When you reduce life to black and white, you never see rainbows. -Rachel Houston

      "It's not good or bad, it's just different." is a phrase AFS told us before we left. So instead of talking about school and life like normal (which I'm sure you're getting bored of and it hasn't changed much since last week)  I'm going to discuss the 'differences' of Spain and America.


Weather:
In the last post or so, I mentioned how colllddd it was here. In reality Michigan is around the 10ºF colder. I shouldn't be complaining. But nonetheless, no matter how cold it is in Michigan... I'm still cold here hahah.

Also I think I've mentioned it before, but I'll say it again because it's kind of a bummer. It doesn't snow a lot here, according to my friends and family, a light dusting is the norm.


Holidays:
Christmas is celebrated, but not Santa Claus and not and the 25th of December. In Spain they celebrate 'Reyes Magos" or the Three Wise Men on January 6th. (I'll write more about this later, closer to the date.)


Food:
Meat- there is so much meat in Spain, so many types and they are delicious! I quote the guys running our gateway orientation, "They do things with meat that you didn't even know was possible." I would be more descriptive in describing them, but honestly I don't even know what I'm eating half of the time...

Candy- So in Spain they have these wonderful sections in a lot of shops that just have rows candy and you take a baggie, put what every candy you want in it, and pay for whatever candy you picked out (normally it's around 1 euro)

I found this picture on the internet, but this is more or less what they have... (There's a store within walking distance from my house and they have this at my school's cafe).

Bread- Except for breakfast, we have a slice of bread with EVERY meal. yuummm, bread <3

Dessert- It also normal have an ice cream or yogurt everyday with lunch.

--in short Spain is bad for the stomach...


Homework (studying):
Do I talk about this already too? Oh well.
Homework is almost nonexistent, sounds nice doesn't it? Well it makes it hard to know what to study for.. Which is something you're supposed to do everyday. Study.Study.Study. It's what's Spain all about. Oh and any homework that's assigned normally isn't checked.


Exams:
Exams are a huge deal. Your whole grade rides on 2 or 3 exam grades.
During exams: No talking. You're desk is cleaned out and all you're stuff is put on this self thing in the back of the classroom. Only a pen, pencil, easer, and in some cases white out. Your pencil bag is put with your books in the back of the class too. And it's normally on 6 questions.



CLothes:
You always wear shoes or slippers in the house. Going barefoot is not acceptable.

In PE no one wears shorts, everyone wears long jogging pants.

We have 'house clothes', which simply means we wear sweats in the house, when nothing is going on.


Volleyball:
Clothes: Some people wear leggings to practice, and there's even a girl that wear school clothes to practice.. We can practice wearing earrings, necklaces, and bracelets. (We can even wear them in games).

Games: Every Saturday we play best out of 5 against another team. (My first game was last week, we killed the other team!! :) )

Teams: At the last game, there were only six people there from my team, I think this is normally... Also in the younger teams there are boys that play... not something you see in Marlette....


Smoking:
So mannny people smoke in Spain. And so many 'younger' people smoke. I pretty sure around half the people in my grade smoke...  AND it's socially acceptable. it's was something that really caught me off guard.


School Buses:
There are school buses, but don't go thinking about yellow buses that are in America. Nope if have to ride the bus you ride in a coach bus or take a normal city buses (there's a bus stop right outside of the school)

Also for field trips (we went to the museum in Valladolid today) the school doesn't provide a bus. We take a city bus.


House/Roads:
ALL house have a fence around it with a gate that open only by using a remote, key, or pressing a button to 'call' the inside of the house, where you can press another button which opens the door.

There is no roadkill here. none. I haven't seen a single dead animal on the road since coming. Also people don't need to worry about deer running out on the road (though my host mom told in the South they sometimes have that problem with horses..) Also roads curvy and confusing and rarely go where you think they're going to.




I hope you're all enjoying my blog and if there's anything you'd me to write about comment or e-mail.
Chao.

Studying .... basically all the time :/

Now that this language barrier is fading away, I'm struck trying to catch everything we've learned in the past two months. It's neither fun or easy.

Philosophy and Literature, I'm not wasting my time with... in fact I use these classes to study and read.

Biology: I just spend Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and ALL of Sunday studying for my exam I had today. (I was supposed   to take it on Friday, luckily my teacher forgot to make me a special test (ALL MULTIPLY CHOCIE!!) so I had two extra days of studying.... two extra days of much needed studying). The exam, I pretty sure I would of failed if my teacher wouldn't of underlined key words in the questions, that hinted at the answers after my first time turning it in, and even then I pretty sure that if I pass, it won't be by much (she only underlined four questions... :( )... and of course I studied the wrong things... just my luck haha
 But one thing I noticed with this exam, I understood the questions, I could READ it!! For one of the first times, I couldn't use the 'I have on idea what this says' excuse. Progress is good :)

