Week 1

Wow, it's hard for me to believe that I have been in Spain for a week now! It actually feels like I've been here for quite a while. I feel very at home in my home and at the school and I now know my way around the city very well. I feel like I have grown so much in the last week and learned so much as well. My Spanish vocabulary and conversation skills have increased tremendously and I have learned a lot about Spanish culture. I have learned all about international travel and airports and how that all works. I feel a lot more grown up and independent. I have made so many new friends already, and cannot wait to become closer with them as the summer moves along. I knew a few girls from UND before we all came here, but I'm much closer with them now than I was before and feel like I know them so much better. It's fun to learn new things everyday about the people you're with. It's weird how when you're thrown into an immersion program like this, you quickly make friendships with people you've never met before. It is kind of like we are all that each other has here. The only people who understand what you feel like and are experiencing here. I remember on the first day of school when we were all finally back together again we just talked and talked about what was going on in our lives and compared and gave suggestions. I feel like I've known some of these people forever already and I hope that we'll keep in touch when we all go back to our own lives in the USA.

My family here is so wonderful as well. I am very happy I was put with this family and I enjoy spending time with them and getting to know them. They are so sweet to me and treat me as if I were part of their family. My mom is starting to know what I like/dislike as far as foods, and she always makes me coffee in the morning and sets it out with some toast with marmalade/nutella, and cereal. She always asks me what I want to do or what I want to watch on TV or what I want to eat. She's very caring and always has my best interest at heart. Having such a wonderful family here has made this transition process much easier for me. We are able to joke around and have fun and communicate better each and every day. My little sister is so adorable and sweet and she's really taken to me now that we're getting to know each other better. She likes to sit by me at our meals now and is always asking me for help with her English, teach her songs on the piano, or to play games with her. She never fails to make me smile. My dad is very interested in America and how we do things back in the states. He'll ask me if we have the same things there, or how the weather is there, or have me teach him some random English since he doesn't really know any. He is actually a very good cook as well! He makes lunch for us every day. He likes to run so one of these days I will have to go for a run with him. I'll try to get a picture with my family one day soon here so you can see them :)

I've also become very accustomed to the food/meals here in a week and grown to love them! For example they have bread with every meal and it's a very different bread from anything I've had in the United States. I LOVE that bread now and always look forward to having it. There have only been a few foods I've had here that I haven't liked. Most of them I've liked and quite a few of them I love! I'm excited to keep trying new foods and eventually I want to help my mom/dad cook one day so I can see how some of these things are made!

Having to go to school in the summer and have homework is really a pain, but then I realize that wow, I've already been here for a week. Only 5 more weeks and then I'll be done and be able to enjoy my summer with freedom, sunshine, and fun. Learning Spanish in Spain where the teachers do not speak English is very different than in the US where we focus a lot on the translation or if you're confused the teacher just explains the word/assigment in English. If you are trying to say something and can't think of the word, you can't just ask. You have to try to describe it in Spanish or figure out a similar word. Same with when our teacher explains something. If we're confused about it, she re-explains it in Spanish again. For example, each day she'll have a phrase of the day type thing we talk about. One day it was the Spanish equivalent of two heads are better than one. She asked us what it signified and meant. Which is a lot harder to describe than I would have thought. It's a very good way to learn Spanish though, because then you don't learn it as a translation. You learn it as it is, just like how we learned to speak English growing up. A word is a word for something and you don't know anything else for it.

It's hard to believe I have only been here for a week since it feels like more, but it's also hard to believe how quickly this week has flown by! My time here is going to be gone before I know it, but I am so excited to learn more and get to experience more places and cities on the weekends. I absolutely love it here in Spain and cannot wait to see what these next 5 weeks bring :)

Saturday in Segovia!

