Santander Para Siempre

Hola todos!

Well, unfortunately, my last day in Santander was on Tuesday. It was a super fantastic day because we got ice cream and had a really nice farewell dinner and went out on the town afterwards because we still just hadn't had enough of each other yet. Our farewell dinner was at this super chic place called Deluz and it's actually an old house turned into a restaurant and it was really cool! We all got dressed up for it and ate fancy foods while watching the USA (so disappointing and heartbreaking) soccer game. Some pretty cool people made a list of superlatives for every person to get one and it was just a lot of fun laughing with all of my new friends I've made here in Santander. We also hung out with our new Oregon friends one last time which is super awesome because we never would have met each other had it not been for us being half way across the world together!

I slept for maybe 2.5 hours that night and then my host mom had to come in and wake me up so I wouldn't miss the train. I got all ready and then she and Ana took me to the train station and we had to say bye. I didn't really know what else to say other than "Thank you so much for everything" and smile and hold back tears while they said goodbye. When I get back home I'll write a blog post about all my feelings and everything I learned/gained on this trip!

The train got to Madrid at about 230 and then it took me close to an hour to walk 0.8 miles to our hotel due to the insane amount of stuff I have with me lol. It sure was a sight to see me lugging around 70 pounds of stuff and stopping to catch my breath several times. Upon arriving, I was greeted by air conditioning (!!!!!) and the two older Schutte sisters (aka my roommate's sisters). I took a shower and went and got a snack and then found them walking so we took a nap in this gorgeous park across the street from us. Normally I would post pictures, but I only have this wifi working for a short time before we head out. Rachel showed up and after a while more of relaxing we headed out to explore the city by night and have dinner and then walked home in the rain and cold winds. I'm sure they weren't too happy about it because they had been traveling all day, but I was laughing at the whole situation. Add it to the list of memories to keep forever.

Anyways, we are continuing our Madrid adventure and heading out to Barcelona tonight for a few days and then Pamplona for San Fermin/running of the bulls and then back to Madrid before flying home. I won't be taking my laptop with me because it's heavy and we won't really have that much time to blog anyways. So a huge thank you to everyone who cared about my life here in Spain and for staying updated. I'll post maybe one more time the night before I leave (Tuesday) and then I'll do a major recap post when I'm back in the United States (:( I never want to leave España).

Hasta Luego!!

Laughter is global

Today was one of my favorite days all trip and I didn't even do that much, but laugh with people. Other than a quick little presentation and one midterm, I came home and had some lunch which consisted of a yummy Alubia bean soup with murcía and churrizo and then for the main course we had Cocido Madrileño (basically pork belly) which had a weird texture, but it was in a super spicy sauce aka first spicy food all trip, that I ate what I could to just take in the flavor. I may only have one day left, but I'm still trying new things! My host mom even made me a pitcher of tea today after I tried to describe sweet to her at breakfast. Sure it didn't taste quite like home, but I was so appreciative and I drank the whole pitcher at lunch and dinner! 

Later, I just relaxed a bit and then went out to the beach and juggled the ball a bit with people and then sat down and talked and laughed a ton with my friends Marco, Nicole, Alix, Alaina and Hannah and with one of our new friends we met from Oregon, Connor! We literally just sat at the beach, it was a little cloudy and windy, and talked and laughed non-stop for a few hours. We also got several good pictures and videos out of the experience as well. By the end, we were all up and dancing to music without a care in the world. It was the perfect way to spend our last beach day together even if the sun wasn't really out. 

When I came home, my host mom and sister were in the kitchen preparing tacos!! They had a box of hardshells with the meat spices and salsa. It once again didn't really taste like home, but it was super fun to see them make it and to show them how to eat them. As we were finishing up eating, my host brother was in the kitchen and my host mom starts telling me about how she won't be there for lunch tomorrow so she made a lasagna for Javier and I. She told me about how to use the microwave and then began giving me a step by step process to which Javier said "a monkey can handle doing this" and then him and Ana began giving her a hard time because she was about to give me step by step, cutting, microwaving, taking out of microwave, getting a plate and fork and knife and eating it. She started laughing at it when she realized I was 20 and could handle heating up food. But after, she just kept laughing and then I couldn't stop laughing and Ana was just sitting there looking at us like we were crazy. We were both trading off laughs because one would stop and the other would start. I don't think I've laughed that hard in quite a while and it was super fun to do it with my family here in Santander! As you can tell, mother's repeating things and the children not paying attention is global. Also making fun of things moms say is also something done around the world. 

