Hi guys, so I finally am sitting down and writing this, and I have a pretty good amount to tell you all about that has happened in the last two months or so.
So the first big thing was the Santander international half Marathon. It was on march 9th. I decided to run in it about 2 weeks before. I may have been a pretty good runner when I was in the USA, but not training was still a bad idea. So on march 9th I got up, got on my running stuff and headed over. The marathon was huge. 4000 runners, I had never ran with so many people. You were always running in a group and when I looked ahead of me or behind me we were just this giant train of people. There were so many people that when the race started I didn´t cross the start line until 41 seconds later, was totally new for me. The race went through almost all of the main parts of Santander, and followed the shoreline for a while and that gave a nice view. We got to run through the tunnels too, it was cool to get to be in them on foot, but they were about 10 degrees hotter -__- Most of the main roads were shut for this, the busses were diverted, it was huge. In the race its self they had pacers running at 1:20 1:30 1:40 1:50 and so on so you could follow one for a certain time. They had water stands every 4km or so, the people would hold out bottles filled with ice cold water already with the cap off. You didnt even have to stop. It was amazing. So for the first 13 or 15km of the race I was feeling pretty good. I was fine, going well, I was ahead of the 1:30 pacer. Then I totally died. I did manage to finish the race in a respectable 1 hour and 47 minutes without stopping or walking once! So all in all I am quite proud of that, It was lots of fun (in its own painful way). I got a cool shirt out of it. And I couldnt walk normal for 3-4 days I was so sore.
But, March 9th held more exciting things for me! Later that day the Gramse family came and picked me up! It was my third and final family change. The Gramses are the ones who I went to Logroño with all that time ago. I have lived with them for almost a month now. It is awesome! I have 3 siblings. Celia (10) Nadia (14) and Mario (16). Everything is great with them and this kinda leads me into the next cool thing!
My first weekend with the Gramses they decided we should go to France to skii for the weekend!!! So friday night we all piled into a car and had about a 6 hour drive to a small resort in France!! It was my first time out of Spain since I arrived, and my first time in France. It was pretty cool, and fairly similar to Spain so far as how it looked. I got to do some fun stuff on my snowboard (I have really missed it) and I learned how to ski!! On sunday afternoon Nadia wanted to try snowboarding, and we have the same shoe size so we did a trade. I picked it up really fast, I think all my experience with snow and my familiarity with the feeling of sliding over the snow helped a lot. Within 2 hours I did my first black! Then at lunch Nadia wanted to change back (like all begining snowboarders she was hurting a bit) so I traded her again and snowboarded till the last minute. Then back to Santander. It was a blast and I am going to try to put some pictures of all of this.
So those are the main important things. Other then that some I guess interesting things could be that I am forgetting my first bloody language. I skype my family and I can´t think of the words. If you use it I understand, but I just stop speaking for a second because I cant remember the english words. I have been doing a lot of paper work for up comming trips and next year stuff. And here is a little bit on my upcoming trips! I am going to Almeria in the south of spain for semana santa which is around 16-20 of april with the family. May 1-7 I am in DUBAI!!!! Visiting my Aunt Elise. May 17th the biological mothership comes to spain to visit me and be tricked into eating weird foods (muahahahha nobody tell here). And then in June there is the euro tour!!!
So thats everything I have been up to, thanks for reading and putting up with my extreme inconsistency in writing here, hope all is good to you where ever you may be.
Abrazos a todos
Jonah
