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A Year Abroad: Notes from San Sebastián Sandra Ott, Director, University Studies in the Basque Country Consortium In its first year-long program on the San Sebastián campus of the University of the Basque Country, the Consortium aimed to provide students with a range of experiences from which both personal and academic enrichment could be derived; for the education they received this year derived not simply from the classroom – though we did make every effort to maintain high academic standards in that sphere. As students quickly found out for themselves, there was much to be learned in the narrow, noisy streets of the Old Part of town; in the crowded bars where, twice daily, cuadrillas of Basque men gather to drink small glasses of wine and in the cafés where their womenfolk often take hot chocolate and pastries; in the shops and markets where smartly dressed city people mingle with those from the baserriak, the farmsteads of the rural countryside; and, among so many other places, in the homes of friends in a city that is at once beautiful, bilingual, and big enough to contain happily a group of young Americans in search of knowledge about a country, a people, their languages and a culture distinctively different from all others. In this academic year, 29 students participated in program and came to us from 17 different colleges and universities in the United States. The majority of students were of Basque descent; and 21 of them had relatives living in more than 36 different towns in Euskalerria. Fourteen of the students had at least one Basque parent; and an additional seven had Basque grandparents or great-grandparents. Only eight students did not have any known Basque kin, though many had Basque friends in America through whom they became interested in the Basque Country and its people. For all our students, the program provided a unique opportunity to learn about the cultural heritage of the Basques. For most students a primary aim was to learn how to speak fluently Basque or Spanish or both – an aim not easily fulfilled but which was successfully achieved by virtually everyone. Some students who initially focused their energies solely on Euskera soon found that some knowledge of Spanish is also essential, and so in the second semester worked hard on what they liked to call “survival Spanish.” In this first year, we had only a handful of students who studied only Spanish, but by the end of the year they were known to put to good use their own brand of “survival Basque,” and came to terms well with the realities of a bilingual academic program in a bilingual country. During the second semester I was often impressed with the progress our students of both Euskera and Spanish made, and I wondered if they knew just how far they had come, not simply with their fluency in one or two languages, but also in terms of their whole experience here. When they arrived in Madrid last August – feeling both exhausted and excited – students had little idea what to expect from the months ahead of them. At once, things seemed strange: the food, the hours of day and night at which meals were eaten, the language(s) they heard all around them, the way people lay claim to their own personal space by pushing and shoving on busses and in the streets, and a whole host of other seemingly odd habits. That initial sensation of all things being foreign began to dissipate after the students had been in the Basque fishing village of Fuenterrabía (Hondarribia in Basque) for a few weeks. Owing to the intensive work they did there in either Basque or Spanish, students started to realize how good they were at starting conversations with locals in town, even if they sometimes hadn’t a clue what a loquacious shopkeeper or bartender had to say in return. Those were days of hard work (five hours daily of language class five days a week) and lots of sunshine, a temptation which led many to the beach after class. During that month in Fuenterrabia, students were also able to get their bearings in Euskalerria by traveling to different parts of the country – north and south – on Consortium excursions. In early October we all moved the short distance into San Sebastián (Donostia) to become acquainted with a much larger Basque town, with new surroundings both as a university group and as individuals who were to live in different parts of the city, some with local families, others in apartments. As all those who lived in the apartment will well recall, 8 Pescadería in the Old Part was for a long time the Mecca of the American students, the gathering point for friends in the program in the students’ favorite part of town (except during Carnival, when no one sleeps and everyone seems to be on the street). During that first semester, students learned that having a year abroad means having to step into the shoes of another way of life and walk around in them; at times it entails making decisions on one’s own and coming to terms with a certain amount of independence and responsibility. During the first semester the Basque and Spanish languages formed the core of students’ curricula and were complimented by courses in the history of the Basque Country, the anthropology of southern Europe, Iberia and its culture, and Spanish Literature. Two students, Julia Stevens and Alan Mathson, joined the orchestra of the Music Conservatory of San Sebastián and took private lessons from staff there. Another, Janice Mainvil, joined the local women’s basketball team, with which she traveled extensively in Spain during the academic year. In the field of sports we also had two students, Ramon Aberasturi and Mike Shalz, playing rugby, the former for Hernani, the latter for San Sebastián. As a member of the Hernani team, Ramon participated in the national rugby championship. During his stay in the Basque Country, Ramon also learned how to stone-lift, a popular rural Basque sport. During the Christmas vacation we said goodbye to those who had registered for only the first semester, and the group dispersed to different parts of Europe, mainly by train and bus to see as much of Europe as possible before classes resumed in late January. In the second semester we were a much smaller group but also a more independent one in many important respects. In that term a number of courses allowed students to utilize their knowledge of Spanish and/or Basque in a variety of contexts. By far the most popular course, I think, was Basque Cooking and Cuisine, headed by my friend Pedro Sancristobal, Director of Culture for the Diputación of Alava. The class was held every Friday evening in the Cofradía Vasca de Gastronomía – a local gastronomic