Semana Blanca

You, my lovely, observant readers may have realized that I did not post anything for last week. Truthfully, it wasn't that I didn't have the time, it was just that I was too lazy to write last week. I hope this post makes up for that.

Starting with last week, Alex's counselor from Rotary was visiting the city of Pamplona for her vacation. She kindly invited us to come visit her so she could show us around the city. On Wednesday, us exchange students hopped on a bus and did just that. We spent the entirety of Wednesday walking around Pamplona, slept in the apartment Alex's counselor was staying in, and explored a bit more Thursday morning before getting back on the bus after lunch.

This picture below is the gateway of the original Roman walls into Pamplona. Cool!

This was probably the coolest bridge ever, as lame as that sounds. You can see how it zig-zags in the background.

Wednesday night we had some time to hit the shopping center in Pamplona. Normally, I get sick of shopping faster than most, but once I discovered that the shopping center had a pet shop, I didn't want to leave. I didn't realize how much I missed visiting pet stores until we walked past the window display where little fish were swimming in a tank. My reaction was basically, "OMG! FISHIES!" and the next thing I remember is having my nose pressed up against the glass like a five-year-old while everyone else snickered at me. Anyways, the pet shop was really cool. They had a bunch of baby hamsters and several colorful birds for sale. There was also an amazing bearded dragon which I was very tempted to hold, but I restrained myself. I suppose I'm not usually this crazy in pet shops, but in my defense, I haven't been to one all year.

Another highlight of going shopping was that I finally found a pair of (drum-roll, please) pink sunglasses! That's right, I finally have a replacement for my favorite pink sunglasses that broke ages ago during orientation!

That same weekend, Rotary invited us to go to a nature reserve and see some lovely cranes during migration season. A lot of the birds from northern Europe migrate to the Iberian Peninsula for winter, and this lake is one of the few nature reserves in existence for these migrating flocks.

Unfortunately, we couldn't get very close to the birds, so I could only take pictures of the beautiful views.

There were also some neat castle ruins that we got to play on.

This week is "Semana Blanca" which means "White Week". Basically, because we live so close to the ski resorts in the mountains, our school takes off for a week and travels to the resorts for a ski trip. You are not obliged to go, and I didn't sign up for the trip, so I stayed home while Alex, Grace, and our Spanish friend, Maria, went north to learn how to snowboard. I suppose it was better for me, anyways, because I don't actually know how to ski, and I think my balance problems would make for a painful downhill experience. Because of this, I spent a majority of this week singing show-tunes and painting a large barrel that Santiago had in the garage. He asked me if I wanted to paint it, and I decided that I had enough free time this week to give it a shot. This (as of Friday morning) is what I have so far.

I tried to paint symbols or things that symbolized this year as well as my personality. For anyone who can't read the quote, it says "Some people live more in 20 years than others do in 80. It's not the time that matters, it's the person". It may just be my most favorite quote ever. As of right now, I still have a ways to go, but a majority of it is painted.

As much as I would love to have the barrel almost entirely painted by the end of this weekend, I cannot. We are heading to Zaragoza tonight because Carmen's (my host mom) dad had a heart attack. Carmen has been in Zaragoza all week, and Santi and I are driving down to see everyone today. He seems to be doing better, though, because he is back at home now. Unfortunately, from how Santi put it, my host grandparents don't have wifi, so I have decided to post this before we leave, just in case I don't have the time in Zaragoza.

Have a wonderful weekend!

La Dama Boba

I had to wait a lot longer to post this than I had initially planned, but it took me this long to finally get to a computer.

My new host parents took me to Huesca where Santiago´s parents live to have lunch with them. It was a bit of a special meal because this was the first time I got to meet Santi´s parents in person. What I didn´t realize was that this visit would last from before lunch (about 2:00 p.m.) until into the night. It´s currently 7:00 as I type this on my new host grandparent´s tiny little laptop (basically it´s one of those pesky netbooks they sometimes have us use at school back home, for the benefit of those who know what I´m talking about). Either way, I´m glad to finally have the internet access because considering the fact that my host parents and grandparents just went to church, I have a feeling I´m still going to be here for a while.

I´m currently having a hard time reacounting everything that I did this week. I think it has to do with the fact that I didn´t sleep very well last night. You see, my first host family went to Zaragoza for the weekend, so my previous host family, because of the fact that they are such good friends of theirs, took their dog, Nala, for the weekend. Since I spent several months living in the same house as Nala, she still considers me a member of her pack. She did not leave my side for the entirety of Saturday, and continued to follow me around this morning. That itself wasn´t a problem because I love Nala, and she basically just chilled out underneath my desk most of the day. However, last night Nala still refused to leave my bedroom. I even left my door open (which is asking for trouble in the form of my current family´s dog, Leo, who likes to eat out of my trash) so she could go down to the kitchen where we had put her bed, but she refused to leave my room. I wouldn´t have been bothered by this if Nala hadn´t spent most of the night pacing around my room or growling every time Leo passed by. Despite the fact that I took a nap this afternoon, I´m still a little hazy.

This Friday Alex and I had theater practice. We´re doing a play called "La Dama Boba". From what I know, it´s a very famous play that was written in either the 15th or 16th century by a very famous Spanish writer. The entire play is written in verse, so the best I can do is compare it to Shakespeare. Alex and I were given the very small roles in the play of the teachers. I´m not complaining because it means that I get to have just as much fun watching the play as being on stage, and I don´t have paragraphs of difficult lines to memorize.

