Tuesday, November 27, 2012
El Cambio
El Cambio. The change. "Cambiar", or "to change" is one of the first verbs I remember learning when I first arrived in Spain, nearly 3 months ago.
I've been avoiding writing this blog post for a week or two now. The fact is, tomorrow I will be leaving my current host family - where I will be living, I still don't know. I do not want anyone to get the idea that my host family and I do not get along or were having problems, because honestly we are a pretty perfect match. They were even planning on hosting me the entire year, rather than just half (which they put on the application because they had very understandable concerns about how difficult it could be to have a host student). The problem is that my host grandmother - my mother's mother - will be undergoing brain surgery next week, and my mother will need to live with her for awhile to care for her. This, along with the general stress this puts on my family, is why I am changing.
I am sad that I will be changing families, because as stated above, I could not have been placed with a better family for the person I am, and they are just honestly some of the sweetest and most understanding people I know. It's also sad that there is a possibility that I will need to change schools, because I really enjoy my school and my classes and have made a lot of really great friends. I want to be able to tell you all that I could be placed with a host family here in Alcorcon or close by, but I honestly have no idea what is going on right now. All I know is that I am somehow going to be able to finish the trimester at my current school - this I have been promised.
As those exchange students who have had to change families know, it is not a prospect one can look forward to with ease. Upon arriving in your host country, your host family becomes the first place that you begin to feel secure in, a little area of sanctity in an otherwise unknown universe. The idea of having to "start all over" in sense is very difficult to come to terms with.
But here is what I'm trying to say in a nutshell: change is hard. You don't always expect it. Often, you can't do anything about it.
Yet at the same time you have to try and remain positive. I have been looking back on all the amazing changes that have happened since I've arrived in Spain: I now am pretty much conversational in Spanish. I have had my eyes opened on what it means to be fully responsible for yourself. I have turned 16. Made friends. Stepped outside my comfort zone.
With changing families I will have the opportunity to meet many more people and become part of their lives as well, and this I do look forward to. I have fear, yes, but also hope and excitement because I refuse to let this make my exchange experience any less. Change is inevitable; sometimes it is big and all encompassing, and sometimes it is small and slow. But how we react to changes is what determines whether they are for the better or worse.
(This post is a little heavy. Expect a more light-hearted update about birthday and thanksgiving and school soon.)
Monday, November 12, 2012
10 weeks (aka: I couldn't think of a more exciting title)
Well, as the title of this post states, it's pretty much been 10 weeks since I left Flagstaff. 2 and a half months. I'm not really sure what to think about that amount of time.
I apologize for not updating more often. Last week I really got hit hard with homework, and I'm finally starting to get invited to do things with friends more, and a whole bunch of other stuff that I'll talk about in this post. Honestly, the reason I'm writing this right now is because I don't want to do filosofia homework...I'll put headings every few paragraphs so y'all can just read the parts you're interested in.
Halloween
I guess I'll start with Halloween. Halloween was a lot of fun for me, because it was pretty popular at my school. Not many adults really care about it, and I guess not a lot of kids, but some of the young ones will go "truko o trato" (trick or treating) throughout the apartment building. But because my friends (and class in general) is awesome, quite a few kids (yes, including me) dressed up for school. That night, my friend Paula (who lives in the same building as me) invited me to go to her house and watch scary movies and eat snacks with her and some of her family and friends. That ended up being a lot of fun and I didn't go home until midnight (although that's considered a pretty respectable time to go home here).
The next two days we didn't have school because Thursday was All Saints Day and Friday was "la puenta". I'm not exactly sure how to explain this, as it's kind of just how Spanish logic works...but basically if there's a holiday on a Thursday with no school then there isn't school Friday because it's "bridging" (puenta means bridge) the gap between Thursday and Friday.
Friends
Anyways, that Friday some of my friends were throwing a surprise birthday party for our friend Amanda, so we all went to a Creperie and ate crepes and shakes and talked for a few hours. Just so you know, the stereotype that los espanoles are loud is very, very true. Sometimes I get confused for a second before I realize that, just because they're yelling, it doesn't mean they're angry. But back on the subject of Friday, after the creperie we went to meet with some other friends and another girl who I hang out with sometimes at school, Elena, was with them and I ended up hanging out with her and these new friends for a few more hours. I'm really happy that, when I first meet people, they don't realize I'm not Spanish, and when they find out I'm foreign they don't assume I'm from the U.S. at all.
Orientation
Three weeks ago? was the first orientation we had just with the AFSers in our area (Week 6 Orientation or something like that). It was...fun. Yes, mostly fun. What I enjoyed most was watching all of us speak in (albeit broken) Spanish, and be able to understand it (mostly). We've all come so far since arrival!
And to any Madrid Kids reading this...let me see your f*cking chicken :b (I have a feeling we'll never forget this).
School
I really like school for the most part, and I fully understand about 85% of it, and have some vague idea of what's going on for about 10% of the time. The other 5% is spent sleeping... Like I said earlier, in the past two weeks I've been getting a lot more homework. I don't mind too much, as it gives me something to do and is really helping my Spanish. Last week I had an English Test (easy peasy) and a report on Mars due. The way they do reports and projects here is a lot different, for one thing you don't type it all out. You hand-write it all on blank paper. For this reason they generally need to be longer, 4-6 pages. You have to take the projects and exams very seriously because they pretty much determine your grade - for example, my entire 1st trimester Ciencias grade is based on that Mars project (30%) and an upcoming test on everything we've learned so far (70%). So when I say homework, it's more like studying or reading or working on projects because teachers don't actually grade homework and the reason you do it is so you know what's going to be on the test. Kids here have to be a lot more responsible for their grade.
