Thanksgiving, short term exchangers, and Christmas is coming!!

Hello everyone! So first off I have to say sorry about the large delay in writing this post. Nothing too interesting happened so I waited a bit because a short term exchange student has came to Santander and I figured that would be pretty cool to write about. But we can't start with that!

So first off was Thanksgiving. Unfortunately here it is not a holiday so I didn´t get any school off. Most people know about it or what it is here though, and they had me talk about it a little bit in my english class. There also is no black friday in Spain so I didn´t get any screaming deals. On Thanksgiving weekend I went to Bilbao again to meet up with Amaia so we could sorta do a thanksgiving. Given that I am an ex vegetarian who still doesnt eat much meat and she is a vegetarian it wasnt to interesting. On friday night we made our own potato dish, and pizza. Then we went and saw the new hunger games movie which was awesome! I would highly reccomend seeing it if you haven't already. Saturday we just kinda messed around and explored the city. I got to know Bilbao pretty well. Its a really beautiful city! On sunday before I left we went to cross a street and the FC Barcelona bus went right infront of us!!! They were playing that night against Athletico Bilbao. (They lost 1-0). I returned sunday afternoon.

Between Thanksgiving time and this last week not too much has happened. We have had exams and so on in school. I had a fun time with some friends on the weekend. Speaking of exams I recently got a 6.3 on my chemistry test!! (Thats passing) That made me really happy because I didn´t study at all since I dont have to pass the class, but it shows that I remembered my chemistry from last year! (Thank you Mr. Cukierski) I got an 8.5 in my french class which is a very good grade. It was rather surprising given that I don´t really speak french but ya know. So that sums up how school has been going for me. Its fun. I understand just about everything now, or I understand the words but not the meanings.

So this Sunday night a short term exchange student through rotary arrived in Santander. He is staying with a friend of mine who I have previously stayed with several times. His name is Justin and he is from South Africa. He was really cool to meet, and I actually just hung out with him today. We speak in english because that is his first language and he speaks zero spanish. So I am playing translator for the next 6 weeks while he is here. It is really cool to have another exchange here and here about South Africa. Also I have to say, while here, I have met people from Scotland London Wales and Ireland. None of their accents are nearly as different as the South African accent. I sometimes have trouble understand him its so different (though I have a sinking feeling thats also due to my declining english skills).

Tomorrow all the rotary clubs in Santander are having a big supper that I will go to, I plan on wearing a bowtie because (take note kids) Cool kids wear bowties. So that should be interesting if nothing else. Justin will be there too. Then later its christmas break! My christmas plans are not set in stone yet but we will see.

Thank you.

Nelson Mandela

July 18th, 1918-December 5th, 2013

A small tribute to one of the greatest men who lived

Thank you all very much for reading, until next time!!

Jonah

3 Months!

Another 2 weeks have flown by! It has just been a normal 2 weeks here. Rains all the time. The usual. However yesterday was my 3 months in Spain mark. These three months have been the most amazing three months of my life, it has been indescribable. I want to say thank you to a all organizations and people involved, all of your support and help has given me the best thing in my life, and I am very thankful for it! In these past three months I have seen and traveled to new worlds. I have learned a totally new culture and I am still continuing to learn it. I learned a new language, and I met 1,000 incredible and unique people along the way. It has been the absolute best. As yesterday was my 3 month mark, I got the best present I could have gotten. Last night I had my first dream entirely in spanish. It wasn´t one with one or two sentences in spanish, I had the whole dream in spanish! So that was awesome for me, and shows you all how I am doing with the language.

On another note I do have thanksgiving plans! Here thanksgiving is not a holiday, but that won´t stop me. I will leave friday after school and catch a bus to Bilbao again. I will spend the weekend in Bilbao with Amaia, and we will do our own little Thanksgiving.

So that is everything that I have to tell you all about for now! Thank you for reading!!

Run the exams are coming!

Hi everybody! So it has been about 2 weeks now and I think this will be around the average time between posts. Enough interesting things accumulate for me to write a fair amount in this time. It has been a fantastic 2 weeks over here in España.

