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!!!
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