Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm. -Winston Churchill

ONE:
I realize I didn't post at all last week, sorry. But in all honestly there was nothing to post about.

TWO:

HAPPY LATE THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!! :)

THREE:
I'm out of things to list so I'm just going to summarize the past couple weeks.


Last week was the beginning of my school finals (my school has it's finals a month before the trimester actually ends. Why? So that people have time to retake any finals they failed... yeah.. I don't really get it either.) Oh course, Thanksgiving was the first day (just my luck isn't it? :)).
Also finals are run differently in at my school, then at Marlette High. In Marlette, two days of exams, one hour you have exams then the next you don't... ect. In my school here, FOUR days of finals, but you only take 2 exams a day. One in your 1st hour and then one in your second to last hour (2 hours to take the exam), the WHOLE time in-between, you study. Then when you finish your 2nd exam your done with school and you can leave. (Oh course the majority of us end up waiting for school to end anyways, but still you get to wander around school for however much time is left.)

Now how did MY finals go.... welll, I don't know all of my scores yet, but I have a general idea how I did overall.

English: Super easy. Passed with a very high grade (Everything I wrote was grammatically correct.. any thing the teacher marks wrong is because I didn't put a verb in the Simple Imperfect and just wrote it in a tense that made sense)
Chemistry: very,very,very,very bad
Biology: not as bad, I think I just passed :)
Sciences of the Contemporary World: I don't know, but I think I did really well
Math: another very,very,very bad exam BUT my super nice teacher gave me a 5 (PASSING!!) because that's a class I need to pass :D (THANK YOU!)
Computers: ...iffy... I think/hope that I passed... we'll see... hahah
Lengua (aka: my spanish class that very similar to our english class): hmm... that's how that went... BUT I was able to answer 3 parts of it.. oh course they were worth the least amounts of points.. but still :) 
Philosophy: I made up very philosophical answers for just about every question, including definition (I should get points for effort or at least creativeness)



Moving on... Thanksgiving (Día de Acción de Gracias)... I might of posted it wrong on facebook, not my fault. I was misinformed.

I didn't celebrate Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving, but we were planning on celebrating on Saturday with taco (mmmm, this was not my idea (though I was it was) my family knows me too well :) ) But on Saturday we ended up eating at my grandparents house, so it was post-poned to Sunday.

The tacos turned out fanastic, as long as you ignored the fact no bean...
apparently chile beans don't exist in Spain..?

BLACK <3

Then this tuesday, to celebrate the fact finals were done, me and some of my friends walked to Burger King and ate a ton of deliciousness after school (ps. first time eating fast food in Spain)

My good friend Angela eating a Whopper

And yesterday, we decorated the Christmas tree. (Which reminds of the christmas tree in 'A Christmas Story' because when the lights are on it's a ton of ever changing colors. :D )

me and my host mom decorating the tree

more or less the finished product of the tree

My camera doesn't do the tree nearly any justice....  

And up-coming plans:

Saturday is boooooooooooooked, first I have my weekly volleyball game (these volleyball games in all honesty are really sad. The last team we played only had two people that could overhand serve. But the practices are a blast, everyone plays intense and the practices are a lot like varsity practices even if the games aren't). After that, I'm going to this thing called Scouts with my sister. Apparently it's like Girl Scouts in the US, expect boys and girls are together. But a couple of my friends are in it too, so it should be fun, and after Scouts I'm going to out with my friendssss.

And finally, my adorable host sister!
(Just look at that face! How could you not love it?)
:)

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 :)

 

..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).