Archive for month: June, 2019

BY NINA CHIKANOV

One of my main reasons for studying abroad in a Spanish-speaking country was to improve my Spanish language proficiency.  

After taking four years of classes in high school, I was highly considering adding a Spanish minor to my degree in college. I wasn’t committed to it, so I didn’t declare the minor right away; unfortunately, with a Computer Science & Engineering curriculum (typically 4 STEM-based classes a quarter), I didn’t think it would be feasible to commit to any other course-load. This doesn’t mean it’s impossible to do, but for me, I didn’t think the extra stress was worth it. 

So…to make up for the fact that I wouldn’t be taking any language classes at UCLA, I started thinking about going abroad. The Contemporary Spain program in Madrid was perfect for me in this regard, as I could take my core GE classes in English and place into either beginner or intermediate Spanish classes. On top of that, I had the option of staying with a host family (read about my homestay experience here), which gave me more opportunities to fully immerse myself in Spanish language and culture. 

One of my first cafés in Madrid

When I first arrived, I was definitely rusty. The last structured Spanish class I had taken was AP Spanish in my last year of high school (2 years ago at this point – crazy!) I could basically only speak in present and limited past tenses and forgot a lot of other grammatical details about the language. It was enough to get by and order a café con leche (very important), but my mistakes were constant and sometimes prevented others from understanding exactly what I meant. Moreover, I had to think extremely carefully before speaking.

In terms of listening, I think I could better understand what was being said to me than I could successfully relay information to another person. While I didn’t fully grasp everything, if people were speaking at a slightly slower pace than normal, I could pick up on what they meant to say.  

Intermediate Spanish classes helped refresh and build on the grammatical structures I had lost. I was reminded of when to use imperfect instead of indefinite, brushed up on some vocab, learned the tough concepts (subjunctive…yikes) and more. It gave me regular listening, speaking, and writing practice and was definitely necessary to kick me back into functioning Spanish mode. 

My friend Hank and I speaking with some girls on the club soccer team at Universidad Complutense Madrid. This was a part of Spanish-class field trip to learn more about university life in Spain!

My host family mostly helped for in-person real-time situations. If I was struggling to ask a question or phrased something completely wrong, they would correct the phrase or provide the appropriate words. This way, I was able to practice my Spanish outside of a classroom setting where the context was more unexpected. 

Outside of those two sources, I mostly practiced my Spanish in stores or at language exchanges. I also met native Spanish speakers through activities like soccer, Jewish functions (read), during nights out, or even randomly during the day at parks and other social locations.  

Leila, Sophie, and Shivani at a language exchange in Chamberí

Essentially, I tried to speak as much as I could every day. I found Madrid to be the perfect city for improving my speaking fluidity since people will (for the most part) continue speaking with you in Spanish even if they know English well (unless you’re completely lost).  

While not everyone would correct me as openly as my host family, it was still helpful to see the reactions and read the body language of people in real-time conversations. 

…  

 Living in a country where Spanish is the official language is definitely the way to acquire proficiency. It still took a lot of work on my part to improve, and I even know some people who managed to get by in Madrid with very limited Spanish. But I’m glad that living abroad for four months made me more comfortable with Spanish and helped me get over my initial hesitancy to speak a foreign language. To become fully fluent, however, (starting at the level I did, with 4 years of background in high school) would probably take me about a full year of living abroad, if not more.   

For now, I really hope I don’t lose the progress I’ve made. I plan on reading news in Spanish and watching Spanish TV shows when I can (definitely in Spanish with Spanish subtitles), as well as practicing more frequently with my Spanish-speaking friends. 

Abroad definitely gave me more motivation to keep up with a language and showed me the practicality of being bi/tri-lingual, even if learning a new language sometimes resulted in losing some vocab in old ones.  

Hasta pronto,  

Nina 

Nina Chikanov studied abroad in Madrid, Spain in fall 2017: http://eap.ucop.edu/OurPrograms/spain/Pages/contemporary_spain_madrid.aspx

BY NINA CHIKANOV

The first few weeks of study abroad were pretty rough for me. Besides losing my luggage and arriving a week later than others in my program, I struggled to adjust to my new lifestyle on campus. Since my classes were held at the ACCENT Study Center instead of a Spanish university, I found myself missing the hustle and bustle of campus and all my various clubs at UCLA. 

I consciously knew I was giving up all commitments for one quarter by going abroad, but I didn’t realize how hard it would hit me to not have these established communities to fall back on in Madrid. 

At first, I wished that we could take classes on a more integrated campus with a mix of different students outside of the UC-system, even though my Spanish proficiency was not nearly high enough to take my GEs completely in Spanish. Soon, though, I was able to find communities to fill this unexpected void. 

1. Meetup Pickup Soccer Games 

One of the things I missed most from home was playing soccer regularly. A couple of others in the program would opt to go play pickup at Parque Santander close to the apartments, but these matches were usually organized spontaneously and were played on any random space we could find – dirt, sand, grass, etc. (Protip: if you don’t find an open field, don’t assume that every nice-looking patch of grass is fair game…we had a great time telling local police that we ended up inside private office facilities because we wanted a space to play #ballislife) 

Anyway…these games were a ton of fun but I missed out on a lot of them if I had already planned things for the afternoons before the games were organized. The fields were also closer to the apartments than my homestay, so it made it harder for me to spontaneously go out and play. 