Yesterday our group took a day-trip by bus to Segovia, Spain. I was super excited to spend the day with our group and get to be a little bit touristy again and get away from the books. The weather was not ideal for an outdoor tour, but we made it work. I was wearing a t-shirt with a cardigan over it, a zip-up sweatshirt, my jacket, and a scarf and I was still chilly! I'm so glad I brought that jacket because I was not going to. I have worn it almost every day so far! We left the school at 10 and got to Segovia at around 11:30 I think. We went into the tourist center to get maps. One weird thing about the tourist center is that you had to pay to use the bathroom. It was 20 cents and there was a guy standing in front of the entrance to the bathroom and one of those spinners to let you through. Needless to say, I held it and just went later on the trip. There was a really long line for the bathroom though! I don't know why people would be willing to pay when you could just walk around a little bit and find a place where it's free. We then went to some cafés to get coffee/breakfast and wake up a little bit. I've always heard about how great the crepes are here, but I have never had one. I decided to get one and it was so absolutely delicious! They are kind of like pancakes, but a little more doughy and sweet. Seriously, check them out!

After the café we proceeded on to our next stop--the cathedral. Cathedrals are a  big thing in Spain, and this one was the biggest Cathedral I have ever been inside! Rico said the purpose of the big size is to make people feel small in the face of God and realize that they are just one little part of our big world. Another interesting thing about the cathedral is that there are people buried underneath the floor! Shanna enlightened me about that, and said that that is where the saying "stinking rich" or "filthy rich" comes from. People who are buried under cathedral floors obviously were rich and had to pay a LOT of money. Every time they buried another person they had to open up the floor again and the smell was just wretched. So that's where "filthy, stinking rich" comes from :) There was also a wedding going on in the cathedral while we were there so we got to see a little bit of it. It would have been cool to see more of the ceremony and what their traditions are here.

Here is just one of the many grave markers in the cathedral.

The huge cathedral! It is a gothic style cathedral and is very very old.

After the cathedral, we all wanted to use the bathroom and the guard at the cathedral said there was one right outside if you go down a staircase. We found the staircase and went down there, and it was seriously the most disgusting thing ever!! It smelled wretched and there were just two toilets. There was no toilet paper by either of the toilets and the floor was wet and nasty and the toilet seats were super gross. There was a sink, but no soap or paper towels either. I still shudder just thinking about it. It really makes you appreciate having nice public bathrooms in America. We then proceeded on to the castle. I was really excited for that part because I have never been inside a castle before. It was so cool! There were a bunch of knight suits inside and it was set up with a bedroom and throne room and dining room and a lot of cool, ancient things. The people back then must have been very small because some of the knight suits were so little! We took tons of pictures in there and had a lot of fun exploring throughout the castle. It was huge and had so much neat stuff inside to look at. There was a little museum inside and a gift shop as well. 

We all met up again at the end and headed up to the tower together. I was super excited to be up high and be able to look over the whole city and all the scenery. When we got to the entrance, there was a sign saying that there are 152 steps up to the top. 152. It was insane. It was this tiny little spiral staircase that just kept going up and up and up and up! The steps were narrow and we could only go up single file, but they were tall steps and short Emily and I were pretty much crawling up the staircase. It was super claustrophobic but once we finally made it to the top it was SO worth it. The view was absolutely breathtaking. The wind was like a hurricane though. We took a bunch of fun pictures up there. When we left and got outside, it started to rain. Actually no, it started to pour. The rain was coming down so hard and so we ran into a building near the castle. It had a little cafeteria area inside, but we couldn't eat there because our families had packed us lunched and you're not allowed to eat outside food in restaurants in Spain. So we ran across the park and went back to the castle and ate in a side room in the castle. Which wasn't really legal either, but the guard didn't find us until we were done eating. Hahaha.  It was still pouring outside, but it wasn't going to get any better so we started our walk around Segovia. It was our free time and we wanted to do a little shopping so we walked around with our umbrellas and explored. I've never actually used an umbrella with good purpose, but it was so nice to have it! I stayed mostly dry. We walked around for about 2 hours and then returned to the town center and the bus. In the town center they had a beautiful carousel with the most interesting animals/things to ride on! It had a squid, a pterodactyl skeleton, a rocket ship, a grasshopper, a helicopter, a hot air balloon, and more! It was so cute and the little kids were so excited to ride on it.

