, one thud from the rack of beer for the adults and one thud from the rack of cola for the kids. Who knew that the tradition of mushroom picking begins with a family party until late the next morning? I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it was a planned effort to sleep in until noon, the prime mushroom picking time. Here’s another fun fact I learned that weekend: the average Spanish picnic table, given several hours of rain, will leak onto the poor soul trying to sleep beneath it at a frequency similar to Wikipedia’s definition of Chinese water torture. Needless to say I didn’t sleep much that night, but how else can one discover the local passion for mushroom picking?

Oddly enough I enjoy those kinds of experiences, and they tend to be the memories that stand out. Several weeks later, while camping outside of Chulilla, a small town near Valencia, I had one of my shoes stolen by a dog in the night. Luckily the next morning a local man, after a hearty laugh at my predicament, invited me into his house and gave me a pair of his son’s shoes. Throughout my travels in Cataluña and Spain, I have always found myself surrounded by a group of kind locals. Unknowingly I have also had some of the best olive oil, almonds, and wine that Spain has to offer. I have experienced rugged and beautiful landscapes. But more that anything, I have been welcomed into a team of fanatical climbing friends. I have climbed a lot of incredible rock too, but I expected that. So like I said, just do what you always do, and the results will be anything but routine.