¨Noone can make you feel inferior without your consent.¨ -Eleanor Roosevelt

Last week was one of the most difficult weeks of my life. To start, school was awful due to the constant antagonizing from my Lengua Castellena teacher. I would finish an assignment or an essay completely satisified, and he was there to remind me that it did not make any sense and that I would have to do it again. He also likes to use basic English when he talks to me and make jokes about how I ¨´understand´¨ things. 

This is a story worth reading, but mind you, 4 days ago, I would have become extremely emotional at the thought of anyone reading my blog being able to know this story. ´¨What happens in Spain, stays in Spain.¨

I´m not a big fan of P.E., and I did my highschool credit for it last year and was content that I had gotten it over with. Well, here everyone takes it every year. Luckily, the school is different and we have a different schedule everyday, so I only have to suffer through two days of it. Also, PE here seems to be more intense and the students take it more seriously. 

This is the part where I want to say that we were doing some extremely rigorous weight lifting or something impressive, but we had 15 minutes left and were playing tag. This kind of tag was the kind where you have to hold hands and run to touch someone who will then have to join the chain. Me being me, when my chain missed catching someone, I ran into a wall. I suppose that I could have fallen over but considered running into a wall was less embarrassing. I got myself back up and half of my front tooth was missing.... So now I was the strange American girl who ran into a wall and lost her tooth. 

There was also more problems due to the fact that on my school forms I only put the area code on the portion that asked for my parent´s telephone numbers. So my family picked me up, and they took me to the dentist where I was going to have to wait a week for another tooth. Luckily we tried another dentist as well and got one the same day. 

While we were waiting for the dentist, my host dad and I went and took a coffee at a nearby cafeteria. I made sure I was very careful not to open my mouth so nobody would stop and stare. Then, he and I had a conversation and it made me realize a lot. The ¨verguenza¨ is like embarrassment or being ashamed, and in Spanish, is something that you can have in social situations. He let me know that it did not matter what I looked like or what weird things I did in public or my friends or family did, that the next day, I could walk right into school with or without a tooth and not care what anybody thought. So when I finished my coffee, I was laughing and smiling and could later make jokes about not having a tooth. 

I think it especially made it better when I showed my friends from school(who aren´t in my class) the pictures of me without a tooth, and they laughed so hard at them and said ¨pobrecita.¨ The important part was that I could now laugh with them, at myself.

"I met a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself." ~James Baldwin

My first real day of school was today. Before, I had 3 days of school just for one hour to get used to it and find schedule and level and more. 

Wednesday, my first day of school for one hour, was okay. My host dad told the teacher to introduce me to the class, but he didn't. I couldn't understand much of what he said actually. All I know is we had to take a pretest for Spanish literature and I couldn't read it or anything, so he told me to write on a piece of paper just about myself. Everyone in my class knew that I was American or British or didn't speak Spanish or something.

My parents had pre-informed me that it was okay if I wanted to grab a coffee with some friends afterwards. Mind you, I had just moved to this new city and didn't have any friends and was desperate to talk to people older that 5 and less than in their 30s. So after class, I was expecting people to want to talk to me, being that I am this weird but intriguing foreigner, but nada. One person asked me where I was from but didn't seem especially interested to continue the conversation. I didn't want to leave the school without friends, so I went to a group of people and pretended like I didn't understand that we could leave after the first hour. They had fun using their English with me but still no coffee dates. They showed me some girls that were just now leaving the school and I got coffee with them. Mission accomplished! 

Within 15 minutes, I felt like I had known them forever and in the following days, we continued to go to each-others houses and get more coffee and whatever else. It's a group in total of like 6 girls, but they are all in the class of Letras and I'm in Sciences. 

For the 3 days of only 1 hour of school, we had the same teacher everyday. Honestly, I have no idea what he is saying. All I know that he is hilarious to the rest of the class, but I don't understand the jokes. I also think he cusses a lot, but that could just be my imagination. 

So today I actually had different teachers and could understand everything they said. Well not every single word, but I could understand what they meant. It especially helps when the person's voice isn't very deep. 

I've also noticed that I can now understand my family. At first, I couldn't understand much because the different voices (especially the niñas), but now I can basically understand everything. It definitely helps to understand something when you want to understand it or be understood. 

First coffee date

Las chicas minus some 

Parque de Europa 

Fashion Night in Madrid

"London Tower"

Another coffee date

Mi café

"Sometimes you realize what you have to say is not worth figuring out how to say it."

           I start school tomorrow. It's actually going to just be one hour for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I am extremely ready to go because I haven't had school since May, and I need friends. Don't get me wrong. I love my hermanitas, but it would be nice to see people my age. I went on a  run with my mom.... I don't know how many times ill be able to do that. She was too athletic for me. She kept pointing out groups in the streets and saying you're going to know them soon. They're your age. It actually made me nervous because if I don't make friends in school, I will literally have no one. Mucha presión! 

            The second day I got here, we had another party for Abuela and Ainara. It was saint's day for the people without a day for their name. We also went to a gypsy market and got olives and a scarf. 

