How to Pack with the 80-20 Rule

Liebster Award

Okay. This post is not normal for me. There is, I guess, an award (the Leibster Award) is on WordPress right now and I was nominated by livingwithlinguaphilia this weekend. I think this is interesting because it encourages people to explore different blogs. I’ll be quite honest; I don’t spend much time reading other blogs. I tend to pop on, post whatever is on my mind, and leave. I’ve never gone through anything like this before, so bear with me.

Rules: 

1. Mention, link and thank the blog who nominated you.
2. Answer the nominator’s 11 questions.
3. Nominate bloggers with little followings (under 200) and link them below.
4. Create 11 questions of your own for your nominated blogs to answer.
5. Notify your nominees via social media.

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Here are my answers to livingwithlinguaphilia‘s questions:

1. As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?  How has that changed, and how do you feel about the change?

Which year do you mean? There was a random slew of lifeplans. I think veterinarian, video game developer, and detective lasted the longest. As I grew up, I realized that, while I enjoy animals, I could not spend my whole life with them. I also found that I just enjoyed playing video games so much that designing them would ruin it for me. As for the detective, I am an insanely oblivious person; I would be a terrible detective.

Right before freshman year, when I was picking my first classes, I had a stroke of luck. The professor that was helping me fill my schedule recommended a linguistics course. I had zero clue as to what linguistics was, but he said that due to my love of Spanish, there was a high chance that I would like linguistics. I quickly realized that I did not just love Spanish, but all languages in general. I then switched schools, created a linguistics major at PSU and will be graduating at some point in the near future.

I think the change was for the best. While I still love Spanish, I’ve been able to work with Arabic and random other languages throughout my academic career. Now I hope to work in language analysis in the future, and I think that it will be a good fit. Assuming that doesn’t work out, I know that I’ll be happy just working with languages.

2. What character (literary, television, movie, etc.) do you identify with most, and why?

This may be the hardest question that I have ever been asked. My gut instinct is Dean Winchester from Supernatural. He wants to save people, is willing to sacrifice everything, is loyal to a fault. He would do anything for his family, and he hides his feelings because he doesn’t want to seem weak. Deep down, he has a big heart and just wants everything to end up okay, be he knows that life doesn’t work that way.

3. If you could spend a day as a character that you feel is very different from you, who would you choose and why?

Iron Man. I appreciate how confident and smart he is. I think it would be interesting to experience that level of self-confidence.

4. What is the book you have read the most, and what draws you to it?

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. This is my all-time favorite book. I love how Mary grows from being a bitter child that prefers to be alone and hates other people into becoming a loving, happy child that sees the beauty in the world. I also love the element of magic; not wizardry magic, but the innate magic of plants growing and life happening.

5. What is your favorite word in any language?

Okay, I’m going to cheat and do two words, because I love them both for very different reasons. My favorite English word is petrichor. It means the earthy smell after it rains. I think it’s awesome that there is a specific word for that smell.

My favorite Arabic word is منطقة (min-ta-ka) which means area. Meaning-wise, it’s relatively dull, but it’s really fun to pronounce.

6. It’s a dark, raining morning.  The kind where the alarm goes off but the lack of sunlight makes it feel like it can’t possibly be time to wake up. How do you motivate yourself to start the day?

There’s always so much to do. I usually cannot sleep in due to school and work so I just soldier on.

7. It’s a beautiful day, but you are busy working inside.  What would you rather be doing?

This literally sums up my summer. Working when it’s nice out is awful. I would rather be outside, practicing martial arts with the Quinns.

8. You have the opportunity to take an all-expenses-paid two-week trip to any location on the planet.  Where do you go?

Geez. Another hard one.

Right now, I’d probably choose Egypt. I have been obsessed with Egypt since I was a child and I almost got to study abroad there for the next school year. Kind of broke my heart that the university wouldn’t allow me to go.

9. What is something about you that people are often surprised to learn?

People are always surprised to hear that I have a black belt in Tang Soo Do. I don’t much look like someone who would do martial arts, so I can understand it.

10. What is your favorite guilty pleasure?

I love Riesen chocolate more than anything. I can’t buy them too often because I will inhale the bag within an hour or so.

11. I want to try something new.  What do you suggest, and why do you think I’d like it?

As usual, I recommend martial arts. I cannot say enough about how much martial arts has changed my life. I am an incredibly lazy person, but martial arts is something that I have stuck with for years. It’s one of the only things that can motivate me do workout. I have made amazing friends and helped military groups learn how to disarm people. I have been bruised and beaten, but learned how to get up every time. I have learned how to set goals and achieve them. Marital arts is good for anyone and everyone.

