My First Week

Okay so since I haven’t written in my blog for a week, what I’ve done is taken portions of letters that I’ve written and sections out my journal entries, because they are pretty descriptive of everything I’ve done over the past week. Enjoy!!

Sunday January 13, 2008
Since yesterday, a lot has happened that I feel like I should write about. Today was our first day in church, and boy was it overwhelming. Everything was in Spanish for three hours, and I felt pretty overwhelmed. We had Relief Society first, and then Sunday school, and then Sacrament. In Relief Society, I could understand the majority of what they were saying, but after that I had a really hard time focusing, and so I didn’t really get as much out of the other two meetings. But I’m noticing that my Spanish is getting better and better every day. The days go kind of slow, but I think that’s because I don’t really have much to do so far. Today, we were supposed to go with Madre’s sister, Ana, to church at 10:15 am, but Brooke’s alarm clock didn’t go off, so we got ready in about five minutes after Racquel came in and told us what time it was. Then after church we came home, and Madre and Padre had gotten home from the hospital, and Madre was making lunch for us. We had pork “breasts” I guess you could call them, but they were more like pork chops without the bones; with mashed potatoes only much smoother, bread, and salad with crab and tomatoes, cheese, and some hard-boiled egg. Everything has been really good so far. I haven’t eaten anything I didn’t like. We’ve eaten calamari, tuna, crab, pork…pretty much everything except chicken which is really popular in America.

Monday January 14, 2008
Today was our day to get acquainted with Alcalíngua. This morning we had to go take a test to determine where we are in Spanish, and let me tell you, that was one very hard test. Most of it was way over my head, or how I like to say “sobre mi cabeza”. The scores don’t really matter, but it made me realize how much I really have to learn. We didn’t have any classes today except for one, and that was our religion one. He made it sound like it’s pretty much impossible to get an A, but lots of teachers say that, so I’m not sure if I should be worried or not. I think that with the effort that I put into my classes, I will be just fine. He, like everyone else, spoke in Spanish the entire lecture, but I could understand pretty much everything he was saying. He doesn’t talk quite as fast as most other people most of the time, so I think that made it easier. But even so, I really understood what he was saying, and we were talking about how important it is to know about your history in order to know about yourself. I actually really like him a lot, but there were some girls in the back talking about how crazy he is, and boring, but I didn’t think he was either.
Other than that, today we went around Alcalá a little bit for a tour, and we went to the mall to try to change money and to buy slippers. But we couldn’t change money at the Santander in the mall for some reason, so I’ll have to do it tomorrow. Tomorrow, I have my first Spanish 106 class…and I think it will be fun. There’s about six of us from our group that are taking it. I officially have five classes, but only two that seem to be really intensive, and those are Spanish, and History 202.

Tuesday January 15, 2008
Today around 4:15pm a bunch of us had decided to go into Madrid to look around a little bit, and to get a better feel for the city. We went to the Puerta del Sol, and a few people went to the Plaza Mayor, but I didn’t. Mostly the girls I was with wanted to look in the stores, and I personally wasn’t all that interested in the stores. I think we came to see the history, not to shop, I can do that in the states. But I figured it wasn’t really a big deal, so I didn’t protest, but the next time we go in, I probably will say something. It was kind of miserable because it was especially cold today. This morning, you could tell that it had rained and it was chillier than any of the other days all day long. But while we were there we went to a little pastry shop, andI had my first pastelito from Spain. It was amazing!!! It had chocolate filling kind of like frosting, not the pudding-like stuff that you see in the U.S., and the outside was kind of like a croissant topped with crystallized powdered sugar almost. Super yummy, and I actually had two of them, but afterwards my stomach was not very happy with me. I also tried the hot chocolate. Brooke got a cup of it, but because it’s so rich, she didn’t want all of it. It’s basically like drinking a melted chocolate bar, but it tasted really good.

Wednesday January 16, 2008
I finally took a siesta today!! I was absolutely exhausted when I got home from school, and I haven’t taken a single siesta since I got into Spain. I slept for about an hour and a half I think, but it’s okay because I didn’t get much sleep the past two nights. My classes today consisted of History 202, and my conversation lab which ended at 12:30pm. Brooke still had class until one thirty, but I needed to go buy some slippers or zapatías so I went home alone. Last night I changed some money into Euros finally, and I got to spend them today. I got two pairs for 5.95€, and they are both really cute and comfy, but one of them is for my sister Jordyn since her birthday is this month. Before I went to the centro comercial, my friend Kaitlyn had come with me since neither of us had class, and on the way to the centro, we were kinda hungry so we stopped by a panadería and bought a loaf of bread. Not like the bread you see in the states, more like french bread where it’s really soft in the middle. Then when I got home, the only one home was Padre, and he was getting lunch ready for everyone. We had this soup-like mixture of lentejas (beans), onions, red pepper, and sausage. It sounds kind of funny, but it was actually really good, and the bread tasted good dipped into it. Afterwards, I had a Fiji apple for dessert or “postre”.
Over the past few days, even though I’ve been pretty occupied with classes, and getting acquainted with Spain, I’m kind of homesick. It’s so weird because when I got to Provo, I was only homesick occasionally, and it was only once in a great while. I think it might be because I knew I was going to see my family frequently, and so not seeing or talking to them regularly wasn’t a big deal. I didn’t think I would really be homesick here either because of that, but I’m also not talking to my family or texting them on a regular basis like I was before, and I’m about 6,000 miles away instead of just 600. I mean, I don’t think it’s going to affect my studies, but I’m definitely more emotionally fragile than before