society of the sort so typical of Spanish Basque social life. Our first instructor of the semester was Juan Mari Arzak, a local Basque whose restaurant Arzak is, in my view, the best in San Sebastián and who was named best chef of all Spain in 1984. Owing to the fame of our guest teacher and in order to launch the cooking course, Basque Television filmed the class and interviewed many of our students. From then on students learned each week how to prepare a three-course dinner from a different part of Euskalerria, and each week students could, if they wished, stay to eat in the Cofradía what they had been shown how to prepare. The dinners in the Cofradía were always fun – if not a little fattening – and we often made our way afterwards to the streets of the Old Part for a beer and a dance. Not all our cooking classes were, however, confined to the Cofradía and the Old Part. One week we went to the nearby town of Usurbil to a sidrería, where we sampled the local cider and ate the traditional fare of such Basque establishments: tortilla de bacalao, steak, nuts and figs. Later in the semester we went to Tolosa to see the “Museum of Desserts,” a fascinating collection of Basque material culture concerning pastry-making from as early as the 17th century. The “Museum” belongs to Jose Mari Gorrotxetegi, who is himself a rather famous pastry and candy-maker in Guipúzcoa. With the collaboration of the San Sebastián Cofradía and the Diputación of Alava, we were also fortunate to have an excursion to Vitoria to see the Basque Parliament and a bodega in the Rioja, the famous wine region of the Basque Country. For our last cooking class of the year, the Cofradía asked two students, Ramon Aberasturi and Cam Drake, to prepare a dish of their choice for the class on Basque Television. As was the case with our cooking class, there were a number of opportunities during the second semester for students to utilize their Basque and Spanish. A native Basque-speaker (who knew no English) ran our Basque conversation class, and under the direction of Alan King, our Basque instructor, students were able to do projects in Basque villages, as well as in San Sebastián itself. In my own anthropological research class, students did fieldwork on a project of their choice and which required them to use their linguistic skills as much as their anthropological ones. The research class was particularly valuable, I think, for Marguerite Camino, who made a study of the village – Arneguy – from which both her parents originated. She and her sister Kate learned a lot from their numerous visits to Arneguy where they stayed in the farmhouse of their father’s family. A similar kind of fieldwork was done by Marcelino Ugalde who was able to stay with a number of different Basque families in different parts of the Basque Country; his main work was conducted on a baserri in the lovely mountainous village of Alquiza with four shepherds. The farmhouse has no road leading up to it, no bathroom, and no modern conveniences, and when I left Marcelino there the first weekend, he cheerfully remarked that the farmhouse would be just like living in a bunkhouse of the sort he has known in the American West – a bit rustic with good male camaraderie and lots of hard work with the sheep. On one occasion, I took some other students out to see our Alquiza shepherd friends so that they could watch the cheese-maker of the house, Jose Mari, practicing his craft. His battered radio blared from the kitchen table, and as he gradually built his cheese with arms thrust deep into a large vat of steaming ewes’ milk, Jose Mari explained his art. With only one small window, the kitchen was cast in shadow, a little smoky, and smelled of sheep and cheese. With the cheese-making finished, the shepherds took the students round their barn, which made at least one student from a sheep raising family a little homesick. And then the cheese-maker insisted on our staying for lunch. He had bought some lovely thick steaks in Tolosa the day before (he had made the journey there and back on foot) and had made for us his own special pudding with sheep’s milk and cinnamon. After lunch the girls danced for him in his small, dimly lit kitchen and when we left, Jose Mari stood in the doorway of his enormous, dilapidated baserri, smiling. In that second semester we also had a course in Basque political institutions and were fortunate to have as our instructor a member of staff in the Basque University, Iñaki Aguirre. As the son of the late and ex-president of the Basque government, José Antonio Aguirre, Iñaki was able to give the course a special dimension. In both semesters Jon Bilbao taught our courses in Basque History. His great knowledge of his subject and his rather endearing ways (Professor Bilbao is an old friend) were much appreciated by students. In the field of Spanish studies we had three instructors who proved to be very popular among students – Felix Menchacatorre, Patricia O’Connor, and Jasone Cenoz. Together they taught courses in three different levels of Spanish language and conversation. In addition, Felix took charge of courses in Spanish literature and 20th century theatre. During the year the Spanish classes took a variety of mini-excursions – to the Ayuntamiento of San Sebastián, to the offices of the main daily newspaper, to a sidrería, to the old and picturesque fishing village in Pasajes San Juan, and to restaurants on congenial outings. During the second semester students continued their lessons with the Basque folk dancers from Argia, and one of the dancers took up private lessons in txistu from a teacher at the Music Conservatory. Several students became involved in local cuadrillas, groups of friends of roughly the same age who meet regularly to socialize. The second semester brought our people a new confidence in themselves, not only as speakers of Basque and Spanish, but also as guest members of a culture and society which, by May, no longer seemed impossibly alien. Those nine months, from late August until late May, taught us all many things. We certainly were not without our problems, both as individuals and as a group, but with the help of staff, local families like the Vaquerizas (whose own daughter and Toni Ansotegui swapped places as an inter-family exchange), students’ relatives, and the many other local friendships formed during the year, our students left San Sebastián not simply with an important academic experience, with a knowledge of new places, people and ways of life, they also took with them, I think, a deeper understanding of themselves, of the country and culture to which they themselves belong. |
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