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I don’t really spend much time reading other people’s blogs, so I am going to look around and find some ones that I think are cool. Also going to be honest, I didn’t look at how many followers you all had because I am bad a technology and didn’t want to search.

• fangirls on the road
• arabic feed
• token language
• I read encyclopedias for fun
• Benedict Fans
• MicaiahRose
• Ravings over sweet nothings
• Wanderella

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Here is the list of questions my nominees must answer:

1. What is your favorite childhood memory?
2. What is your favorite movie and why?
3. If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would it be?
4. What is one thing that you want to do before you die?
5. If you could change your name, what would it be and why?
6. What is your favorite activity?
7. If you could have any job, what would it be and why?
8. If you could meet anyone, past or present, who would it be and why?
9. What is something about you that people are often surprised to learn?
10. What is your favorite television show and with which character do you feel the strongest connection?
11. How many pillows do you like to sleep with?

I’m (Kinda) Halfway There! (Plus Weekend Adventuring

Hola!

Sorry it’s been a few days. I know that my last post was not super uplifting, but things are definitely looking up.

As of right now I have 2 participants tested and another 8 scheduled. So I’m halfway there…Or at least I will be once I have them tested.

My first testing session did not go very well, but everything worked out in the end.

Right at the beginning, my laptop crashed for some unknown reason. Thankfully, Annie was able to fix it pretty quickly.

Then, my first experiment crashed. I have no idea why. I tested it multiple times before I got participants and it was fine. The next day, it worked fine. But for some reason, it worked fine when I tried it again later. I think the Eprime system is just demonic and out to get me. But I will soldier on.

All of my participants have been extremely nice so far. They’re really patient with me when I try to speak to them in Spanish. I did have an awkward encounter with one of them though. Due to martial arts, when I am in a more professional situation, I don’t like to touch people other than to shake their hand. So I didn’t know what to do when one of the participants did the double kiss on the cheek thing. Like, I was aware of this phenomenon, but I was not expecting it from participants. So, in true Delaney-klutzy fashion, I tried to give him a handshake when he came in but he kept coming so I gave him a half hug and then realized that he was trying to do the kiss thing. He didn’t seem to judge me to much. One of these days, I’ll fit in a little bit better, but it is not this day.

I have started coding the data from the first participant. I’m really glad that Carla had me work with Praat this year because I bet I’ll be spending most of the summer with the program. Thank goodness it’s free and I could download it onto my computer.

I’ve noticed that most of the participants have a more British English accent when they are speaking in English. It makes sense, but it was not something that I had really expected.

Okay. Onto weekend adventures.

Saturday was Annie’s birthday, so we asked her what she wanted to do. Originally, she wanted to catch a bus to this mountain and go hiking, but she settled for hiking up some mountain trails in Granada. The views were wonderful and I only fell twice. (In my defense, the last section of the mountain was insanely steep. Alex had to hold Angie and my hands while we were walking down because we were terrified that we were going to fall….Only I did, of course. Klutzy life for the win!)

Sunday, we took a bus to Salobreña, a decently small town with a beach. So I obviously spent most of the day tanning and even swam for a while (it was insanely cold). The most interesting thing, in my mind, was that the beaches were not sandy. They were rocks. The one side had a more pulverized, tiny near-sand rockiness, but the other had large smooth stones. I spent time on both sides of the beach and found that the larger stones were surprisingly confortable. I definitely could have napped there.

Monday, Annie, Angie, and Felix made me leave the apartment in the evening and go on a walk. This was probably a good idea, because I was ready to throw my computer against the wall. I love Praat deep down, but man, marking sentences and words are not my favorite activities.

We walked down to a park. I don’t know the name, but apparently it is like the Central Park of Granada. It was super pretty.

There were a lot of roses and I even found some grass. I think that everyone judged me when I laid down in the grass for a while, but I can’t help it. I really miss grass. I don’t mean that I just randomly think “Hey, there’s no grass. That’s weird.” kind of missing. More of a constant “Why is there so much dirt? Where is the grass? What is this madness? What am I supposed to lay on?” kind of questioning/longing. So in that respect, I guess that I am kind of homesick.

Speaking of homesick, I have developed a list of random things that I really miss.

1. Grass. Not to beat a dead horse, but yea. I really miss grass.

2. Martial Arts. I’ve taken to teaching Angie random things.

3. Arabic. I didn’t bring my textbook and I think it is my biggest travel regret.

4. Alita and Austin (my martial arts partners in crime). They’re like the siblings I never had and I miss talking to them.

5. Driving. This is the longest I have ever gone without driving since I got my permit. It’s weird.

And, to end things, I have a list of things that I don’t miss.

1. The money. Euros are way cooler. Angie handed me two US dollars the other day and it took me a minute to figure out what they were. Euros for the win.