Last night the theater group got together again, and we went to Jaca where a traveling theater group was performing the same play that we are practicing. The group had a very interesting take on it, making it feel like something that you would see performed by a traveling company back in the 1930´s or 40´s. It´s sort of a difficult thing for me to explain, so I´ll just say that you had to be there to understand the brilliance of what this group had done to a classic "Spanish Shakespeare" play. I doubt anyone in the audience didn´t laugh at least once. Anyways, afte the play we got to meet the cast and talk to them about the performance. It was wonderful and very interesting, but we didn´t get home until late that night (midnight).

I could continue to talk about the homework and tests I had to take this week, but I shant bore you with those details.

OLYMPICS!!!

Except for the very unlikely chance that you live under a rock (a fact I highly doubt if you are reading this post) the Sochi Winter Olympic Games started this weekend. The winter Olympics aren't very big in Spain this year because there aren't many Spanish athletes involved in winter sports. However, if the game is soccer, you can bet the whole country will be watching. Still, this fact doesn't keep me from being glued to the television when all of the skating, skiing, snowboarding, and hockey events are on.

What's fun about the Olympics for me back in the States is that, especially in the winter when we can't really do much, it's the only time where we all sit and watch sports as a family. Normally we don't watch a lot of sports. My dad and grandpa follow college basketball, and we keep up during football season. My sisters and I sometimes turn on a tennis match when none of our shows are on, but we generally don't watch a lot of sports; at least compared to some. The Olympics have always been the exception to that, and I love it! It doesn't even matter if my home country is anywhere close to winning or not. I'm the sort of person who will be like "Oh! Japan is doing well. Go Japan!" or sit there absolutely amazed by a couple of figure skaters and not even caring that they are the rival team from Russia. I just have so much fun watching.

On Friday I had a test in philosophy. Most of my classes I do okay in now, but I must admit that I'm pretty confident in my ability to fail every test in philosophy. Lucky for me, the teacher is nice and just gives me "sufficiente" on everything.

Yesterday Alex, Grace, and I went with one of our friends, Maria, to see Paranormal Activity. Alex is the kind of person who doesn't get freaked out by those sorts of movies. Maria and Grace, on the other hand were clutching Alex the whole time. Honestly, I was mildly bored by the movie. No offense to anyone who loves Paranormal Activity, but I just found it too typical of a scary movie and very predictable. However, there was one group of girls sitting in front of us who were even more scared than Grace and Maria. They were fun to watch. I also enjoyed listening to the commentary of a teenage boy sitting behind me with his girlfriend. He basically narrated the movie out loud in Spanish. As we left the movie, my stomach decided that the popcorn wasn't sitting to well and I promptly threw up into an empty popcorn container. Surprisingly enough, I wasn't as concerned about that as I probably should have been, but I think I was just glad to finally know why I wasn't feeling too great during the last half hour of the movie. Anyways, we had a sleepover at what used to be my house but is now Grace's house because not only was she still freaked out by the movie, but we decided it would be fun.

Jump to today where I slept in, went hiking this afternoon, and now have to try and write an essay for my college before bed.

Enjoy the Games!

Everybody's Birthday!

You know how you have several weeks where absolutely nothing interesting in the slightest happens? Then suddenly, the next week, everything happens? That week was this week.

The week kicked off with Alex's birthday. My host family went over to her house after dinner to wish her a happy birthday and enjoy some delicious cake. Tuesday was my host mom's birthday so we went out for tapas for dinner so she didn't have to cook. Wednesday was Jen's birthday, and Friday was Grace's birthday. For Grace's birthday, us exchange students and the girls from school gathered at her house where we goofed around and ate an American style birthday cake. Alex, Grace, and I wanted to head over to Zaragoza this weekend and celebrate Jen's birthday too, but this weekend we were all changing host families. In short, we were just too busy packing and moving houses to make something work.

Earlier this week I also filmed my audition in order to get into the music program at my college. For anyone that's curious, you can watch it here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tZNUWBQNhE

Also, on Thursday Alex, Grace, and I had to go to Huesca for a Rotary thing. It was El Dia del Paz (The Day of Peace). Basically, we had to stand in front of a monument while people gave speeches and a school choir sang a lovely song about world peace. Grace even gave a short speech about her exchange year. After that we went out to lunch with our Rotary counselors and stopped by some shops before heading back to the bus station and buying our tickets back to Sabi.

This weekend, like I mentioned above, we had to switch host families. Everyone agreed it was sort of pointless because the three of us were just switching among our current host families. I had to move into Alex's house, so I basically moved 30 yards down the street. Grace moved into my house and I helped her unpack because Alex's host family had gone to Zaragoza for the day. This is one of the reasons I haven't been able to write this post until now. The other reason was that throughout this week I have become progressively more ill. By the time Sunday (moving day) had rolled around I was very feverish and achy. I was far too exhausted to unpack last night, or finish a blog post.

I apologize if parts of this post are poorly constructed because I'm too tired to edit. I skipped school today, slept all morning between hacking fits, and didn't really start moving around until 5 in the afternoon. I hope I'm better by tomorrow, but I'm not looking forward to unpacking.