Chloe en España

Super Bowl XXXIX

Long time no typing. So . . . whats new. Well, this week was spent relaxing, until Wednesday when school started again. On Sunday was the Superbowl. Oh, I see that I haven't written about that yet. So, we all (the five Americanas) went to Anna's last host family's house to watch the Super Bowl, which, since it was on at the same time as in America, went from 12:00 in the morning to 4:15 am. I was really looking forward to only the commercials, but of course, they didn't show them. So I learned a little bit about how football works from my fellow exchange students, and I think that I understand it now. Kinda. Anyways, the next day we all went out at night because we didn't have school, but seeing as how it was Monday night and the college students all had school, nothing was open. So we ended up just walking around the old part of town at one in the morning. Which was actually kind of cool because there was nobody there, and it was eerie. Then on Wednesday we went back to school. And then nothing else exciting happened.

Me and my mom have started to plan our trip for when she gets here. I'm sooo excited to go to all these places (as of now we're going to Madrid, Sevilla, Milan, Rome, and Paris). The only thing I'm really not looking forward to is leaving here. Ah, just thinking about it my heart starts to beat fast and I get all nervous. It's going to be awful having to say goodbye to people I probably won't see again but have been such a huge part of my life here. So, I'm just not going to think about it.

Oh! Also I got two packages from Madre, one with a whole bunch of host-family presents and candy, and the other with a cake mix and Valentine's Day candy. Not that I need to eat any more. I think I'm just going to fast when I get home to lose all the weight that I gained here.

What? Me complain?

[Chloe's mom here: I was reading a message-board thread on whining, so I asked Chloe to write the same thing. Keep in mind the spirit in which this is written - unadulterated whining without worrying about seeming ungrateful or trying to balance the myriad good things with the bad. All exchange students feel variations of these things during their exchanges, but they often feel guilty about it: they're living abroad for a year, so what do they have to complain about? Plenty, and just because they are living abroad doesn't mean they've given up their right to normal feelings and frustrations.]

I miss having a steady group of friends that I can always talk to and that I can just hang out with, without feeling guilty about speaking English. I miss American food. I miss cars, and driving everywhere. I miss my family and animals. I miss being able to talk without having to think a whole lot (maybe it's better this way). I miss having dryer-dried clothes. I miss having clean clothes to wear every day. I miss being able to wear whatever I want to school. I miss the WATER, I could never live in the city my whole life. I miss eating dinner with my family and just talking about nothing. I miss calling my friends for hours and talking about nothing. I miss TV. I miss English and how funny people are (it's hard to catch the subtle jokes in a second language). I hate feeling like an idiot when I talk. I hate knowing that people can't understand me. I hate being bored and feeling like I'm wasting my time here, but there's really nothing to do at all. I hate the fact that I've gained weight. I hate that I have so much stuff. I hate the fact that I'll have to leave all this someday kinda soon. Annnnnnnnd, that's all. For now.

What to/not to worry about

My  mom asked me what are some things that I shouldn't have worried about before I came, and what I should have worried about more. Let's start with what I worried too much about:

• They told me that Spain is very particular about their Spanish, and that I must try hard to speak Spain Spanish and not Mexico Spanish. Well, in the end it didn't matter at all. It's better to know any Spanish at all than none, and if you learn some South American words that they don't use so much here, they'll correct you when you get here. No pasa nada (it doesn't matter).
• Everyone told me that Spain is super conservative, and that I'll have to wear really conservative clothing. It's not like I wore belly shirts and short shorts at home, just normal clothes. I expected to come here having to button my shirts up to the top button, long skirts, all that. I was wrong. They may be more conservative in some ways, but the kids here wear the same clothes, more or less, as we do.

Well, I can't think of anything more, so lets move on to what I didn't expect:

• School is really serious over here. It's only for studying. No school-organized sports, no pep assemblies, no school dances, nada. I think it must be a lot harder than our schools, because a lot of my friends have failed classes, and they're really good students.
• This is definitely a patriarchal society. Women cook. Women clean. Women serve the food. In my economy book it was talking about the rate of employment and all that, and it said that housewives aren't considered part of the working population, because they don't generate money, and that countries in which the women work have a lot higher rate of employment. Maybe it's just me, but I couldn't imagine them saying that in an American economy book, because it's just a fact of life that women work; it's not a novelty. But, I could be wrong.
• Learn to peel fruit. Oranges, duh, but I'm talking about apples, peaches, pears, grapes (yes, even grapes). They peel everything here, and with a knife. It's really hard, too. You probably think I must be mentally challenged if I can't peel an apple with a knife, but I'm not the only one. All of the girls who came here have a hard time peeling, and Vicente always had to intervene in my attempts at peeling because I would take off half of the apple with the peel.

So, this is all for now. As I think of things I'll write them down.

Pamplona

I guess that I haven't really described what it's like over here, geographically speaking. So, if y'all are interested, I think I'll go ahead and explain it, seeing as how I have absolutely nothing to do for the next two hours.

