and the following weeks......

Happy reyes!

We have had the epiphany. It was fun.... i got to do the whole put your shoes out, and then the kings come in and leave you stuff. I woke up this morning with presents, and it was wonderful. like a late christmas. The kings gave me a book, pajamas (with penguins on them) and a shirt. It was really funny, because my host mom, even with her kids all being over the age of 16, still pretended they were real. She opened her nice new set of knives and exclaimed, "oh, i really wanted to have this! look how pretty they are!" all excited. i couldn't help but laugh even though the rest of the family found it a little less than funny, maybe even a little dorky. I don't know. i like when people do things like that. i just know that when i'm older i'm going to get myself gifts. Why not? If you have an excuse to buy yourself something nice, why wouldn't you take it. It just doesn't make any sense not to. Anyway...... there's this tradition were the whole family eats this cake called kings cake (i think), and there are 2 prizes inside it. One prize is this bean, and if you get that you have to pay for the cake, and the other is a little figurine, which you get it, you get to wear a super cool crown and are named the king (or queen, depending on said person's gender). It just so happens that I WON, and was named queen. No big deal. Twas splendid, except the fact that the cake is disgusting.

When i was talking about my philosophy class in my last blog, it really got me to thinking in the last few day about philosophy. I know i'm supposed to be talking about my spanish adventures in this blog, but this is really starting to bug me. I know that some of the most respected people in the world were famous philosophers such as Plato and those guys, but really, to me, it's all just a bunch or crap. I have been forced to study up on my philosophy because i have a test coming up, and i just can't make myself think and analyze it because it really doesn't make any sense to me. Every chapter, my philosophy book raises a few questions that are supposed to provoke some kind of grand conversation, but usually i read these questions and about 3 sentences come to mind. Three sentences equals about 3 seconds of talking, and yet my teacher can go on and on for about 3 days debating whether or not the sky is blue. Literally. If someone asks me if the sky is blue, i'd probably say something along the lines of "Well, sometimes, when it's a nice day out. Other days it's kind of gloomy. Sometimes it's a mixture of blue and grey." Or if you want to get fancy you could go with the scientific weather paths, you know the ones that say that the weather usually moves from out west, and just kind of moves across the united states. So if the pressure drops or rises, chances are the sky color is bound to change. Or even better you go could with chemistry and the color spectrum. It's all science really, but yes, the sky IS blue... you can't really argue with that. I'm not meaning to sound ignorant, i would just like to state my point of view, and how i shouldn't have to be studying why things the way they are, when really there's nothing to study. Things are the way they are because that's the way they are. That doesn't mean said 'ways' can't change. That's what the people are for, and the government and all that stuff. It's just the way it is. Plato and his follows and role models, in my opinion, are just reading way to into everything. It seems like they just look around and say "what deeper meaning does that window have over there?" "Why do we use this table like this" "Why am i here." "Where am i exactly?." Although some of these are descent questions to ask, we can't always know these things. Sometimes we just have to say, "well... that window probably doesn't have a deeper meaning other than just to look out, or let light into the house." or "The table is used to put stuff on." and more importantly, "I'm here because i was born." and "Well, i personally am sitting on my bed in my room right now in Godella, spain." The most questioned question, probably, is "what happens after death?" JUST LEAVE IT ALONE. you'll know when you die.... you can't die and then come back to life. it just doesn't work like that. Some of these serious questions that people spend their whole lives debating and arguing over just have simple answers, that sometimes change and sometimes don't. The other day we were talking about how we are unable to know things. i was just sitting there like, that's ridiculous! Of course we can know stuff. i know what 2+2 is. i know my parents and friends. It's just like GEAT REAL. You can't tell me that i don't know things. i know how to slap you across the face if you want. This doesn't mean i don't like my philosophy teacher... she's actually really nice. She impresses me everyday y how excited she get over the difference between the truth and reality. Done with that.