We left Segovia at 5:30 and got back to Avila at about 7. It was a really fun day and I took a million pictures. I uploaded many more pictures into my Facebook album, so check those out if you'd like to see more! I was super tired by the time we walked home. I am excited for our other weekend excursions as well. It's fun to spend time with our group and get to know the people better and experience Spain with them. Except we hardly ever use our Spanish when we're all together. Haha WHOOPS.

More Jota!

Here's another video clip from the jota dancing last night! This one was the men and women, and they were using castanets to enhance their dancing. (The kids sitting on the right side are my little sister Marta and her cousin Daniel)

Friday Friday

Yesterday was a pretty regular day at school, classes weren't super exciting and we took notes and things like that. We have so much homework for our literature class. It's super annoying and takes forever, so that's not much fun. Dance class is kind of a nice break in the day though! We learned more steps for the primero section of our dance. It is getting more difficult, but it's fun. I was super tired after school and had to walk home in the rain which is no fun. But then after lunch I decided to take advantage of siesta time. I have not actually napped during that time yet, but yesterday I decided it was finally time to try it out. BEST. THING. EVER. No wonder they all do it! Even most of the businesses close from 2-5pm for lunch/siesta time. I felt so refreshed afterwards and was much more alert in the evening. Definitely going to be taking more siestas from now on :)

After my siesta, Kari and Ceceli and I decided to meet up and just go out for a while and see what we found to do. We were planning on going to one of the bars and getting drinks/tapas, walking around a bit, and then going to a festival they were having in town. Most of the bars didn't start serving dinner/drinks until 8pm though, so we ended up finding Chuchi, a wonderful pasteleria that is owned by the family of one of our profesoras here! SOOO good. We tried Yemas, which are a traditional sweet of Avila. They are made with egg yolks that are somehow sweetened. I really liked them, and thought they kind of tasted like lemonheads. But squishy :)

Then we walked around and did some touristy picture taking, but we were getting really cold so we decided to go to my house for about 45 minutes before the festival to warm up. When we got to my house my mom brought us some drinks, which eventually turned into a multi-course feast of sandwiches, chips, meat, fruit, pudding, and cake. Haha. My little sister was playing her violin for us and we were playing the piano and it was so much fun to just hang out. We decided it was too cold to go to the festival, but my mom's sister-in-law was at our house and she was heading to her dance practice! She is in a dance group in Avila and they dance the jota, which is very native to this area of Spain and the Castille y Leon region. We decided to go watch and it was so fun and interesting! There were men and women and they did multiple different dances. It was a very good cultural experience and we enjoyed it a lot! Here's a little video clip of one of the dances the men did. They are just at practice so they are not in their costumes. 

After that, we headed home and I went to bed. Today we had a day trip to Segovia! I'll have to update on that later when I get all my tons of pictures uploaded. :)

Just a day, just an ordinary day :)

Nothing really exciting has happened today, so I'll just give you a short run-through of my day. In my conversation/comp class, we did some more grammar work with sentences/conjugations that is getting a little more complex each day. Then we did a little activity using different tenses where we had to write sentences like, "If I were an animal, I would be a _____ because ____" with many different categories like food, weather, objects, natural resource, vehicle, etc. We also played a game in teams, kind of like jeopardy with different questions. Tomorrow she is teaching us a song, so that should be fun! In my culture class, we learned about the northern coast of Spain. (I think.. Haha.) The activity we did was a little confusing, but I was starting to figure it out towards the end. Many of the words are new words I am not familiar with so it takes a lot of thinking. We did have our first day of dance class today though! I guess that's something a little bit exciting :) We were learning the feet and a little bit of arms for a dance, but I can't remember what it is called. Not flamenco this time though. We practiced a few steps and then had to do it with a partner and do cross-overs/changes of position. Shanna and I were partners and we actually did pretty well! Not at holding a serious face though. We just kept laughing. We nailed the steps though, and deemed ourselves "profesionales." I hope you're reading this, Shanna. Haha! We're gonna be legit dancers after six weeks, I just know it :) Then Shanna and I had literature class with Rico. Took some more notes and talked a bit. We have reading homework for tonight, so I guess I'll see how well I learned!

