Well, I've started two posts already for how awesome November has been, and I promise you all will see them/it! For now, I really want to remember the hilarity that was the night of the 21st of November, and give you a small glimpse into one of my Rotary Meetings.
At 8:30, Zlata arrived at my house. As she only lives about a four minute walk away, we spend a lot of time at each others houses, which is also cool because we will be switching families directly in March or April! We waited and waited for our club counselor, who has the special Spanish ability of turning "I'll be there in five minutes...", into ten or fifteen, or twenty minutes. Interesante. Surprisingly, we made it to the meeting (which begins at 9pm. NINE PM.) a bit early, thanks to our counselor's super speedy driving skills. Normally, the meetings last about an hour or so, but the meetings here in Spain (or at least, in my club), are very different from the ones I've been to in Florida! They don't sing any funky songs to begin the meetings, there's nothing about the four way test at the beginning or end, and they mostly just talk. Sometimes, its in louder voices then are really necessary, but that's Spain for ya.
Normally, after the meeting, we eat in the restaurant of the hotel where our meetings are held, but this time for whatever reason, we all ate at a different restaurant along the coast, that specialized in sea-food! If you're reading this and you knew the Nicole from last year, who considered the only edible sea food to be tunafish from a can, you must be surprised right now, as was I! I'm waiting on the pictures from Zlata, but our dinner consisted of clams, octopus, soup broth with a single meatball, cod-fish, little crispy fish things that I thought were asparagus sticks, snails, smaller snails, stuffed peppers, and finally, a fruit platter that lasted about 6 seconds. The beverage options were Spanish Beer, Spanish Wine, or Water...........and of course, non-alcoholic beer as well ;)
For this dinner in particular, I was so happy to finally have another exchange student with me to experience all of the....interesting foods that the restaurant had to offer. After what felt like 4 hours of eating (it was a little less than two hours), we headed out. Taking the long way home with our counselor (who had had more than a few glasses of.....beverage), he pointed out all of the clubs and discotecas that his children usually go to, and told us that one weekend when they are home from college, he's planning on us spending the weekend together, discovering the discotecas of Torrevieja.
So that's about it. Actually, it wasn't a normal Rotary Meeting at all (at least, as normal as you can get here), but I had a really great time, and thought you all deserved to know at least a little of what I've been up to this month. I hope to post my November blog in real life, and not just think about all the things I'd love to put into it. But for now, this is it.
Que tengais una buena semena, (and Dia de Accion de Gracias!)
---Nicole/Николь/نيكول
Did I not mention that I've learned how to write my name in Russian and Arabic?! Because there are so many people here (not exchange students, but people in Torrevieja), from Russia, Morroco, Angola, and other countries from South Africa, I'm learning a bit of both languages, as well as Castellano!
Ciao! до свидания, وداعا
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Friday, November 4, 2011
Two months: Quite a long journal about arbitrary teenage traveler thoughts, and other less dramatic topics.
Here we are. I'm finally sitting down and writing. Depending on where you are while reading this, you'll see that I'll be posting this around 9 in the morning (for me), or 3 in the morning, (for those of you on the East Coast). If you're wondering why I'm writing at this time on a Friday morning and not working diligently in my school work, HA. The phrase "Soy una estudiante de intercambio", followed by a lovely smile and a swish of my rare (here in Spain), blonde hair, can get me out of a lot of things...
A joke. Calm down Mom and Dad ;) Right now I'm usually in my History of Arte class learning about Roman architecture, and jealously listening to my fellow compañeros discuss all the places in Europe they've been to see some of these thousand year old creations. JAJAJA, yeah, way jealous. But their faces mirror mine when I talk about being able to go the the Disney Parks for the day Saturday and it's no big deal, or the fact that I can drive a car, by myself, legally, and I'm only 17. Being a teenager in the Orlando area, we take those things for granted, just as a weekend trip to Rome here is. Things are just on a bigger scale here. Anyway, since we're sort of already there, lets talk about school.
