Chloe en España

No quiero irme

I really, really, really don't want to leave here.

This week

So I kind of forgot that I had a blog, so I'll fill y'all in on my latest doings. I went to my friends' confirmation, like I talked about before. It was nice. An hour and 15 minute long mass, and then the confirmation bit. After that I went to a little gathering with all the friends to celebrate the confirmation. That was last Friday. Then the next night Anna the American and I went out at night to La Trave, which is a place that has about 5 bars in close proximity. All of the kids from our schools go there, so it's a lot of fun. It's not fun, though, when old men who should be doing other things than hitting on teenagers follow you around. There was one guy there, by himself, who followed us into all of the bars we went into to try to get away from him. Finally, Anna yelled at him and he left. We got home at 5:00, and then the next day was spent doing homework.

The week went by kind of slow. I had two tests today, but I think I actually did okay on them. I'm starting to get worried about the end of year tests, though. Those will be super hard. First we have to take the final evaluations for the third trimester of each class. Then, the week after, we have to take global exams, which consist of everything that we've been taught this whole year. That will not be fun to study for, because at the beginning of the year I understood nothing, so I'll have to teach myself that stuff. It's going to be miserable and I'm going to hate the world during the tests, but at the end I'll be happy that I took them and finished the year like any other Spanish kid would.

These past few days it has been very, very hot here. Today the high was 100 degrees, I believe. I'm wearing lots of sunscreen though, so hopefully I won't get toasted again. I've also been going to the gym a lot lately. I feel good about it, but sometimes I feel as though my host parents are obligating me to go. My host dad makes it seem like it's not an option to not go, and if I hang out with my friends instead of going, he thinks I made the wrong choice. They are paying for it, and this is coming from a man who does four hours of spinning during the winter, and bikes four hours during the summer, so I guess maybe I shouldn't take it personally.

Oh! I found out that one of my friends from Vashon is probably going to come here for San Fermín. It was completely random for him to come, but I'm excited. I think it will be fun.

Confirmation talk

It's been a while since I've written anything, but nothing much has been happening around here. Last Friday Anna and I went to Montse's (host mom) niece's dance performance. It was pretty cool, lots of flamenco dancing and women in really pretty costumes dancing with castanets. I love those things, they sound so cool. I was a little lost because it was pretty abstract dancing, but then at the end Montse told us that they were re-enacting parts of Don Quixote. That explained why a lady was standing on top of a guy's shoulders spinning around a long piece of cloth in circles (trying to be a windmill). Then this weekend I did nothing. I went to the gym, finally, on Saturday, then studied a little bit on Sunday. Yesterday I watched some real bullfights on TV with Tomás and Igor. Madrid has it's festival this week, so there're lots of bullfights and partying and such. It was really interesting because I had never seen a real one. I was shocked at how cruel it was, but then after the third bull came out it didn't bother me as much. To make me feel better Igor said that these bulls wouldn't exist if it weren't for the bullfighting, because it costs a lot of money to raise them. It's quite an intricate sport; every move that the matador does with the red cloth has a specific name, and there are three parts to each match, and to kill the bull they have to get it into a certain position to stab it right through the heart, instead of going through the bone, fun things like that. I had to stop watching after a while, but I'm glad I finally saw a real Spanish bullfight, even though it was on TV.

This weekend all of my friends are going to get confirmed. They're all excited - no more catequis (I don't know how to spell that word and it doesn't show up in the spell check; you'll have to forgive me). I never knew that Confirmation was such a fashionable event. This is the conversation that took place today in between literature and religion class:

"So, I think I'm going to wear my white skirt and a little black jacket."

"No, you should go with pants and a shirt. Not too formal, but still really cute, ya know?"

"Yeah, but I already bought the skirt, and I want to wear these boots with the skirt, and the boots don't go with pants very well."

"Don't even think about wearing boots with that skirt, that would look so bad."

"True, because we are going to go to celebrate in the bars afterwards. Hmm, I don't know."

I'm not joking, this is actually how the conversation went. I don't know very much about this subject, but shouldn't it be more about God and stuff instead of what to wear? Never mind, they're 16-year-old girls.

Oh! Abby called me last night. It was nice to talk to her. She's doing really well and glad to be home. She said she misses us though, and she thinks that she's already losing some of her Spanish. This worries me, because I tend to forget things easily, and I don't want to lose my Spanish.