I also really wanted to break out my cleats. After all, I lugged them all the way from the States for a reason! (No regrets) 

Someone suggested I try out the app called “Meetup” to find more organized pickup games. For some reason I had this idealized vision that I could just walk outside and find Spaniards playing fútbol – this might’ve been the case in some regions of the city but I guess I didn’t know where to look or what the good times were to look – or I just watched too much TV where every Spaniard was born with a soccer ball attached to their foot. So clearly this expectation was not my reality. 

Action shot of me going into a tackle during a pickup game.

By searching for pickup soccer games on Meetup, I at least gained validation that such games existed and happened weekly. These particular matches were co-ed, bilingual, and happened every Sunday from 5-6 PM or 6-7 PM. Each game was 7 versus 7 on a short-sided turf field and cost €5 for the hour. The group even went out to a cafe after the later match to eat, drink, and relax.

Group photo after one of our games 🙂

Getting out and playing at least once a week whenever I was in Madrid for the weekend allowed me to meet so many cool people from all over the world. Students, teachers, locals – all united by love for the game. I even picked up on some soccer terms in Spanish that I wouldn’t have learned otherwise (e.g. atrás tells someone to watch their back, sube tells someone to advance up the field, etc.) 

Leila and I at Sukkot reception at CJM

2. CJM Dinners & Holidays 

The next community I found gave me an outlet for Friday night dinners and annual holidays. Through an organization called Kahal, I was connected to CJM (Comunidad Judeo de Madrid) for the high holy days of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, as well as Sukkot and Hanukkah. 

 I always love connecting with other Jews around the world because I feel like we have an immediate sense of connection by virtue of our religion and our culture. 

Spanish Jewry has an especially complicated history because of years of persecution and complete expulsion in 1492 by the Edict of Expulsion signed by monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella. As a result, the community is a lot more traditional than mine at home and is not nearly as big or diverse as the American Jewish community, even though it is once again starting to grow. 

Regardless, after going to a few dinners and meeting other Jewish students studying abroad in Madrid, as well as other native Madrileños and many who came from Latin America and other countries, I felt completely comfortable. After the main dinners, we would join in song; it was really comforting to listen to these tunes even though the melodies were not completely familiar. 

A panoramic of the guests at dinner!

One woman I met through the Jewish community invited me over to her apartment for a potluck with her friends one weekend, and that was also a real pleasure to meet people in a relaxed setting revolving around food, friends, and conversation.

In fact, because of her hospitality, I made friends with one of her pals who later taught me how to snowboard in an indoor snow zone in Madrid! 

It was an awesome experience, and if not for these communities I would not have had as many opportunities to learn about cool places in Madrid or fun activities to try. 

. . . 

Community exists everywhere. I definitely crave it and I think finding those two groups enhanced my Spanish experience exponentially. Not only did I meet people outside of my immediate program, but I also got to connect around a common interest and integrate myself better into Spanish life, if even for a little bit 🙂 

So – if you’re feeling a bit lonely abroad, I assure you that community is the key. For me, I tapped into my love for soccer and my connection to Judaism, but there’s so many other groups out there waiting to welcome travelers with open arms. 

Con un abrazo,
Nina 

Nina Chikanov studied abroad in Madrid, Spain in fall 2017: http://eap.ucop.edu/OurPrograms/spain/Pages/contemporary_spain_madrid.aspx

BY NINA CHIKANOV

As mentioned in my general course reflection (read), the classes I took abroad gave me a unique opportunity to learn from the city. I actually think that I know more about Spanish history now than I do about American history—which may be a bit embarrassing—due to the level of cultural understanding needed to fully engage with the subject material in the courses.

In the case of my class, “Negotiating Identities in Madrid: Gender and Sexuality in Urban Space”, the most relevant event to understanding contemporary Spain is the global economic crisis of 2008 and the subsequent construction boom of the Spanish housing / project market.

In the wake of the economic crisis, Spain was in the process of rapid construction – all of which suddenly halted and resulted in abandoned housing developments, projects, unfinished roads, etc. (if you’re interested in seeing how this unfolded visually, check out this website that compares satellite images from different Spanish villages before and after the boom…pretty wild).

Basically, there was a lot of unused or abandoned space, and because of the economic crisis there was an uprising of frustrated people. The political climate was buzzing in Spain and in Madrid around the time of the crisis, and years of witnessing the unemployment rate rise under seemingly delayed governmental responses culminated in the reclaiming of public space by various citizens’ initiatives on May 15, 2011 in Sol (Madrid’s city center).

The centerpiece of Puerta del Sol

While I don’t want to focus too much on this event, 15M (wiki) is significant to Madrid’s culture and was an important turning point for how communities organize and reclaim public space today. After 15M, even more groups came out to reclaim the unused public space for their neighborhoods and communities, many of which were alive and functioning during my semester abroad.