Much to everyone's surprise, probably mine most of all, I LOVE my school here! I absolutely love it. I've heard a lot of exchange students talk about hating school, or don't even talk about it at all because they skip it so often, but unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), my school is one of six in my town, and it's the best. The top acedemics (I feel like I spelled that wrong...irony?), the most well behaved students (OH LORD I CANNOT EVEN BELIEVE THAT SOME OF THE PEOPLE AT MY INSTITUTE IN FLORIDA, AND THE STUDENTS HERE ARE THE SAME AGE.), and the top number of students choose to continue their education after 16, and keep on continuing until their 18. In most of Europe (I'm pretty sure), when you turn 16 you can either drop school and start working...or whatever, OR continue education for the last two years (equivalents of 11th and 12th grade, but SO much harder). Here, I'm in 2º
Bachillerato, the equivalent of 12th grade. It's the final year of school here, and it's quite difficult, even if you do speak Spanish ;) Education here is much more enforced than in the US, and it's quite different as well.
My school is only Here, there are two options to choose from the last two years of school, Humanities, or Sciences. Obviously I chose Humanities, since there is no way in the world (GET IT) that you could find me taking physics, biology, or chemistry in English unless absolutely necessary, let alone in Castilian Spanish. JAJAJA, no. In the Humanities direction, I have ten classes, but we go to different ones every day. Below, you'll find a quick run down of my schedule, and later I'll post a picture. It's craziness!
Monday: Valencian Language, Literature, English Grammar, History of Philosophy, Economics, History of Arte, and History of Spain.
Tuesday: Mathematics, English Grammar, History of Arte, History of Philosophy, Tutoria (like homeroom), English Oral, Literature.
Wednesday: Economics, English Oral, Mathematics, Valencian Language, History of Arte, History of Spain.
Thursday: Mathematics, Literature , English Oral, English Grammar, Valencian Language, and Economics.
Friday: History of Arte, Mathematics, English Oral, History of Philosophy, History of Spain, and Economics.
That's the schedule I received at the beginning of the year, but it's been altered a bit to fit in a few more hours of Math classes, since that's the only one I need credit for, as well as Spanish classes. As of right now, I have about 8 hours of Spanish classes a week, but of course, all of my classes are taught in Spanish anyway, so I'm learning quite fast. Torrevieja, my city here, is a really popular tourist town for people from mostly the UK, and Sweden, so there a actually a lot of people at my school who don't speak Spanish, but there aren't very many who want to learn...I have around 8 to 10 classmates for my Castellano classes, but only one other girl is with me in all of them, since we're the newest ones here. She's 12 years old and from Russia, so it's an interesting class. Though I always happen to look younger than my age, I always seem to be the oldest! The other students are two more from Russia (15 years, and 13 years), two from Morroco (two 11 year olds), two from China (two 15 year olds), and one guy from a country in South Africa, which I'm pretty sure is Angola, but he also speaks Arabic, and a bit of French. With the exception of the 12 year old girl from Russia, all of those students have been in Spain/Torrevieja for at least 3 years, going all the way back to six years, and they don't speak Spanish! It seems very few of them want to learn, but I suppose it's different when you're forced to move to a new country, and you still have your family there to talk with in your first language. Obviously, I want to learn, and I love my Spanish classes! I've also just learned that even with only 700 students in my school, there are 49 nationalities! Russia, Sweden, the UK, Germany, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Morroco, China, Norway, Peru, a whole mess of countries in Africa...etc...AND I AM THE ONLY AMERICAN! I couldn't believe it when I heard it, but it's absolutely true....¿que guay, no?
Well, moving on. If you're still here reading all of this, six rounds of applause. That's very brave of you. I meant to warn ya'll (I love being able to use that when I write, since I obviously can't use it when I speak...), that this would be a long journal, but I suppose you've figured that out by now. Good on ya. Moving on to family.
