So, yesterday marked one week for me, and it has easily been the best week of my life. There were so many crazy awesome things that happened. My family told me that this part of the year is kinda vacation time for everyone in Spain, thats why all the family and friends are in town. But most of them have left, next week it will be what they call normal. Anyways, most of our time has been spent at the various beaches, and it has been awesome for me. For a kid who has lived in Iowa for all his life, I have no complaints about spending 7 hours a day at the beach. Going along with this, I believe I could not have been placed in a better spot. Initially I was hoping for somewhere along the south coast because its warm enough to swim year around. Well, this in my opinion is a thousand times better. For one, the beaches here are absolutely incredible. They are just amazing. Most of them, you can walk a hundred feet out into the water, and it is still a pure sand bottom, and you can stand except when the waves come. The waves are big enough for even surfing, its amazing. The water is incredible, it is so amazingly clear. There is also a ton of marine life, and its awesome. Yesterday I was snorkling through this amazing giant tide pool. It´s long really long, and about 30 feet wide. in the middle there is a ridge that you can stand on. It is dead straight and goes the whole way, its really cool. But, whats better, and what makes this a very popular snorkling spot, is the fact that despite it only being maybe 7 feet deep at the deepest, you can never touch the bottom. Why? Because almost the entire bottom, the whole way excluding the ridge is completely covered in sea anemones. It is beautiful. There are tons of fish that weave in and out of them, and its just amazing.
There are a few downsides to the beaches here that I learned the hard way. One, the water is pretty cold. It´s not terrible if you keep moving in it, but its not a hot tub by any means. Also, I first hand learned of a fish that the locals call "scorpion". It is in the same genetic family as the lion fish, but it is not quite as dangerous. 2 days ago I was out in the ocean at a beautiful beach, when I felt a pain on the bottom of my right foot near my toe. I didn´t know what of dangerous things we had here, so I decided to go in. I thought that it most likely was just a sharp shell. But of course this being the ocean I thought, gee I wonder if it was a lion fish. One minute later I was still alive so I crossed that off my list. I got to shore, saw a bit of blood on my foot. Went over to my host mom, she said it was a scorpion. That kinda flipped me out until she explained thats what they call the fish. We went up to the medic stand, where they confirmed it was a scorpion sting. By now it was hurting a ton from the venom. Luckily for us, its very easy to treat a scorpion sting, you don´t have to go to the hospital, and that would let the venom spread. Unluckily for me that is done by having lots of small incisions made in your foot with a special knife. They don´t have any anesthetic at these stands I should add. So they made lots of cuts, then they pressed around them and massaged them to bleed out the venom. It took about 10 minutes. After that my foot actually felt considerably better, and I could still walk. Now, there is barely a mark on my foot, the cuts and sting healed pretty rapidly.
Overall, this week has been amazing. I had lots of adventures, good and bad, I learned so much spanish so quickly, yet I have tons left to learn. I made some friends, I tried lots of weird foods (ex. Eel), and started learning the city. There was so much more, but I don´t want to write another novel. It´s been incredible and I know it will continue to be. I don´t really post pictures on here, but if you want to see some you can follow me on instagram @jonahmarkss. Thanks for reading!
Friday, August 30, 2013
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Final Days and First Days
So, the last few days before I left were totally crazy so Im going to do a brief run down of what happened. Also I learned that once you are in your final days in the country you instantly become famous and everybody wants to spend time with you.
Monday: Monday I went through my normal routine during the earlier part of the day, then I drove to town that is slightly larger then mine called Ottumwa. In Ottumwa I have 2 friends. One is and inbound from Italy, Giulia. Her host sister (my other friend) is Taylor, and she will be leaving for her exchange in Italy soon. I think Taylor also has a blog so I will try to find that out and edit the address in here so you can follow her adventures too.
Tuesday: Tuesday I did basically the same thing, minus this time I went to Washington (another small town) to say goodbye to a friend, Hannah, who is an inbound from Austria. We went and got ice cream, then hung out at the square. You can follow Hannahs exchange in the USA here, on her blog. Unfortunately we couldn´t spend much time together because tomorrow was the first day of school for Hannah. So that night I spent most of my time totally finalizing my packing. But it didn´t get fully done.
