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 :)

 

..Anything Can Happen.. Anything Can Be...

“Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”  ― Shel Silverstein'

 The literature exam I had last week was a spectacular failure. I spent the whole hour trying to come up with something to write on my paper and wrote down maybe 4 answers. (I was pretty happy with those answers too) But then when the teacher was giving back the tests to everyone else, he basically told me my test was as good blank and didn't bother giving it back to me. But it honestly doesn't bother me, lit. is not going to be my subject this year. :)

Last weekend was the fall AFS orientation, the actually orientation part is really boring, but it's great seeing other AFSers.

All of us from Castilla y Léon and Galicia 

While I've made some really nice Spanish friends and I plan on getting closer to them and making some really good long-term friends, nobody understands you as well as the other exchangers. For the most part we were all instant friends and we all know we can rely on each other. We can all relate to each other on some sort of level and it really nice to know there are other people going through the same things you are and you're not alone.

Yesterday I had my second volleyball practice. Oh how I've missed it. :) 

Are you ready for my super active schedule?

Mondays and Fridays: I go to the gym with my family.

Tuesdays and Thursdays: I have volleyball practice. 

And Wednesdays: I have PE at school for two of my hours, except it's not like PE in America where we play games or do sports. No, we actually do workouts. Jump ropes, med ball, weights, etc....

Tomorrow I have a math exam, I hope I'll pass it.... but we'll see how it goes haha :D

This weekend Madrid. Then Monday and Tuesday no school! :)

And random fact: Sunday it drizzled. It was the first any sign of rain of any sorts since I've been in Spain. Monday it down poured and since then the weather has been cold, windy, cloudy, and on and off rain :/ Also there is no 'fall' in at least the northern part of Spain. No changing of the leaves, only cool day... it goes straight from summer to winter or at least that's what it feels like.. I don't even want to think about how cold it's going to be in January or February when it's supposed to be the coldest.... 

Adios <3

ps. Last month sometime I went with my family climbing these

'little' mountains close to Valladolid (did I write about this already?)

anyways here's a link to pictures of me and everyone I went 

with on the town's website: Pictures of 'Lote' 

They spelled my name wrong.. :| but I think it's cool that they put me on

their website :)

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself, any direction you choose. -Dr. Seuss

So Thursday, my first exam in Spain.

          I'm gonna be 100% honest here, I knew I was gonna fail that exam awhile before I actually took it. I knew what I was supposed to study, but didn't even bother to try. Why? Because it was over 17 pages of literature notes.. full of VOCAB.. yeah also it was over poetry in class and the first half of a Spanish play (La Celestine)(we were supposed to read that on our own). That one I did try, and failed epically. Then I found an english version of the play online, it didn't make much more sense either. Early on I decided I wasn't going to waste my precious time attempting to do lit. homework, instead I spend my time doing other less impossible assignments. Like: math, biology, writing a paper over Alexander Fleming (1 1/2 pages of success :D), philosophy, and occasionally chemistry.

         So test day comes and I realize just how big of a deal these exams are... EVERYONE is studying. My biology teacher gave us the class time to study! In lunch, unimportant classes (*cough* philosophy, english, religion..), and in the breaks EVERYONE was studying.

        Then finally the time came for the exam.. desk were moved apart, exam passed out, and the teacher explained the direction, made it clear no talking during the test, not even to ask him a question. (Yep it was intense)

       When I started to read the test, I was able to read and understand the instructions. I actually knew what I was supposed to do. But it stopped there. The exam was only one side of a paper, four different parts or so, and on the back we needed to write a summary of what we read in La Celestine. I answer 4 questions I think.. and as for the summary, I read an online summary so I knew what happened in the play, but guess who couldn't remember the names of the characters?? yepp, me, this brings me to fail #103294 of the year so far.

         Result: Lotte probably is going to get the worst grade she's ever gotten in her life and honestly she could careless. Hopefully mr. literature teacher (who I can't tell apart from mr. chem/physics teacher) will have the exams checked by tomorrow.





Last weekend I went out with my friends again, a ton of funnnn :) I remember my camera this time so I have pictures.

These lovely people are my friendss :)
left to right: Angela, Cristina, Angela, Sandra, Natalia, ME, and Andrea

us again :)
left to right: Angela, Sandra, ME, Andrea and in the front Natalia 

Today is Monday and the morning sucked, mostly because it's a Monday, but also because my worst class are all one after another: Religion, Physics/Chem, and then Philosophy. Fun right?  Nope, Monday mornings I normally have to use all my super powers to try and stay awake. (Not because of lack of sleep, but rather because I so BORED!) But the rest of the day went a lot better. My teacher didn't show in my computer class, so we just sat around in the hallway and talked, I got to meet some people in the class I didn't talk to before. (We were in the hallway because we were locked out of the lab because... the teacher didn't show haha), then after reading a page out of our biology book my bio teacher let us do homework the rest of the hour, so I had someone help with some homework I didn't really understand.  Finally we had Sciences of the Contemporary World, where I turned in my first paper (remember the 1 1/2 pages of awesomeness) and people that wanted to could read them out loud so most the class we watching my classmates read their paper out loud.

Easy day for the most part. :) And we just got back from the gym... exercise, I always forget how much I hate it until, I get roped into it somehow. But it helped me relax a bit and I felt a lot better leaving the gym then I did when I came.

This coming weekend AFS Orientation: I'm pumped!

The next weekend MADRID! Woohoo! I can't wait :)

Sorry about the super ramblyness of this post. It's late and I'm really tired. I'll try and make the next one better:)

CHAO  <3

Life's going goood :)

I had a blast last weekend with my friends, I can't wait to hang out with them again.