**This is a little blurb I wrote approximately.... a long time ago. My writing/thinking skills (which my parents claim I have, thanks Maaaam and Daaad :) are definitely not at this level of intellegence right now**
Esentially, you become a daugter, a sister, a friend, a cousin, a grandchild, etc. You become a part of their lives, just as they have become a huge part of yours. You experience a whole hord of emotions and events with them. Excitement, frustration, fear, and a overwhelming friendship that cannot be attained through any other way but living with them. Everyday is a new adventure, but you cannot garuntee that it will be a good one, or even an exciting one. Granted, the look on my host parents face when they see the look on my face after pronouncing a new word correctly, or using all the correct tenses in a frase the right way is quite humorous. But this exchange year is more than that. Everyday you won't be 1.taking day trips to La Sagrada Familia, 2.making weekend plans for visiting Paris (BUT I DO HAVE A FIVE DAY CLASS TRIP TO FLORENCE ITALY!!!!1! JFKLDJAFAJ) or 3.taking a nice swim in the Mediterranean whenever...unless of course 1. You live in Barcelona, 2. You live in Pamplona 3. You live along the Mediterranean Coast, like me....¿que suerte, eh? More or less, you're living a normal family life. You have doctors appointments, soccer games (SO MANY SOCCER GAMES), band practices, and chores around the house to be completed. And I adore it.
Hmmmm, what else?! I suppose I could talk about RYE in Spain, but that won't take very long. Basically, it barely exists. En fin.
Just kidding, sorta. Well, the third weekend of September we had our inbound orientation. I don't know if I'm biased, lucky, or a bit of both, my I really feel like nothing compares to the Florida Orientations. Spain of course, is a bit different, as there are about 130 exchange students here this year, and approximately 124 of them are from the United States or Canada......woo diversity? ;) At this point, we have one trip planned for June or July around the south of Spain, and a day or two in Portugal, but I'm not sure if I'll be going on that one, since the towns we have planned to visit are only about two hours away from mine, and I have plans to go with my host family during the year. I'll admit, a bit of a dissappointment, but you live with what you get. I'm trying to look at it as an opportunity to travel a bit more by myself around the country, but I won't lie that more Rotary events would be nice.
Finally, after two months and two days of waiting, the other exchange student in Torrevieja arrived last night! We all headed to the airport at 11ish, as her flight was supposed to arrive at midnight....yeah, I'm EXHAUSTED. My host family, counselor, and next host family only had to wait about half an hour until Zlata was here! She's 17 years old from Russia, and will hopefully be in Second Bach. with me. Her first host family is my second, just as my first is her second. And they live down the street and up the next one in the same neighborhood, so we'll be so close the whole year! Finally! I ended up being a translator for her last night (she speaks a little English. No I wasn't speaking Russian...), which was aboslutely the coolest feeling in the world. Speaking in English one moment, and in Castellano the next! She's friendly, but we were both very tired, so we'll be seeing more of each other this weekend (and of course, the rest of our exchange year!).
Well, the bell is about to toll for me to head to my first of three hours of Language classes! Like I said, I really enjoy them, but they can be a tad more difficult when you've only had four hours of sleep, and spent your first waking hour writing like a maniac in English. Oh, the things I do for you all....and my memories later on!
I'll post more pictures later! I'm using the dinosaur age computers right now in my school library, which obviously don't hold my photos!
Hasta hora,
Nícole
A joke. Calm down Mom and Dad ;) Right now I'm usually in my History of Arte class learning about Roman architecture, and jealously listening to my fellow compañeros discuss all the places in Europe they've been to see some of these thousand year old creations. JAJAJA, yeah, way jealous. But their faces mirror mine when I talk about being able to go the the Disney Parks for the day Saturday and it's no big deal, or the fact that I can drive a car, by myself, legally, and I'm only 17. Being a teenager in the Orlando area, we take those things for granted, just as a weekend trip to Rome here is. Things are just on a bigger scale here. Anyway, since we're sort of already there, lets talk about school.
