First week!

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!