Wednesday: Wednesday was the first day of school for everyone else, and my last day in the country. So seeing as I didn´t want to spend all day sitting at home bored out of my mind with the time passing 4x slower then usual due to the excitement, I decided to go. I made up a small schedule that went to all my favorite teachers classes with my friends. It was great to get to see everyone one last time. In school, I also had my final goodbyes with Federico, the Italian inbound to my city. We had became pretty good friends in the short time we knew one another. I cannot tell you how many times I was asked in school why was I still here, and then why would I spend my last day in school. It was kinda hard to explain the second one since there is no way to describe how excited I was, and how terrible it would be to have nothing to keep me occupied during this time. Finally, I went home after school. It was an early out heat schedule, (all first days of school are) so we got out at 1:30. Cross Country practice was at 3:30, and I really wanted to go to that. So I went home, and messed around for a little bit, then went to Cross Country. I didn´t run that day, because I didn´t want to be sore or have any chance of getting injured for my trip tomorrow. So I just sat around, talked with the coach, and talked with people before and after they ran. Also during this time my neighbors and a friend named Perry began texting me, they wanted to hang out for a bit that night (see what I mean? Famous :P ) So after saying final goodbyes to some of my best friends (they run cross country) I went and picked Perry up and headed to my neighbors house. Now I lived in the country so neighbor is a loose term. By neighbor I mean lived within 2 miles of me. My neighbors have a daughter who is 18 and 2 sons, 16 and 13. I hang out with both their sons. Davin is 16 and Chaysten is 13. So we spent a bit of time together, played some soccer, but then I had to go. My family wanted to have one last family dinner. So I went home, did that. And then I really finalized my packing.
Thursday: The big day. When I got up that was the first thing that crossed my mind. My countdown on my wall had just hit zero. I got up and had to say goodbye to my younger brother Jeremy, then went through my normal routine. After that I checked all the small annoying things I could have forgotten, but I was all good. I basically packed my toothbrush, grabbed my phone charger, and I was ready to go. So then I had a good 2 hours of waiting. It killed me. I tried to distract myself for most of it, but it didn´t really work. The only decent way to describe the excitement at this point is indescribable. It was incredible. Finally, my mom and I left for the airport. I drove the larger part of the way, because it was the last time I could enjoy my driving privileges. When we got there, we unloaded my bags, took a few pictures and said Adios. And that was it. I was on my own, in the airport, an exchange student. I got my tickets no problem, and headed through security. I flew out of Cedar Rapids airport, normally there is no line for security, thursday there was quite a line. So that was a bit weird. I had a bit of confusion with the gates, because my gate said that it was headed to Chicago until 20 seconds before boarding started, but it was all good. Also, while waiting in Cedar Rapids 3 different Rotarians walked up to me and started talking to me, they knew I was with Rotary because of my blazer. It was pretty cool. My pin covered blazer attracted lots of attention from other people too. I was asked a lot of questions about it. I got to Dallas and had a 2 hour layover, but the first thing I did still was go to my gate. After sitting there for around 10 minutes a Girl around my age sat down one seat away. She kept on staring at my blazer, then I would look at her, she would look away, then once I looked away she would continue to stare at it. So after around 5 minutes of this I decided to start a conversation. Her name is Maria and it turns out she was an ex exchange student, that was why she was so interested in it. She was from Alicante, Spain, and she had gone to Kansas on her exchange 2011/12. She was just returning to Spain from a month long exchange in Ohio. We talked a lot, then our planes gate got changed, then our flight got delayed. I went and got my first Euros from a currency exchange stand! On the plane we were 4 seats away, so close but we couldn´t talk. The plane was the biggest I have ever been on, and it was really cool. There were tvs in all the seats and everything. So I watched a movie, tried to eat part of the dinner, but couldn´t, the airline food was so bad. I tried to sleep. I really did. I was just too excited. I watched another movie, and spent a lot of time listening to music and watching our flight progress on the TV. Overall I got about 1 hour of sleep.
