It's been about three weeks since my last post (actually less than three weeks, so boom!), and a lot has happened so I decided to make a post about everything that has happened since my birthday, leading up to today (nothing exciting has happened today, by the way, so don't get super excited for the end of this post thinking that I'm going to hit you with a curve ball and be all like "Oh and today I found out I passed my Spanish Language class", because c'mon guys, let's be realistic.
Anyways, the weekend after my birthday, my friends Pooja (India) and Amelia (Minnesota) came up to visit me, since Amelia and I are birthday twins (but she's a year older). They arrived Friday evening, so we hung out with my friends for a bit, and then since Amelia had just turned 18, we went to a casino (they carded all of us, and I was the only one under 18 so they just told me to not touch anything), Amelia played a slot machine, lost 20 cents, and then we left. Then she bought a lottery ticket, didn't win anything there either, all in all, quite anticlimactic.
On Saturday, we had lunch with my host parents (paella, yum yum), and then went to Jaca to see Ethan. We showed them the cool stuff around the city, and then we went out for tapas. Jaca has this amazing potato tapa. It's so good, it's like garlic and oil and I really don't know what else but it's so so so good, and so we ate way too many orders of that. We wanted to go dancing, but our stomachs all kind of hurt from the potatoes, and also all of the clubs were completely full, so we only stayed out until about 2:30. My host mom came to get us, we went home and slept for a very long time. The next day we had lunch with my host parents, and then Ethan came over to spend our last afternoon with the Zaragoza girls. Ethan was having a really bad day, and was feeling really homesick. I felt really really sad for him, but it was nice to have the other exchangers there too, because we had a little home reminiscing session all together. It kind of makes things better and worse at the same time to talk about the things you miss. It's nice though, it makes you feel like you're not quite so far away from home.
Amelia and Pooja left that evening, and Ethan and I walked around Sabi for about an hour, waiting for his bus home. We had a really intense philosophical conversation about the way the brain works and life in general and afterlife and reincarnation (Pooja is Hindu, and we had learned a lot about her religion over the weekend), and about just really random things. It's funny though, because probably 10% of the conversation was just us pausing to search for the words in English and I included Spanish words more times than I could count. Ughhhh English is getting very difficult to speak and write. I suppose that's a good thing though.
The week passed, nothing too exciting happened. Classes are getting more interesting now that I understand them, and philosophy is now one of my favorite classes! English class is getting difficult for me, it's getting harder and harder to remember my own language, which is a completely weird feeling!
The Friday of that week, I didn't go to school, and instead Ethan and I went down to Huesca for the day of the peace. There was a ceremony, and Ethan and I had to speak a bit. In a successful attempt to be funny, Ethan started talking about the weird food here, especially "caracoles" (snails) and murcilla (I actually don't know how to spell that, but it's a dish made entirely of rice and pig blood). Throughout the day the Rotarians all called him Caracol, which was pretty enjoyable.
After the ceremony, we went to this super big cathedral for a tour. Because of our blazers and the fact that we are foreign, we got a behind the scenes tour! We go to go up to the roof of the cathedral where you could see the whole city, and we got to go to where the priests prepare sermons and see some super old books that were all in Latin. We saw the oldest music book in all of Spain, and some Latin carvings that date back to the 10th century! It was really cool!
After the cathedral we had lunch with rotary, and then Ethan and I explored a bit on our own. We went shopping, and I found these super rad pants on sale for only 8 euros! It was really exciting!
We went home that night, and I had a pizza night with my friends! It started snowing super heavily where I live, and when we were going home around midnight, we almost couldn't make it to our house! It was crazy! My friends weren't super excited, and they all laughed when I went outside and started jumping around in it.
My host dad worked most of the weekend, so my host mom and I just kind of got lazy and watched movies all weekend. It was nice though, to just rest, sometimes it's hard to remember to take a break when everything is just so exciting all the time!
On Monday, a new American came to my school! She's here with a different program, and for only five months. She's really nice, and we spent a lot of time together throughout the week. I've been helping her learn Spanish, and amazing myself by how much I've learned. I actually explained the subjunctive tense to her, which is a concept I was struggling with just a couple of months ago! I was really proud of myself. On Friday, we went out for tapas with my friends, which was really fun!
Yesterday, Izzy (the new American) and I went to Jaca to see Ethan. I showed Izzy the city, and then we met up with Ethan and walked around. It's really snowy there too, and we were frozen by the time it was time to come home.
I watched a movie with my host mom last night, it was actually really interesting. It was about ETA, a terrorist group that existed in Basque Country mostly before the dictatorship ended. I learned a lot about the culture of the country under Franco, and it was very interesting!
This morning I woke up, and my host mom had left for Huesca to see her parents and my host dad had gone to work. I ate lunch alone, and decide to write this. So yeah.
This past week, I passed the halfway mark of my exchange. For me, that is absolutely terrifying, because it makes me acknowledge the fact that I don't get to live here forever, and that this life I've worked so hard to build over the past five months? I have to say goodbye to it, forever. Because even if I come back to visit this beautiful area I've learned to call home, it won't be exchange, I won't be living with my host parents, going to school, I'll never have the opportunity to experience this again, and I really don't think that I'm okay with that. I'm not ready for the heartbreak I know I'll feel when I say goodbye in July, and I wish there was a way to live in both California and Spain so that I could avoid the pain I know I'll feel.
Enough depressing stuff though... I'm just going to make the best out of the limited days I have left (143 days, to be exact)(probably seems like a long time to you. It's really not).
Sorry guys this was supposed to post yesterday but the upload failed. Today was interesting, I woke up at four AM, and my mind was convinced that it was seven. I got up around 4:30 and started getting ready for school, and the more I woke up, I started realizing it was still dark outside and something wasn't right. When I realized my mistake, I laid back down thinking I wouldn't fall asleep, but I did. At almost 8 (the time I have to leave for school), my host mom came in and woke me up (I guess I turned my alarm off in my four AM half-asleep state). She had to leave for work at 8, and my host dad had already left for work, so I ended up not being able to go to school since no one could take me. It was nice to get a couple more hours of sleep, but I kind of wanted to go to school and I was a bit bummed. Anyways, here are some pictures of the last couple of weeks:
My three loves: Amelia, Pooja, and Spain. 
We did a lot of balancing on things for some reason.
It was raining and the wind was pretty intense, but it was super fun and really beautiful. 
Thanks for adding another blog post. They are ALWAYS interesting and fun to read. When you show a picture that has some cool structure or cityscape, it would be helpful to add that info in your caption too. Have a wonderful next 141 days in Spain!
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