After school I came home and had lunch with my family, and then a few of us girls walked around town looking at the shops/stores and just exploring a little bit. It's really cold here again. It was 38 degrees when I woke up this morning, and I don't think it's been above 50 all day. BRRRR. We explored a lot of stores, and  got some treats at a little bakery place. SO yummy. They make good sweets here, that's for sure! Another fun interesting thing about Spain here is that there is no sales tax on items. If the tag on something says 1.20 euros, it costs 1.20 euros. It's nice because you can calculte how many euros you need easily on your own, and it's really nice to not pay tax when you are so used to it! We walked around for about 2.5 hours, so that was some good exercise. Living up in the mountain makes walking very good exercise. I should have some toned glutes and calves when I return! I came back home and logged onto my computer, and my friend Laura called me on Skype! It was SOO nice to talk to her for a while and we chatted and caught up on life. Let me know if any of you ever want to Skype! It's so weird to talk with someone so far away! But it's super nice as well :)

*Fun fact of the day: I had my first Spanish dream last night!! Before I came here, I wondered if that would ever happen, and sure enough it did! Much sooner than I had expected. I woke up shortly after and realized and it was so weird to think about! My brain was speaking Spanish inside of me!

We are about to eat dinner and I have quite a bit of homework to do tonight, so I'm going to keep this short and sweet! I need to plug in my camera and upload some more of my pictures from the last few days to share with you. Hasta luego!

Game Night!

This afternoon/evening, I just stayed home with my family because the weather was icky and cold today and Marta has been sick. She's feeling much better though. The three of them took a siesta this afternoon and I did my homework. One interesting thing about school here is that the profesoras require us to use pen. When we had our placement exams and were all sitting there with pencils out, they told us to get out pens to use because "pencils are for kids." Haha. It's fine except that I make quite a few mistakes when I'm trying to write things in Spanish, so I end up needing to scribble, which I don't like. It's making me get better at thinking before I write though. Then Marta came downstairs and wanted me to help her with her English homework. I love doing that. It's fun to see what she is learning and hear her try to say the words and read. She's pretty good at reading. It's also good for me, because explaining an English word in Spanish can be quite difficult. After that, Marta really wanted to teach me how to play a traditional Spanish game she has been talking about. It's called Tres en Raya, and is very similar to Tic-Tac-Toe, except it is a little more complex. You only have 3 pieces per person, and you set them all down on the board. Then you keep shifting/moving them around one at a time in an attempt to get three in a row of your own, and stop your opponent from doing it. It involves some good thinking and was really fun. I actually won the first time I did it! I was proud of that because trying to understand her directions was a little bit confusing at first. Here's a picture of what the game board looks like. I was going to attach a link to a site about the game, but the site was in Spanish so I did not think it would do you any good to read about it like that. :P

We played a few rounds of that, and then she got out another game called Tic Tac Baum. Her mom played with us too, because that game can have many players. It was just us girls because Jesús was at work. It's a Spanish board/card game type thing. You roll a die and it tells you what card to draw. There are 5 or 6 different cards, with different word-related tasks to do. Some have a category, like "Things you could buy at a kiosk" and then you have to think of a word that fits it. Others have 2 or 3 letters and you have to think of a word that starts/ends with it. Others have letters scrambled up and you have to make a word, etc. Then there is a little bomb-type thing that beeps when you are playing and you pass it around. Whoever has it when it explodes loses that round, and you keep track of how many times you get exploded. It's a pretty simple game, but in another language I wasn't sure how it would go. I actually did pretty well, and my host mom was very impressed at how quickly I could read the cards and then think of a word in response. I need to thank Alissa Zink for that I think. She is a wonderful person and we played the word game Ruzzle on our phones in Spanish while we were at UND this spring! It was crazy and super hard at first, but eventually we got better at seeing Spanish words in bunches of letters instead of naturally seeing English words. So thanks, girl! :)