Friday: Towards the end of the journey I spent time peering out the window at Spain!!!! It was my first time seeing the country, or any part of Europe. I also was really nervous about making my next flight. My Dallas to Madrid flight was supposed to be arrive at 10:05. But because of the delay we arrived closer to 11. Then we taxied till about 11:15. My next plane boarded at 11:30, and left at 11:45. And I had no idea what to do for customs and where to go and all this stuff. So my friend Maria helped me out a bit and got me headed the right way. Customs and passport control were so fast, they both took under 2 minutes. Customs was a bit worse, I didn´t know if I needed my checked bags, and nobody spoke english. My gate for my next flight also happened to be on the other side of the airport. So I got there asap, and barely made it. I was on time. Unfortunately the flight crew and just about anybody else with any power including the people checking your ticket when you get on, didn´t show up till around 11:45-12. So that was annoying, all the stress for nothing. I got on my flight, sat there really excited the whole time, then we landed at Santanders fairly small airport. I jumped out and ran inside. Inside I was waiting around the luggage claim waiting for my bags. And the sliding doors to the outside opened when someone walked to close to them. My host family was there, along with lots of other friends they had brought. My mom started waving at me and my cousin and a friend ran over as close as they could get yelling to me. I got my luggage as fast as I could and went out and met them. My counselor was there, my cousin, what I believe was my club president, and another family. I tried to understand all the spanish, but it was really hard. Finally I departed with my family and cousin. I saw my house and the city for the first time. We went back to the house, it was around 2 now. Lunch time. So my mom started making lunch, then more family friends showed up with another cousin of mine, a son my age, a younger son. We tried to talk a bit. But I was tired and I wasn´t adjusted to speaking spanish yet. It takes me about 2 or 3 hours. Lunch was great, the new food was weird and awesome. After lunch I broke out all the candy that I brought as presents. And everyone really warmed up and we had a lot of fun trying that. I showed them american money and lots of other stuff. They were all really nice and just the best. Another cousin and someones sister (both I think around 12) showed up a bit later. We all spent some more time together. I gave out more presents and we had lots of fun. Then around 6 my family decided, lets go sailing. So me, my cousin (Juan), the family friends son my age (Pablo), his dad, and my host dad went to the ocean!!! I guess my family owns a small sailboat. We were taken out to the boat on a little motor boat. Now we were in the middle of the bay. We motored a ways, then tried to set sail, figued out that the sail was broken near the top of the mast, and motored our way to a beach. I should mention that the water here is insanely clear, you can see so deep down, and its mainly beautiful sand bottoms. Once we were at the beach, we spent some time trying to flip the boat on its side so we could fix it. We didn´t manage to. So we motored out into the open ocean and to a little rocky island with an old lighthouse on it that. We threw down our anchor in a small sort of bay about 30 feet off of shore. It was incredible the water was 25ish feet deep and you could clearly see the bottom which was smooth rock, or sand. I got convinced to jump in, and it was absolutely freezing. But if you kept moving it was only slightly terrible. However it was totally worth it. I had grabbed a pair of goggles from the boat, and it was amazing. There were hundredes of fish in the bay, and you could see so far underwater. It was so awesome. It was so beautiful that there were actually divers with tanks and masks and the whole deal there. So after about 10 minutes freezing in the water and enjoying the views I climbed back on the boat, and we headed back to the bay. They said they would get the mast fixed and we could come back many more times. Once in the car the sleep started to get to me. I really tried hard to stay awake for the 5 minutes, but it was hard. Once back at the apartment, I showered, then we headed out for dinner at one of the other families houses. Dinner started at about 10:30, and was excelent. Afterwards we hung out till around 12:45. Overall, it was an incredible first day.
So overall things that I didn´t really mention were that Cantabria is also a mountain province, so it has some pretty cool views aside from the beach. This is the most incredible place in the world, and I´m so happy I get to spend my year here. The people are great, and so nice. There are millions of new little things. On a different note, I don´t think I´m going to write a timeline of what happened anymore because it took forever, and all my posts would be a novel. Also, this took me 2 days to write since I don´t always have lots of time to write. Thanks for reading the short novel I just wrote!
