“¡Sólo cinco grapas! ¡Sólo cinco!”

I’ve had my share of medical disasters in the past—sprained ankles, stitches, scoliosis, back spasms, et cetera. But my five-month stint in Spain promised to be a time of rest and good health. I’d be walking like crazy, eating the famous Mediterranean diet and getting plenty o’ sleep. Sure, I read over the Center for Disease Control’s travel tips about mosquitoes and vaccinations, and I memorized Spain’s 911 equivalent, 112, just in case. But I never expected to make a 112 call, especially not in my third week in the country.

Sorpresa, sorpresa. I did.

I’d settled into a comfortable routine—wake up, do errands/homework, eat comida, nap, do more homework/errands, go to class, eat dinner, mess around on Facebook, go to bed. I was in the final week of the mini-course and had just one last composición to write for Ángeles’ class. No problema, ¿eh? That Tuesday morning at 11ish, after doing some serious Facebook work, I went upstairs and fixed a cup of tea to help get me motivated to write. I carefully walked down the marble stairs with the teacup, as I’d done a hundred times before, but this time was different: My slippered foot slipped out from under me, my teacup went flying and I fell down the stairs, hitting my head on four or five stairs along the way.

I lay at the bottom of the staircase in shock for about five minutes before I could call out for Ana. I wasn’t too freaked out until I reached back to feel my head and my hand came back bloody. Ay. I lost it. Sobbing and on the brink of hyperventilating, I called and called for the señora who wasn’t home. Ana and Pepe had stepped out to do errands, and Callan had gone running. I was alone. Somehow, I had the presence of mind to get up, grab some TP from the bathroom and start applying pressure to my head wound, and grab my phone from the room. I didn’t know what else to do, so I called 112.

A couple of reminders: I don’t speak Spanish too well yet, I was really disoriented and scared, and my house has zero cell reception. Bad combination. The 112 operator could not hear me, except when I twisted into one of those awful good-God-my-limbs-are-not-supposed-to-go-like-this-but-it’s-the-only-way-I-can-get-a-signal positions. When she finally could hear me, she couldn’t understand my broken attempts at Spanish. It took her ten minutes to transfer me to the “English-speaking” operator. I’m not one to criticize people who are learning to speak a second, third or fourth language, but his English was not good. If it takes a 112 operator twenty minutes to understand that someone is bleeding profusely from the head, on Ximénez de Enciso (which I spelled for him 8 times, using both Spanish and English letter names), in Sevilla (no, NOT in one of the surrounding areas!), we have a problem. I was freaked out before, but now I was freaked out and very, very angry. I was about to implode by the time the man finally sent for an ambulance. Luckily, Pepe, Callan and Ana all got home soon after I got off the phone, and they helped me tranquilitarme until the ambulance people arrived.

Y’all, never take our health care system for granted. I understand that our current system needs major fixing in that it only provides care to people who can afford it (disproportionately, White upper- or middle-class men), but I appreciate how immediately one can receive emergency care services. This was especially clear to me when I compare my American emergency-room experiences with what went down a week ago. I arrived at the hospital at 11:45, but I didn’t end up leaving until 16:30 (4:30pm). Here’s how it works in Spanish hospitals: I got out of the ambulance and went into a little consultation room. A doctor asked what happened and I explained that I fell on the stairs, hitting my head and landing on my hip. They wheeled me over to a line of hospital beds and wheel chairs, where I waited for an hour. I explained my situation to a second doctor in a consultation room and waited in line for another hour. I got x-rays; sat in line, then reviewed my (clean) x-rays in the second consultation room; and waited in yet another line until they were ready to close my head up.

When I got into the treatment room, seven or eight doctors swarmed around me and pointed toward a stiff cot, their mumbled Spanish instructions buzzing in my ears. They had me lie face down so they could sting my gash with four or five strong disinfectants. You know how in the States the doctor will give you a local anesthetic before any kind of stitches, staples or local surgery? That doesn’t happen here. With very little warning (“Okay, here come the staples!”), the medicos closed my wound with what felt like an office stapler. One of the doctors brusquely tapped my calf as I whimpered in pain, but that’s about all the comfort I got. They seemed kind of annoyed at how uncomfortable I was. One doctor kept saying, “¡Sólo cinco grapas! ¡Sólo cinco!” (like, “Come on! It’s only five staples. Only five!”) From the way they were acting, I might guess that Spanish patients have a higher pain tolerance than Americans do, but after taking Spanish meds I really don’t think so. The drugs here are way stronger—each tablet of ibuprofeno is 600mg, three times stronger than American ibuprofen! Maybe I was just at a stingy hospital.

After waiting in one more line, the consultation doctor gave me the okay to go home. By that point, I was all kinds of out of it. Wayne and Cheryl, two of our program directors, had met Callan and me at the hospital shortly after we arrived, and they made sure I got back to the house safe and sound por taxi  (Callan left at 3ish to finish her composition for Ángeles). I got home, ate my comida at 16:45 and pulled a Rip Van Winkle until dinner time. I don’t think I’ve ever loved my bed so much!

Almost two weeks later, I’m just fine; I got my staples out Wednesday, no problem, and my bruised hip healed up nicely. It’s kind of hard for me to believe that the whole thing actually happened ‘cause it was so surreal, but every once in a while people in my program will ask me how my head’s doing or whatever. I’m just relieved that my study-abroad insurance covered the whole thing and that when someone in the program had to go to the hospital it was for something relatively minor. Plus, now I’ve got an insider’s perspective on how Spanish health care works….

