Everything is so vintage here! Every street, every building, just everything! All the views from my house and houses of my friends and host family's relatives are just gorgeous! This weekend I am going to La Costa Brava! They are these beautiful beaches on the southern coast of France and northern coast of Spain! I will stay with my family in my host grandfather's house! They said it is 5 minutes away from the beach. School is fun because I talk with a lot of people! But I have been laughed at a few times for making mistakes in the language... it's best just to ride it off. The funny part is that the teacher's assign homework and I don't understand...so the next day they are looking for it and I never knew we had any! There are a few advantages to being a foreign exchange student; first of all I have an awesome tutor at the school that says I can always go rest in the library if I am tired or have a headache, or I can always go eat something in the cafeteria. Also, I never have to do full assignments. Everyone was assigned a book to read in Catalan Literature and my teacher said I can just pick a small book to read that is in Catalan and English. I never have to take notes either because at the school they have chalkboards and they write in cursive so I can' read it. It makes sense, don't know what the word is and I can't read their messy cursive. This past weekend, I went shopping in the center of Barcelona with my host mom. It is so much fun to speak rapid spanish with her and see all the tourists look at you. For Catalunya's Independence Day, Aura painted a Catalunyan flag on my cheek and on the way home a bunch of American's told me very loudly that my flag was "sick" thinking that I couldn't understand them. Also, when we were shopping I noticed that the store clerks treat the locals MUCH different than the tourists. I got a card so I can check out books at the library, they have a bunch of banners in there of activities you can do so I grabbed one and I am going to look into it! I have been running lately, it feels good and hills and empty roads up here in the mountain are perfect for it. A few other quick things, it seems like everyone smokes here. I definitely stopped coughing by now. Normally it's not indoors, but outdoors is like 6 inches away from the door with the door open. A lot of guys and girls my age smoke during the break at school too. I like my school, but it takes up to an hour to get to school everyday. A 45+ minutes to get back sometimes! By the time I get home I am exhausted! Yesterdady, I went to a party/BBQ that was held for me! It was so much fun and in this HUGE house with like 10 floors! The kind of house where if you fall asleep on a couch on the 4th floor NO ONE will ever find you! Yeah that kind. They had a pool that was pretty and a really nice piano! I haven't been able to play the piano in a few weeks and it was so nice! I missed the tune very much! We ate all kinds of meat and foods that are very good! They live really close to us so I can go over there whenever I want! I am really starting to learn "The European Mindset" and it is very different than the American one. My host dad told me boys here aren't competitive because it makes them unequal. I honestly don't understand, I think being competitive is good and it bugs me a little. I was close to the most competitive people in my gym class...and I am the new girl. I don't know what the word is, but it seems like everyone here likes Obama. Now I don't want to get into politics because I don't know anything about it. Another one, God is very important to me. I try to bring up Jesus and the reaction is "I don't care if you worship a brick, as long as you don't drop it on my head" and this isn't from my host family at all. This is from society. You can just feel the attitude. Moving on to happier subjects, when I was shopping with my host mom I was trying to explain how I was frustrated. I was frustrated with how I couldn't say anything because I didn't know how to say it! And she couldn't understand me saying that one single sentence! Okay it is funny looking back but at the time it wasn't. Here is some photos! One of them is of the weird milk here! It doesn't have to be refreidgerated.... I don't understand... oh and one of costa brava!
Your teachers seem much nicer than mine. My history teacher said the equivalent of "I dont care if you are american you will have to do everything like everyone else." And the girl i sit next to (Who is fluent in English) leaned over and said, "your dead."
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