Blog 6, my catching up...

I didn’t realize that I haven’t written in my Blog since the 9th, so sorry this is catching up on quite a few things…


Sunday February 10, 2008
When I woke up this morning, I felt great, it was really good to be back in my own bed. I wore my new shirt to church, and I got tons of compliments all day, so I think it was definitely a good buy, even if it was 10 . However, I took some medicine for my nose before we left for church, and I think it causes drowsiness because I couldn’t stay awake to save my life today in church. I kept dozing off in every class, and I felt really bad, but it must have been a combination of the medicine and me being sick.
After church, we got home and we had paella again. It was the same kind as last week, but I learned my lesson. I didn’t eat as much as last week, and I didn’t drink hardly any water so that the rice wouldn’t expand in my stomach. So it was actually an enjoyable experience compared to last week. We got to meet Teresa and Madre’s mom was here again. I’m not sure how Teresa is related, but Abuela is kind of funny. She doesn’t say much, but she watches me and Brooke all the time. When I was setting the table I could see her watching me out of the corner of my eye, but when I turned to talk to her she would turn away. Emily and I think she’s kind of crazy, but oh well whatever. Anyway, after lunch I went and laid down and like every other Sunday my siesta ended up being about two hours long. I only do that on Sundays, and it’s kind of become my habit to sleep for that long. It felt great! Then we left to go to the Shumway’s to hang out, and I wrote a couple emails and just sat and talked to everyone. They made brownies and they tasted so good, but they weren’t cooking very well, so Susie made some fried brownies. It sounds kind of gross, but they were really good. The last batch turned out perfect in the oven, but the rest were pretty doughy.
When we got home, Ana and Nacho and two other relatives of the family were here. I can’t remember their names but they’re from a city in the region of Andalucía and super nice. The husband works as a college orientation person or something of that sort, but I’m not sure what the wife does. However, it was apparently a pretty big deal that they were here, because we ate in the large dining room for the second time today, and Madre had empanadas, stuffed hard-boiled eggs, shrimp, dried meat and cheeses, and then we had actual dessert for postre. She made flan and this lemon cheesecake-like dessert. It was SOOOO good!!! Because I’m American, I could have eaten the whole thing by myself, but Spaniards are a lot more conservative in the way they eat. They eat much slower and not so much sweets as we do. At home, I used to sit there and eat ice cream out of the box all the time, but the portions they eat here are fairly small, and they don’t really have seconds.
Anyway, it was really fun to meet some new people today, and I actually enjoyed talking to everyone in Spanish. It wasn’t really hard or uncomfortable, and I felt like I could talk to them without feeling dumb. When we were eating lunch today we had been chatting about something and then we finished, and randomly Raquel turned to me and said that she was really impressed with how much my Spanish had improved over the last month. Everyone says that I speak well, but I really appreciated that compliment from her because she was pretty much the first one in the family that I felt comfortable talking to on that first day we got here. I still feel inadequate when I’m speaking, but I at least feel like I can communicate well enough that I don’t look silly. Hopefully I can improve even more by the time I get home!!!

Wednesday February 13, 2008
This morning was most possibly the most boring day I have ever had in our conversation class. It just seems to me that Angélica doesn’t have a goal in mind for us. When we got to class on the first day, she asked us what we wanted to learn, and she created the agenda for the class based on what we told her. I don’t know, I guess that’s kind of a good idea, but the stuff we are learning, some of it I’m never going to need after I leave Spain, and half of it I can’t remember anyway. After that class I presented my project with Sarah for the Alcazár of Segovia, and I’m pretty sure we don’t know hardly anything at all. However, I can’t say that I care too much since we don’t get a grade for it.
After lunch Keri, Brooke and I went into Madrid. We were going to see the something of San Sebastian, but we couldn’t find it. So instead we happened upon a mall, shopped around, and then a little while later we went to this churrería where Brooke’s sister said we should go. We hadn’t had churros y chocolate yet so we thought that might be good, and it was awesome! The chocolate is SO thick though. You see the natives downing it like it’s nothing all the time, and well, I got brave and decided to try the same thing. I can’t say it’s something that I plan on doing regularly, I basically did it just to be able to say that I did. It wasn’t bad for sure, but man, these people are crazy for doing it as a normal habit.
We also had a new food today for lunch. Our madre calls it “cocida”, and it’s made with garbanzo beans, chicken, and I can’t remember what else. It was really good, but I definitely ate too much; padre piled it on my bowl like there was no tomorrow. Oh well, it’s better than eating raw salmon like we did on Sunday, yuck!!!
Other than that, we just came home and had something like chicken noodle soup for dinner, and we watched “La Pie de la Letra” with padre like usual. But tonight the guy won the maximum prize of 50,000.00€, which is about $75,000.00. Crazy huh? Padre said that he’s only seen that happen a couple times before. Oh, and the other thing I found out tonight is that our family has housed about 6-8 other foreign exchange students before us. So they’re pretty experienced I’d say.
Saturday February 16, 2008
Yesterday should have been something that I would have a lot to write about, but Segovia was pretty much a big ol’ let down compared to the other Alcazars that we’ve seen. Basically we could go in maybe seven rooms on the first floor and it was 2€ to climb the Tower of John so we didn’t do that; the Cathedral was freezing like every other one we’ve seen, the aqueducts were really huge and pretty cool; when we went to Pedraza (which was solely for the food) I didn’t eat and it was cold. However, in Pedraza while those of us who weren’t eating were waiting for those who were, we went up on this hill and we watched the stars for a while. So that was fun, but it was such a long day, and we were super tired when we got home.