Monday: Monday I went through my normal routine during the earlier part of the day, then I drove to town that is slightly larger then mine called Ottumwa. In Ottumwa I have 2 friends. One is and inbound from Italy, Giulia. Her host sister (my other friend) is Taylor, and she will be leaving for her exchange in Italy soon. I think Taylor also has a blog so I will try to find that out and edit the address in here so you can follow her adventures too.
Tuesday: Tuesday I did basically the same thing, minus this time I went to Washington (another small town) to say goodbye to a friend, Hannah, who is an inbound from Austria. We went and got ice cream, then hung out at the square. You can follow Hannahs exchange in the USA here, on her blog. Unfortunately we couldn´t spend much time together because tomorrow was the first day of school for Hannah. So that night I spent most of my time totally finalizing my packing. But it didn´t get fully done.
Wednesday: Wednesday was the first day of school for everyone else, and my last day in the country. So seeing as I didn´t want to spend all day sitting at home bored out of my mind with the time passing 4x slower then usual due to the excitement, I decided to go. I made up a small schedule that went to all my favorite teachers classes with my friends. It was great to get to see everyone one last time. In school, I also had my final goodbyes with Federico, the Italian inbound to my city. We had became pretty good friends in the short time we knew one another. I cannot tell you how many times I was asked in school why was I still here, and then why would I spend my last day in school. It was kinda hard to explain the second one since there is no way to describe how excited I was, and how terrible it would be to have nothing to keep me occupied during this time. Finally, I went home after school. It was an early out heat schedule, (all first days of school are) so we got out at 1:30. Cross Country practice was at 3:30, and I really wanted to go to that. So I went home, and messed around for a little bit, then went to Cross Country. I didn´t run that day, because I didn´t want to be sore or have any chance of getting injured for my trip tomorrow. So I just sat around, talked with the coach, and talked with people before and after they ran. Also during this time my neighbors and a friend named Perry began texting me, they wanted to hang out for a bit that night (see what I mean? Famous :P ) So after saying final goodbyes to some of my best friends (they run cross country) I went and picked Perry up and headed to my neighbors house. Now I lived in the country so neighbor is a loose term. By neighbor I mean lived within 2 miles of me. My neighbors have a daughter who is 18 and 2 sons, 16 and 13. I hang out with both their sons. Davin is 16 and Chaysten is 13. So we spent a bit of time together, played some soccer, but then I had to go. My family wanted to have one last family dinner. So I went home, did that. And then I really finalized my packing.
Thursday: The big day. When I got up that was the first thing that crossed my mind. My countdown on my wall had just hit zero. I got up and had to say goodbye to my younger brother Jeremy, then went through my normal routine. After that I checked all the small annoying things I could have forgotten, but I was all good. I basically packed my toothbrush, grabbed my phone charger, and I was ready to go. So then I had a good 2 hours of waiting. It killed me. I tried to distract myself for most of it, but it didn´t really work. The only decent way to describe the excitement at this point is indescribable. It was incredible. Finally, my mom and I left for the airport. I drove the larger part of the way, because it was the last time I could enjoy my driving privileges. When we got there, we unloaded my bags, took a few pictures and said Adios. And that was it. I was on my own, in the airport, an exchange student. I got my tickets no problem, and headed through security. I flew out of Cedar Rapids airport, normally there is no line for security, thursday there was quite a line. So that was a bit weird. I had a bit of confusion with the gates, because my gate said that it was headed to Chicago until 20 seconds before boarding started, but it was all good. Also, while waiting in Cedar Rapids 3 different Rotarians walked up to me and started talking to me, they knew I was with Rotary because of my blazer. It was pretty cool. My pin covered blazer attracted lots of attention from other people too. I was asked a lot of questions about it. I got to Dallas and had a 2 hour layover, but the first thing I did still was go to my gate. After sitting there for around 10 minutes a Girl around my age sat down one seat away. She kept on staring at my blazer, then I would look at her, she would look away, then once I looked away she would continue to stare at it. So after around 5 minutes of this I decided to start a conversation. Her name is Maria and it turns out she was an ex exchange student, that was why she was so interested in it. She was from Alicante, Spain, and she had gone to Kansas on her exchange 2011/12. She was just returning to Spain from a month long exchange in Ohio. We talked a lot, then our planes gate got changed, then our flight got delayed. I went and got my first Euros from a currency exchange stand! On the plane we were 4 seats away, so close but we couldn´t talk. The plane was the biggest I have ever been on, and it was really cool. There were tvs in all the seats and everything. So I watched a movie, tried to eat part of the dinner, but couldn´t, the airline food was so bad. I tried to sleep. I really did. I was just too excited. I watched another movie, and spent a lot of time listening to music and watching our flight progress on the TV. Overall I got about 1 hour of sleep.