I would now like to talk about one thing that recently happened. I have meet a large number of dog's lately. I don't know why really... it just seems like everyone has a dog. This weekend i went to a little pueblo (again) to eat, and the family had a huge dog. By huge i mean HUGE. I was the only one who pet it at first, so naturally it followed me around the rest of the day.... slobbered all over my shirt and barked at me when i left the room. It was funny because the family just didnt take any crap from him. He was bugging me at one point, and the mom just took out a book and slapped him real hard. I dont know why i found it funny, probably because this dog was huge, so they can hit him harder if they want without hurting him. My host family gave them a ping pong table set for christmas, but i have a feeling the paddles aren't going to be used much for playing ping pong. They seem ideal for 'love patting' their huge dog. It gave me the impression of small horse. a pony per se. Heres pictures of all the doggies.

Little tibet attacking my host father.

Cucka, the cat dog.

But thats it. I've met more doggies, i just don't have pictures. i would like to talk about our natural inner system need to have an order for everything. I’m not saying that we all are super OCD or anything, but we as humans don't just walk around aimlessly. I have been paying attention to how things are done here, and there are quite a few things that have a specific order to them. It’s pretty goofy if you think about it.

My morning schedule is the same every single day. Set alarm for 6:50. Get up at 7:15. Go pee/wash face/brush teeth. Get dressed super fast, put on a little make up (at which time my host mom tells me to hurry up). Put on my shoes, throw my crap in my backpack, go eat some cereal and chug a cup of coffee. Walk to my neighbors house, wait for her to be ready for 15 minutes. Run to meet who ever is bringing us to school. Arrive at school.

Afternoon schedule: Get home, throw my backpack in my room. Eat lunch. Watch the news with my parents while talking about stuff. Go to my room, pretend to do homework. Go out with neighbor/ go to library/ go chat with my host sister/ play the piano. Actually do homework. Eat dinner. Watch movie.

Daily schedules aren't exactly what i'm talking out. We do specific things and a certain order as well. For example, eating. A few people have a certain way of doing things when they eat. I'm sure my eating habits are notable in some way or another (mom/dad don't say anything), but i've been observing things, and i have found that my host dad and brother do things in a specific order. First of all, my host dad has a profound passion for 'el vino' and always has a hefty supply in the house. At dinner, he sits down, compliments the cook (my host mom), pours himself a glass of wine, smells it, sips it, and then makes a satisfactory noise such as 'mmmmm' or 'que BUEno'. Then (depending on the food) when he gets served, he just goes at it. mixes everything and cuts everything up into little pieces using rapid fork and knife motions. Sometimes i like to watch because i think it's funny. My host brother has a very nice and clean way to peeling his oranges. First of all, he never touches his food with his hands ever, so he uses a fork and knife to peel the orange. First he cuts it down the middle, then each half once again, then, very carefully, cuts the orange peel off, stabs the whole orange piece and stuffs it into his mouth. That always makes me giggle because he's ever so careful while peeling it, but then stuffs it into his mouth all messy like, usually ending in a small orange juice puddle.

Other than physically eating, we have the normal lunch party. When a few families gather this is what happens 99.9% of the time. First, sit in the big room with couches to talk and drink something, gather around the table and wait for someone to set it. Someone sets the table, and everyone comes to eat. Then you sit down, eat normally (vegetables first, then meat, then salad), After eating you eat more usually something like cheese and wine, then someone will bring out a dessert with a bottle of champagne (or two). Once thats all over, theres coffee and little sweets like chocolates or fruit or something.

Other than food, i have my little orders as well. For example, so get the the metro station, i go down the block, turn left, then turn right on the main street. Walk until i see the bar with the green sign, turn left. Walk until i see the shoe store, turn right. Turn left at the old wall with a bunch or graffiti, walk straight until the station.

There's plenty more, but i just dont have to time to explain EVERYTHING.

The other day i went to l'horta (i think it's called) to help my neighbor with his garden, so that was pretty fun too. I felt all handy and stuff, and he gave a bunch of plants to bring home. I decided im going to make him a scarecrow about of stuff i find in godella. It's going to be awesome.

This is my dad and my chemistry teacher. feel free to admire the similarities.

Happy january.

Jane

happy 4 month christmas new years blog

Hello kin.

This is my holiday entry. I will attempt to make it festive, full of laughter and joy.

Now that christmas has passed, i can say that i was rather surprised. I thought i was going to get all down and sad ‘n stuff, but quite frankly i had a wonderful time. (that doesn’t mean i didn’t miss the good ol’ minnesota christmas.) But before i tell you about spanish christmas, i need to catch you up on my latest adventures.