Much to everyone's surprise, probably mine most of all, I LOVE my school here! I absolutely love it. I've heard a lot of exchange students talk about hating school, or don't even talk about it at all because they skip it so often, but unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), my school is one of six in my town, and it's the best. The top acedemics (I feel like I spelled that wrong...irony?), the most well behaved students (OH LORD I CANNOT EVEN BELIEVE THAT SOME OF THE PEOPLE AT MY INSTITUTE IN FLORIDA, AND THE STUDENTS HERE ARE THE SAME AGE.), and the top number of students choose to continue their education after 16, and keep on continuing until their 18. In most of Europe (I'm pretty sure), when you turn 16 you can either drop school and start working...or whatever, OR continue education for the last two years (equivalents of 11th and 12th grade, but SO much harder). Here, I'm in 2º
Bachillerato, the equivalent of 12th grade. It's the final year of school here, and it's quite difficult, even if you do speak Spanish ;) Education here is much more enforced than in the US, and it's quite different as well.
My school is only Here, there are two options to choose from the last two years of school, Humanities, or Sciences. Obviously I chose Humanities, since there is no way in the world (GET IT) that you could find me taking physics, biology, or chemistry in English unless absolutely necessary, let alone in Castilian Spanish. JAJAJA, no. In the Humanities direction, I have ten classes, but we go to different ones every day. Below, you'll find a quick run down of my schedule, and later I'll post a picture. It's craziness!
Monday: Valencian Language, Literature, English Grammar, History of Philosophy, Economics, History of Arte, and History of Spain.
Tuesday: Mathematics, English Grammar, History of Arte, History of Philosophy, Tutoria (like homeroom), English Oral, Literature.
Wednesday: Economics, English Oral, Mathematics, Valencian Language, History of Arte, History of Spain.
Thursday: Mathematics, Literature , English Oral, English Grammar, Valencian Language, and Economics.
Friday: History of Arte, Mathematics, English Oral, History of Philosophy, History of Spain, and Economics.
That's the schedule I received at the beginning of the year, but it's been altered a bit to fit in a few more hours of Math classes, since that's the only one I need credit for, as well as Spanish classes. As of right now, I have about 8 hours of Spanish classes a week, but of course, all of my classes are taught in Spanish anyway, so I'm learning quite fast. Torrevieja, my city here, is a really popular tourist town for people from mostly the UK, and Sweden, so there a actually a lot of people at my school who don't speak Spanish, but there aren't very many who want to learn...I have around 8 to 10 classmates for my Castellano classes, but only one other girl is with me in all of them, since we're the newest ones here. She's 12 years old and from Russia, so it's an interesting class. Though I always happen to look younger than my age, I always seem to be the oldest! The other students are two more from Russia (15 years, and 13 years), two from Morroco (two 11 year olds), two from China (two 15 year olds), and one guy from a country in South Africa, which I'm pretty sure is Angola, but he also speaks Arabic, and a bit of French. With the exception of the 12 year old girl from Russia, all of those students have been in Spain/Torrevieja for at least 3 years, going all the way back to six years, and they don't speak Spanish! It seems very few of them want to learn, but I suppose it's different when you're forced to move to a new country, and you still have your family there to talk with in your first language. Obviously, I want to learn, and I love my Spanish classes! I've also just learned that even with only 700 students in my school, there are 49 nationalities! Russia, Sweden, the UK, Germany, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Morroco, China, Norway, Peru, a whole mess of countries in Africa...etc...AND I AM THE ONLY AMERICAN! I couldn't believe it when I heard it, but it's absolutely true....¿que guay, no?
Well, moving on. If you're still here reading all of this, six rounds of applause. That's very brave of you. I meant to warn ya'll (I love being able to use that when I write, since I obviously can't use it when I speak...), that this would be a long journal, but I suppose you've figured that out by now. Good on ya. Moving on to family.