Friday: Towards the end of the journey I spent time peering out the window at Spain!!!! It was my first time seeing the country, or any part of Europe. I also was really nervous about making my next flight. My Dallas to Madrid flight was supposed to be arrive at 10:05. But because of the delay we arrived closer to 11. Then we taxied till about 11:15. My next plane boarded at 11:30, and left at 11:45. And I had no idea what to do for customs and where to go and all this stuff. So my friend Maria helped me out a bit and got me headed the right way. Customs and passport control were so fast, they both took under 2 minutes. Customs was a bit worse, I didn´t know if I needed my checked bags, and nobody spoke english. My gate for my next flight also happened to be on the other side of the airport. So I got there asap, and barely made it. I was on time. Unfortunately the flight crew and just about anybody else with any power including the people checking your ticket when you get on, didn´t show up till around 11:45-12. So that was annoying, all the stress for nothing. I got on my flight, sat there really excited the whole time, then we landed at Santanders fairly small airport. I jumped out and ran inside. Inside I was waiting around the luggage claim waiting for my bags. And the sliding doors to the outside opened when someone walked to close to them. My host family was there, along with lots of other friends they had brought. My mom started waving at me and my cousin and a friend ran over as close as they could get yelling to me. I got my luggage as fast as I could and went out and met them. My counselor was there, my cousin, what I believe was my club president, and another family. I tried to understand all the spanish, but it was really hard. Finally I departed with my family and cousin. I saw my house and the city for the first time. We went back to the house, it was around 2 now. Lunch time. So my mom started making lunch, then more family friends showed up with another cousin of mine, a son my age, a younger son. We tried to talk a bit. But I was tired and I wasn´t adjusted to speaking spanish yet. It takes me about 2 or 3 hours. Lunch was great, the new food was weird and awesome. After lunch I broke out all the candy that I brought as presents. And everyone really warmed up and we had a lot of fun trying that. I showed them american money and lots of other stuff. They were all really nice and just the best. Another cousin and someones sister (both I think around 12) showed up a bit later. We all spent some more time together. I gave out more presents and we had lots of fun. Then around 6 my family decided, lets go sailing. So me, my cousin (Juan), the family friends son my age (Pablo), his dad, and my host dad went to the ocean!!! I guess my family owns a small sailboat. We were taken out to the boat on a little motor boat. Now we were in the middle of the bay. We motored a ways, then tried to set sail, figued out that the sail was broken near the top of the mast, and motored our way to a beach. I should mention that the water here is insanely clear, you can see so deep down, and its mainly beautiful sand bottoms. Once we were at the beach, we spent some time trying to flip the boat on its side so we could fix it. We didn´t manage to. So we motored out into the open ocean and to a little rocky island with an old lighthouse on it that. We threw down our anchor in a small sort of bay about 30 feet off of shore. It was incredible the water was 25ish feet deep and you could clearly see the bottom which was smooth rock, or sand. I got convinced to jump in, and it was absolutely freezing. But if you kept moving it was only slightly terrible. However it was totally worth it. I had grabbed a pair of goggles from the boat, and it was amazing. There were hundredes of fish in the bay, and you could see so far underwater. It was so awesome. It was so beautiful that there were actually divers with tanks and masks and the whole deal there. So after about 10 minutes freezing in the water and enjoying the views I climbed back on the boat, and we headed back to the bay. They said they would get the mast fixed and we could come back many more times. Once in the car the sleep started to get to me. I really tried hard to stay awake for the 5 minutes, but it was hard. Once back at the apartment, I showered, then we headed out for dinner at one of the other families houses. Dinner started at about 10:30, and was excelent. Afterwards we hung out till around 12:45. Overall, it was an incredible first day.
