Last week, on Monday, I went to my first running practice. It was the first time I ran with anyone other than myself since I got here, and it was really nice to feel that familiar pressure (good pressure) of running with a partner. It can be difficult to push yourself to run quickly when you are running alone, so it was really nice to have the help of a friend to remind me to keep pushing up the hill, to maintain my breathing, and so on. Overall it was just a good time, and I enjoyed it very much. After practice I felt kind of sick, with a sore throat and so on, so I went to bed earlier than usual. I went to school Tuesday, and even though I felt a bit under the weather, I made it through the day. When I came home, I told my host parents that I felt a bit sick, and so I rested for the whole afternoon. They bought me some cold medicine from the pharmacy which helped a bit, but I still really didn't feel good. On Wednesday I felt even worse, but when I am sick at home, I normally just take an ibuprofen, power through it and still go to all of my classes, so that was my plan here too. When I got to my first class, Physics and Chemistry, I felt realllllly sick. (Wednesday was hands down the worst day I've had here so far). I started to feel really nauseous, so I excused myself to go to the bathroom, and ended up throwing up (sorry if that's a gross detail, I just feel like its important for my story). I didn't have my cellphone, because I don't bring it to school with me, so I didn't know how to call my host parents (they don't have a school nurse or anything like back home). I ended up, with the help of my friends, in the secretary's office, where they looked up the number for my host house. However, at the time, my host mom was at work, and my host dad was running errands in town and had left his cellphone charging at home, so no one was there to answer the multiple calls my school made.
The really nice thing through all of this was how helpful everyone was. The secretary of the school was even about to drive me home herself (about a 10 minute drive from my school), when my host dad finally called back to say that he would pick me up. When I got home, I watched tv in bed and slept for the rest of the day. My host dad made me a mixture of lemon juice and honey, which is helpful for sore throats, and something that his mom used to make him when he was young and got sick. It was interesting... But far better tasting than the salt water my dad has me gargle at home when I'm sick.
On Thursday, I still really didn't feel well, so I stayed home again. I slept for about four hours, and when I woke up in the early afternoon and checked my temperature, my fever had broken. My appetite had returned that morning, and pretty much everything went uphill from there. I felt a lot better, and on Friday, I was up for school again (:
On Saturday I went to Zaragoza, a city about an hour and a half drive away from me, with four friends to go shopping. We went to a very well known mall here in Spain, which it must say was hugeeeee and surprisingly fairly well priced. I had a super great day with my friends, and I got a lot of new clothes, that will hopefully make me look less American and more Española. We had lunch at a Spanish chain of a sandwich restaurant, which was super delicious. Overall, it was a really great day.
Saturday night, we went to a small town about a five minute drive from ours, called Senegue. There was a party that night, so we went to a friends house for dinner before. There, I ate rabbit for the first time (which is like a thing here), and it was actually very good. It was pretty intimidating, and my friends all made jokes that it was just chicken. It was a lot of fun.
That night we went to the party. It was really cool, there was a huge tent with a live band a lot of people dancing and the streets were full of people singing and dancing and it was really cool, really culturally different, and a really great experience. I went home around 3:30am, which strangely enough, is early here (most of my friends stayed out til 6:00 or 6:30). My host mom didn't want me staying out too late since I was still getting over being sick, and I agreed with her. I'm still trying to get used to how different the timing of everything is here.
On Sunday afternoon, we went to the home of my host dad's parents for lunch. It was really delicious, we had rice with vegetables, bell peppers, and a sort of Spanish bacon, and of course, chorizo. It was super yummy.
I was still really tired from the night, so during siesta, I slept about 3 hours on their couch. When I woke up, my host parents had gone for a walk in the woods to find mushrooms, so I watched a television program about a Spanish singer who died about a year ago with my host grandma. I was actually really surprised by how much I understood. It's really amazing how much my Spanish has improved in just the three weeks (three weeks today!!) that I've been here.
We went home, had dinner, and I fell asleep fairly early. This morning I woke up, and went to school. Today was one of the first days that I really actually enjoyed school. It's kind of difficult to sit in classrooms for hours, and only understand a word or two occasionally that a professor says. But today I really felt that I understand a lot of what they were saying, and my friend Blanca helped a lot by teaching me new Spanish words, and making me little notes of how to conjugate certain verbs and so on. She speaks English pretty well, so I've kind of been using her as an escape when I'm tired to just relax and speak my home language. But today we decided that we're no longer speaking English to each other. However, when I'm trying to tell a story and I don't know how to say something, she's an excellent translator. For lunch, we had spinach with mushrooms and chicken with mushrooms (the ones that my host parents gathered yesterday), and it was very delicious.
This afternoon, I went to running practice again. I ran 40 minutes of hills with a girl I hadn't met before. She is faster than I am, which is really good because it makes me push harder. Tomorrow I am going to run with her again, and I'm really excited to start getting back in shape.
That's pretty much been my past week... Thanks for reading(: I'm going to try to update again soon, but the future is uncertain so I will make no promises.
I can't explain how how strange it is to experience all of this in Spanish, and then translate my experiences into another language. But it's fun, and I'll be able to look back on it happily in the future.
Until next time!
Hasta luego, Zeph
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