FIRST, i went hiking again. I keep doing that, even though every time i go i always end up in serious pain, and something bad always happens. This time, i ended up with 3 blisters on my feet, and a picture of me sleeping on the bus uploaded to spanish facebook. The last time i went, i ended up with blisters as well, along with sunburn, and i fell twice. The conclusion? hiking+me=embarrassment+pain. Anyway, this time i basically only went because they told me there was going to be snow, (which there wasn’t. Liars) BUT i did get to go into a real cave. unfortunately i didn’t get a picture, but i’m telling you right now it was the real deal. We had to climb down this little hole thing, slide down a rope, and then a teacher had to help us down to the ground. There was no light, so we all got little flashlights and all that. At first i was kinda creeped out, but then i started looking around, and actually it was super cool. it had all those weird slimy looking rocks, and those drippy looking rocks hanging from the ceiling. i felt so outdoorsy. And that was that. Heres my winter break so far.

I didn’t really even realize it was christmas until the 23 of december when i FINALLY got off school. i will tell you, the last few days of school were awful... very slow and stupid.... just like at home EXCEPT FOR A FEW THINGS: Since we're in school until later here, i spent my last week or so in school spending more time in the cafeteria because they put up a nice christmas tree in there. It made me feel better about being in school for so long. It's the little things that count right? (plus the lunch guy is really nice, and you can order coffee and such if you want). And also, one day at lunch i sat down, opened my lunch, took out my sandwich, bit into it, and you can imagine my pure surprise and delight when it was a wonderful peanut butter and jelly sandwich. i had to hide it from my classmates because they all think it' weird, but it was wonderful none the less.

The last day of school was actually fine, we just had a bunch of activities in which a few friends and i skipped out on that and just kinda walked around for a while. I think my problem is that in valencia there’s no snow, and it’s around 65 degrees every day, so my body/mind can’t deal with the fact that yes, it is christmas. It was quite the shock when i got home that afternoon, and my host sister was happy that we were off school and that it was christmas. It’s really not my fault.... in spain they don’t celebrate christmas as much as we do (actually they think we’re weird for decorating our houses and all that) and so we don’t have a tree or anything in the house. So naturally i snapped into action, and took to decorating my own room a little to spread christmas cheer to myself. (Jenson’s, i already told you this) I put out a bunch of red and green clothing, including a red scarf and a green sweater, hung up a red bow and the christmas cards i’d received on my wall, continuously streamed an irish christmas station on the internet, and set my laptop background to a picture of snow. I thought i did pretty good considering the circumstances.

Anyway, to celebrate the end of this first trimester from h-e-l-l, my classmates organized a dinner that was quite pleasant, and after we hit up a super cool juice joint. Looking back at my first trimester, i’m actually kinda sorta proud. Here are my grades:

Spanish-no grade, BUT i did pass an essay test in which i wrote 3 pages comparing three books (Hamlet, Oedipus the king and The Cat on the Hot Tin Roof) with a wonderful D- that i will never forget ever.

English- passed with a 7/7. Hooray!

Biology- passed with a 5/7. Hooray! I can explain to you what a stem cell is if you want. To remember them, i call them magic cells. Because they are magic.

Philosophy- no grade this trimester. although i did pass a project i had to do for that class. See how i’m focusing on the positives? Except now i'm just going to comment on how i really don't like philosophy. Quite frankly, i don't really care what the true is, or what reality is or what is the reason is. My teacher was trying to explain the difference between reality and truth, and i'm just sitting there like why does it even matter. I forget the real example, but she said something like a car is the reality because no one can say that the car doesn't exist, but our perception of the car is the truth because we all see the car differently or SOMETHING like that. I'm just sitting there thinking, why are we spending 30 minutes debating whether a car is the truth or reality or the reason for living or the objective of life or whatever you want. From my point of view, the car is a car, and we don't have to question why the car is there or for what is serves because i can tell you that right now. The car is here because some dude invented it, and we use it to get around. That's it... there's nothing more to it.

Chemistry-passed with a 5/7. Hooray! Except i don’t get chemistry.

Math-failed. Oops..... I have nothing to say.

Geography- failed. with a 2/7. Never though i could ever get such a bad grade. This is more than failing. This is failing to an exponential power that is googol. I failed to the power of googol. I will admit that i didn’t ‘give it my all’ per se, because i think some of the work i had to do was keeping me from doing necessary things such as sleeping and showering.