After dinner, I was watching TV with Ana and then I got the pictures from my weekend with the family and then proceeded to show them pictures of me in my band uniform and some of the pictures from the trips and then I showed them a video of one of our shows form this year. They loved seeing all of the things they see in movies for college and college football games, and said it was really cool what I do in band! Culture sharing is a non-stop thing! I then went back to my room to watch the Germany game (they beat Algeria 2-1 with all goals scored during the 30 minute over time period) and attempt to study for my last final tomorrow. UGHHH I want to be done with school for the summer, but I am also so not ready to leave Santander and Spain all together :(

Weird fact, I'm super tired and about 4 times as I typed this, I must have dozed off because I typed ends of phrases that made zero since to the conversation, but somehow didn't have any errors. It was super weird to know that my brain and body can do so much as I'm basically already asleep. 

Sorry for no pictures, I'm exhausted and I just needed to put my thoughts down! 

Hasta logo!  

MALLORCA

Honestly, I have no idea to fully describe how amazing of a weekend I just had, much like the rest of my trip, but I'll try my best.
Thursday right after class, I hopped on a plane to Barcelona and then another to Mallorca (one the Spanish Balearic islands in the Mediterranean) and then caught a cab to our hostel. The whole time though, I was concerned for what was happening with the USA vs Germany and the Portugal vs Ghana games. As soon as we were able to pay at the hostel, the game ended so I didn't get to watch any of it, but we advanced and that's all that matters!!! I'm so pumped for the rest of the world cup (I watched both games today and now am up late instead of sleeping as usual). Anyways, we just dropped our stuff off and then found a place to eat dinner. We found a place with a great deal for salad, pizza, and a drink and we just sat around eating, enjoying the summer ocean breeze and talking to our cool waiter. Then we ventured a minute to the beach and just stood there in awe. It was already dark, but it was still beautiful and the water was significantly warmer than Santander and a hotel had live music. Standing there in the water just taking it all in, "What a wonderful world" started playing to complete the surreal moment. The night ended with gelato as it should.

que bonita 

Day 2 in Mallorca was all beach and food. Light breakfast, then beach for a few hours. Lunch, which was actually one of the highlights. We ate at this little place that had cheese burgers, fries and a drink for 6.50 euros and then the waiter was this man from Granada who was super happy and loved that we spoke Spanish so he kept bumping up the Michael Jackson and Madonna tunes just for us. He was such a happy and nice guy and the food was great and we rather enjoyed our time there. However we couldn't stay away from the beach too long. We were only there for about an hour when we rushed to meet two other people who had just gotten there. Timing was perfect and we met them at the bus stop to travel down the coast a little ways where we scrambled around to make it on time for PARASAILING!!!! We made it and again, the boat driver was super cool and I talked to him for a little bit about where he was from. Turns out he's from France and has been in Mallorca for about 15 years. He even thought I was from Belgium so that was actually a neat compliment. I may not blend in with the Spanish but at least someone didn't think I was immediately from the States. It was actually kind of neat to be talking to a French guy in Spanish and occasionally English. Anyways, parasailing was so much fun! It almost didn't feel real when I was up in the air. I just was trying my best to remember it all and then on the landing, tried to make sure my bathing suit bottoms didn't fall off haha! We realized at dinner, that we were in the German hot spot of Mallorca. There were Germans everywhere and they were already drunk by 9pm maybe. Another cultural mixing was having Italian food in Mallorca, Spain, while surrounded by Germans and having a Dutch waiter. We finally made it back to our quiet side of town, which we realized later how thankful we were to be staying in an area with significantly less tourists and more locals, to explore what it had to offer. 

 
I had the time of my life up there as you can tell
Look how high I was Mom!! You would have loved it

Day 3 started off at the same cafe for breakfast then traveling to downtown Palma to visit the cathedral there from the 15th century. It was really pretty and different somewhat from the other 6 cathedrals I've seen this trip. I say this sarcastically, but I really do love to see each and every one because they all have something different to offer. This one was the super high ceilings and the beautiful stained glass windows. Then we walked through swanky downtown Mallorca which reminded me of 5th Avenue in New York, and learned about the famous Mallorquin pearls (they are actually synthetic so I became less impressed with them). After making it back to our area, we bought stuff at the market to have a picnic at the beach and then caught some sun rays until we went to catch our ride with our ocean guide, Angel. He picked us up in the only vehicle I hoped for on an excursion like this and we made it out to a different stretch of beach to go kayaking. We kayaked to a cove where we then jumped off the cliffs!! so much fun! Then kayaked a lot more through super choppy water, definitely got a good workout, and then got to snorkel a little bit around the bay. Unfortunately it was too choppy to go out too far to see prettier fish, but I still really enjoyed it. We then relaxed a little at Palma's most famous beach bar which came straight out of a movie and then had a sunset kayak back to the starting place.

