First day at School!

Pues, hoy fue el primer día de colegio, (pero no clases).

Well, today was the first day of school (but no classes).

The whole day was an orientation day with 2 tests at the end. One test was to see how our Spanish is (i.e. should we go into AP Spanish, AP Spanish literature or DELE—I expect to be in AP Spanish—it is the lowest level offered here, but is the highest at most American schools) and to see what math we should go into. I’ve learned that when I can’t follow what the teacher is saying our if it just becomes to tiring, it is extremely easy to daydream for quite a while before realizing that you’ve missed the last five minutes of instructions on what to do should you becom ill. Throughout the day there were moments when I would look around and realize that this would be my life for the next nine months. I would wind up sitting there with a stupid grin as the teacher talked about which areas of the city to avoid at night.

My favorite part is about an hour into the day there is a 45 minute break to get coffee or a snack from a nearby bar (I had a café con leche and a chocolate croissant—the croissants are so much better here, even in the airports). For lunch (one hour) we went to a local high school (today there weren’t local students because they don’t start until next week) where the food es muy mal (bad, but I guess it’s really just your standard high school cafeteria food  standard all over the world). After the first few days I think I will pay a bit more and buy lunch somewhere else unos días de la semana (a few days a week). The people I’ve talked to are interesting—the flight from Boston was an icebreaker—many of us had already talked to each other a bit. After school many of us broke into groups and walked around. (My group attempted to buy cell phones, but learned that we need our passports.)

After talking to one of the girls, I recognized just how lucky I am to have the host mother that I do, and I could just as easily ended up in a very difficult and demanding family. I met my host sister Clara today! (She hasn’t been at home this past weekend, which happened to be her birthday.) Ella tiene 7 años, and she starts school tomorrow. So far she’s pretty cute, but I only met her an hour ago! 

photos from the first days

en el auto bus de madrid a Zaragoza ( 3.5 horas)

boston a paris

mi cuarto

el soap story (una de las tiendas de Ana)

chairo!!

el catedral de pilar

la vista de mi casa

el rio

un mercado muy famoso

joaquin y anna

yo y Ana

el catedral

well, i'm in spain now!!!

Spain, September 5, 2009 (first full day)

It’s 12:45 AM and I just got home from an amazing day with my host mother, Ana and her boyfriend Joaquin. I honestly couldn’t have added a thing to make it more perfect. I slept until 1 (it felt so good to sleep in a bed after 2 days of traveling and napping on planes and busses) then went to the mall with Ana to see the two shops she owns and to eat lunch. (And to buy underwear because the airport lost my suitcase. One of my bags—the small duffel—made it through though, so I have a year’s worth of T-shirts, all my hygiene stuff (YAY!), sports/exercise clothes, scarves and my voltage converter, as well as one extra pair of pants that I only packed so I could say that I didn’t only bring jeans. Though I don’t have most of my clothes, I think it would be much more difficult if the small bag had been lost….thanks, mom, for making me pack 2 bags!) Lunch was a little bizarre (pureed fish in a weird pepper thing and REALLY good lamb) but tasty, as well as huge. We came home and I learned that she has wifi (pronounced weefee in Spanish) which fairly uncommon here. Her boyfriend picked us up at 8 (which is pretty early here) and drove us around in his convertible so I could see Zaragoza. We walked though the biggest plaza in Spain and through the Catedral de Pilar (es muy famoso). We then walked around for a long time (we saw about ten people in wedding dresses and tuxes—apparently the area is super popular right after wedding ceremonies, as well as 2 groups of women in which all were dressed as devils and one was dressed as a nun---a typical bachelorette party) before stopping in a bar for tapas (here, a bar is where you go if you want tapas). We got a plate of 6 tapas for the three of us (each tapa is about 3-4 inches long/in diameter). I knew that dinner (la cena) is small here, but not that small…though very good, it was not very much food. We walked back towards the car (as I planned how I would eat when we got back home) then stepped into a very small street towards an incredibly cramped bar for more tapas. I tried foi gras for the first time (Ana hates it, Joaquin loves it). As I was deciding if the taste was good enough for me to get over the fact that it felt like I was eating butter, they both told me that if I didn’t like it, no problem, just give it to Joaquin. I took another bite then passed it on and tried a ham one and a cheese one, both of which were muy delicioso. We walked on (I was feeling much more satisfied with the meal and could go back to enjoying the amazing city around me) and entered another bar were we had a post cena coffee. I ordered a café con leche (basically a latte) and received odd looks from Ana, Joaquin and the bar tender. Apparently that is only for the mornings. After meals you have the Spanish specialty, café contado, which is an espresso-sized coffee with a drop of milk. It’s bitter, but very good. As we continued to walk back towards the car I was thinking about the perfectness of the meal and the night as a whole…then we walked into a chocolate café. First there was the bar with different truffles on display—good…we went past that and sat at a table and opened a menu of chocolate desserts—heaven. I had a quartet of chocolate (somewhere between fondues, drinks and sauces), one white, one chilled like very rich chocolate milk, one acidic Spanish specialty, and one astounding, thick dark chocolate. Then we walked back to the car (for real this time).

Though I still need to meet my host sister, I think being to only kid around has made it easier to get to know Ana and Joaquin They’re both really nice, and I roughly understand about 85% of what they say but only because she speaks really slowly for me and if I REALLY don’t understand something then he tries to explain it in English.

That’s all for now…I start school the day after tomorrow!