Both games were really fun and we enjoyed playing them and spending time together. I learned a lot during the second game too, and my vocabulary here increases every day. It's also fun to be able to start joking back and forth with them and using a bit of sarcasm. It just makes the environment more relaxed, and it feels more like home when we aren't just speaking to each other by asking necessary questions or weird concrete questions just to make conversation. Being able to converse over what is on TV or what we are doing is so much better. I'm really glad I have a family who likes to do stuff with me and engage me in their activities. They are so nice and wonderful and I'm excited to spend more time with them and get to know more cultural things. Marta said she has more fun stuff she wants to play, so we'll see where that leads! That was enough brain stimulation for the night, so I'm off to bed! Hopefully it's nicer tomorrow, but I don't think it will be, because Jesús asked me tonight if I brought a jacket for winter. Ha!

Rain, Rain, Go Away!

Of course the icky weather from Grand Forks decides to follow me to Spain. Go figure. It's 44 degrees right now in the middle of the afternoon. (Fahrenheit. I gave up on learning Celsius and just put the Avila weather app on my desktop of my computer in Fahrenheit, so when I get up in the morning I can plan for my day. Watching the news at night and having them say it'll be 10 degrees doesn't help me much.) Because it's so chilly outside, it's pretty chilly inside the houses and the school. It has been raining on/off all day too. Luckily I got a ride with my mom to school so I didn't need to walk in it, and on my walk home, it was just misting so I didn't need to use my umbrella. Today was my first day walking home by myself from school and I did it without getting lost or turned around at all!

Classes were about the same today. In my conversation/composition class, we went over the homework/writings we did last night and read them out loud, and then did some more grammar work. At the moment we're just reviewing some basic grammar concepts, but she said it'll get harder from here. I really like that class and I love the profesora. She is so cute. During one of the breaks, she was asking us if we have been able to talk with our family and friends back home at all. We said yeah, mostly through email or some people have been using Facetime or Skype, but we don't really use our phones. I was trying to explain that I have a blog I use to keep people at home updated, and I was pretty sure the Spanish word for it is also blog. She didn't understand what I was talking about so I was trying to explain it as a diary that I keep on a website to reflect on my days, add photos, etc. The spanish word for diary is "diario," but I accidentally said it with an 'a' sound at the end instead of an 'o'. So it sounded like the Spanish word for diarrhea instead of for diary. She gave me a really strange look and then I realized what I said and was like AHHH NO NO NO and then we laughed and eventually figured out what I was talking about. The Spanish word is blog, like I thought. I just didn't say the 'o' sound in the word right. Whoops! Just one of my awkward language barrier moment. There have definitely been a few.

Then I went to the cultures of Spain class. I'm experimenting with my classes/schedule a little bit, because the two classes I wanted to take here are at the exact same time, so I can't take those two and need to pick one to do and then also do a different one. Confusing, but anyways I'm working that out. So I went to the culture class today and it was kind of intense actually! The teacher was lecturing on all (and I mean ALL) of the provinces and regions of Spain and their capitals. It was a LOT of material in one sitting, especially without having any background knowledge of Spain at all. Just imagine trying to have every single US State, some info about it, and its capital explained to you in one 1-hour sitting. SO much info.