Math and Chemistry are probably the toughest. Math we switched from stuff I learned last year, to trigonometry .... sin, cos, tan... all of which I haven't even thought about since freshman year geometry, and I'm expected to memorize at least 20 different (but obnoxiously VERY similar) formulas. Chemistry is just stupid, in all honesty I should understand wayyyy more than I do now, but I only remember about 5% of everything we learned last year... and the whole writing the formulas thing is different, you write out the formulas completely different in Spanish then you do in English. Also when they change the names it get confusing.
       For example: Nitrato argéntico. I managed to figure it was: somethingNO3... but I had no idea what element argéntico stood for, and when I asked, the teacher just didn't understand that I have no way of know argéntico  was a form of plata (silver), I'm pretty sure he thinks I'm just dumb.  Also I was told to memorize all the charges for all the elements, so I assume we're not allowed to use the periodic table on test. This is going to be a problem: nitrogen has 4 different charges, manganese has 5... etc.

My computer teacher gave us the exam today, so I have to first figure out the answer and then memorize them so I know them for the exam. (Also I learned not to get on that teacher's bad side, he kicked a kid of the class for the week for talking.... he wasn't talking loudly or anything)

And religion, Sciences of the Contemporary World, and P.E. I'm really hoping I'm able to wing it (or be able to get by with a one night cramming study session)... we'll see how that goes. :)

Until November 21 at 3:37 (the earliest) I'm not going on facebook, mostly because facebook is way too tempting when I'm studying and I waste way too much time creeping on people I don't really need to be creeping on haha.

Last Saturday I went shopping.. I got a much needed sweater and two (also needed) shirts. My closet is looking a little less sad haha.

Friday is 11/11/11!! I'm borrowing a watch so I don't miss 11:11, I have yet to be successful making a wish. :(  The problem is that the school doesn't have a single clock... anywhere!! It's annoying.

Next weekend: I think I have a volleyball game!

And then next Wednesday my class is having a field trip to the Science Museum of Valladolid

Procrastinating time is over... back to hitting the books

¡Hasta Luego! 

"Nearly every man who develops an idea works at it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then gets discouraged. That's not the place to become discouraged." -Thomas Edison

     Guess what guys?? It's bloggin' time! :)

Last weekend, was probably one of the longest weekends ever... (it was four days longs, so in a way it was an longg weekend). Saturday we woke up early to drive 2 hours to Madrid. My host dad has a cousin that lives right outside of Madrid, so we were staying with them. 

When we got to their house (which involved driving that wrong way down a one way street, whoops. the joys of Spain's curvy streets that never go where you think they're going to lead) We brought our stuff inside and all of us (including the cousin's family. The cousin is married with two kids, 7 and 10) we took the train for 15 minutes or so the go to the center of Madrid. 

From there we went to the most boring museum I've ever been to... the Natural Science Museum of Madrid or something. Stuffed animals and me do not go well together. And then to make it better after I left the museum I ran back inside to use the bathrooms and the security guard yelled at me and told me I wasn't allowed to. I wasn't in the best of moods that morning to say the least. 

After the museum, it was 2:00, i was really hungry (another reason for my crabbiness),  and we went to eat at a PIIZZA restaurant (I loovve pizza incase you didn't know), Jardín Pizza (directly translated as 'Pizza Garden'). We ate more then I ever thought was possible. First we eat had our own pizza (I was struggling to finish that..) and then my dad thought it would be a good idea to order 2 large plates of fries for the 8 of us to share.. and THEN we all split three HUGE pieces of cake... ugg, never in my life have I eaten so much food. And it was so good.

After lunch, (my mood improved by 105%) we walked to the Plaza Major, which was really cool. It was full of people trying in anyway possible trying to earn some money. Painters, people pretending to be statues, people dressed up as famous characters for pictures...etc. It was amusing :) 

Lastly for the day, we walked around and went to this really pretty park that had a ton of really entertaining playground equipment in it. 

Sunday, was nothing special. We went to an outlet center, but nobody got anything. 

Monday, we ate with my host dad's parents and Tuesday we ate with my host mom's parent... and I can promise you, when you eat at ANYONE's house in Spain. Hungry is not a possibility.

School is frustrating, mostly because all I'm told is not to worry and the only people helping me are my classmates. I have a biology exam on friday... last week I asked my teacher what I should study because the exam is over 50 textbook pages.  The teacher basically told me everything was important (how helpful.. not really). So I've attempted to study, but due to the lack of focus on my part and the impossibility of what they want me to do... it failed. 

But my friends think that if I can get caught out in my chemistry class, it'll be possible to pass, so I've turned my attention to studying chemistry and it's working... more or less. :)

And on another bright note: I got a 7.5 on my math exam!!!!! (This earned me a round of applause for my class and many congratulations :P... okay, not that dramatic, but they were still impressed)   

And this weekend I'm going SHOPPING <3 and then going out with my friendsss. Apparently there some sort of festival going on this weekend. I'll be sure to take pictures! :) (also I get the feeling that there's always some sort of festival going on in Spain...)

Until next week, Lotte :)