Out of these neighborhood spaces, my favorite one to hang out in was Campo de Cebada, located conveniently close to my homestay in Barrio de La Latina. Coinciding with the beginning of 15M, Campo de Cebada opened its doors officially on May 15, 2011 and repurposed a courtyard that was originally meant to be a multi-purpose sports center before the construction halted.

A demonstration referencing the events of 15M in Sol

The neighbors who crafted this space were inspired to reclaim it after an intervention by the “La Noche en Blanco” initiative that temporarily transformed the plaza into a rainforest with an open pool. After the intervention was taken down, many wanted to continue using and enjoying the

space and wrote a series of demands requesting public right to the space until the City Council offered plans for new community facilities. This re-appropriation, therefore, stemmed from an inherently legal manner, where the neighborhood collective agreed to recreate the space as soon as construction was ready to renew.

In the meantime, they installed a public garden, made places for people to sit out of recycled wood and materials, championed a rotating leadership system led by general assembly, and avoided any exchange of money or formulation of a commercial space (meaning that most contributions to the space were material or service-based instead of monetary).

The inside walls of the plaza are covered by constantly changing murals and large artworks. There is a basketball/soccer court in the middle of the space and a central wooden barrack that slightly resembles a treehouse. While there were no theatre performances in the Fall, the plaza also hosted makeshift outdoor performances for the community in the past and even held TEDx Madrid within the space.

Over the past four months, the plaza served as a casual hangout spot for me and my friends, fostering a care-free, welcoming, cheerful atmosphere. It was comforting to know that for the short amount of time that I was in the Madrid community, there was an alternative space for me to exist and explore outside the hustle and bustle of the center.

Unfortunately, Campo de Cebada reached the end of its lifespan towards the end of my semester abroad in December of 2017 to make way for the newly planned sports pavilion in the same space. They invited those who could to take a plant from the community garden home with them as a way to keep a little piece of the movement with them. Although I could not physically keep a plant, this plaza forever has a place in my heart and in my Madrid experience.

Another favorite neighborhood space is called Esta es una Plaza! (EEUP for short). Their history is a bit more militant than Campo de Cebada, as they seized the empty plot of land before requesting a temporary permit to the space. They were actually forcibly evicted many times over their lifespan before finally reaching an agreement with the city, who initially did not want anything to do with them. With a bit of struggle, they pushed through to create the space in existence today, which previously was an empty dirty path in between apartments. Effectively empty space.

EEUP differs from Campo de Cebada in the fact that it is less defined by the murals on the internal walls (even though these are also present and pleasantly interactive) and focuses more on the gardening aspects and the family spaces. There are multiple swing sets set up, a space for donated books and trays, and a large center table with an overhang that provides shade. The demographic at EEUP is definitely more family-based whereas Campo de Cebada is a wider mix with many young people.

Top: Non-commissioned art on the walls of the warehouse. Bottom: An exhibit from the commissioned section of La Tabacalera

For activity-based hangouts, I frequented La Tabacalera, an old tobacco factory repurposed into a self-cultural center and a managed government-sponsored promotion of art. I could probably go on forever about all these spaces, but my favorite aspects of all of them is the intent behind them.

They were created with the intent of reclaiming the right to the city – or taking back use of public space from higher authorities (such as the city government) and giving it back to the local communities – and governed by a rotating, democratic assembly that promotes an even distribution of power, to keep with the open nature of each space.

These projects created pockets within the city that have a unique personality. They are welcoming, comfortable, innovative. They spark discussion and bring people together from all walks of life. They exist for the enjoyment of the community and they are upheld by the passion of its members – and I think that is something so beautiful that should be present everywhere.

Maybe it’s because I’ve lived in the “UCLA bubble” for the past two years that I cannot bring to mind any similar collective or projects in Los Angeles. I have never experienced anything like this before coming to Madrid, so I am unsure if these collectives are unique to the crisis or unique to large metropolitan cities in general. However, if these collectives exist anywhere near me, I would love to learn more and get involved.

I do not feel at all well-integrated into the larger LA community as of now – my life is on campus. But lacking the campus in Madrid gave me the opportunity to explore the city without a real home base, and as a result, I stumbled across beautiful displays of collaboration and community stemming from a place of desire to craft the city from a grassroots perspective.

I want to go out and explore LA for many reasons, but Madrid’s neighborhood collectives and its overall spread of “hidden gems” have given me one more important reason to explore. It also

makes me wonder which spaces in my life could be repurposed into something else. Where is the dead space, and how can I make it better?

The Negotiating Identities class in general has given me a lot to think about in terms of the roles of public and private space, diversity within groups of people, and overall accessibility to spaces and events. These neighborhood initiatives are a perfect example to show that beauty is born out of crisis. The power of the collective is strong and unique — and as long as there is a group of committed individuals with a shared goal, these initiatives will continue to pop up again and again.

Looking forward, I think I’ll return to LA with a heightened awareness of the urban environment and a coupled ambition to make the city my learning space and my playground.

Gracias por su atención!

Hasta la próxima, Nina

Nina Chikanov studied abroad in Madrid, Spain in fall 2017: http://eap.ucop.edu/OurPrograms/spain/Pages/contemporary_spain_madrid.aspx