Time with Nanners and Karen

I got back today from Madrid with Nana (my grandma), and her friend and traveling partner Karen. It was really nice, but a bit strange, to see people from home. I really enjoyed being around them, though, and hearing about what is going on at home and with everyone in my family. On Monday we left in their rental car to Madrid, with all of their suitcases and my two huge bags that they are kindly taking home with them for me. We had a good ride down, until we actually got into Madrid, and then we spent about an hour searching for a hotel. Somehow, after being lost for a bit, we ended up getting a hotel right smack in the middle of Madrid, and it wasn't too expensive, either. On Monday night we walked around and I showed them the Plaza Mayor and Puerta del Sol. Then on Tuesday we got on one of those hop on/hop off tour buses. We stopped at this really cool market that was set up on some streets. We bought a few things, then went on to the Prado museum. After that we were pretty tired, so me and Nana went back to the hotel while Karen walked around, looking for a good paella restaurant.

This morning was quite stressful. First Nana lost the ticket to get the car out of the garage, then we got lost on the way to the bus station. It took about 45 minutes to get there, when it should have taken five. I finally got there, and I really hope that Nana and Karen made it to the airport alive and on time.

I think that I did pretty good with translating between English and Spanish. Nana and Karen were very impressed, but they also don't speak Spanish, so I could have been speaking Gibberish and they would have still been impressed. Having them here made me miss home a little bit, and especially after having such a hard time getting to the bus station all I wanted to do was get on that airplane back to Seattle. But, only a little over two months and I will be home. Having them here, and talk about Prom and my best friend's dad's graduation party is making me really want to be home right now and part of the fun, but I guess you have to make some compromises if you're going to be an exchange student.

Tour guiding

I am going to kill this computer and then throw it out the window until I see it crash and break into 50 billion parts. Every time that I write in my blog and I click "publish," it won't publish it and deletes the post. So then I get all mad and don't want to write everything all over again. So this may not be too detailed.

Okay, so first, Abby came back on Thursday, but then I had to say goodbye to her that night because their flight to America left at 7:20 the next morning. She came back from the trip to Italy and France with her parents and grandma. They had a few problems, but other than those I think it went pretty well. It was so sad saying goodbye to her. We just had to tell ourselves that we'll see each other soon. Which we will hopefully. I miss her a lot, though. (Abby si estàs leyendo esto llámame por favor!!!)

Then yesterday my grandma and her friend came! It was a little bit of a mess getting them to their apartment, but it all turned out in the end. Today I showed them my school, the old part of Pamplona, and then we ate lunch with my first host family and then they took us around to two really pretty old towns. Then tomorrow we're going to San Sebastián, which should be fun. And now I'm going to bed because translating the history of 12th-century churches from Spanish to English is quite tiring.

EEUU

In history class we're studying a wonderful topic: The United States of America. The title of the chapter is "Bajo la influencia de los Estados Unidos," or "Under the influence of the United States." When the teacher read the title the kid in front of me turned around and said "Under your influence." The teacher is really worried about offending me though, because in the book it talks about all the good aspects of the US, but then it also talks about the bad ones, like the racism, and all the pollution that we emit. Whenever the teacher says anything like that, he turns to me and says, "Now Chloe, please don't take any of this offensively. I don't mean in any way to offend you." I was kind of surprised that he said that. Like he told me, the US is a huge place, and there's bound to be some faults. Although I never took any of it offensively, I did appreciate his concern for my feelings.

I love Spanish nightlife

Last night I went out with some of my Spanish friends to a group of bars where my whole school goes. I had a lot of fun and I'm really going to miss doing this when I get back home. I wish we had bars and clubs like this at home. One of my friends is probably going to go to Miami this summer for a month, so he was asking me some questions about America. He asked if we go out at night. He was terrified when I told him that there are no bars, no clubs, we can't drink, and that lots of people have a curfew of 12:00 or 1:00. He looked at me shocked and said that 1:00 was his curfew when he was 13 years old. We'll see how he holds up down there. Anyways, I had quite a few chats with some of the kids in my class that I hadn't really talked to before. One of them was going on about how I get better grades than lots of the kids in my class (I'm not bragging or anything, it's true), and how on our next test he's going to cheat off of me. I told him that wasn't going to happen. Then I was talking to one of my friends who I hadn't talked to for a long time. He's Mexican, went to a private boarding school in Boston, and I just found out yesterday that his dad is the coach of the Pamplona soccer team Osasuna. He speaks fluent English and likes to practice it on me. Usually I get mad when people speak English to me, but he has an excuse, and I can actually understand him, so I don't mind so much. I got home at 5:30 because we had to accompany one of our friends home who got sick. One of my friends told me that the night buses to Zizur, where I live, stop at 4:00, so the dad of my friend drove me home. Interestingly enough my host brother, who was at the same place as me last night, got home at 6:00 on the bus. Now I think I'm going to take a siesta because I'm running on 5 hours of sleep and I have school tomorrow.