I live in an apartment, on the sixth floor. It's pretty small, but it's comfortable and I like it. Since we live in the city, normal houses don't exist, and everyone lives in apartments. All the streets are just huge apartment buildings, one after the other, with stores in the ground floors. The bottom of mine now is a pharmacy, I think. (I don't tend to pay too much attention to where I am . . . it's gotten me lost a few times, believe me.) The apartments here are all pretty different, so it would be hard to give a general explanation. Obviously, they're all pretty small, but some can get pretty big, just depends. They all have a small kitchen and usually they eat in the kitchen, too, two or three bedrooms, bathroom, TV room, just a normal house. Outside I would say everything is pretty well kept up. The sidewalks are all made out of tile-type squares (not shiny bathroom tile, but I cant think of the English word for this type), and they make pretty designs. There're lots of parks, and there're always lots of people taking a stroll, or kids playing, or joggers running. Lots of roundabouts. People abuse their emergency flashers here; they'll park their car on the side of the street (still in the way, though), and turn on their flashers so that the friend who they're waiting for will see the car when they walk out of the grocery store.

The old part of town is absolutely amazing. A lot dirtier, but incredible. The first time our host parents took us there Abby and I were just in shock. It's so European, you wouldn't even believe it. Now we don't even think about it, it's just the old part. We could walk there, but from my house now it would take about 25 minutes, and I'm just too lazy for that. There're lots of huge fountains in the roundabouts, and some of them even have colored water. The parks here are really pretty, just long expanses of grass and park benches. There's one skating park with a huge bungee cord toy thing that you can climb. I climbed it for the first time the other day and it was quite an experience.

This post is pretty long, and I'm sure you got bored by my description of the sidewalk tiles, so I think that's enough detail for now. If you want, you can just look at the bagillion pictures I've  taken and that should give you a good idea of what it's like here.

Yearbooks

Yesterday we got the católogos, or year book type things that the school gives out every two years. It's just a small book with all the class pictures, from kids 4 years old to 18 years old. They weren't going to give me one, I'm not sure, maybe because I'm not actually a paying member of the school, but there was one book left over because one of the kids in my class is in Australia for a year, so I took his. Well, I didn't take it, I asked the teacher if there were any extras that I could have, and he gave me that one. I'm so glad I have this, it will be so fun to show everyone at home all my friends and teachers and classmates here. That will be a good keepsake from here. Just like my uniform (I payed over $150 for that thing, no way I'm leaving it here.)

Spreading the culture around

Yesterday at lunch there was a group of boys huddled around, and my friend turned to me and said it smelled like pot. I wasn't paying attention before that, so I asked her what she said. "Umm . . . joint?" I laughed and asked her where she learned that. She had spent a little while in Ireland and they taught her that and "bitch." She asked me why that got confused with "la playa" (the beach) when she said it. Because with her accent, there's no difference between bitch and beach, so that's why. Then all the girls got all excited and asked me to teach them swear words in English. I felt bad, but I wasn't going  to let them down and pass up a bonding opportunity with these girls, so I taught them shit, damn, son of a bitch, whore, asshole, all that. They already knew f***, because they have a word like that over here that they say a lot. One of my friends burst out randomly with "'F*** YOUR MOTHER' is this right??" I was laughing so hard, wondering where she ever learned that.

I know that I could be teaching them how to say things like "have a nice day," and "lovely to meet you," but they already know all that, and this is much more fun. And if they ever say it to anyone else over here, no one will understand them. I just hope they don't go to the US or England and say "Hello, nice to meet you, and f*** your mother."

5 months!

Today marks five months that I have been in Spain. That seems like so long. But then just wait until I hit 8 months, that will be just crazy. The 6-month mark (a big deal because it's half of a year) will be spent in the south of Spain, so that will be an exciting day. As of today we have 25 days left until we leave on our trip!

Today we (Abby, Anna, Kalin, Kat, and I) had to go to the school for a meeting. Or so we thought. It turned out that we were going to be taped for a local TV channel who's doing a show on exchange students. There were two Spanish kids there that went to the US a few years back, then they had us choose one person to talk for all of us (we chose Anna because she speaks the best). They just asked her general questions (food, why you came, differences, etc.). Then later the cameraman filmed us for about an hour, walking up the stairs, walking down the stairs, walking in the hallway, just sitting there talking, just about everything that he could think of. So I'll be watching myself walk down my school hallway tonight at 9:30. And they're going to give us all copies of the show, so we'll have it forever!

Thanks for telling me

This weekend I went with my host parents to a town (can't remember the name) to eat lunch with a whole bunch of their friends. They all pitch in money each month to be a part of this society where they rent out buildings, and they all get together to eat lunch and talk and have fun. It's pretty cool to see a huge group of good friends just having a good time like that. Anyways, all the food was really good, and they kept raving about this one type of food that would be coming out soon called morcilla. When they brought it out, I was a little skeptical to eat it because it looked like a big sausage with rice in it, but black. They told me it was black because of some sauce they use to make it. So, being brave, I ate it, and it was pretty good. About ten minutes later, after I had eaten it all, the lady next to me told me that she wanted to wait until after I ate it to tell me, but it's actually black because it's pig's blood. Yum..

At the lunch a boy from my class was there because our parents are friends. His family had a German exchange student with them because our school does lots of little exchanges, and earlier in the year Miguel (the boy from my class) went to this German's house, and now he's here. Anyways, this German kid speaks English, Spanish, German, obviously, and I don't know what else. He said that he thinks English is a lot easier than Spanish. I had to agree on him with that one. Miguel speaks a little German, but is fluent in English, like all the kids at my school. I asked what they speak to each other, and he said a mix of all three languages. I was just thinking that that type of situation would not occur very often in the United States. I really wish that learning another language was as important over there as it is here. But then everyone here learns English, and we're already capable of doing that, so maybe that's why we don't learn other languages. Maybe it's because we don't care about the rest of the world, who knows.