Post Christmas

Happy Sunday, everyone!

I'm very tired today, but with good reason.

Not only is it Post Christmas, the aftermath of an exhausting few days, but I also had a bit of a cold yesterday. Fortunately, it's a lot better today. On top of that, yesterday we went to see El Hobbit: El Desolition de Smaug. I'm not quite sure if I spelled the name exactly right, but you all know what movie I'm talking about. We went to see that movie at 10:30...at night. The movie didn't end until 1:30 a.m. Then I had to get up early this morning because we went snow shoeing in the mountains where there is actually snow. The main reason we went to do that was because another exchange student, Kaylee, is staying at Grace's house. Kaylee is from Hawaii and is on exchange in the Canary Islands. I think my favorite comment by her about the climate here in the mountains was, "Wow! There's ice, and it's not in a freezer!" Even for Grace and me, who weren't as impressed by the snow, it was still a lot of fun, and undeniably beautiful.

Kaylee first came here yesterday. All of us exchange students went ice skating in Jaca and then we all went to see El Hobbit together. It was fun, but anyone familiar with the Lord of the Rings movies know that they are lengthy. Because Spanish is my second language, I don't feel qualified in giving a full review of the movie, but I will say I have one complaint. Benedict Cumberbatch (who voices the dragon, Smaug) wasn't in this version because it was translated into Spanish. Of course, I understood the movie. It just takes more effort than I usually have to make to understand it. Combine this with a three hour long movie and it gets tiring. Grace started to feel the movie's length about two hours in. She spent the rest of the movie resting her head on my shoulder while we went back and forth, commenting on the movie. Most of our comments were simply "I ship it." For those of you who aren't familiar with the term "ship" or "shipping" it's just a slang term for when you like the idea of two characters (in this case, in a movie) as a couple. Some of these pairings grew progressively more ridiculous as the movie lengthened. Surprisingly, our craziest "ship" wasn't Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) and Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch, but not in this version). It was Legolas (Olrando Bloom) and an ork.

However, I think the best part of this weekend is that we still have one more week off!

VACATION!!!

For all of you back home and across the globe who read my blog religiously, thank you so much for your devotion. Seriously, it's not like I'm posting chapters of a riveting mystery novel. I literally just log in to my account and ramble about my week in a condensed and organized manner. Thank you for reading!

Winter Vacation is upon us. I repeat, Winter Vacation is here! This is probably the best news I could ever post on this blog other than something along the lines of "Hey, everyone. I was abducted by aliens this week, but don't worry. They didn't scientifically experiment on me. They only wanted me to help them save their home planet. Needless to say, the mission was a success. My new intergalactic friends and I are going out for coffee next week."

There are two things we can deduct from that previous paragraph that has been spewed forth by the dark corners of my subconscious: 1. I am in an excellent mood 2. I read and watch way too much sci-fi.

Sorry if I'm confusing anyone. I'll just get on with my usual synopsis of my week before I start discussing my personal opinions on Transcendentalism and the methods used for dinosaur cloning in Jurassic Park.

Monday, as you know from my previous post, I spent the day in Madrid on a class trip. Tuesday and Wednesday were normal school days, but Thursday my class took a trip to another Instituto in Huesca were everyone attended presentations involving the job fields and areas of study they want to go into. Since I'm not actually attending a university here in Spain I only really went for the experience. The whole system, in truth, is the same sort of thing you could find at these events back home.

Friday was a half-day at school. I only had to come in for the first two hours to take a history exam. As usual, I finished before almost everyone else because I normally can't answer all of the questions and the ones I do answer tend to be mediocre answers at best. Well, except for Matematicas, I'm great at that class. I guess it also helps that I was taught to be a quick test-taker. That's sort of a thing set up by the educational system of the U.S., isn't it? Here, whenever there is a long exam, we normally do it after school and they last for about two hours. Normally there are anywhere from 2-5 questions on the entire exam. In the States, we learn how to quickly and accurately answer a lot of questions in a short amount of time, even if they are shot answer. Your answers have to do with your understanding of the material and the ability to thoroughly explain it instead of how much of the text book you can memorize word for word.

Don't take this the wrong way. I'm not trying to rant about educational systems. I'm simply making general, and what I think to be accurate, comparisons.

Yesterday Alex, Grace and I took a bus to Zaragoza where we met up with Jen (you might remember me mentioning her back around Thanksgiving). We spent the day Christmas shopping for our host families. Normally, gifts are given on "Reyes Magos" which celebrates when the Wise Men came to give baby Jesus gifts. This falls on January 6th. However, being Americans, we all decided to give our families their gifts on either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day in order to share a little tradition with our host families.