So last week there wasn´t too much going on, except the extreme dread of the exams starting. Exams here for the students are basically pure terror, and frantic studying. This is because of the fact that exams here are basically your grade. They are atleast 80% of your grade in the class, and they are HARD. We have so far been through 5 of them, the vast majority of them in the past week. I haven´t done so hot on most of them, aside from the english one. I think I did all right there. Only problem was it kept on asking me to use the phrasal verbs or the past simple or present simple continous. I have no idea what those are, so I put what made sense to me. Ohhhh weellll! The exam that I am actually looking forward to is my french exam. The teacher did something else for me since I haven´t ever taken french before so its my only class that I really get. I think I will do good on it, and I have loved that class. So a big thank you to Ladislo (my french teacher) for changing some stuff up for me and really giving me a class. It has really been great to have a teacher who did that for me. In this coming week I believe I have a philosofy exam, a chemistry one, I am really hopeful about chemistry too, that was one of my really good subjects back in the usa and I have learned everything we have done in that class so far so I hope it goes well. I also have my french one next week!! So all in all school isn´t killing me, its going good. There was a little mishap last monday in english class. The front part of the classroom floor is about 7 inches higher and thats where the teachers desk is. I was sitting in the front row in english, and at the start of the class the teacher came in and moved the desk a little. The front legs fell off the platform and the desk slid forward crushing my hand between it and the top of my desk. The kids in the english class might have learned a few new english curse words, but thats ok. I didn't break any bones, but I did manage to mess my hand up pretty well. I acutally just took my splint off, and it is all good now. So no need to worry. Other then that like I said it is all just smooth sailing.

Outside of school I spend a lot of time running, and I have started going to the gym a bit too. I have an amazing running route here. Its a large route that starts out going down a large street, then through a forest park, then the majority of my run is spent on this boardwalk at the edge of a cliff above the ocean. The view is absolutely incredible. I could run for days there and never get tired. It takes me past one of the northernmost points of spain, not the most, but probably the second or third guessing off of google maps. Lately we have been getting a lot of rain, so I can't always run or do that, and it isn´t all to pretty all the time. But when it is nice, it is amazing. Every weekend I go out, and I am starting to get a pretty big group of friends. Everyone knows me, because I´m the only american around here. There are lots and lots of british people, but I haven´t met any other americans. And none of the other foreigners are exchange students, they live here. So sometimes random people start talking to me which is always fun!

This weekend I did a little trip (the afternoon yesterday till about noon today) to Bilbao. In Bilbao I hungout and stayed with Amaia and her family. She is a fellow exchange student through rotary, and the only other northerner with me. They were really nice, and the city was amazing. I have a few pictures of it that I can put up. The buildings there are way nicer then most of the buildings here with the exception of El Palicio de Magdalenas here. But, the terrain doesn't have anything on that of Santander. Bilbao is also a bigger city, it has the little trains that go around, and a nice bus system.

The buses and everything made me start to think of the public transport here so I have to tell you about it. I love it, it is so easy and affordable. I would take it any time over being able to drive myself. Within Santander there are over 200 bus stops all around the city. The buses come quite frequently, and are set up so that if you are staying in the city part you can take almost any bus, so you won´t wait more then 2 minutes. The buses by my house come around every 5-10 minutes so it is not at all bad. They run on time, and they are great. Its 0.60€ for each bus trip which isn´t bad. So thats the transport inside the city. Outside the city I have only expierienced the planes and buses. The planes are basically exactly the same. I haven´t tried the trains but they seem pretty easy and nice. The buses I freaking love. If your location is close their could be a bus departing for there every hour or so. They are idiot simple, and very affordable. My ticket to go to Bilbao this weekend, a city 1.5 hours away, was 6€. Just the whole system both inside and outside the city is so amazing.

So thats all for now, thank you all so very much for reading, and a big thank you to everyone who came together to help my exchange happen. It means the world to me. Caio

-Jonah

Amaia gave me american food! :) 

This thingy is cool

Amaia and I infront of the cute little doggy

Tasty art....

Your classic street

A cool building

Language and life

Hello again everybody! So once again I just have had a fairly normal week. Things are still a little bit hectic with my school and I am really hoping that soon they settle down to a steady schedule soon. I´m starting to re-consider how often exactly I will write in here, because I have finally started to settle into a normal sort of life. I´m not off doing something totally crazy and new every weekend, I am just living and loving the spanish life. I saw my clock on the blog and it was just...shocking to see how long I have been here. It doesn't exactly feel like I'm still in the first 4 weeks, but its hard to believe it has been that long. One cool thing that I can tell you about is that we had a nation wide strike today where nobody goes to school! So I got a day off and it was awesome. I find it pretty cool that there is a national skip school day every year. And the parents are fine with it because they know the teachers don't teach class on that day because nobody is there! Also for some schools (not mine sadly) tomorrow is a day off. This is a classic example of the mindset, we just had a strike and skipped school, slept in and did nothing. We need a break. No school tomorrow! I find it hilarious and awesome! This weekend I plan on going paintballing with my host brother Mario and his friends so that should be a fun/terrifying and painful expierience.