Moving on. Christmas eve was wonderful. I woke up at the wonderful hour of 12, ate a wonderful breakfast of chocolate cereal, sang wonderful songs with my host dad/sister (in the wonderful languages or italian, spanish, english, valenciano etc.), ate a wonderful christmas eve lunch of wonderful things that i don’t remember what they’re called (something that looks like shrimp but has eyes and feet), Talked on skype with wonderful cousins and friends and family, ate a wonderful dinner, and opened wonderful presents from wonderful people while talking with my wonderful family over skype. Twas wonderful. I will say i got a little choked up at one point, but nothing too bad, and after everyone else opened their presents and everyone was happy just like it should be. Everyone really liked their presents. Here's my host dad and his new wallet.

Christmas day was something of a different sort. We got up early to drive up the the Pyrenees mountains. I, being half giant half human here in spain, was rather crunched and was unable to sleep, so i had a nice time looking out the window. We stopped halfway to eat lunch in this antique old village house that serves as the cabin of the ex-wife of my host moms brother. (if you don’t follow, it’s fine... took my 3 hours to figure it out) We ate there, where i got a tour of this weird house that has pictures of jesus everywhere and rooms for things like storing potatoes and apples, and then we were off again. Three hours later we were driving up the mountains (i knew this because my ears hurt like crap) where i saw snow! I was so happy even though it was crappy ice snow and unplayable, its all the same to me and my minnesotan soul. I never really thought i would miss snow so much, but its true that snow is a very important component in my life, and also because i missed the only snow day that has ever happened in the minneapolis public school system ever in my life, and probably will ever happen in my life... we’ll see if i get lucky next year.

The mountains were amazing.... all snowy and european, not to mention tall and pretty. My family has an apartment here, it’s pretty small but i really like it. It reminds me of a urbanized version of those little cabin’s we used to rent in the middle of nowhere. We had a minor crisis the first few hours of the trip when the water heater/ air heater wouldn’t work, and the apartment was freaking cold. We all thought we were going to have to spend 5 days wearing blankets all over the place, and having to choose between death cold shower and no shower. It finally started working right before we all went to bed, so it worked out nicely. The stupid thing is i got sick AGAIN, so i was probably coughing the whole night, annoying everyone. This whole sick thing is NOT gaining me any popularity points. The first day we were there, i didn’t so ski because i felt gross, and my ears hurt and it was just stupid, so we went and walked around in various old villages, which i happen to like a lot. I secretly want to buy a little house in an old european village somewhere when i’m older. I think i might just do that. The second day i didn’t go ski either because my host sister was feeling gross so we did basically the same thing. The thing is, is that it was an astounding 60 degrees or something like that, all the way up here 2000 meters above sea level in northern spain. Only stupid people would question the climate change theory now that we have like... 50 feet of snow in minnesota, it snowed in north carolina for the first time since the 1980’s, its 50 degrees in the pyrenees mountains, and half the the airports here in europe are closed due to bad weather and dangerous conditions. Following my environmental speech, December 28th is similar to our april fools day, so every year they play a small trick on my host dad. This year (this is complicated to explain... hang in there) they told him that the boyfriend of their daughter (who owns a restaurant in MN) was going to hold a spanish week when my host parents go visit their daughter in MN, and that they wanted my host dad to sign flamenco for an hour every night. He got all excited about it and everything. Twas funny. The third day no one went skiing. We took a day trip to a small village called Roda de Isabena that was literally a village on a mountain top.

All these little pueblos are basically the same. They are circular, all the houses connected with a plaza in the middle of the town usually with a restaurant, church and bell tower. All the streets are made of stone, all hilly and skinny making it virtually impossible to drive through. This particular village had an amazing view of the mountains because it’s really high up, and also a rather old church. We got a tour of it, and virtually everything inside was built before the 15th century. There were paintings from the 12th century, a baptizing bowl from the 12th century, authentic clothing from some bishop, and the best being some columns holding up the building from the 9th century. I have never touched anything that old in my whole life. I felt to connected to history even though i really despise history. After, we visited a few old sanctuary/monastery (i’m not exactly sure what they are called) but they were both built int he 11th century (one in 1104, and the other a short time before or after) they were both from roman descent and very pretty.

