MISTI Blogs

After three weeks in Spain, I’ve spent a lot of time with my headphones on listening to music and strolling the streets of Barcelona. I usually spend about an hour or so after work every day walking around a new part of the city, which has given me hours to just let my mind wander.

1. Primeras Reflexiones

When meeting new people, I get asked where I am from, and I hesitate—my parents are Costa Rican and Mexican, but I lived in Chile for four years, grew up in Florida, and went to college in Massachusetts. So what do I say? Are they asking me where I live currently, where I grew up, or where my family is from that gives me my tan skin? Normally I stick to saying that I go to college in the United States and leave it at that until they probe with further questions. 

They also ask for my name, and that question has been taking up a lot of my brain space lately. Over the past few years, I’ve had a weird relationship with my name. All my life before college, I was known by most as Valeria (“Vuhl-air-ee-uh”), aka the ‘American’ pronunciation of my full name. I really only heard my name pronounced correctly by my family or other Hispanic people.

I got used to correcting everyone that I ever interacted with. Getting my name called out at the doctor’s office, giving my name to Starbucks baristas, and especially at school. I’ve gotten very good at butchering my own name to make it easier for people to pronounce. 

Because of that, I grew up thinking my name was too difficult for people to pronounce. So, when I got to college, I decided I wanted to reinvent myself. I dyed my hair purple, got a few tattoos and piercings, and decided that I would be more confident in myself and make an effort to be more social than the shy girl I was all my life. To really solidify this new persona, I started introducing myself as “Val.” I already had some friends who called me this, so being known to everyone as “Val” made me feel cool. 

I do still feel that the nickname suits me very well, but I think freshman year, I jumped a little too far to the complete opposite extreme. For the past few years, especially being away from home, I virtually never heard my full name. Lately, I’ve realized that I miss it. I really like my given name—why have I been running from it? 

Now that I’m here in Spain,  it is so nice to hear my name being pronounced correctly. I will admit that when I first got here, some of the remnant anxiety took over, and I introduced myself to a few people as “Val.” After about a week I made some progress and was introducing myself with the American pronunciation of my full name- it’s a hard habit to break after pronouncing my own name incorrectly for most of my life. After almost three weeks in Spain, I am becoming more comfortable introducing myself as Valeria.

I’d like to continue introducing myself correctly, even when I’m back in the United States. I still like “Val,” but I don’t want to continue to carve and shorten my name simply to make it easier for others. 

1. Mi Hispanidad 

My identity as a Hispanic woman has also been recently at the forefront of my mind. Spanish was my first language, taught to me by my mother from Costa Rica. I was born in Fort Lauderdale, FL, then pretty soon after, we moved to Santiago, Chile, where my mom had found a job. My life there for the first few years of my life was entirely in Spanish. We lived there for about 4 years before moving back to Florida—this time to Tampa. A year or so later, I went to school, and of course, we were taught in English. I remember my mom telling me that at first, I didn’t even know how to ask my Pre-K teachers how to go to the bathroom. Eventually, I learned and my entire life outside of my house was in English. I’m ashamed to admit that over the years, I got very used to responding to my mom in English when she speaks to me in Spanish, a habit that I am actively working to break.

I was very nervous about interning in Spain because I had very limited knowledge of technical engineering terms in Spanish. Luckily, my coworkers have been a great help. 

The other day, one of my coworkers asked me to pass him the pie de rey. I stared at him dumbfounded since this translates directly to “king’s foot.” He didn’t know the English word, and I didn’t know the Spanish word, so after a few seconds of confusion, he walked behind me to grab a pair of calipers. He holds them up and asks me what they’re called in English, and it was a very wholesome learning moment for both of us. 

Most people at the company speak Catalan, Castellano (Spanish), and English. A few coworkers have joked that they’d help me and the other intern with our Spanish as long as we helped with their English. This honestly helped me feel a lot more comfortable in my skills and reminded me that it’s not embarrassing to not be able to speak a language completely fluently- we’re all learning! 

In an effort to sharpen my Spanish skills, I picked up a book to read on my long 1.5-hour journeys to and from work. I had begun reading 100 Years of Solitude (Cien Años de Soledad) back in Boston, but I left the book somewhere in my storage boxes. My copy is in English, but the book was originally written in Spanish. I picked up a Spanish copy and must admit that it has been a little harder than I originally thought.

The more I read, the more I realize there is an entire subset of Spanish that I am missing. There is a bunch of advanced vocabulary, descriptive terminology, and other random words that I simply just have not come across. Most of the time, I can use context to figure out what the word means, but every so often, I have to stop and translate a few words. Sometimes I’ll get a translation and realize I don’t even know the word in English—which makes me feel slightly better (for example, lúgubre, which translates to lugubrious). While reading, I kept a little notebook and wrote words I learned. Some of my favorites so far are catalejo (telescope), brújula (compass), and terciopelo (velvet).

For some reason, I can’t help but feel somewhat embarrassed by this. Since I’m Hispanic, I have a self-imposed pressure to be perfectly fluent in Spanish. The reality is, I’m not. But I’m working on it. And honestly, that’s all that matters. After only a week in Spain, I realized I had begun to think in Spanish again—something I haven’t done in a while. I really enjoy being in a place where everything most things are in my native language! (I am in Barcelona, so a lot of signage is actually in Catalan. I know a teeny tiny bit of French that helps parse through signs and messages in Catalan, but once people start speaking, I am completely lost.)

1. Pensamientos Finales

I’ll wrap up my first blog by discussing one of my favorite things about Spain so far—the food. I’ve had incredible tapas, paellas, and sangria in my first few weeks here. I even found an authentic Mexican restaurant near my apartment with the best tacos and sauces I have ever had.

I am so excited to have easy access to Hispanic food. It is so incredibly difficult to find anything in Boston. I hope this isn’t a controversial opinion, but … Beantown and Naco Taco simply just do not cut it. When I cook on campus, I’ve had to use Instacart to get groceries delivered from stores inaccessible from campus without a car just to make empanadas, and hunt through HMart to find packages of tostadas, yet there are still many meals I have yet to make (like arepas … oh how I miss arepas) since I simply cannot find the ingredients in Boston (if anyone has any recommendations, please let me know). 

I walked into a Carrefour here in Barcelona the other day and spent an hour in there roaming the aisles and buying things I’ve been missing—tequeños, flan, galletas maria, and so so many more! My roommate laughed at the amount of things I returned home with, but it was surprisingly cheap for the quantity of snacks and food that I bought, and we’ll probably be well-fed until the end of our MISTIs 🙂 

I’m excited to continue to eat wonderful food and learn more about myself and this beautiful city!