Friday January 18, 2008
Well, pretty much today has been the longest day of my life. I seriously haven’t had time to sit down all day long. Yesterday was pretty laid back though and I didn’t really do anything except go to Spanish and come home to eat lunch, take a siesta, and to do homework. But lunch yesterday was pretty much the most amazing thing I’ve ever eaten in my whole life. It was a soup made with red peppers, onions, carrots, chopped up pieces of steak, and then they fried diced potatoes and you put those in there too. So after all that you eat it with the bread, and I absolutely loved it. It was definitely my favorite meal so far. Then today for lunch we had cauliflower with something sort of like a hamburger patty. You mash the cauliflower up with your fork and then you put olive oil on it with salt and pepper, and it sort of has the consistency of mashed potatoes but tastes like cauliflower. That was really yummy too. And for dinner we had tortilla de patata which is kind of like an omelet, only not runny and only made with egg, potatoes, and onion. Oh, and you eat bread with that too. We eat bread with every meal actually.
So anyway, today I went to Alcalíngua to apply for a short term loan so my classes wouldn’t get deleted, went to the Shumway’s to print forms off to release information to my parents, back to Alcalíngua to fax them but couldn’t and had to pay 4,80 € to fax it from the post office, went to the bank with Brooke, back to the Shumway’s, and home for lunch. Then right after lunch we left for Madrid to do one of the assignments for our Madrid Walks class. We walked what’s called the Gran Vía, and we went to the Madrid Temple after that. Everything is so huge, and that’s the one thing that absolutely overwhelms me about Spain, is how elaborate everything is. Every single building has really intricate details, and every part of the building has something interesting about it. And once again there are tons of fountains here. We saw the Fountain of Neptune and the Fountain of Castilla (I think that’s right), and they are both really beautiful. All of the architecture is really overwhelming, and there’s nothing like it in the United States. Then the temple was just as beautiful of course. It looked kind of like they used ideas from the Romans, maybe not, but it looked Roman to me. I don’t have any pictures right now, but hopefully soon.

Saturday January 19, 2008
Today was the day that we went into Madrid to see the Prado museum. Boy is it huge. Me and Brooke were there for a total of almost four hours and we only got to see one floor of it. The most important we saw was the Velásquez exhibit that they had going on right now. I actually really liked his work, with the way he uses color and light to enhance the meaning of his paintings. He has a theme of painting everyday life in realistic situations. It could be a woman in the fish market, or a man standing on the sidewalk, but in every painting you feel like you know the inhabitants. He also had a lot of religious paintings of Christ and Mary, the apostles, and so on. But he also does a lot with mythological beings too. The Goddess Venus, Mars…everything was very beautiful, but at the same time the paintings weren’t necessarily happy, they were just whatever the people were feeling in that particular moment of time which is what made it beautiful. Oh, and I decided that I definitely don’t like El Greco’s work. Compared to Velásquez, Greco is very dark and dreary, and the paintings just aren’t pleasant to look at. He uses an elongated look to the humans that makes them look unreal, like zombies or something. Besides that, there were lots of pieces of artwork that I liked, but not of artists who I knew the names. But the one thing that was super cool: I got to stand in front of “Las Meninas”. Only one of the most famous pieces of artwork in the world by Velásquez. The painting has been photographed and put in hundreds upon hundreds of textbooks, but the tourists of course aren’t allowed to take pictures. This painting is the one where Velásquez painting himself into the painting as being a member of the Royal Court when he didn’t receive that position until like three years later, and the children are accompanied by some disfigured looking people who were supposedly the children’s playmates and that’s the only purpose they served. Very interesting.
You obviously are not permitted to eat inside the museum, so we went to the Parque de Buen Retiro to eat lunch. I tell you what, you haven’t seen a park until you’ve seen this. It goes for several blocks, so you could probably start walking it in the morning and barely finish seeing everything by the evening. There’s a large pond with little boats that you can rent out, long stretches of walkways that go on forever, and besides that you have all of the amazing buildings surrounding the park that you can see from various points in the park. People take their dogs on walks (only not on a leash), and there are people running, and some just sitting on the benches, but they are all taking in the grandeur of the park, and Madrid itself. You definitely don’t see anything like this in the states.

Today, Sunday January 20, 2008
Okay so now that you are all caught up to date, there are some other things that I wanted to mention. First of all, there are so many people that smoke here. Even though our family doesn’t smoke, our clothes smell like smoke sometimes because everywhere you go people are smoking, and it’s actually pretty gross. I am getting a little bit better at communicating every day, but it’s actually not as hard as I thought it would be. I mean, some of them talk really fast and have a super thick accent, so that makes it hard. But for the most part, I’m not having any problems. And my family is really nice, and they make us feel like part of the family. One of the things I like about the Spanish language is how they use adjectives as pet names, like in America, but it sounds so much cooler in Spanish. Our mom, whenever she talks to me she’ll say something like “¿Qué tal bonita?”. I don’t know, it’s just kind of funny.
Of course I have to say something about what I ate for lunch today. You’ll never believe it, I had lasagna. Yup, that’s right, and it was amazing like everything else I’ve eaten. The biggest difference was the cheese, which was much sweeter and creamier than the cheese that we’re used to having on lasagna. With it we had a salad with tuna and shrimp in it. But with the salad here, they don’t use ranch, Italian…any of those dressings; what they do is put oil and vinaigrette with pepper and salt. It’s definitely not my favorite, but it’s not too bad.
Other than that I think that’s about all that’s been really exciting over the past week. I don’t have any pictures to upload because my rechargeable batteries won’t charge with my converter, so I’ll steal some off of Facebook from my friends and update my blog later. This weekend we are going to Toledo on Friday until Saturday night, so that should be fun, and in a couple weeks we are going to Andalucía. Until then, ¡hasta luego amigos!