War perspective from Spain

The first few weeks here in Spain were overwhelming, trying to get used to a new culture, food drowning in olive oil, new family to live with, a new language to master and a new big city with metros.

We spent days and nights in museums, stores, cafes, restaurants and discotheques but adapted rather fast and soon began to think that this was our city. It seemed as though we were not in another country.

But then the conflicts in Iraq worsened, and the United States became not so favorable with the Spaniards, especially since their President supports the war and 90 percent of the population doesn’t.

Instead of Spaniards seeing us as the desirable exotic foreigners, we were now those “war-crazy Americans.”

People have cornered us in bars, saying that all Americans hate Arabs and Americans are only interested in money and oil. Then we tell them that America is not like that at all.

Parents have encouraged us to lie about where we are from and to not discuss anything about war.

And all of the sudden we are caught somewhere in the middle of being Americans and being Spaniards.

It is the craziest feeling. After Sept. 11, we all feel a strong sense of American pride, and should not feel ashamed to tell people where we are from. But we have been told not to say we are American, but Canadian.

Pretty ironic, the one time you want to say that you are from Canada! But they can still tell so we get stared at.

We no longer go to the Hard Rock Café, McDonalds or anything that symbolizes our culture in order to be safe. Windows have been smashed during protests in those places with words written in graffiti saying “boycott” while American flags are burned in the background. And we have just gotten used to it.

We are surrounded by “No a La Guerra” signs, buttons, flyers, protests and other propaganda, and the U.S. Embassy down the street now has large military tanks guarding it.

We use what vocabulary we know to speak Spanish in public and try not to travel in large groups.

Our little bubbles that we had at SMU no longer exist, and now we all care about what is going on in the world.

We stay in closer contact with our parents and go to Internet cafes whenever we can to get caught up on the news, since our houses lack CNN.

And all the while, we are supposed to be having the “abroad experience” that we will look upon when we are 60 years old and think, “Wow, did that change me.”

Despite the warnings, we all take advantage of our short time here because this is our chance to have the abroad experience.