The last night was interesting... well, not exactly for me because i was not conscious when the excitement happened. Apparently i talked in my sleep, which is something i NEVER do. I’m they type that never moves in my slept, i’m like a brick normally. But when i woke up the next morning, my host sister told me i had been talking in my sleep. Naturally i was embarrassed because my host sister, host brother and i all slept in the same room, and therefore everyone had heard. She didn’t make a big deal of it at the time, but later we all sat down at the dinner table and discussed it. It was funny, because my host brother was the one who told me all about it, so that made it just exponentially more embarrassing. He said first i said “no se” and then “mama!!” really loud. And after a really long sentence in spanish that he doesn’t remember what it was. At least we know i dream in spanish... too bad i don’t remember anything. And that ends my pyrenees experience.

New years was more of the same, just at later hours. They do this thing where you have to eat 12 grapes, one for every second before 12 AM. it was funny to watch everyone stuff their faces with grapes. I find joy in watching people to dumb things. Anyways, i'm fine before apparently ill have good luck the whole year because i did all of the right things on new years eve. 1.) i started the year off with no dirty clothes (my host mom says it's bad luck to start the year with dirty clothes). 2.) i ate all my grapes. and 3.) i wore something red. so yeah. BUT one good/interesting thing happened. I met this girl named Elin from switzerland (i think.... sorry if i'm wrong) but it was so weird because we got to talking, and it turns out that she lived in minneapolis for 2 years. i probably like... saw her around one day. In fact she lived in the minnehaha area so thats pretty close. SO WEIRD. it's a small world huh?

Well.

I’m sitting with 4 months in spain. It literally just feels like a REALLY long and difficult week. Now, i can’t make any more excuses. Technically i’m supposed to be close to fluent, comfortable and well adjusted by now, but quite frankly i think i need just a LITTLE more time. not even a month, just 3 weeks or something until i’ll feel really good about everything. In three weeks i’ll but basically half way (crazy) through my stay, so if i’m not completely self sufficient by then, i’m doing something wrong. Having said that, it’s not like i’m not well adjusted. I DO have friends that i’m comfortable with, and i understand almost everything, slightly depending on the day, but it’s true that i understand almost everything. Speaking is a different story, and i’m making it my new years resolution to talk more everyday, since my family says i’m shy. Probably everyone reading this knows that i, in fact, am not shy, so i think i need to change their minds. Hence the new years resolution. My other new years resolutions would normally be something along the lines of be nicer to my parents, get better grades, help someone less fortunate than i, etc... but the truth of the matter is that i’m extremely nice to my spanish parents (and nicer to my normal parents with the distance and everything), i don’t care about my grades very much, and now that i have experienced being a true outcast myself, i find myself able to relate more to people less fortunate than i, hence making it a lot easier to help them out. Plus i plan to go help out at the Red Cross with my host sister. So normal new years resolutions have already been resolved. This presents a debacle, because i believe that everyone should have at least a few resolutions, because we can all improve our lives and the lives around us. So what i did was put my thinking cap on and came up with a few more resolutions. The first being that of improving my talkativeness. The second being to make friends with my host brother. The third to keep my room clean because if it’s not clean i feel bad because everything’s always clean. Plus it’s a little weird that my room is dirtier than my 21 year old college student host brother. The fourth is to learn a little valenciano (just because i love it and it’s pretty and it’d be fun to learn a little.) The fifth and final is to learn some trivia. There is a story behind that. The story is my family and i played trivia pursuit in the mountains one night, and they all knew all of these random facts about everything FOR EXAMPLE who was the most famous violin player in italy in the 1900’s, what province was named after a random guy i’d never heard of, who was the captain of a random soccer team in 1987 etc etc. I will say that i did answer 2 questions right (1 1/2) one of them being who was the main writer of the declaration of independence, and the other being where are salmon born, in the ocean or river. I said river all proud and stuff, but my host dad thought it was the ocean and made a good argument so i went with his answer and we got it wrong. It fine though because i have the satisfaction of knowing that i was in fact right. So that ends new years.

I had a few other things to say, but i can't seem to remember them right now. i'll entertain you with some cultural funniness next time.

My host dog and myself bid thee farewell.