So overall things that I didn´t really mention were that Cantabria is also a mountain province, so it has some pretty cool views aside from the beach. This is the most incredible place in the world, and I´m so happy I get to spend my year here. The people are great, and so nice. There are millions of new little things. On a different note, I don´t think I´m going to write a timeline of what happened anymore because it took forever, and all my posts would be a novel. Also, this took me 2 days to write since I don´t always have lots of time to write. Thanks for reading the short novel I just wrote!
Thursday, August 15, 2013
Pre-Exchange
So, it's one week from when I leave for Spain. There are about 10 million things going through my head. There is so much going on at the moment. I am nervous and incredibly excited to start this incredible experience.
Exchange has sort of been something I have been very interested for a very long time, however it was one of those things that was so unreal that it never really took shape until this past year. It is just crazy for me to think about how in in 8 days when I arrive I will be all the way across the world as an exchange student. I started packing, but not much has gotten done. I bought all the presents for my host family. I have emailed them lots over the past few days, yet despite all of that it still hasn't entirely set in that it is a mere 7 days away. Lots of the previous exchange students I have talked to have talked about that, it doesn't fully sink in until you are there, and sometimes have been there for several days or even weeks.
Looking back on this year it is incredible to see how much something that hasn't even happened has influenced me. At the start of the 2012/13 school year, exchange was still just something I was sort of interested in. It started to become more real when I found Rotarys youth exchange program. Through all the training and camps it influenced almost every aspect of my life. Rotary was everywhere this year. Every friday I would go to Rotary meetings, and I am about to attend my last one before exchange tomorrow. The inbounds to my district quickly became some of my best friends. So much happened and so much changed, and there is no other way to describe it but awesome. I'm very grateful to all the people who have made all of this happen.
Anyways like I said I am a bit nervous about the whole thing. There is so much that I am nervous about, yet most of it excites me too. I'm nervous to meet my host family, nervous to go through customs, to live in a fairly large city, to be speaking a new language all the time! The list goes on and on, yet every single thing that I just listed off is really really exciting to think about. Overall, I would definitely say I am more excited then nervous, and not just by a little bit. I try not to think about the whole gravity of this, because when I do I get so excited that I practically bounce off the walls.
Overall it has been an incredible year, with a even more amazing year to look forward too. My next post will be written and posted from Spain, so goodbye to the USA, and thank you to everyone who helped make this happen.
Exchange has sort of been something I have been very interested for a very long time, however it was one of those things that was so unreal that it never really took shape until this past year. It is just crazy for me to think about how in in 8 days when I arrive I will be all the way across the world as an exchange student. I started packing, but not much has gotten done. I bought all the presents for my host family. I have emailed them lots over the past few days, yet despite all of that it still hasn't entirely set in that it is a mere 7 days away. Lots of the previous exchange students I have talked to have talked about that, it doesn't fully sink in until you are there, and sometimes have been there for several days or even weeks.
Looking back on this year it is incredible to see how much something that hasn't even happened has influenced me. At the start of the 2012/13 school year, exchange was still just something I was sort of interested in. It started to become more real when I found Rotarys youth exchange program. Through all the training and camps it influenced almost every aspect of my life. Rotary was everywhere this year. Every friday I would go to Rotary meetings, and I am about to attend my last one before exchange tomorrow. The inbounds to my district quickly became some of my best friends. So much happened and so much changed, and there is no other way to describe it but awesome. I'm very grateful to all the people who have made all of this happen.
Anyways like I said I am a bit nervous about the whole thing. There is so much that I am nervous about, yet most of it excites me too. I'm nervous to meet my host family, nervous to go through customs, to live in a fairly large city, to be speaking a new language all the time! The list goes on and on, yet every single thing that I just listed off is really really exciting to think about. Overall, I would definitely say I am more excited then nervous, and not just by a little bit. I try not to think about the whole gravity of this, because when I do I get so excited that I practically bounce off the walls.
Overall it has been an incredible year, with a even more amazing year to look forward too. My next post will be written and posted from Spain, so goodbye to the USA, and thank you to everyone who helped make this happen.
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