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Published: January 21st 2009
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Jan. 21.
Sunday-- Seeing that this was my last day of freedom before I started my intensive Spanish course, I took the day easy. I slept late until 11 and then did the one of my favorite hobbies, facebooking. At about 12 I walked down to the beach to run. This unfortunately didn’t go so well for a few reasons. First, it had been about two months since I had ran because when finals rolled around last semester, working out got cut for sleep and I didn’t have the motivation to run over break. Second, I only had walking shoes that gave me blisters that kill the next day. Finally, it was just too beautiful to run. I started next to the port, so I kept looking to my right and seeing yacht and sports cars. Then I made it out to the boardwalk, where to my right was the port, straight ahead was the Mediterranean Sea on a sunny 60 degree day, to my left was a bunch of sail boats and behind me was the beach with the castle above me. Combine these three things together and I couldn’t make it more than a few hundred yards with slowing
Boardwalkd
This was one of my views of the beach and castle as I was running. See why I had to keep stopping. down or stopping.
After lunch with the family, I spent my siesta taking a 2.5 hr nap and then spent the rest of the night reading English magazines and on the internet. At supper I gave mi familia the presents I had got for them. They really liked the cow magnet, flag, Premier Co-op barn calendar and especially the book of pictures from around Wisconsin. I even liked the book because the pictures were aerial shots taken from a kite and include Vermont Church and other areas of Wisconsin that I have visited. Additionally, the captions are in English and Spanish, so even though I couldn’t explain all the pictures, mi familia could read it for themselves.
Monday—Today was my first day of school! I met some other CIEE kids so that we all could figure out the bus system together. Once on campus, we got split into our different levels based on how we scored on the test on Thursday. I was placed in the lowest level with 8 other students. This is called an intensive class because we are doing a semester’s worth of work in 2 weeks by having four hours of class a day.
Turron Factory
The museum and factory were in the same building. Therefore, I had a lot of homework to do that night, but first I had a huge la comida, lunch. I had half of a chicken, 2 meatballs the size of a small fist, serano jamon, 2 other kinds of meat, pasta, bread and fresh picked oranges for desert. This required a short nap followed by going shopping for some new running shoes because I could barely walk today in my other shoes. I was a little nervous about going shopping for shoes when I didn’t know how to talk to the sales-clerks, but it went fine. I got the second cheapest pair of shoes (the cheapest pair they didn’t have in my size) and it “only” but me back $50. I then did my homework in about an hour and studied vocab for a few more hours.
Tuesday—Being the second day of school, I was able to figure out the bus system by myself and was able to make it to school with a little more time to spare. At our break after the first two hours of class I talked to my teacher and the director about the possibility of moving up to the next level class.
Captions
I took pictures of all the descriptions in the museum so it would make the assignment easier. My reasons were that the lower class wasn’t challenging enough since some of the people in there have had no Spanish and I have had 3.5 years and I didn’t say this, but I felt that I was working a lot harder than the rest of the class and they were holding me back by not putting in the same amount of time at home as I was and speaking too much English in class. I thought that I would switch classes on Wednesday, but the director pulled me out of the lower class just as it was about to start after the break and said that I could move up to the next level. This middle level class isn’t as much fun as the lower level, but I feel like I will learn more and the teacher/teaching style is a better fit for me. After quickly returning to home, we had to meet CIEE at 4 pm to go tour a Turron factory. Turron is a kind of dessert that is eaten around Christmas that is made from almonds, honey and sugar and is only produced in Alicante. Even though CIEE told us they would make the visit as
Turron
This is a picture of one kind of Turron. It didn't taste that good, kind of like messed up cookie dough. The other two types were amazing. short as possible, we would still miss most of Obama’s inauguration, making a lot of us mad. However, we couldn’t skip the tour because it counted as a class because we had a large assignment based on the tour (4 short answers and a 150 word essay in Spanish). The tour of the factory and museum was very short, only about 40 minutes and the drive time was about half an hour each way. As soon as we got let off the bus in the downtown area, all of us went to the bar area in hopes of catching some of the inauguration at an American bar. Luckily, one bar was open and had it on, but we missed most of it. After about an hour, some friends and I headed down to the beach because we didn’t want to go back to do homework yet. This was a fun way to relax, while also celebrate our new President. I think that my facebook status best summarizes how I felt, “Although I am in Spain, I am still and American and proud to be one”. Although this was a historic day for America, it was amazing to watch how interested
Sunset.
The factory was a ways out of town. This is the view from the parking lot as the sun went down. the Spaniards were in this transfer in power and to watch this American event from a different country/culture/language. After supper I was able to stream Obama’s speech and other events of the day along with watching some of it on the TV with mi padre.
Wednesday—Nothing to exciting happen today, sorry. Just class, another huge lunch followed by a short nap and then a bunch of homework with breaks on Skype. One cool thing was some of the other CIEE student did have an article about them in one of the Spanish papers with a picture and quotes about how the Americanos felt about Obama. It was kinda weird to think our experience yesterday was news worthy, but I guess if you think about it, it’s unique.
I'll try to make more small post instead of such a large post, the last few days have been a little busy. Also, thanks for the comments. Joanie, I didn't know that you knew Spanish, I'm now quite up to that level yet, but yo compredo.
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Lisa
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Siesta
It's funny, I laughed really hard when you mentioned your siesta because yesterday in Psychology my professor talked about we have a schema of kindergarten which includes nap time which has changed to our schema of high school and college that (unfortunately might I add) does not include a nap or "siesta"...