**This is a little blurb I wrote approximately.... a long time ago. My writing/thinking skills (which my parents claim I have, thanks Maaaam and Daaad :) are definitely not at this level of intellegence right now**
Esentially, you become a daugter, a sister, a friend, a cousin, a grandchild, etc. You become a part of their lives, just as they have become a huge part of yours. You experience a whole hord of emotions and events with them. Excitement, frustration, fear, and a overwhelming friendship that cannot be attained through any other way but living with them. Everyday is a new adventure, but you cannot garuntee that it will be a good one, or even an exciting one. Granted, the look on my host parents face when they see the look on my face after pronouncing a new word correctly, or using all the correct tenses in a frase the right way is quite humorous. But this exchange year is more than that. Everyday you won't be 1.taking day trips to La Sagrada Familia, 2.making weekend plans for visiting Paris (BUT I DO HAVE A FIVE DAY CLASS TRIP TO FLORENCE ITALY!!!!1! JFKLDJAFAJ) or 3.taking a nice swim in the Mediterranean whenever...unless of course 1. You live in Barcelona, 2. You live in Pamplona 3. You live along the Mediterranean Coast, like me....¿que suerte, eh? More or less, you're living a normal family life. You have doctors appointments, soccer games (SO MANY SOCCER GAMES), band practices, and chores around the house to be completed. And I adore it.
Hmmmm, what else?! I suppose I could talk about RYE in Spain, but that won't take very long. Basically, it barely exists. En fin.
Just kidding, sorta. Well, the third weekend of September we had our inbound orientation. I don't know if I'm biased, lucky, or a bit of both, my I really feel like nothing compares to the Florida Orientations. Spain of course, is a bit different, as there are about 130 exchange students here this year, and approximately 124 of them are from the United States or Canada......woo diversity? ;) At this point, we have one trip planned for June or July around the south of Spain, and a day or two in Portugal, but I'm not sure if I'll be going on that one, since the towns we have planned to visit are only about two hours away from mine, and I have plans to go with my host family during the year. I'll admit, a bit of a dissappointment, but you live with what you get. I'm trying to look at it as an opportunity to travel a bit more by myself around the country, but I won't lie that more Rotary events would be nice.
Finally, after two months and two days of waiting, the other exchange student in Torrevieja arrived last night! We all headed to the airport at 11ish, as her flight was supposed to arrive at midnight....yeah, I'm EXHAUSTED. My host family, counselor, and next host family only had to wait about half an hour until Zlata was here! She's 17 years old from Russia, and will hopefully be in Second Bach. with me. Her first host family is my second, just as my first is her second. And they live down the street and up the next one in the same neighborhood, so we'll be so close the whole year! Finally! I ended up being a translator for her last night (she speaks a little English. No I wasn't speaking Russian...), which was aboslutely the coolest feeling in the world. Speaking in English one moment, and in Castellano the next! She's friendly, but we were both very tired, so we'll be seeing more of each other this weekend (and of course, the rest of our exchange year!).
Well, the bell is about to toll for me to head to my first of three hours of Language classes! Like I said, I really enjoy them, but they can be a tad more difficult when you've only had four hours of sleep, and spent your first waking hour writing like a maniac in English. Oh, the things I do for you all....and my memories later on!
I'll post more pictures later! I'm using the dinosaur age computers right now in my school library, which obviously don't hold my photos!
Hasta hora,
Nícole
Random graffiti in Cartagena that I think is fabulous.
A day in Alicante!
Halloween. Not a huge deal here, but more of a good excuse to get out of the house :)
TORREVIEJA<3
Zlata, Ofelia and I! Ofelia is my second host mom, and Zlata's first.
Castellano 2nd hour! Yeunis (Angola), Shuang Shuang (China), Aida (Russia), Me, and Alex (Russia).