So with the language I have really started to realize how easy it has became for me. I can think in spanish most of the time and have few or no problems with speaking. However whenever I feel like I am doing really good with the language I go somewhere and proceed to understand nothing, and act like I know nothing. Then someone tries to help me out by speaking english and that reminds me that I can´t even speak very good english anymore D: However everything is going pretty smoothly and it is. I can go to the movies and understand (thank goodness the next hunger games comes out soon) And I am just incredibly pleased with how it is all going for me.

Yesterday was the 2 month mark for me. This has the best 2 months of my life. I want to say a big thank you to everyone who made this happen. It is indescribable the expierience. I could never be able to accurately put it in words what it has ment to me, and how amazing it all is. Thank you all so very much!!!

Normal isn't Normal

So the past week was for once, a normal week. It was really weird to have a normal week. I am adjusting to school and what not. For the most part I don´t do too much in school. School here is way more dificult. The normal students go home and study for 5 hours every day, and some have tutors. And this is even their first language, their native tongue. So for me it is extremely dificult. I don't understand a lot from classes because lots of the teachers use words that I don't know. They also seem to speak a lot faster. One thing that did come as a surprise to me was that I have done most of what we are learning. But we will see as time goes on. But for now in most classes I don't do much, and I don't study much. I prefer to go out after school and expierience spain. I do give effort when in class but its hard. French is my best class because the teacher is awesome and doing something totally different for me. I'm really trying in that class, I really would like to learn french. The school is still changing around my schedule so its kinda weird. I really cannot wait until I get a finalized schedule, but I am really happy that they are making efforts to accomadate me. I don´t really know what to tell you all haha. I have greatly increased my doodling skills. I taught most of the class how to make paper ninja stars so we now have large wars with those at breaks. So I don´t have much else to tell! Thank you all for reading! Ciaoooooo

An Overload of Awesome.

So, as the title of this post kinda hints, this last period of time since I last posted has been awesome. Now I am going to proceed to totally skip over most of it, and start with Friday.

Friday was a pretty normal friday (pretty awesome I know) minus the fact that this was the semana azul at my my school. That means, blue week. All week long there had been activities having to do with water for the various age groups of kids. The activities were optional, but due to the fact that mine was awesome I signed up. I was in the last group on Friday. The activity for Primero de Bachiller (my grade) was scuba diving. During the second break of the day me and the 8 other students who had signed up for it got to leave. We took the bus across the city, then walked a bit. We got suited up in wetsuits, jackets, boots, flippers, goggles, the whole thing. We all piled into a car and drove just a little ways to some docks where we got weight belts and air tanks. We then assembled everything and loaded into a boat and headed out to sea. I figured we would be diving at Mouro as that is a fairly popular spot. But, it turns out we would be diving at a spot just off the coast near El Palicio de Magdalenas (a palace the royal family had built way back when cause they liked coming here). Once there we got some talks about with the respirators and goggles and what to do if you get water in either or various things. Then gear on and down we go. We went down to the sea floor in a sandy patch. We all got in a circle and did a few basic things, practicing taking out your respirator and putting it back in, getting your goggles filled partly with water and getting it out. Then off we went. It was amazing. We were 10-12m under. Their were huge rocks in the water here, and patches of sand. In the plates of rocks there were sometimes cracks. We would swim through these cracks like a giant maze. Sometimes they were thinner at a certain point, and you could swim beneath that. It basically made super awesome underwater tunnels. It´s a totally diferent world down there. Fish swim all around you. I saw so much wildlife. I saw fish of all sizes, shapes, colors. 2 of the most exciting things were a seeing a scorpion fish, and an octopus. First the teacher pointed out the octopus then swam after it. it was a purple octopus, fairly large. He grabbed it, and it squirmed around and shot ink everywhere which looked cool underwater. Then it got away, so I grabbed it but it shot ink again, so I let it go. It was so cool. Then later as we swam over a crevice the teacher pointed out a scorpion fish on the bottom. It was fairly large, and it was really cool to see what decided to sting me way back when. Overall it was just indescrible. It was so amazing and I think I have a new hobby. I loved it so much and I really would like to go again.