After classes a group of us went to the computer lab and were trying to figure out plane tickets/hostels for our long weekend. We have one four day weekend we are given to travel, and so we are trying to decide where to go, how to get there, and where to stay. We really wanted to go to London, but the plane tickets were jumping in price by the minutes, and so we are still debating where exactly we want to go, but we are getting it figured out. We have a day trip with our group to Segovia this weekend, so that'll be really fun. I came home from school then and ate a really yummy lunch. Marta was home from school today because she still wasn't feeling well, but when I got here she was feeling much better. She sat by me and showed me her sticker books. She loves stickers and has tons and tons of them in books. Many of them are of characters I know, like the Disney princesses, Hello Kitty, Mickey and Friends, Pooh, and Spongebob. It's so cute because they have different names here, and some of them are so literally translated. Like the Disney princesses. Snow White is "blanca nieva" which literally means white snow. Same with Sleeping Beauty. And Eeyore and Tigger from Winnie the Pooh are called "burro" and "tigre" which are the words for donkey and tiger. And SpongeBob is Bob Esponja, probably my favorite translation. It was fun to look at all of her stickers because she has so many. We'd go through and she'd tell me what they are in in Spanish and then ask me what some of them are called in English. I learned some fun new words and she did too. She has a traditional Spanish game she and her mom want to teach me when Marta is feeling a little better. I'm excited to learn how to play. It's still kind of rainy/misty, so I probably won't do anything too exciting the rest of the day. Just hang out with my family and do my homework.

Enjoy your super hot weather back home! Luckies...

Actual School and Classes

Today was the first day we actually had classes and such. I walked to Allison's house and then we walked together. Both times we walked today we did great and did not get confused or lost at all. We are getting better :) I am in the medium level of classes which I am very happy about. I did not want to be in the high level, because I thought I'd get confused and some of the students in our program can speak SOO well. I also didn't want to be in the low level, because I want to be challenged here and not be learning basic things I already know. There are 8 girls total in my class, so it's small and fun. Our profesora is Rut and she is SO cute and young and fun! We started by playing two games to get us to know each other and be comfortable talking and conversing. In the first game, we had a large star on the board and we each took turns writing 5 words/things on the star (one at each point). Then the class had to ask us yes/no questions about the words to figure out what they mean to us/signify about us and our lives. It was actually really fun and it was fun to get to know the other girls. Then we played a game where we had to draw a word/theme out of a basket and then we had to describe it for one minute. Then the class had to guess what we were describing. Basically verbal charades. Then we had to crack down and do some more academic type stuff, but that really wasn't too bad! Part of our homework for that class is to keep a journal and write in it every night about what we did at school and in the afternoons/evenings. I think that's great actually, and it'll be fun to look back at after the trip. Plus it's good practice for my Spanish writing skills.

My other class is Spanish Literature/Readings. The teacher is Rico, our chaperone for EMU, so that's kind of interesting. There are only two girls in that class though, Shanna and me! Haha. So that'll definitely be interesting. We will both need to do our readings/homework, or it'll be pretty obvious. No hiding in that class. We took some notes about different types of literature in Spanish, and then he assigned us a reading. It probably isn't going to be a super interesting class, but I guess it'll be nice to cram it into 6 weeks instead of spreading it out over a whole semester. Our final class of the day is our dance class. The dance studio was occupied today with students from the school who are taking Spring Final Exams, so we were in a classroom listening to different types of dance music and we learned the arm/hand motions for flamenco dancing. Yes, I said flamenco dancing. This is going to be one of the craziest things I have ever done. Haha. And at the end of the 6 weeks, our host families come to watch us perform a dance. AHH.