 

 Cathedral, our beach picnic, and the epic extreme sports Mallorca van

It was super cool talking to Angel because I just really enjoy hearing about people's lives and this whole trip I got to talk to people from all over the world in this one small island. He is from Tenerife in the Canary Islands, but lived in Alabama from when he was 2 until 14, then moved back here somewhere in Spain where he reached professional skateboarder status and then was a river rafting guide, and has been in Mallorca for 12 years now and owns this excursion business. He told us all about how Germans and British both have their areas of the island that they vacation to in the summers because of cheap flights. And we learned about how Mallorquins know 4 languages (Mallorquin, Spanish, English, and German) and some can go their whole life without speaking Spanish due to all the tourists. That's when we all were happy to be in a super local area of town and we had very positive encounters with everyone there. We were even able to impress them with our Spanish speaking abilities which was really surprising to me. Angel even offered to drive us to the airport this morning because his excursion didn't go out until after 11. So he picked us up this morning and drove us to the airport so we didn't have to pay for a taxi or deal with the airport bus.
Sometimes you just have to be nice and talk to people and be truly interested in what they are saying. You will get so much more out of a culture like that and you'll even experience the true generosity of the human race.

At dinner we all were basically falling asleep so we just called it an early night and took off for the airport early on. We packed in so many activities for only being there for a little over 2 days and I loved every second of it: the people, the crystal clear beaches, and the adventure. I'm going to return here one day on my next Spanish adventure because I loved it that much!

Can't get over how perfect these beaches are

Hasta luego!!

P.S. I had Starbucks in the airport today and never has a white chocolate mocha tasted so good

Señora Mantequilla

Tonight I made pancakes for my host family! My real mom (that's how we differentiate here because it gets confusing having a real mom and a host mom) sent me a package of Kerbey Lane pancake mix and Mrs. Butterworth's syrup a few weeks ago and tonight I made them for dinner. My host family has never had pancakes before so I showed them how to make them, just like they taught me how to make Spanish tortilla last week, they both even flipped one, and then we sat down to enjoy them. Ana, my host sister was fascinated with the syrup bottle because it's in the shape of a woman and she's seen it before on, you guessed it, The Simpsons. Several times throughout the meal, she would just laugh and say "es una mujer" (it's a woman). Ana, my host mom, was trying to figure out how to say the brand name in Spanish and since the direct translation of Mrs. Butterworth's would be "Señora Mantequilla merece la pena" we decided that simply Señora Mantequilla (Mrs. Butter) would suffice. It was so much fun showing them how to make a simple thing us Americans love to eat and it was especially cool because they actually liked them! I don't even want to think about having to leave them in 55 hours

Sña Mantequilla y los panqueques de Emilia 

Festival de San Juan

One thing I love about Spain, and even Europe in general, is that they have so many well-rooted traditions that we don't really have the equivalent of in young America. An example would be San Juan. For us, the actual first day of summer is no big deal because it's so ridiculously hot already and it's been summer already for 3 months basically. But here in Spain, we (I wrote that instinctively) like to celebrate major events like the Summer Solstice. So every year, all over Spain, especially along the coastal cities, they celebrate the festival de San Juan aka summer solstice aka longest day of the year. In the coastal cities like Santander, a little before midnight all the young people go to the beaches to hang out and fiesta with their friends and wait until the bonfire is lit at midnight. There are lots of little fires people have in their circles though too. The main purpose of the fires is to bring something from the past year that you want to leave in the past so you burn it and are refreshed for the new year. There are still some people who do that, mainly students looking to burn textbooks, and they come to see the bonfire and then go home. The entire under 30 population spends the whole night at the beach. They had a small sized midway with a band and food and games, but basically it's a party on the beach all night long.
A large part of my group all met up at the beach and spent a lot of time there together which was a lot of fun now that we've all been able to build up some friendships. I even saw my host sister while there and talked to her and her friends for a really long time! It was so cool to see her outside of the house and we could both just be more like friends then quasi-siblings! School was somewhat of a struggle for all of us in the morning because close to no sleep happened, but it's all worth it when you are learning about a culture!

Here's me with the bonfire (it was huge!! There are fire fighters that control it because people used to throw things into it that made it go way too crazy)

Sometimes I forget where I am

Wow wow wow! I cannot believe it has been over a week since my last blog post! That makes me sad because it's less that I'm writing down and less for my fans out there to enjoy. I have actually been writing in my journal too on the side just to make sure I'm not missing any detail.