Moving on to Saturday and Sunday, we had a trip to the mountains to listen to the deer or something (city people hobbies). We were up in the middle of nowhere, in a cabin used sometimes by sheperds to stay in while they chase cows around the mountains. I wasn´t extremely impressed by the deer, however the mountains were incredible. I´m not going to write too much about them but it was amazing. I summitted 3 peaks in 24 hours, and saw some just breath taking views. On the first day we ate lunch just below a peak, so I was eating above the clouds, and for a bit of the meal, in them. Some of the mountains were over 2500m in altitude, so they weren´t tiny sissy mountains either. Now enjoy the pictures, and thanks for reading :)

The group for scuba

Belén!

Jumpin spot

Cabin was the one in the middle

Halfway up

I´m in a cloud!

In a cloud again!!

At the peak

Don´t let the pretty colors fool you all of that was thistle type plants :(

From another peak

Another view from a peak

A little stream

One of the sort of peaks I climbed

Yes we were up at the very top

The cabin and the group

Logroño and School!

So! Over the weekend I went to Logroño with the Gramse family. Logroño is the capitol of La Rioja, a close by province famous for its wines. So we had a 3 hour drive friday night. When we got there we met the family of rotarians we would be staying with. Then we almost immediatly hit the hay. The next day we explored the city, chilled out in parts of an ancient castle. The usual stuff. The next day we went to a garden house/area of the family a little bit outside the town. There we met up with an exchange student in Logroño for her exchange. I already knew her from Madrid Orientation. We had a big lunch, and passed the afternoon there. But then we had to go. 3 more hours in the car and we were home. I had a great time and it was tons of fun!

Now, on to the schooling. The monday and tuesday I was living with Carolina in her parents house, as her father was traveling and her mother needed someone to be there. So their house is about 8 minutes from the normal house. From their house to Las Llamas (my school) it is about a 5-10 minute walk. So I got up on monday and headed to school for the first time!!! I have met lots and lots of people and made many friends. Most of the time I can´t understand the teachers because they talk faster and speak with different words that make them sound fancier. The schooling is quite different. You have your class. And then you stay in that room for most of the day with the same people. The teachers change rooms. Sometimes you will change rooms for elective classes, but for most of the day you are in the same room. I sat next to a kid named Bruno on the first day, and we have sat together since in all the classes we have together. He was actually an exchange student to Indiana last year through a different program, so that really helped when I didn´t understand. Which was basically all the time. All my teachers are pretty understanding about it. I really can´t do too much due to the fact that I don´t understand 90% of what goes on. Which is pretty weird since in a conversation with another person my age, I can do pretty well. Its been kinda surprising but aside from english class (I´m pretty good at that class) french is the easiest. I am the only person in the class who hasn´t taken 4-5 years of french before this year, so the teacher is awesome and doing something totally different for me. Its nice to have a class where I actually do something, and I´m learning fast. Aside from that I have created some fantastic doodles.

On a totally unrelated subject I kinda feel like I have writers block right now, so I will probably come back and write more later. I´m putting this in to explain why my posts are sorta in chronological order, but they then just kinda morph into whatever goes through my head.

In school everyone is really nice to me, but sometimes I get some pretty silly questions so those are always fun. Also trying to teach people how to say beach and sheet in english class is hilarious. In english class I didn't even have to buy the books, the teacher said I can be an assistant teacher. Sooo I sit around, answer questions and correct the teacher on how to pronounce things. Its oodles of fun.

Now its picture time! (Thanks for reading too)

Don´t mind me hanging out in a castle

My awesome new sunglasses

A street in Logroño with the cathedral in the background

Logroños fireworks

The cathedral

Me, my host brother, and Cheyenne the exchanger in Logroño

Mouro Madrid and Mountains oh My!

Hi guys! First off I would like to apologize for the delay in writing/posting all of this. I have been very busy doing things like swimming in freezing oceans, then hiding out in the freezing mountains 3 hours from Madrid. So obviously I have not had much time to write blog posts.

Starting with last week, last week was pretty normal aside from thursday and friday. I hung out, ate nutella, read Harry Potter in spanish. The usual stuff. Thursday was exciting, we went back out to Mouro and this time I had my camera so I have some awesome pictures. We went swimming while out there, however it was freezing. It probably was the last time that we will go there or swim there until spring. The water now is quite cold, and the sea is acting like posieden heard his favorite ice cream brand is getting shut down (its very rough). It was totally worth it though. I have some videos and just awesome stuff to show you all. I´m really sad I don´t get to swim there for quite a while. Then, that evening I went to try out for a U19 select team. Its based about 1 mile from my house. My highschool doesn´t have a team, so this was my only option. It wasnt actual tryouts, I just did a practice with them and if I was good enough I got to join. So before we started I was told that there are a lot of problems with the federation in spain with me playing (as I am an exchanger) which I find kind of stupid. But its all good, I will figure it out. So I played with the team, and it was so much fun. I have missed playing soccer so much. After the practice the coach pointed at me and said "next thursday 7:30" (In spanish) so now I can train with them, and if I get all the paper work figured out I can play in games too!!! :) Also, later that night I spent a while skyping Nuria (an ex exchange student friend who came to the USA last year) and that was fun.