2. People that don’t like any language other than English. I just think that’s dumb. Languages are awesome, learn all of them.

3. Frustration with people that don’t speak English well. Get over yourself. They’re trying. Be patient.

4. Being asked if I’m a terrorist for speaking/learning Arabic. I mean, really. I hate this so much. Not all Arabs are terrorists and if you say this, you sound like a racist idiot.

5. Fast food. I lived off fast food this past school year. It’s hard to make time for real food when you go directly from classes to work. Fast food is greasy and gross. I feel so much better not eating it.

Bait and Switch from the Witch and Other Unfortunate Happenings

First of all, this post isn’t going to be quite as happy as usual. Sorry. There are still happy things, but it’s been kind of blah this week.

Second of all, sorry it’s been a while since I’ve written. Apparently, life does this thing where it gets super busy. I’m not a huge fan of that.

Alright, so I am no longer alone in the apartment. Angie arrived on Sunday and Felix arrived on Tuesday. It’s nice having people in the apartment; I feel much less paranoid that someone is going to break in.

Angie and I have spent hours (over the course of two days) putting up flyers to find participants, only to realize that they are being torn down. This is quite a bummer because as of right now, I have not had any participants. I need 20. Those are not good odds, so I’m starting to feel the stress.

Before I came here, a lot of the people that I was working with said that a lot of people are decently fluent in English. As far as I can tell, this is not the case. Like, I’m sure that there are enough people for all of our experiments, but I am having a hard time finding them. Last evening, Angie and I walked up to maybe 2 dozen people throughout our quest to hang flyers and asked them if they spoke English decently well and knew other people who did. Only one person that we talked to said that she knew people. That is not an overly good sign.

I finally had had someone email me asking if they could participate in my study. I was so insanely happy and terrified and nervous. I got to the lab like two hours early and made sure everything was perfect…The person never showed up. I waited for an hour just to be sure. It was awful. All of the people that were in the lab were super nice though and were trying to lift my spirits, which I appreciated.

As for the bait and switch, we all went out for lunch yesterday at a restaurant called “La Bruja” (literally, the witch). We sat in the bar area so we could get some drinks and tapas but because there were seven of us, they moved us to an area with actual tables. They then refused to serve us the tapas because we were not in the bar. It was one of the most infuriating things that I have experienced in Spain. The food that we got ended up being okay but still. I was quite excited for the tapas and then my dreams were crushed.

Okay, that’s enough for the bad news and happenings. I don’t want to sound like a sourpuss. A lot of good things have happened too.

A few days ago, I was walking around with the goal of finding a store that sold children’s books in Arabic so that I could practice reading and comprehension. I also had a need for tape. There were many problems with trying to find tape, mostly because I didn’t know the word and people kept saying no when I asked for “the stuff that puts the things on the wall”.

Anyways, I went to this one Middle Eastern restaurant that I stop as somewhat frequently. The one guy there is super nice and talks to me in Arabic/Spanish which is awesome. I figured that he would probably be someone who would know where to find books. Apparently they are really hard to come by here, but I should look if the group goes to Morocco. I also asked him about tape but I still didn’t know the word, so we played a glorified game of Pictionary for a few minutes. Good times.

Yesterday, we had to present our research projects at the lab meeting so that the people in the lab could hear what we were working on and offer advice or make us think more about things. You know, the average meeting of the minds.

This was my second lab meeting and in the first one, the girl was not told that she would be presenting in English. Since she tried so hard to make sure that we could all understand her, I really wanted to do all of my presentation (about 3-5 minutes) in Spanish. This does not sound overly hard. . . It kind of is. Mostly because of the vocabulary that I needed. In high school Spanish classes, they don’t teach you the words for Voice Onset Time (VOT) or code-switchers or other linguistic terms. Yet another failing of our education system, I guess. 😉

Anyways, I was so terrified. Anyone who knows me knows that I hate talking in front of people more than most anything. Add talking in another language to that and I thought my heart was going to give out.  We had to do this up at Houghton College but it was a presentation to classmates that were also learning the language…Not people going for their master’s and doctorates who are fluent.

Thankfully, Angie was a saint and made sure that I translated all of the words correctly. She even put up with me while I practiced presenting to her. (She’s pretty cool)

The presentation went well. Everyone was super nice about my fractured Spanish and they seemed to understand me well enough. Annie even told me that she was proud of me. YAY! Apparently, I made a few gender errors and small things, but overall did pretty good.

I actually outperformed one of the Spanish-English bilingual students from PSU that was presenting, so that was interesting.

