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!!!

2 Weeks In

So, I´m a bit past 2 weeks here in Spain.  It has all been so incredible. This week has been slightly more calm. We haven´t gone to the beach as much, and the weather is worse. In fact right now it is continuing its 36 hour streak of raining.  Early in the week we did go back out to Mouro (aka my favorite place ever). Mouro is the small lighthouse island out in the bay that I visited on my first day here. We swam around a bit more, but there were lots of divers so we left and went to a beach. The next day, we got the boat again, and dropped my host mom off at the beach, then, I learned to sail! I have gone sailing before but I never really learned how to do a ton of it, or why we did what we did. Me and my host dad spent large amounts of time sailing around. I learned tons, and it was so much fun.  Unfortunately the camera that I bought arrived the day after all of these fun adventures. So I don´t have many pictures. I did buy a camera, I quickly realized that my smartphones camera was not good enough to capture all the incredible views here. Also this camera that I bought is (to my knowledge) impervious to just about everything short of being strapped to a bomb, then eaten by a shark flying into an active volcano. So I can get some pretty cool underwater photos on here hopefully. There were some cool things, I went for a bike ride with my host dad through some of the surrounding area. I saw my host dad try flyboarding! And my host family says I can try it next time too!There isn´t much else to tell about this week. No venomous fish stinging my feet. None of that stuff. I have just been walking around, experiencing the culture, and learning the city. And it has been an awesome week. Today I will present to my Rotary here for the first time, so thats a little bit nerve racking but it will all go good. The language has gotten 10,000x easier then when I initially arrived. Thats really all I have to write about, now for some pictures. (Note, yes strapping a bomb to my camera and having eaten by a shark that is flying into a volcano is a Despicable Me 2 reference.) Also, Sorry about the delay in posting, I have been having tech difficulties.

A plaza in the city

I want to put a jar of Nutella in his hand

Españaaa!

My host dad flyboarding!

A part of the beach

A great view over a bay

The sea near El Virgen del Mar

Some more ocean

Flags ceremony for a giant sailing competition santander is hosting

Part of Santander at night