From place to place…
It has been exactly 1 week since I’ve arrived in Spain. For 3 nights and 4 days, I stayed at a hotel called Hotel Selu. It was a very small but cute place located in a very small alley. On Monday, September 6, my fellow students and I sat in the hotel conference room as we all eagerly waiting for our host parents to pick us up. We didn’t know what to expect and we were really nervous. Thankfully, my host mom named Nicole is great! I have a roommate/sister from the program named Amrita and she goes to UC Irvine. I also have a host sister named Elodie who is 18 years old. Before the program started, one of the requirements to apply for this program was to fill out a housing questionnaire form where we write what kind of hosts we want - single parent, family, etc, food we eat, food we don’t eat, etc. I requested a family with young and older kids, pets, and my food restrictions. Not all of these are guaranteed to be granted. However, I am really blessed to have the family that I have. Although my “sisters” aren’t super young as I hoped, Elodie is such an awesome sister and person. I also have 2 cats named Kiwi and Friki (pronounced “Freaky”, haha!).
I live in the more modern, newer area of town, which looks really nice…BUT is the farthest from school. It takes me about 15 minutes to walk to the bus stop, so it takes me about 32 minutes to get to school.
I had my first day of class yesterday, Thursday, September 9. I placed into Spanish 3, History, and International Studies. I have class M-Th 9:30-13:00, MTu 17:15-19:15, F 10:00-12:00.
I was SUPER excited for the first day of school! I was so drained after class, I’ve realized, it’s REALLY exhausting listening and speaking in Spanish. I like my classes but my language class is 2 hours long! There is also this girl who has a lot of confidence speaking in Spanish (which is reallly good!), but she isn’t necessarily good at it…The only thing that really bugs me is that she thinks so highly of herself and does not know when to stop talking. She literally talked during the whole 2 hours and at one point, our teacher had to stop her. I really need patience and need to practice patience. This is something I’ve been struggling with for a while now, and it’s been very hard.
On the other hand, I really enjoyed my history class, although I do not like history. The teacher is REALLY nice and really encouraging. Yay for me, I have him two classes! :)
After school, I took a siesta (nap; a Spanish custom to take naps) and at night, once again, we all met at Plaza de Tendillas. A few of us, girls, ordered Tinto Veranos and just chilled. Later, a few of us went to the mercado, and they bought wine and beer and we went to park to hangout and drink. We made up our own spanish game, “Jugamos Zoo, ‘uno, dos, jugamos zoo’”. It was hilarious! There were a lot of young people sitting on these HUGE stairs, hanging out and drinking, so we decided to join them, but sat in our own little spot…when suddenly, one of the kids yelled, “CORRE!!!! POLICIA!!”.. Which means, RUN! So all the kids dispersed and ran… it was HILARIOUS. I couldn’t stop laughing… I’m in Spain, part of a immersion program, and surely, I felt “immerged” into the culture when all the young locals ran.
And this was us.
Make it a great day or not, the choice is yours!
-e
“If we get in trouble, tell them we’re Americans and don’t speak Spanish”