Gym
Starting last month, I joined a gym that's close to our apartment and owned by a friend of my parents. I usually go four or five times a week: 2x a week to kickboxing, 2x a week yoga, and then various other things like strength training (I lift weights...) and sometimes I use the elliptical or treadmill if it's been raining or I didn't have time to run. Speaking of running, I'm now about 120 miles away from having run 1,000 miles this year! Woo. I'm really enjoying my runs here.
That's all I'm going to say in this post, again, I'll try and update more often so they aren't so long and random. And if I'm making grammatical errors and spelling mistakes, that just proves how much Spanish I have in my brain...I can't tell you how many times while writing this I wanted to substitute in Spanish words, or couldn't figure out how to spell something (English spelling is so tricky, gah.) I hope everyone is doing well - yay U.S. for electing Obama! Also, good luck to my amazing sister and all my friends who are doing NaNoWriMo, I really wish I could do it again this year!
Annnd...November's already almost half-over. Que loco. Have a Happy Thanksgiving! (Although I hope to update before then).
I apologize for not updating more often. Last week I really got hit hard with homework, and I'm finally starting to get invited to do things with friends more, and a whole bunch of other stuff that I'll talk about in this post. Honestly, the reason I'm writing this right now is because I don't want to do filosofia homework...I'll put headings every few paragraphs so y'all can just read the parts you're interested in.
Halloween
I guess I'll start with Halloween. Halloween was a lot of fun for me, because it was pretty popular at my school. Not many adults really care about it, and I guess not a lot of kids, but some of the young ones will go "truko o trato" (trick or treating) throughout the apartment building. But because my friends (and class in general) is awesome, quite a few kids (yes, including me) dressed up for school. That night, my friend Paula (who lives in the same building as me) invited me to go to her house and watch scary movies and eat snacks with her and some of her family and friends. That ended up being a lot of fun and I didn't go home until midnight (although that's considered a pretty respectable time to go home here).
The next two days we didn't have school because Thursday was All Saints Day and Friday was "la puenta". I'm not exactly sure how to explain this, as it's kind of just how Spanish logic works...but basically if there's a holiday on a Thursday with no school then there isn't school Friday because it's "bridging" (puenta means bridge) the gap between Thursday and Friday.
Friends
Anyways, that Friday some of my friends were throwing a surprise birthday party for our friend Amanda, so we all went to a Creperie and ate crepes and shakes and talked for a few hours. Just so you know, the stereotype that los espanoles are loud is very, very true. Sometimes I get confused for a second before I realize that, just because they're yelling, it doesn't mean they're angry. But back on the subject of Friday, after the creperie we went to meet with some other friends and another girl who I hang out with sometimes at school, Elena, was with them and I ended up hanging out with her and these new friends for a few more hours. I'm really happy that, when I first meet people, they don't realize I'm not Spanish, and when they find out I'm foreign they don't assume I'm from the U.S. at all.
Orientation
Three weeks ago? was the first orientation we had just with the AFSers in our area (Week 6 Orientation or something like that). It was...fun. Yes, mostly fun. What I enjoyed most was watching all of us speak in (albeit broken) Spanish, and be able to understand it (mostly). We've all come so far since arrival!
And to any Madrid Kids reading this...let me see your f*cking chicken :b (I have a feeling we'll never forget this).
School
I really like school for the most part, and I fully understand about 85% of it, and have some vague idea of what's going on for about 10% of the time. The other 5% is spent sleeping... Like I said earlier, in the past two weeks I've been getting a lot more homework. I don't mind too much, as it gives me something to do and is really helping my Spanish. Last week I had an English Test (easy peasy) and a report on Mars due. The way they do reports and projects here is a lot different, for one thing you don't type it all out. You hand-write it all on blank paper. For this reason they generally need to be longer, 4-6 pages. You have to take the projects and exams very seriously because they pretty much determine your grade - for example, my entire 1st trimester Ciencias grade is based on that Mars project (30%) and an upcoming test on everything we've learned so far (70%). So when I say homework, it's more like studying or reading or working on projects because teachers don't actually grade homework and the reason you do it is so you know what's going to be on the test. Kids here have to be a lot more responsible for their grade.
Gym
Starting last month, I joined a gym that's close to our apartment and owned by a friend of my parents. I usually go four or five times a week: 2x a week to kickboxing, 2x a week yoga, and then various other things like strength training (I lift weights...) and sometimes I use the elliptical or treadmill if it's been raining or I didn't have time to run. Speaking of running, I'm now about 120 miles away from having run 1,000 miles this year! Woo. I'm really enjoying my runs here.
That's all I'm going to say in this post, again, I'll try and update more often so they aren't so long and random. And if I'm making grammatical errors and spelling mistakes, that just proves how much Spanish I have in my brain...I can't tell you how many times while writing this I wanted to substitute in Spanish words, or couldn't figure out how to spell something (English spelling is so tricky, gah.) I hope everyone is doing well - yay U.S. for electing Obama! Also, good luck to my amazing sister and all my friends who are doing NaNoWriMo, I really wish I could do it again this year!
Annnd...November's already almost half-over. Que loco. Have a Happy Thanksgiving! (Although I hope to update before then).
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