Now, I should mention that throughout the week and especially Thursday night I was packing for orientation in "Madrid". We were scheduled to arrive 12:00-15:00 on Friday at one of three stations in Madrid. So I got up painfully early on Friday and headed to the bus station. I was, unfortunately, traveling alone. Most of the students had other students near them that they met up with to travel with. I only have one student near me, Amaia in Bilbao (we are the cool northerners) and she couldn´t get matching tickets so we were traveling alone. So I found my bus and went on. I then spent the next four hours listening to music and trying to drown out the lady talking in Mandarin the whole way. When I finally arrived there were only a few other exchange students there. So we hung out for a while in the station. Finally we had a huge crowed of us. Most I had talked to over our facebook page, so we got right to talking and being weird. A bus came, we all got on and went through Madrid picking up the students at the other stations. Then it was off to our destination that we had been told was a "little bit" out of Madrid. What we didn´t know was that it was a little bit outside the province of Madrid. So really 3 hours from Madrid and painfully high up in the mountains. None of us had any idea how long we were going to be on the bus, so it was kinda painful. We got there, and found that we were sleeping in tents. 80 other exchange students and I had packed for a hotel in Madrid. My phone was dead, there were like 2 outlets, and if it did have battery, there was no service. So we got split into tents, then we just hung out for the rest of the night. We had dinner in a building that had tarps for walls. In short we all got to know eachother better. So we played games, ran around, then at 12 we went to bed. I was in a tent with 3 rotex (people who have done exchange and returned) from spain. Alejandra (spanish rotary lady)  actually briefly thought that I was rotex from Spain which was hilarious. Our tent was easily the most fun tent. We were somewhat known the next day due to loud conversations in spanish (everything else at camp was english) and yelling rude lyrics to songs till about 1-1:30. Then came the sleep. I dozed off in my sleeping bag, then about 30 minutes later realized that I was totally frozen. The remaineder of the night was spent putting on more clothes, curled up in a ball in my sleeping bag, desperately trying to stay not dead. It was so incredibly cold. I didn´t sleep more then an hour that night. Also large amounts of time were spent dreading doing this again the next night. When we finally all got up at 7 it was miserable. Almost everyone had almost the same expierience. We had a decent breakfast, with lots of hot chocolate. Afterwards we messed around a bit, then we had talks all morning about rules, then some paper work and other stuff. It was then announced that we were moving to a camp ground that had buildings to stay in. It was possibly one of the happiest moments of camp. But we didn´t move until later. First we did lots of pin trading with the other exchange students, then we took pictures with eachother and as a large group. Finally we cleaned out our tents and put everything in a trailer to be taken to the other campsite. We had to walk though. Once there we unloaded the trailer, and then we went on a hike up through the mountains. It took 2 hours, but we were rewarded with an incredible view of the graveyard where Franco is buried. We climbed around on the rocks and had a great time. We went back, ate dinner, and made skits to perform infront of the other exchange students. My group did a decent skit, I got to be a bull and run around trying to skewer people with my horns of paper. Terrifying stuff. However I have to say hats off to Reid for the incredible Miley skit. After that we just messed around and in general had a great time. The next day we got up, ate and immediately got on the bus to go back to Madrid. Once in Madrid we all were dropped off at our stations. My bus didn´t leave for a while, so I waited in the station with several other exchangers and talked. When I got on the bus I figured out that my Rotary had bought me a first class ticket for the ride home, so a big thank you to them. I spent the whole time watching movies. It was a great expiereince. I had the time of my life, and I made so many friends. I have friends in all parts of España now.

It was a great week, and an unforgettable weekend. Thank you very much to everyone there, and everyone who helped put it on. Thank you also to all Rotary clubs for sending all of us exchange students.

These are just some of the pictures from Mouro and the orientation, I´m not going to caption them. I hope you like them! More might come later. Also I have heard a lot about problems with instagram, I will edit a direct link in on the about me collum. You can also expect a post about school soon as there is a presentation tomorrow then it starts monday. :] Thanks for reading!!!