Later last night, we were all invited to a party to celebrate Manuel (one of the people in the lab) receiving his Ph.D. This was the first time that we had been invited to go and spend time with the lab people outside of the actual lab and I was really excited. Everyone seemed really nice and Teresa, the head honcho of the lab, was there and kept speaking to me. She is wonderful. She doesn’t get frustrated when I cannot understand something or ask her to say something slower.

One of the other labmates was there. She is the one of the main ones that we share a lab section with and she is super nice. She and Angie kept telling me that my Spanish is better than I think it is. Which may be, but I am definitely not nearly as good as I could be. So I will keep struggling to improve.

Also, today I had another person email me about my study. The person seems very interested and kept emailing me back almost instantaneously. It was quite impressive. I also asked him if the person had any friends that spoken English and s/he does so s/he’s going to try to refer them to me.

Hopefully this participant is enough to get this show on the road. I’m raring to go.

Before I end this, I wanted to talk a little bit about some different things that I have noticed.

1. Toilet paper here is not as wide. It’s kind of awkward until you get used to it.

2. Tinto de verano is my new favorite drink. Annie got me hooked and it is the most wonderful thing in the whole world.

3. Apparently my Spanish comes out a lot more when I have a glass or two of wine or other alcohol. I guess that it’s enough to lower my inhibitions about making a mistake and I just end up going for it. So I guess the answer to becoming fluent in Spanish is to drink more.

4. People here are genuinely happy when you try to talk to them in their language. They don’t really get frustrated. In State College, there are a lot of times where I have seen people get really frustrated and annoyed when someone doesn’t speak English or has trouble with conveying what they want. I find that cultural difference to be quite striking. It’s definitely something that Americans could stand to improve on.

Málaga Adventures and Brain Workage

¡Hola!

So, I had been really good at keeping up with writing here on a daily basis, but we went to Málaga over the weekend and I did not want to bring my laptop in case something happened. Anyways, here is how the weekend went.

I should start out by saying that, while I enjoyed Málaga, I definitely like Granada better. There are so many tourists in Málaga. I know, I know. I am a tourist, too. But a bunch of them were the stereotypical looking, Spring-Break-esque tourists. Not going to lie, there were a lot of attractive shirtless men, but still. It didn’t have the same homey feel that Granada does.

The bus ride to Málaga was uneventful. For a while we just kind of walked around and enjoyed the city. After a while, we decided to go to to the Alcazaba. When we went, I didn’t know what this place was, just that it was really cool and had an ancient castle-esque feel.

Sorry, I didn’t get a lot of decent pictures of it from afar. Anyways, once I got home, I googled it. And guess what?! Alcazaba is from the arabic قصبة which means ‘citadel’. Sweet! Apparently this place was built in the 11th century; so I walked around a super old building and didn’t even think about it.

Beside the Alcazaba is a Roman theatre.

Guess when that guy was built (according to the Wikipedia)?

If you guessed “in the 1st century” then good job! Yep. Super old. Awesome.

After we did the Alcazaba, we decided to hike to the top of the Castillo de Gibralfaro. Yep, that’s a mouthful. The hill was HUUGGGEEEE and I kind of thought that I was dying. But I got a lot of pretty pictures and I’m sure that my legs are stronger based on how easy walking has felt on the last two days.

The view was awesome and I probably could have stayed there forever. Definitely worth the pain.

That night, Annie, Haoyun, and I stayed in a hostel (my first one). I remember my one friend warning me about hostels before I left and saying that they were not overly safe, but this one felt super nice. There were drunk British guys out on the terrace when we got there and their accents made me happy. Our room was filled with four sets of bunk beds. We were hopeful that we would be the only ones staying that night. This seemed to be likely, but maybe 45 minutes after we turned of the lights and were trying to sleep, this girl burst in, turned the light on and promptly flopped on one of the beds and played on her phone. I cannot imagine being that rude to anyone. Being the wonderful, passive-aggressive person that I am, eventually went to the bathroom and turned the light of before crawling back into bed. I was planning on throwing her off the balcony, but I hear that people frown upon that, so I settled for turning the light off.

When I woke up in the morning, there were two more people in the room which was kind of creepy. Mostly because my ninja senses did not wake me up whenever they came in. Anyhoo, Annie, Haoyun and I got dressed and left.

We took a bus to the botanical gardens and walked around for a few hours. They had some cool plants and had a section called Around the World in 80 Trees, which made me smile.

The one path went up a hill to a lookout point with a little building and a hammock. Annie seemed to enjoy it. 🙂

After the gardens, we went to . . . the PICASSO Museum! Yayy! It was really cool. They had things that you could listen to that would tell you things about the paintings, but I am super lazy and didn’t want to carry it around.

This brings us to the thing that I found to be most interesting. (This part is kind of weird, mostly because I don’t really know how to describe what was happening) The tour guide, Javier, was speaking in Spanish. Like most Spanish speakers, he spoke incredibly fast.