After school we walked home, and I was home alone a while waiting for Jesús and Marta to get home. Jesús came home but without Marta. They were taking her to the doctor this morning because she has been having bad allergy problems, and I asked him where she was and he said something about the medico and something about her tests. I knew she had two tests in school today so I figured she was making them up since she missed this morning. After a little more conversing, I figured out that they had taken her to the hospital to do tests because they thought she might have pneumonia. He left again after lunch, and I went out walking around town and the river with my friends Carly and Abbey, both from EMU. That was really nice and relaxing and fun to talk with them for a bit. When I came back, the family was back from the hospital with Marta. Turns out she has bronchitis. Her allergies have been really bad, and so the phlegm/stuff has been building up in her lungs. But she's on antibiotics and it should clear up soon. I'm glad she's not super sick! (And I find it kind of impressive that we were able to communicate all that info and I understood it with no difficulties :) ) Now I'm just relaxing for a bit, but should probably start my homework soon. It's weird, because I'm very accustomed to eating supper and then starting my homework, but when we don't eat until 9 or 10 at night, I should probably do my homework first. I just need to find motivation. My brain is still in summer/tourist mode. Haha.

Check out these sheep we passed by on our walk today! Made me feel kind of back at home. The baby lambs were SOOO cute. Look at the little guy :)

Here's a picture of Abbey and me while we were walking along the river! I love that I live really close to it. :)

Have a wonderful evening, all!

¡Qué extraño!

For those of you who do not speak Spanish, "¡Qué extraño!" is the equivalent of "How strange!" Obviously, while living in a foreign country I have encountered many different things that I find strange. My family has also found a few things about me to be strange. I'll share a few of those first.

-One night I had just gotten out of the shower and was sitting on the couch. I told my parents I was about to go to bed and they exclaimed, "With wet hair?!" When I told them yes, they could not understand how I am able to go to bed with wet hair and not wake up sick in the morning. It was kind of a funny conversation.

-The first day I was here, all my family drank was water. The second day though, at lunch my mom asked me what I wanted to drink. Naturally I just said milk, since I'm used to drinking milk, and they looked at me and said, "Milk with your lunch? That's interesting." Haha. They do not really just drink milk here. And from what other students here have said, if they do drink milk, they drink it warm.

-My family finds it very strange that I do not drink pop. They also found my roll-up Vapur water bottle to be very cool and had never seen anything like it.

-Today I was watching TV with my dad at lunch and there was a chocolate fountain in the background of who they were interviewing. He pointed and said "Look at that! It's like a fountain of chocolate!" I said yeah and explained what it was and he thought it was so cool and could not believe it was real and that we actually have them.

-One difficult experience I had yesterday, was trying to set up my cellphone when everything was in Spanish. It was much more difficult than I thought to navigate through the menu and figure out the settings, but all of a sudden I came across how to change the language and that helped tremendously.

-Another thing I find really strange here is the sidewalks. They are very, very narrow, and in many places they can only fit one-person wide. It makes walking and talking with someone quite difficult, and it's kind of awkward when you encounter someone trying to walk the opposite way.

-Toilets. The toilets here look just a little bit different than in the US, but you flush them by pushing a button on the top. Took me a while to figure it out the first time, but I have the hang of it now. They also have different style toilets for the men in the bathroom.

-Here in Spain, people smoke in public. I always see people walking around and smoking or standing on the corner with cigarettes. I am very not used to that and it's really disgusting actually.

-The people here drive kind of crazy-like. They all have manual cars so there's a lot of jerking and starting/stopping. They don't stop for pedestrians until the last second so I can never quite tell if someone is going to stop or not. They also just kind of park wherever, which is really interesting.

-Another thing I've had to get used to in Spain is the besos, or kisses. When you meet someone for the first time, you do not shake their hand or give them a hug. You do the double kiss thing on both cheeks. It was super weird and awkward at first, but in these first days I've met tons of people and now it's just natural to do. Besos are also used if you see someone on the street you haven't seen for a while, or want to thank someone for a gift, etc. When little kids do it, it's so cute :)

-The light switches here are very different and look like large white toggle squares. The one really nice thing though, is that I have two light switches in my room: one by the door, and one right next to my bed. It's genius, really. I can get all settled into bed while the light is still on, and then just reach over and turn it off. Brilliant.

-All of the rooms, including the kitchen, living room, and stairways have doors. So if you are trying to go from room to room, you have to walk through a few doors. I was pretty clumsy at navigating through them at first, but it has gotten much better now.