School's going, I had my first test today, it was in English class. Expect it didn't really count because I'm not really taking the class, my teacher just thought it would be fun if I took it.. It took a total of 50 seconds, I spent the rest of the time napping :)

I also found out that there was a perfectly good reason why I'm so lost in my chemistry. It's their 3rd year of chem... this is my second.  One of my friends in the class is going to let me copy her notes from last year and explain it to me, so hopefully I'll follow the class a bit better soon. And maybe I'll understand why equations with 1/2 Oxygen in it are all of a sudden allowed, I'm pretty sure Mrs. Wilson told us we couldn't do that.. correct me if I'm wrong.

On friday I have my first 'real' test in spanish lit. .... hmm, I would say wish me luck, but I don't think lucks gonna help me any. I haven't understood a single thing in the class yet... My tutora (which basically is my homeroom teacher) told me not to worry about tests in my classes right now, but she never explained what don't worry means. Does it mean 'oh don't worry if you fail the first couple tests it's not the end of the world' or 'don't worry because we're not actually going to count these tests'? I guess I'm going to find out the hard way and if becomes a problem I'll talk to her again about it. My goal is to pass all my classes.. I think the only way I'm going to make it is if the teachers cut me A LOT of slack.. like: "hey! She tried on this test, so let's give her a 10!"



( Spanish Grading System:
              you can get anywhere from 0-10 points.

• 10 being the highest (you're basically a genius if you get a 10)
• 9-10 is considered 'outstanding' and only a certain number of students can normally get it. 
• 7-8.9 is considered 'very good'
• 6-6.9 is considered 'good' 
• 5 is the lowest pasting grade (5-5.9 is considered 'sufficient') <-- my goal 
• And anything under a 5 is failing )

And while I'm at explaining things, apparently when and what I eat it is something people are interested are knowing...

I eat breakfast (desayuno) when I wake up, it's normally a bowl of Special K ceral (YUM) , though sometimes it's biscuits dipped in hot chocolate (YUUUMMM)

Then I eat a sandwich at school around noon (I consider it lunch, but everyone else calls it a snack)...

Once i get home from school around 2:30 it's lunch time (almuerzo) and we eat the big, hot meal of the day. Normally it involves fish (we eat A LOT of fish) or meat I never knew existed.. 

Around 5, 6, 7:00 we have merienda (another snack) this is normally yogurt or a sandwich with nutella (<3)

Then FINALLY before we go to bed we have dinner. A light meal, yogurt, biscuits and hot chocolate, leftovers... you get the idea

So yeah, a lot of food and my host mom said she was worried I was going to go back to America too skinny.... I have a feeling that that won't be the problem.

and bye now---- oh yeah tomorrow NO SCHOOL!  Christopher Columbus day!!  Me and my family are celebrating by cleaning, ffffffuuuuuuuunnnnnnn AND I played volleyball today! First practice!! Woohhooo, I can't wait until the next one (every tuesday and thursday).

The Fall/Fail...

Last weekend my family took me to Santander, to go hiking in El Picos De Europa. They were gorgeous!!

 And it was also fun to do something active, something besides sitting around and eating. haha. I had a blast. Hiking up the mountains was a lot of work, my legs BURNED. But for hiking back down was tougher. It involved something called patience, because you had to walk super slow, and be super careful or else you'd slip and fall. But I was determined not to fall. I'd seen 3 other people wipe out and I was not gonna be one of 

them.  

Finally we out of the really steep part and could walk normal. After a quick bathroom break (6 hours in the mountains without any bathrooms.. we all had to pee) and then we only have to walk down a small mountain, more like a hill if you compare it to what we just hiked, to get to the car..  But I was a bit reckless and bored, so despite the warnings from my family, I decided ran down a thin path. Then comes this random little boy who is also running down the path a little ways ahead of me. He stops to look back at his mom who was walking behind me. Not wanting to run over the boy I also stop. Then somewhere between standing still and starting to walk again I managed to fall. At first I got up, brushed myself off, felt really silly for managing to fall, but didn't think I hurt myself too bad. Then I looked at my knees, surprisingly my legging weren't ripped, so my knees couldn't be that bad could they?

First knee I looked at, slightly scraped, nothing I haven't had before. The next one, HUGE gash! Color me shocked. After that my host parents walked next to me to make sure I walk slow enough. 'MAS DESPACIO!' Then my host mom made going to a walk-in clinic our top priority. I still didn't think it was that bad, that I need to see a doctor for. But whatever makes mom happy, right? :)

The clinic was another fun experience. My health insurance card still need to be printed off the computer and when didn't have any internet in Santander. But I had my AFS medical emergency contact card and showed to my host mom, who mistook it as my insurance card. At the clinic I found out that she thought it wasn't an insurance card, but we gave it to the receptionist anyways because we were already there. It turns out one of the doctors has a daughter that is in Maine right now through none other than AFS. So the receptionist showed the card to the doctor and the doctor told us it was no problem and checked my knee.

I left with seven stitches and the super nice doctor didn't charge us anything. You gotta love the random coincidences in life. 

ADIOS<3

(annd... guess what? on Saturday 

I have plans to go out with my 

friends for the first time. 

WOHOO)

and just for the record, going out doesn't mean going out drinking,  it's illegal, it would get me sent home, and it's not happening :)

  

We should embrace the bad day's, because without them good days wouldn't feel so precious.

So all I wanted to blog about today was how great today went. Absolutely nothing special happened, it was just one of those days that went really well. I just thought with my last couple post being about how horrible school was, I thought you guys should know things are getting better. :)

My classes are still hard and I'm not understanding much, but when people talk to me I can understand more and I can follow some conversations that go on around me. Yay!

That's all. Bye

ps this weekend we're going to go hiking

in the mountains near Santander

should be funnnn :)