Normally, when I am listening to someone speak Spanish, I tend to pull out random words and translate them to English really quick so that I can get a general feel of what is being said. I did not have enough time to do that (that’s how fast he spoke). So my brain did a thing.

Instead of translating single words like it normally does, the sentences that Javier was saying just kind of replayed on a fast loop inside my head. I still couldn’t understand everything, but I feel like my brain was kind of processing things in whole segments rather than tiny pieces. It was strange. It’s probably a good thing and it felt more natural, but it felt so weird.

Maybe my brain is growing more quickly accustomed to Spanish than I had originally anticipated. This could end up being very interesting.

Guinea Pigs, Bus Passes, and Catwalks

Today, I woke up a little late and decided that I’d better get my rear in gear and get to the lab. Annie had told me about a different bus pass then the one that I had gotten and I wanted to purchase it. However, when I reached the bus station and tried to purchase it, the man would not accept my money because I handed him 50€ and it was only 43€. So, naturally, I used my other bus pass and decided that the moment Annie was riding the bus with me, I would utilize her superior Spanish skills to help me out.

Once I arrived that the lab, I finished up some paperwork and prepared some stuff to recruit participants. Once I finished, I noticed that the one lab member was moving some computer stuff from the one lab into another so I tried to ask her if she needed help. I must not have had enough coffee, because I said “necesito ayuda” (I need help) rather than “necesita ayuda?” (Do you need help?). She asked me what I needed, and I quickly realized my mistake and corrected it, but it was still a stupid mistake and I know better. I think this is a testament to how much I dislike mornings.

Anyhoo, I found Annie and she was working on some stuff. I told her that I was here if she needed to do a test run or anything with her ERP (measuring brainwaves) and she eventually decided to cap me as her guinea pig. The system here is different; the caps have 64 electrodes while the ones at Penn State have 34, so I tried to provide moral support while she learned the new system. She did awesome; she didn’t hurt me or anything and I only freaked out once when I opened my eye and saw the needle coming towards me.

Once all of the capping was done, I went through her experiment so that she had some data to look at and to make sure that all was well.

Oh! I forgot. The lab at Penn State has these nice little sticker things to attach the face electrodes without too much discomfort. They only have tape here. So it was interesting. And the tape kept partially falling off my face. So Annie improvised a bit.

Alex (the last of the graduate students who arrived today) came in. I think it was his first time seeing this process and apparently he thought that I looked like I was in the Matrix. Unfortunately, no superior powers of time bending or Kung Fu abilities manifested. Oh, well.

Once I got the cap off, I had little suction cup looking marks on my forehead and it looked like I had gotten attached by a squid. I must really love Annie. Haha. Don’t worry, I’ll be torturing her in the near future as I run her through my experiment.

Once all of this was done, we all took the bus back the the Gran Vía. Annie got me my bus pass (Thank you, Annie!) so all is good in the world on that front.

After eating, I went home and worked on some more school stuff. Eventually, I needed a break and decided to go on a walkabout. Mostly because I was out of madeleines.

As I walked to the plaza with my favorite pastelería, I saw a bunch of people in all of the plazas. Once I got my food, I decided to investigate. In one plaza, they had set up a bunch of chairs and people were sitting down and watching some kind of opera-esque film. I stood and watched a few minutes and then carried on my way.

Another plaza had some kind of children’s fair going on, with balloons and the carousel was up and running. Children were running around and having a blast.

The last plaza was the most interesting. To me, anyway. This was the plaza by the cathedral and they had set up a bunch of chairs for a catwalk. I am 100% serious. It was the strangest thing. These girls and these guys just kept walking up and down the catwalk; I think they must have been showing off shoes, because their outfits were rather plain and all looked quite similar.

So many people were gathered around and there were photographers everywhere. Some of the shoes looked super comfy. I feel like I need to get a pair of non-sneakers soon because I definitely have tourist shoes.

PIRE 4: A Pleasant Walk, Meeting with Teresa Bajo, and the First Lab Meeting

Yesterday evening, I decided to take a walk. I’ve been doing this most every day, since it’s nice to just get out and look at the city. Especially after trying to work on logistical stuff and paperwork for what feels like ages.

Today, unlike all of the other days thus far, I decided to be super touristy and take my good camera, figuring that I should get some better quality images while I am here, rather than just taking photos off of my phone.

I started out by going to the cathedral. I do believe that this is my favorite building that I have found so far. I am holding out because I know that the Alhambra is going to be jaw-droppingly wonderful; but every time I see the cathedral, I can’t help but stop and stare.