The past week has been a whirlwind of activities and moments of surrealism that I've had to take mental pictures of.

If I remember correctly, the end of last week simply consisted of more beach time whenever I could and continuing to build relationships with my host family. By this point, I feel as though I am one of the family and fit right in. I love everything about them. For myself, and the rest of my group, I think we reached "citizen" status because over the course of the past few weeks, I have run into my host sister out and then a lot of other host moms. It's just a really neat thing to be walking on the street in Spain, yet see familiar faces and can say hi to them. For example, Wednesday we went to watch the Spain game against Chile at a really cool tapas bar that had everything on the menu for one euro!! Anyways, my host sister Ana happened to be there and was sitting at the table next to us! Even though Spain lost, which stinks because we are here and they did horribly and we can't enjoy the infamous celebrations, it was still really cool to be able to chat with Ana outside of the house where we can both be ourselves I guess.

game watching hotspot 

Friday we went to Bilbao as a whole group to see the Guggenheim Museum and wander around the city. The museum is amazing, but mainly just the architecture. The exhibits inside were strange i.e. the Yoko Ono exhibit... strange strange things. There was a really cool moving picture and music piece that we were all captivated by (another mental image I took). That all didn't really matter when it was just so intriguing to simply look all around you at the walls and ceilings and walkways and then at the outside of the building because Frank Gehry is a mastermind. The rest of our day in Bilbao was kind of boring because there wasn't much we knew to do se we just found a park and walked around and took a nap and then we were on our way back to Santander. 

The Guggenheim and it's giant flower covered dog mascot named Puppy

Saturday was a beautiful day. I slept in (in total, I got 28 hours of sleep over the course of 3 nights here because my body simply could not keep functioning) and then met my friend Kaitlin to prepare for our family lunch. We bought the ingredients needed to make tacos and rice and then we bought our kind of queso and tortilla chips and went back to her homestay to make a giant Mexican food meal. Both our families ate together and it was just really cool to be able to give them a little taste of our life back home and to give back a little for how much they've provided to us this trip (another mental picture taken of us all sitting down together eating Mexican food in Spain). Then Kaitlin and I went to the beach and the weather was actually perfect. After catching some rays, I went back home to shower and eat dinner and then watch some soccer before going to bed early again. All in all I spent Saturday the way it's supposed to be spent. 

Sunday was just all too surreal. I went with my host family out to a little Pueblo across the bay where Paco and Celi (my host mom's parents) have a summer home. In total, it was Ana, Ana, Javier, Paco, Celi, and then a great aunt, an uncle and aunt (Ana's brother and sister-in-law). They showed me around the town of Somo and then we basically spent the whole day sitting outside in the sun, having Spanish barbecue which was just hamburger patties, some kind of ribs, kebabs, membría (traditional food here, but you probably don't want to know what's in it-- I love it despite the ingredients) and sausage. It was all so good!! After eating we just sat around all day chatting about anything and everything. As I sat at the table, I had a moment when I forget where I was and I had to pinch myself to realize that I was integrated into another family in a backyard in Spain. I had so much fun simply observing and occasionally throwing in some words. 

 

Cannot get over how lucky I am to have such a cool host family



Upon arriving back at home around 9pm, we ate a quick dinner then I got ready in my red white and blue to meet up with people to watch the USA-Portugal game. Once again we were close to the only people out watching the game due to it being a 12am start time here, but we had so much fun together. I still can't believe they didn't close that game out with a win to secure advancing. Nonetheless it was super exciting and now drama is heightened in the group of death.

there's more to share about the past couple of days, but it's way too late here to finish right now so keep your eyes open for a post coming soon!

Mi madre española

My host mom once again proved she is a saint. After a long day out at the beach playing soccer with some locals and my group, swimming in the extremely cold ocean, running along the beach, and hoping for a tan, and then enjoying some ice cream before heading to watch the first half of the Mexico vs Brazil game with some people, I returned home later than usual. Despite the fact that my host mom doesn't even like soccer, she had me come out and watch the game on the TV instead of my computer and told me to just eat in the living room on the couch, and then sat down to watch the second half with me. It might not seem like much to anybody else, but I already had a fantastic day and could have easily eaten my dinner after the game and she could have read her book, yet she made sure I was the most comfortable and kept me company.
I don't know how I got so lucky to have a host family like this one, but I'm thankful for them every day!

Now for tomorrow, all that is said on the TV here, la roja se puede.