Today was the first day I haven't had to wake up early in two weeks. I spent the day wasting my time on social media, drawing fictional characters, and channel surfing until I settled on a Sherlock marathon on TNT. As it turns out, just like Doctor Who, Sherlock does exist in Spain, you just have to know where to look.

Safe travels to anyone traveling over the holidays. Happy Holidays to everyone currently abroad. Finally, Merry Christmas to everyone back home.

Secretly...I'm Exhausted!

Well, this is the long-awaited late blog post about Madrid.

As the holiday season has settled upon us and Christmas Day draws closer, I finally feel myself getting into the holiday spirit, at last! It took several hours of baking sugar cookies, two Glee Christmas specials, one Doctor Who Christmas special in Spanish, and several hours of listening to Christmas music, but I'm finally starting to feel all warm and fuzzy inside. It will be even better once we get the tree up.

Over the weekend, as I've been announcing for weeks, I went on a class trip to Madrid. On Saturday we woke up insanely early to get on a bus at 7 in the morning in order to spend 5 hours driving to Madrid. When we got there and got all our luggage up to our rooms, we split up into groups and wandered around trying to find a place to eat lunch. After that we joined up in a plaza and headed to an art museum called Prado. For dinner my friends in my class found a nice pizza place that I enjoyed a lot, and then we hung out at a bar until we had to meet up with the rest of our class again to head back to our rooms.

Sunday morning we woke up early again to eat breakfast. Then we had a few hours of down time before we split off into two groups. The group I was with went to La Reina Sophia which is a very large art museum that houses a lot of works by Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso among other things. I got to see the "Guernica" in real life, which I highly suggest doing because photographs don't give it justice. As much as I love art museums, there is a lot of walking and standing involved in going to visit one, so after two days of that on top of walking all over Madrid, I was thoroughly exhausted. Fortunately, the agenda for that evening was going to see a play titled "Montenegro" in a very nice theater. It was very interesting, but I can't exactly explain what it was all about because the plot was very complicated and the language was very complex. Imagine yourself watching a Shakespeare play you know nothing about in a foreign language and you can get the idea of what I felt like. However, I do have to say that the actors were spectacular! Absolutely stunning!

Monday morning we woke up early, of course, and we took a tour of the theater we had gone to the previous night. I was really excited about the tour because I absolutely love being back stage. I always feel really comfortable back stage, but it also gives me a bit of a rush at the same time, if that makes sense.

Finally, we piled back onto our bus, stopped at a bus stop for lunch, and finally headed home. I didn't get back until about 9:30 that night. It was a long weekend, but I absolutely loved it. It gave me some special time to bond with my classmates in an environment that wasn't a crazy fiesta with bad music.

I didn't actually take any pictures because all of the places we visited (art museums and theaters) were all no photography places.

That pretty much sums up my entire weekend. Now that I'm into the holiday spirit I can't wait to post more Christmas related materials.

Feliz Navidad!

San Sebastian and the Long Weekend

It's Sunday, and good news, tomorrow is a fiesta so no school! Counting the fiesta on Friday this will be a four day weekend! It totally makes up for missing two days off for Thanksgiving.

Anyways, late last night we got back from San Sebastian. I have provided a map for reference.

You can find San Sebastian just north of Pamplona on the map, right on the coast. Sabi is located in the middle of the area labeled Pyrenees. The drive was a few hours, but well worth it! It's absolutely gorgeous there. We spent most of Friday just walking around the coast and enjoying the views.

We also spent some time exploring the city...

I wonder if the food is good?

And just ahead you can see France!

I should also add that, since San Sebastian is in Basque country they don't speak Castillan Spanish...

Basque on top and Castillan on the bottom. It's another one of those places like Barcelona. For the record, I can't understand Basque, and neither can most people not from Basque country.

My host family went with Alex's host family. We met Alex's host cousin, Alex, and his parents in San Sebastian. One of Alex's friends, Laura, and her parents had come with them, too. On Friday night we all hung out at a bar, parents at one table and kids at another. After getting over the awkwardness of not being exactly sure what to say or talk about to each other, the four of us (Alex, Alex, Laura, and I) ended up asking each other what different words were in Spanish/English. As we were leaving the bar I thought for the first time, "I don't want to go." And I meant it. For the first time since I came here I genuinely felt comfortable, like I belonged despite the fact that I look hopelessly American. It was all a bit strange, but either way I still dread going through the "Return Policy" paper work for the travel agency.

So, I get to sleep in tomorrow, and then on Saturday I'm going on a trip with my class to Madrid! Just a reminder, I will not be coming back until late on Monday of that week, so my blog will not be updated. However, many more pictures to come!