Once I got my fill, I headed to a walkway/street that is downhill from the Alhambra. Annie had told me that there was a mirador (outlook) up the hill that was especially beautiful and I figured that it would give me a chance to see a new part of the city.

I am not fond of walking uphill. I have the hips of an old woman and they occasionally pop in and out and do other painful things from time to time, so this hike was not super pleasant for me.

Everything was well worth it though. The buildings on the walk up were all white and spacious looking. The architecture looks kind of what I always associated with Spanish houses. There were some gardens and plazas that provided wonderful photo opportunities.

I only got lost once when I crested the top of the hill. There were two different roads and I picked the wrong one. This lovely older Spanish woman walked by a while down the road and I asked her if I was going in the correct direction. She smiled and said no, but walked me most of the way to the mirador and gave me explicit directions on how to make it the rest of the way.

Once I got there, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I have never seen anything so beautiful in my life. I reviewed the pictures when I got home and they don’t even come close to doing the landscape justice.

The hill overlooks the Alhambra and you can see the mountains in the background and all of Granada is laid out. I never wanted to leave.

Eventually, though, life moves on and I had to be on my way (with many a wistful look backwards).

Teresa Bajo

This morning, I had my first meeting with Teresa Bajo. In my typical fashion, I arrived 20 minutes early and then realized that I was in Europe and that I would be waiting for quite some time.

When Teresa arrived, she asked me if I wanted to use English or Spanish. My gut reaction was to use English. My Spanish is somewhat sufficient, but I didn’t think that I could fully explain my project in a different language.

Since the very thought of trying to do so made my stomach flip-flop, I decided that this meant that I needed to push myself out of my comfort zone and at least give Spanish a good try.

I am SO glad that I did. Our meeting was about 45 minutes and I managed to say almost everything in Spanish. I know that I made an obscene amount of errors and there were times that she had to correct me and supply me with words, but I managed to stay in English for about 90-95% of the meeting.

This was one of the biggest successes of my linguistic life. No joke. We walked down to the lab meeting together and proceeded to talk about my future plans and graduate schools and other possibilities (still mostly in Spanish) and it made me so incredibly happy. We ran into Annie, Jon, and Haoyun in the lab building and I’m sure that I had the biggest smile on my face. When Teresa went to go talk to someone else, I hurried over to the group and told them what had happened. They were super wonderful and supportive and gave me high-fives.

Lab Meeting

So, like I said, today was the first lab meeting. Everyone seems super nice and welcoming. The four of us had to say who we were and what we were doing, which was pretty basic. They had us speak in English and everyone else spoke in English during introductions.

The presenter of the day was super nice. I felt bad, because she presented in English on account of us and I don’t believe she had planned on that. I know that that would be stressful to me, so I was incredibly impressed with how easily she transferred everything into English.

She presented on the RIF effect, which is Retrieval-Induced Forgetting. I had never heard of this, but I guess that it is a phenomenon in which remembering information leads to the forgetting of other information. It was nice to learn about something new.

After her presentation, people questioned her about some aspects of the project and provided some areas that would be available to further study. The general feel of the lab was nice and uplifting. There was good discussion and everyone seemed very willing to provide advice and potential insights.

Being in this lab has definitely made me miss the lab at Penn State. I’ve always had trouble with being available for lab meetings, due to work and other commitments, but I never really realized the bonding and the creative vibes that I’ve missed out on. And I definitely miss all of the people that I would run into while flitting about the lab, doing work and attempting to get everything together for PIRE.

Next week, we are all doing mini-presentations of what we will be researching, so I will keep you updated on that.

Until later,

Delaney Wilson

PIRE 3. Language Collisions and Lab Orientation

As I am writing this, I am sitting at the café at the Universidad de Granada and looking out over the city and surrounding countryside and drinking freshly squeezed orange juice. Be jealous. I know that I keep reusing the word ‘picturesque’ to describe how beautiful Granada is; but the second that a new word is created that accurately describes the beauty and grandeur of this town then I’ll use it.

In the first few days, I have been challenged more than I would have thought possible and found out that, despite my beliefs that I would struggle with communicating, people are much kinder than I would initially have given them credit for. I’ve been practicing martial arts since I was in high school (I think it’s been six or seven years by now) and have always been told that it’s better to be self-reliant and that people cannot always be trusted. I still believe that this is the case, but I know now that it is okay to ask for help. If you start reaching out and trusting that people will help, they will surprise you if given the opportunity.

Yesterday marked a turning point in my Granada experience. I had generally been reliant on Annie and Jon to be with me as a comfort buffer to make sure that I could get my point across when I spoke to people in Spanish. Yesterday, they were busy and I had errands to run. Laundry detergent, shampoo, and body wash do not grow on trees here, and I desperately needed to make a store run. Additionally, up until this point, I had been largely unsuccessful with finding good places to purchase food for the apartment.

