Evan Unger '09

Dear Readers,

Hi, my name is Evan Unger and I will be spending the spring semester in Granada, Spain. Let me tell you all about myself. I am a junior management major with potentially a minor in Spanish and a minor in economics. I am from Allendale, N.J., which is located 40 minutes from New York City. I live with parents, my brother and sister, and my dog, who I will all miss. I like Pina Coladas and getting caught in the rain. Just kidding.

**Updated with Photos**

Hola,

My fellow Bucknellians and I finally arrived in Spain after leaving Saturday, Jan. 5, at about 8 p.m. The plane ride was uneventful and I mean that in a good way. I do not particularly enjoy flying, as I believe that nothing without feathers and a beak should be doing 500 mph at 30,000 feet, so an uneventful flight is a blessing. We landed in Madrid at about 9 a.m. Once we got off the plane, the plan was to find Professor Delgado and take a bus to Granada.

Hey everyone. Well, I just completed my first week of living in Spain. I'm still here. That's a good sign.

Que tal?

Well another week has come to pass here in Granada. Time flies when you are napping half of the day. I have begun to settle into my new life here in Spain and have become used to dodging cars and mopeds on the sidewalks and overhearing Spanish conversations as I walk through the streets. As an extranjero (foreigner), I continually make observations about the Spanish culture from an American point of view. First, I would like the declare Granada the city of old men and small dogs; both are bountiful in the streets of Granada.

Hola todo el mundo.

Another week in Spain has come to pass and I have been quite busy. The first three weeks here consisted of an intensive language course that is meant to kick up our Spanish a level or so. It was one of the better Spanish classes I've probably ever taken. First, my professor was Spanish (I think that may be a first) and second, we were able to ask almost anything we wanted about Spanish culture. One day, we spent over an hour discussing palabras feas (or bad words).

It has been awhile since I last posted and much has happened. The Bucknell program took us throughout Spain after our intensive language class had ended. We toured Segovia, Salamanca, Madrid and Toledo, while eating and sleeping on Bucknell's credit card. This is a very long entry, about 1,319 words of my entertaining prose so I will be thrilled if you at least look at the pictures. We hopped on a bus early on a Thursday morning, with our homemade bocadillos (sandwiches) in hand and we were off to Segovia.

So I am still a bit behind in my blog, but I'll bring you all up to speed. On Saturday, Feb. 9, (that sounds so formal, but I cannot figure out a good way to say "not this weekend, but last" for the life of me), Trina, Sofia, Vicki and I went to Cadiz for Carnival. Now, Carnival is not what a carnival is like in the United States. Even though there were cotton candy stands and clowns involved, Carnival in Cadiz has nothing to do with an amusement park. In Bucknellian terms, it was almost like House Party weekend and Halloween at the same time, with less Public Safety officers.

Some weeks it feels like I will not have enough content to write an entry and then I realize how much I like to talk. If you ask my parents, I am quite good at talking on end. (Once, when I was about two or three years old, I talked the entire 140-mile trip from Allendale, N.J., to Mystic, Conn. I guess I was too cute or to far away in the back seat for my parents to quiet me down).

I also hope that some readers of this blog are planning to study abroad and that they can learn from my experiences and my mistakes (when, and if I make one). And for those that are not, I hope you learn some things that you would not normally find in a guide book.

Anyway, back to Spain.

Last weekend, members of Bucknell en Espana had a four-day weekend. Emily, Vicki and I choose to spend our weekend in Brussels, Belgium. Even though we happen to be living in Europe, travel to other countries is not as easy as we had imagined. It took us about 14 hours to travel from Granada to Brussels, which is about the same time it took us get from New Jersey to Granada in January.

Hello everyone,

It's been forever since I have updated and I apologize for the huge gap. I have a lot to tell you all about my travels. March was a crazy month and I was in Granada for only half of one weekend. March began in Brussels and ended in Barcelona. I will put this month into three separate entries to make it easier to read. First, I will write about Sevilla and Barcelona, the Spanish legs of my journeys. My third post will be about my week-long Spring Break to Rome, Vienna, and Frankfurt with my one of my closet Bucknell friends, Bryce.

Flash forward to March 28. Kay, Emily, Vicki, Farzeen and I flew out of Granada early Friday morning to Barcelona to meet up with some Bucknellians who are studying outside of London for House Party weekend. Barcelona is in northern Spain. The people here speak another language besides Spanish, Catalan, that seems to be a combination of French and Spanish. Fortunately, we did not have any problems communicating since everyone we encountered spoke Castilian Spanish. (Please read my previous and new entry on Sevilla, too!)

Before I left for Spain, I decided that I wanted to go to Morocco at some point during my time abroad. This past weekend, Robert, Adam, Emily and I traveled to Africa to see Fes. Tangier, a port city of Morocco, is only a few hours or minutes by ferry (depending on the ferry) from Spain. On Thursday, we took a bus to Algericas and began our adventure.

I've been living in Europe now for more than 16 weeks, which to me is mind-boggling. I feel that after 16 weeks I have gotten a good glimpse into the European lifestyle. Look's take a look of what I love, hate, and flat out find interesting here in Spain. All of these are my personal observations from what I have experienced in Europe and I may be stereotyping or even offending a few people or an entire nation. I apologize but when I leave Europe these are the impressions that I will take with me, even if they are incorrect.