                Dad and I went to run some errands for me yesterday. We went to look for activities and got some documents. We also got my phone working here, so now I have a Spanish phone! 

              My favorite thing here is the coffees. They are so tiny and delicious, and I try to have one whenever I get a chance! Also the Napolitanas are delicious. Miguel and I went and got a café and a Napolitana. I spend a lot of time with my grandparents because my parents work. My grandma is so sweet. She is more like the age of my real mom, but a little bit older. 

        Whenever anyone in my family talks to me, they make sure to talk in ways that I will understand. I will be fluent in 3 languages: English, Spanish, and sign language because we use our hands for gestures so much.

       The last thing I have to say is that you come into this with the idea that it's going to be this amazing experience. And YES it is, but at the same time, it's never going to be what you imagined. The first couple days, you're in honey moon phase because everything is new and awesome, but then it hits you. This is not a vacation. If you want a break from it, that sucks because you're here for 10 more months. You can't just be like oh wait let me go hug my real mom for a moment or tell her how my day was. It's kind of a scary thought, and I think this is definitely how you figure out who you are. 

      The girls on their first day of school

              Un café at Abuelas

     In the hotel, we made friends with Italians in a table soccer tournament. When I was watching TV, I realized this was the World Cup and they ended up winning.

   Mi amor that I miss dearly

Airplane travel is nature's way of making you look like your passportphoto. -Al Gore

   It is so nice to be in a bed I can call my own. We had to travel so long to get to this point. I can't distinguish the differences between the days. This has all been so surreal that I can't even comprehend it still. 

           The airport in Zurich was beautiful. It had tons of really nice stores and cafés. It also had little chocolate shops with an extensive array of chocolates.

              The orientation in Madrid ended up being at a really nice hotel called Hotel Auditorium. I think it is either the biggest or nicest in Madrid. We got there at 2ish and got to rest until dinner at 9. Then we had our orientation at 10:30. It was nice to finally meet the people that we had all seen on the Facebook group and a couple more as well. You could definitely tell that the majority of people hung out with people from their country or that spoke the same language. 

              Katrina, Lucia, and I got to be in a video interview that talks to the students before they have officially started their journey. AFS Spain seemed really cool about everything. We didn't have a super long boring orientation, and they were reasonable about sleeping and rules.

             Finally it was the time to meet the host family! It seemed like lots of the students hasn't talked to their host families much and were really nervous, but I was just excited! It was a little weird having to meet them in front of everybody. It was just the parents at first and they took me home to the girls and grandparents.

          My two sisters, Ainara and Nerea, were very excited for me to come, but Ainara was very shy at first. After a siesta, she was running around the house in underwear, screaming. I gave the family their presents. For the girls, bathing suits, milk straws, and coloring books and a book I made about my life and cupcake tins and mix for the whole family. They really liked the gifts. 

         The coolest thing so far for me was the  coffee machine. We have those electronic coffee machines in the US now where you put the container thing in and it make you that flavor of coffee one at a time, but this was even cooler. You could choose cup size and intensity. It was so delicious. I know what I will be having every morning now. 

            The family went on a walk to show me around the city. Mom had to go because he had to help a friend. Apparently she does beauty classes and sells Mary Kay as a hobby. The dad and niñas walked around with me and showed me the schools. Mom picked us up in the car because it was really late, and she and I went to the grocery store. We walked home from there because a huge shopping center is right next to the house. When we walked through the door, there were balloons and flags everywhere, music, and a welcome home sign. It was a really great feeling to know how much they cared about me and that they had this planned out the whole time. We had a bunch of tapas. After dinner, they brought out this huge box with a bunch of presents for me: keys, a blanket, something for storage, a calendar journal, my own coffee cup that talks about how much I sleep, and a pen.  My sisters already want me to stay para siempre and I am so happy and thankful.

"How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard." -Winnie the Pooh

             I think the incident mentioned in the  post only happened so that I could truly appreciate the ten months ahead of me. With only a few days to fix the problem, I took the initiative to contact my school, telling them of the situation. Thursday morning, the principal emailed back that he was not the one who could give me an official place in the school that the consulate needed, so my host parents would have to go to some board meeting a week from when I needed the approval. Obviously, this wasn't helping, but there was nothing we could do about it. 

              I was Skyping my host family Thursday afternoon to talk about the later travel plans and preparing for the trip. It was nice to talk to them because I was so sad. Then my mom comes downstairs and said that a lady from AFS just called and said the visa was on its way. Apparently she had been talking to a lady at the consulate all day and convinced her somehow to send the visa without the other document needed.

It's official that I am extremely awkward at goodbyes. I don't get emotional whatsoever and it ends up being more of an awkward pat on the back. I didn't know what to do when my mom cried at the airport, and now I am on my plane ride to Nueva York.

           Also, I went to school yesterday. I get the craziest questions or things people tell me. Everyone was either like

1. I thought you were in Spain! Why are you here?

2. How was Spain? Didn't you go to Spain?

3. You're going to be so tan when you get back.

          The next 4 days will be extremely busy, but I will keep you updated!