After telling myself that I am a strong, independent person, I decided to go exploring alone and attempt to find some markets and stores better than the “supermercados” that I had seen so far.

My first find was a tiny little shop with a woman that was selling cleaning supplies. As I stepped into the store, I realized that I had no idea how to say washer or detergent. I had a general knowledge of what I needed, but the washers here are different than those in the United States and I wanted to make sure that I was getting the right products.

The lady was so kind! She put up with my broken Spanish and questions about “the thing that cleans the clothes” and not only helped me pick out detergent and softener, but drew me a picture of the drawer for the washer and explained what goes in what slot and how much of each thing I should use. She was definitely a godsend.

She also helped me to pick out shampoo, conditioner, and body wash and seemed to enjoy my attempt at saying “the things that cleans the hair and the body” coupled with my charades. She made me smell each thing that she picked out to make sure that I liked the scent I was buying and asked me where I was from. We talked for a few minutes, and I went on my way. It was definitely a good experience and helped me to understand that, even though trying to communicate in a different language is uncomfortable, it is something that I am able to adjust to.

Eventually, I found some fruit and vegetable markets, but I didn’t have enough hand space to carry much more, so I went back today, but more about that later.

Later in the day, I decided that I should probably feed myself and went to search for Middle Eastern food while I walked to Annie and Jon’s building. I eventually found a place called the Shawarma King that looked authentic and I walked in and ordered. As the man was cooking the food, he asked me where I was from. I answered and asked him if he was from Granada. He was not; he was from Damascus. Me, being an easily excitable and generally embarrassing person, started vibrating with excitement and asked “تتكلم اللغة العربية” (Do you speak the Arabic language?). He did and I started trying to communicate with him in Arabic. I quickly found out that my Arabic lexicon is not as extensive as my Spanish lexicon and I started having a lot of trouble trying to stay in Arabic. Within a few minutes, we were communicating in a strange mix of Arabic, Spanish, and English. It was beautiful and easily made my day.

Today, I managed to conquer the mercado all by myself. The lady working the stand was quite nice and very patient with me as I pointed at the fruits and veggies that I wanted and tried to say how much. I got a decent amount of food for less than 10€. It is definitely cheaper to eat healthy here than it is in the United States.

I also had a woman come up to me and beg for money. I’ve been to NYC a few times, but I’ve never had people actually come up to me and ask me for money. It breaks my heart and I never know what to do. This happened at the mercado and I learned that if you very slowly and laboriously say that you don’t speak Spanish, they tend to leave you alone. I feel like an awful person, though. Anyway, let’s move away from my moral shortcomings and onto the lab.

Jon, Haoyun, and I caught a bus and went up to the lab today. We are currently in the process of picking rooms and rearranging stuff to set up for testing. We finished our goals for the day fairly quickly and Jon taught Haoyun and I how to ask for the room keys and the protocol for taking/returning them.

Then we all walked to the Psychology building so that Haoyun could see where it was and meet with Teresa. Jon and I are waiting for her in the café as I write.

Tomorrow is our first lab meeting and my first meeting with Teresa, so I will post again in the next day or so and let everyone know of the progress that we are making.

Delaney: the Provider

!Holaaa!

So, this is just a minipost, hopefully I will have more to share later.

First of all, and I know I’ve said this already, but I LOVEEE café con leche y croissants! They’re soo good!

Like, look at them. They’re so beautiful. The croissants are bigger than my hand and they’re SO FLUFFY, I’M GONNA DIE!!  (haha, I made me laugh. I miss Despicable Me, don’t judge)

Anyways, after getting breakfast, Haoyun, Jon and I caught the bus up to the university and started trying to set up some of our stuff. Nothing major, just moving desks around and trying to decide what rooms would be best for each of us to work in. Jon showed Haoyun and I how to get the key for the lab as well as the keys for the rooms within the lab so that we could do it in case he or Annie wasn’t there.

They have cabinets for us to store our stuff in, so I have all of my equipment locked up tight and the key on my beautiful Lowe’s lanyard. It’s really nice to have a secure place to store everything; the bag is quite heavy and I was scared that if I carried it everyday on the bus, someone might bump it or something might get broken.

I love my little cabinet. It’s wonderful.

Once we got everything settled, we walked up to the Psychology building and Jon and I sat at the café while Haoyun met with Teresa. I got some zumo de naranja (orange juice) and it was freshly squeezed. It is one of the best things that I have ever had in my life.

Once Haoyun was done, we caught the bus back to the main street, La Calle Gran Via de Colón. I parted ways with them and decided that I was going to put on my big girl pants and go buy some food from the Mercado. The lady there was super friendly and patient with me while I pointed at stuff and tried to tell her exactly what I wanted.