España actual: Curso breve y visitas en el sur

¡Dios mío! I've been pretty busy since I got here three weeks ago--apologies for keeping y'all in the dark, but you'll understand why in a minute. This Friday, we finished up our three-week-long, intensive course on Contemporary Spanish Society with a lovely two-part examen. After weeks of relaxing and getting to know the city and each other, (almost all of) my program-mates and I were not prepared for the inevitable cram session that took place Thursday night/Friday morning. At this point, I'm crossing my fingers that my frantic scrawls are at least of passing-grade quality. A ver, but until then I'm trying not to think about it!

SEVI 410 was split into two 75-minute halves: Each "afternoon" from 5:30 to 8:15pm, Grupo A and Grupo B took turns attending Ángeles' half, which focused on language and culture, and Rafael Cid's half, which was pretty heavily historical and fact-based. The course was, indeed, intensive in that for each class we were expected to write one or two composiciones, read about 8-10 pages of Spanish lecturas, and discuss topics about Spanish culture with our señoras so we could report back to the class on what they said. Fortunately, since class took place en la tarde we had all morning to complete our assignments. The class was pretty interesting most of the time, especially Ángeles' cultural lessons (El Cid's part could get a little dry, but he's too personable for me to hold it against him), but I am relieved it's over. The constant reading and writing was pretty monotonous. Plus, it kind of interfered with my social time....

One nice part of the curso breve was the series of visitas we took. Over the past three weeks, our class went to see the Reales Alcázares in Sevilla (about five minutes from my house), the mezquita-turned-catedral in Córdoba, the ruins of Itálica, the famous Catedral de Sevilla and the Giralda. We have one last visit later this month, to Granada, so I'll update y'all after that goes down.

The Reales Alcázares is the romantic getaway a former king built for himself and his mistress, as well as the last-stop preparation zone for voyages to the New World. This was the one visit where I forgot to bring my camera, so I only have my memories to share with you! The actual house/palace/whatever was pretty, built by Christians in the style of Muslim mosques and palaces, but it was freezing in there. Like other buildings in Sevilla, the RA was built to retain coolness. El Cid explained that people would just wear a ton of clothes and layer on the curtains and blankets (kind of like I do in my house...), but I'm not sure how effective that'd be at keeping people warm in the long-term. The exploration/imperialism area of the palace was interesting to look at, but I feel like I've seen a good number of replicas of la Niña, la Pinta and  la Santa María in my lifetime, so it was kind of old news. The gardens were probably my favorite part of the visita--there was such a huge variety of flowers and other plants, a ton of ducks (and their gifts to visitors) and some fountains that quietly gurgled to themselves. It was a little warmer outside, which I'm sure swayed my opinion, but overall the first visita was pleasant.

After our visit to Córdoba, some people in my program are calling it "COLDoba." We were a little chilly in the RA, but we were certified icicles after our second visita. It was cool (haha, pun unintended) to see the mix of architectural styles in the mosque-turned-cathedral-turned-mosque-turned cathedral--each time the building was transformed, the conquerors added a new addition. After the mezquita/catedral/whatever it ended up being, we walked por the famous Calle de Flores and stopped in at the town's temple. It was a very historical, cultural trip, but I was so ready to get out of the cold by the time 15:00 rolled around.

I can sum up our visita to Itálica in four words: rocks and cypress trees. We walked around the ruins of the Roman-esque city for about two hours, admiring the second-century floor mosaics and crumbling columns as the morning sun tickled the treetops. I got some pretty nice fotos of headless statues and faded tile, but I took so many that I ran out of film just as we reached the coliseum, the coolest part of the visit. According to el Cid, Itálica’s citizens would punish their prisoners of war by forcing them to battle lions and bulls after a scant half-hour lesson on how to use a sword (some historians believe modern bullfights could have evolved from this custom). If the men died, they died, but if they survived they entered into a five-year gladiator training program, after which they could go free. It was pretty neat to see the underbelly of the coliseum, complete with lion’s den, and walk around the floor of the arena. I had a nerd moment when I stepped into the ring: I could hear the roar of thousands of spectators, jeering giddily at the chance to watch a lion tear me to pieces. There was an area in the middle of the arena where the floor gave way to a stone pit, I guess where the animal-versus-human battles would take place. (The only battle waged there now is the one between the nubby stone and the rich green moss slowly overwhelming it.) I’m glad so many of my program-mates were able to capture the coliseum on (digital?) film—it really was the best part of the city’s skeleton.

Our last visita during the curso breve was to the Catedral de Sevilla and then to the adjacent Giralda. The cathedral was beautiful inside and out but, as always, my favorite part of the visita was the last, a.k.a. the part where I have very few exposures left. (I really need to budget my photo-taking more carefully!) As was their custom, when 14^th-century católicos stole Sevilla from the ruling musulmanes, they tore down the 8^th-century mezquita so they could build la Catedral on the same site. However, the catholic conquerors were so impressed with la Giralda, the Muslim tower that has come to be the symbol of Sevilla, that they couldn’t bring themselves to raze it. Instead, they stuck some bells on top and pretended it was a bell tower. I totally get why they were so amazed—the lighthouse-sized tower provides visitors with incredible views of the whole city, the Guadalquivir (“big river”; Arabic for “rio grande”) glistening along the southern horizon. One can get to the top of la Giralda by climbing thirty-five steep ramps, which were built in place of stairs so that a man could make the ascent on horseback (?). The only downside to the no-stairs thing was that it made it easier for a class of obnoxious schoolchildren to play tag and sprint through the tower’s narrow corridor as their chaperones ignored them.

It's been cool to see all these old cultural and historical landmarks in Southern Spain, but I kind of wish the visits had been more spread out. I feel like I've developed visita apathy--as beautiful and intricate as the architecture and grounds of these places have been, I've seen so many in such a short time that it's getting hard to appreciate each in its own right as I should be. I'm glad we have a break before the two-day visita a Granada!