Sunday February 17, 2008
Today was pretty cool if I do say so myself. This morning we had Stake Conference, and it was way different than any Stake Conference that I’ve ever been to. Instead of hearing from the Stake Presidency, we got to hear from our new prophet President Monson, Elder Richard G. Scott, and there were two other speakers that I can’t remember exactly who they were. It was really cool though because it felt like they were really talking to us specifically, and they knew exactly who we were. It was being broadcast in Spanish for the natives, but for us we had our own English room. However, when Elder Scott got up to speak, he did the whole thing in Spanish, and I didn’t know this, but he was the mission president in Argentina for a while, so he’s fluent in Spanish, and I guess he’s been trying to learn Portuguese too.
Anyway, the only other fun thing from today was that I made flan for my first time for class tomorrow. I haven’t tried it yet, but Brooke said it was good. Tomorrow, I’m going to find out how good it really is!!

Tuesday February 19th, 2008
I signed up for my summer classes today, and I’m going to take Religion 122 which is the second half of the Book of Mormon, Math 110 which is College Algebra, Social Dance, and HEPE just to get it out of the way, and all together it’s 6.0 credits which is full time. If I remember right, the only time I had a class after one is the dance class on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 5p-6:50p I think, and I might be able to change that. I don’t know the times for HEPE yet, but it might not even be necessary to take it as a class and I could maybe do it online.
So I learned something funny yesterday that I forgot to write about. When someone sneezes, in Spanish you say “salud” the first time for health; “dinero” the second time for money; “amor” the third time for love; and here’s the kicker that the missionaries told someone in our group: you say “bautismo” the fourth time for baptism. Kind of funny huh? Anyway, that’s about the most exciting things for today. Good night. J

Friday February 22, 2008
Today we went to the Valle de los Caidos and El Escorial, and before we left I went running, which felt great! Valle de los Caidos was especially cool because that’s where Francisco Franco is buried. Let me just give a picture here: as we were driving up to the Basilica, the main thing you can see is this 450 foot cross sticking up off the side of the mountain and the Basilica sitting beneath it where Franco is buried. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but the feeling was gloomy, and actually kind of creepy. It would have been creepy anyway, but the weather added to the effect as well with the dark clouds in the background and you got the feeling that it was threatening to rain but not quite fulfilling the threat. Inside the Basilica you aren’t supposed to take pictures, but you know what, you don’t see the tomb of Franco every day, I mean he’s only one of the biggest parts of the history of Spain. So yes, I took some pictures, and I can’t say that I regret it, I mean, they are for me, I’m not going to post them on the internet or anything, they’re just going to stay on my computer. It was really weird to stand next to the tomb of on of the most influential dictators in the world. At dinner, we asked our parents about what they thought about him, and they didn’t really talk about him as a person but more what the country was like with him in charge. They said that there was less crime, more respect, and things were just under more control with Franco in charge, and they didn’t seem to have any strong feelings any way or the other. I’ve been wanting to ask them about what they thought for quite some time, but this was the best opportunity I had to bring it up.
Anywho, we went to El Escorial and walked around inside of that for a while. You aren’t allowed to take pictures in there either, and so I didn’t break the rules too much, I only took one picture and it’s not very good anyway. There’s really not much to say about it though, I mean it was a lot like the other palaces we’ve seen and there wasn’t really anything that was super unique about it. After that on the way home we stopped at this castle (which had just closed) and took some fun pictures, and then we came home. It was more laid back today than last Friday, and I didn’t feel like I was going to die by the end of today.
Okay, so for the new food for today. We haven’t had anything new for a while so I haven’t written about it. But today after I finished my bocadillo, I knew I was going to be hungry again later, and there was this little shop that we went inside and got gelato at. Me and Natausha shared some, it was vanilla brownie and some sort of vanilla with caramel, chocolate, and nuts (yummy!). then the sandwiches were really cheap, and I got a pavo y manzana (turkey and apple) sandwich, and it was pretty good. It was kind of like a tuna fish sandwich only a different taste. Okay, so then for dinner we had this fish that I have no idea what it was, but it tasted like cod kind of, not really fishy but a little bit. I really liked it and I didn’t have a hard time eating it. You ate it with your fingers and you just kind of eat it off the bone, but by the time Brooke had barely gotten done with her first, I had finished three, so she was having kind of a hard time with it. Other than that, nothing else fun really happened today, and tomorrow I’m going to do some homework, go to Madrid to do a walk, and make some calls to the states tomorrow night.


I think that’s about it, once March gets here I have four large trips that I’m going on, so I’ll have a ton to write about. Yay!!!