Finalized schedule! The blocks you can barely make out are generally my English/Valencian classes, during which I go to the library. Recreo is a 20 minute "first lunch" break.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Hello world! (How cool that I can say that literally!)
Well, today marks two months here in Spain. Orginally I had planned to give a grande update on here, since I hardly ever write very much, but upon noticing the fact that it's just past 11pm, I have three hours of Castellano tomorrow, and I'm literally falling asleep at the keyboard, I promise to save all of it for another day soon! I just wanted to write and say that all is as well as can be, I suppose, here in the land of bull-running, paella, and flamenco.............a joke was made! I have yet to see a bull in real life, and from what I can tell, only a small percentage of the people here actually approve of bulling running, and the rest all hate it. Paella does in fact exist; it is, in fact, fantastic; and I've only had it two times in the last two months, so I can't really say much about it as I don't know it very well. As for flamenco....my host parents laughed when I asked if there were very many people doing it in the Valencian community, and proceeded to show me my host mom's flamenco dress from when she was about 11 years old....and that's about it for flamenco.
SO. I'm terribly sorry to those who were jumping at the idea of an update on my oh-so-fascinating Spanish tales. It's incredible how little I actually want to sit down and write in English anymore, (whether it be for blogging, or for mail for the family and friends....HEM HEM...DONDE ESTA MI CORREO?!), but I promise it's definitely happening! I write quite a bit actually, but as for typing it all up again, that is just not going to happen.
Vale, feel free to take a mental red-pen and absolutely mark up this journal! As I only speak English here with other exchange students (though I desperately want to begin in Espanol), and my parents (from Florida). Something you all should know is that I'm going to try and not Skype with them until just around Thanksgiving, (AND THE 15TH BIRTHDAY OF MY DEAREST HOLLY SISTER<3), as that will make it roughly a month since we've talked.
Ok. Forreal, I'm going now. I hope (absolutamente) that I'll be able to type everything important, and just a little important sometime this week. I hope everyone is having a spectacualr (but not too much) life!
Nos vemos luego!
Nicole!
Well, today marks two months here in Spain. Orginally I had planned to give a grande update on here, since I hardly ever write very much, but upon noticing the fact that it's just past 11pm, I have three hours of Castellano tomorrow, and I'm literally falling asleep at the keyboard, I promise to save all of it for another day soon! I just wanted to write and say that all is as well as can be, I suppose, here in the land of bull-running, paella, and flamenco.............a joke was made! I have yet to see a bull in real life, and from what I can tell, only a small percentage of the people here actually approve of bulling running, and the rest all hate it. Paella does in fact exist; it is, in fact, fantastic; and I've only had it two times in the last two months, so I can't really say much about it as I don't know it very well. As for flamenco....my host parents laughed when I asked if there were very many people doing it in the Valencian community, and proceeded to show me my host mom's flamenco dress from when she was about 11 years old....and that's about it for flamenco.
SO. I'm terribly sorry to those who were jumping at the idea of an update on my oh-so-fascinating Spanish tales. It's incredible how little I actually want to sit down and write in English anymore, (whether it be for blogging, or for mail for the family and friends....HEM HEM...DONDE ESTA MI CORREO?!), but I promise it's definitely happening! I write quite a bit actually, but as for typing it all up again, that is just not going to happen.
Vale, feel free to take a mental red-pen and absolutely mark up this journal! As I only speak English here with other exchange students (though I desperately want to begin in Espanol), and my parents (from Florida). Something you all should know is that I'm going to try and not Skype with them until just around Thanksgiving, (AND THE 15TH BIRTHDAY OF MY DEAREST HOLLY SISTER<3), as that will make it roughly a month since we've talked.
Ok. Forreal, I'm going now. I hope (absolutamente) that I'll be able to type everything important, and just a little important sometime this week. I hope everyone is having a spectacualr (but not too much) life!
Nos vemos luego!
Nicole!
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