News: - I got a job teaching an 8 year old boy English a few hours a week. - The trash people were on a serious strike and it finally ended - back to beautiful clean streets in Alicante and better wages for the workers. - I officially booked my flight to Dublin for St. Patrick's Day! I've been in Alicante for 4 weeks...I can't decide if that sounds short or long, but I know I feel like I've known this city my whole life. I've gone from asking random people for directions when I'm a block away from my apartment to some people actually asking me. Everything is becoming second nature - the bus ride to school, the tram ride home, trecking across the city to get from place to place, and speaking Spanish from the second I wake up each day. I've found comfort in running on the beach or through the parks, browsing through my favorite stores (Zara, Sfera, Bershka...) and trying wine or coffee or both at every place possible with Sami and Lauren. Other than that, a lot of my time is spent at the apartment with Pedro and Asuncion eating delicious food and chatting with them. My favorite food so far is Asuncion's seafood paella, made with rice and several kinds of fresh fish...shrimp, calamari, mussels, clams, tuna, and some others I've tried to ask about and she's tried to explain, but it's just not translating so I eat in anyway. I love everything she makes...pasta with churrizo, chicken cooked every way possible, lentil soup, some sort of awesome chili-like stuff that I forget the Spanish word for, eggs (for dinner), turrón for dessert (traditional almond/honey Christmas candy), hamburger patties because she thinks they make me feel at home....I could go on forever. The only thing I'm really missing is condiments. I had breaded chicken and fries the other night with no condiments, and I started to get really nostalgic about honey mustard, but I think I'll live. Asuncion is finally letting me clean my own plate and help her a little bit in the kitchen, which is a nice start. The culture here is just different. At the beginning I still felt like a guest and it didn't phase me too much that she refused to let me help out, but eventually it got ridiculous. I haven't sat at the table and waited for my mom to serve me without even offering help since I was a little kid, and even then I helped with the dishes or something at least. She has explained to me that it's very normal here, and if I was her real 21 year old daughter it would be the same way. She washes and folds my clothes, makes my bed, makes my coffee in the morning and sets out my lunch for me to take to school. I'm almost embarrassed to put all this in my blog. I've told her how strange this is for me, and that I'm sorry but I'm going to have to help out or I'll lose my mind. With that aside, I'm getting along great with Asuncion and Pedro. They are honestly some of the nicest people I have ever met. They're simply passionate about meeting international students and giving them the best experience possible; I'm pretty lucky. And they think I'm a hoot with my quick Spanish responses that only make sense half the time. When we're not joking around, we get in pretty deep conversations about everything from government, laws, and current events, to the Spanish reality TV show Pedro and I always watch, to our social lives. They're incredibly interested in everything about the United States, so I try to make us sound a little better than all French fries and Hollywood. So January is coming to an end, and that means my month-long Spanish intensive course is wrapping up and my schedule for the rest of the semester is about to start. I have an oral presentation tomorrow and my final exam the next day, so naturally I'm using this time to write a blog post (hence the URL). I have definitely learned a lot in my class this month, probably more than I've learned in any one Spanish class in my life; partially because we focus on actual "Spain" Spanish and phrases I need to use every day, and partially because I've never cared about the language this much in my life. My schedule for February and on is about to be minimal...I only have classes on Monday and Tuesday, and they're taught in English, which I'm actually not happy about. Including my month-long class, my museum-based class that's only a few weekends, and another traveling class that's in May, I'm getting 15 credits to transfer back to Mizzou and actually am not allowed to take any more. It's great that I have time to travel, but I'm also trying to challenge myself and keep up with my Spanish as much as possible. I'm going to participate in "intercambios," which is a program through the university to set international students up with each other to practice speaking different languages. It's more or less blind dates on campus with random students to chat in Spanish. If you enjoy chatting with someone, you can meet up with them another time. I haven't tried it yet but I'll let you know how it goes. Also, as I mentioned before I'm going to teach a Spanish boy a few times a week starting in February, so that will be a nice way to use my free time, get some experience and bring in some euros. I definitely need to find more useful activities to fill my time, whether it's volunteer work or salsa lessons (I actually think I'm about to sign up...) or anything else. I'm determined to make the most of this semester, and as much as I enjoy sitting around eating "dulces" with Asuncion and Pedro, I have a whole world to see.
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