All of this (minus the Madeleines) was less than 10€, which I found surprising. Soon, maybe later today, I am going to brave the meat market and get some carne y pescado (meat and fish). The kitchen here does not have super many cooking utensils, so I have been making do and trying to channel my inner engineer. It’s been fun. 🙂

Food and Language Encounters on Cinco de Mayo

I know, I know. Cinco de Mayo is a Mexican holiday. But I am not in Mexico. And I am definitely in a place where I can get authentic Spanish food for super cheap. So in the spirit of Cinco de Mayo, I tried to step out of my comfort zone.

I already posted about breakfast. Since then I had some of the madeleines that I had bought. They are super wonderful. I am a big fan. I understand why Jason Statham and the copper loved them.

So today I decided to be a biggie girl and go buy laundry detergent. I should preface this by saying that yes, I do know how to do laundry. In America. Where there is a washer and a dryer and they all run similarly.

Things are not so similar here. First of all, there is only one machine. At first, I was under the impression that it was a washer/dryer. Even so, the directions were in Spanish and I could not read them. So, like any normal adult, I ran and emailed one of my advisors.

Thankfully, she is a wonderful person and doesn’t judge, although she does laugh at my predicaments. 🙂

Armed with this essential information, I started exploring and searching for a store that sold detergent. I eventually found one that looked promising. . . Only to realize that I was not overly sure what brands would be better and had no idea how to say detergent or any of the other things on my shopping list.

Praise God, this woman was so wonderfully sweet and kind! I tried to explain my predicament and how I wasn’t quite sure what kind of cleaner to get for the “thing that cleans the clothes”. She tried to figure out what kind of washer I had and drew me a picture to see if it was right. Eventually, she picked out some stuff for me.

But the adventure wasn’t over. I still needed to stock up on shampoo, conditioner, and body wash since my travel sizes were running dangerously low. With a mixture of random words and charades, we picked out some stuff and she kept making me smell everything to make sure that it was okay for me. She was so adorable.

She eventually asked me if I was at the university and how long I was staying. I told her that I had arrived three days ago and she seemed impressed with how I was handling everything and how well my Spanish was coming out (I disagree with the latter part, but I appreciate the sentiment all the same).

So, with that adventure done, I returned to the apartment to organize things and work on some stuff. Eventually, I got hungry for lunch and decided to go for Shawarma. I love Shawarma. I love Middle Eastern food. If you would have told me that this time last year that I would constantly crave Middle Eastern food, I would have told you that you were crazy. But thank God that everything worked out and I started taking Arabic classes.

Anyhoo, I digress. So I eventually found a shawarma place and the guy dealt with my fractured Spanish. As he was preparing my shawarma, I was looking at the dulces (sweets) in the display and saw something that looked like what I assumed Kunafah looked like, but it was just baklava. All of the baklava I have had was made of sheets of phyllo dough, but this one was made of really thin, crispy strips of the dough. It had an awesome texture.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I was waiting for my food when he asked me where I was from. I told him and asked if he was from Granada. He was from Damascus. Me, being the complete and utter dork that I am, I got super excited, asked “تتكلم اللغة العربية؟” (Do you speak Arabic?)

GUESS WHAT?! HE DID! We then proceeded to have a conversation that included English, Spanish, and Arabic (usually within the same sentences). He seemed really happy that I was trying to talk to him in Arabic and didn’t mind that I completely butcher 90% of what I say. He asked where I was studying and had heard of Penn State. He was super nice and it made my day that I found someone to practice Arabic with.

Side note: I accidentally used the Egyptian dialectal version of university instead of the Modern Standard word, which I find interesting since I have only heard خالد (Khaled, my teacher) use that word once.

Continuing on through my day, Annie, Jon, Haoyun and I took a long walk and ended up at a tapas bar. I quickly realized that I had completely misunderstood what a tapas bar was. Whenever I was in high school, my teacher told me that tapas meant lid and was something that came with beer. So I assumed that it was a cracker-ish kind of food that covered your glass of beer that you ate while you drank.

Not the case. Very much not the case. Mucho misunderstanding.

Tapas are appetizers that come with the meal. Thankfully, we decided on sangria instead of beer. Sangria is amazing. It was my first time having it and I am a huge fan.

Anyway. On to the Spanish food. I had paella. Actual paella. As in the wonderful rice dish that Papa Felisberto would make in high school that Kari would bring in to Spanish class. It’s been so long since I had any and it totally made my day.
After dinner, I went to an heladería for the first time and got some ice cream. It was wonderful.

So. In summation, I found three people to talk to today and celebrated Cinco de Mayo with Tapas and Sangria.