Week One, Check

It's been quite a week here!  It's gone by super slow and super fast at the same time.  I can't believe I'm already a week in!

Just a quick update on the goings on of the past week:

Monday was the first day of classes.  I found the building perfectly fine and everything and was feelin great when suddenly, out of nowhere, nausea hit me like Muhammad.  I figured out later it was probably just a combination of dehydration, no sleep, stress, and major anxiety, but at the moment, all I could think of was me just hurling everywhere on the first day of class.  I leaned forward in my seat and asked my director where the nearest bathroom was.  He directed me to my one professor who told me how to get there.  I thought he said "go left, then right," but he actually said "go right, then left."  My ears were doing that ocean wave thing right before you're about to faint.  You know the feeling.  I stumbled out of the classroom and all around the courtyard trying to find the nearest bathroom.  There was some sort of black tie affair going on outside, with ladies in fancy dresses and men in tuxedos and waiters with bow-ties all around.  And suddenly, my body didn't feel like waiting for me to find a bathroom anymore.  I grabbed the nearest thing with a hole in it and hurled in the middle of the fancy-pants party with the fancy-pants people.  It's actually really freaking funny when I think about it now.  But at the time I was just feeling awful, especially because I had just thrown up into a recycle bin.  My teacher must have been watching me struggle because he ran out of the classroom and actually took me by the arm to the nearest bathroom.  "You look as white as a sheet," he said in almost understandable spanish.  "Probably," was all I could get out.  After that incident, though, the week was much better.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I pretty much figured out exactly how eating goes around here.  Breakfast the second after you wake up, a huge lunch at 2:30, tapas (appetizers) at 5 or 6, a huge dinner at 10:30.  That's pretty much how it's gone every day.  Wednesday, my host mom's mom came into town to stay a couple of days.  This woman literally told me to "get fatter."  On Thursday we were sitting and talking at the kitchen table waiting for lunch to be done, each with our own plates in front of us.  When the buzzer went off, she picked up her own plate and began scooping.  One, two, three, four, five, SIX ladles later, I thought to myself, "Thank goodness that's not for me and I'll be able to serve myself a reasonable amount that I can actually intake."  Wrong, Ang.  So wrong.  She puts the dish down in front of me.  "For me?" I ask her.  "Of course it's for you," she says.  "But it's so much,"  I reply.  "I don't care."  Literally.  That's how it goes here in good ol' España.  They feed you until you LITERALLY can't take in any more food for fear your stomach might ACTUALLY burst.  And I thought Italians were bad. 

Friday my classmates and I took a trip to Segovia!  It's a town about 2 hours away from Toledo, with huge aqueducts and lots of awesome churches.  Our history professor came with us.  He's actually really awesome.  He'd be awesomer if I could understand his Spanish better.  We climbed to the top of the aqueducts and just as I was peering over the side to get a better look, he said "Yeah, a lot of people actually fell to their deaths while building this; they didn't have any way to keep themselves strapped in."  I took a few steps back.

When I got home that night, Piedad and I watched a game show called "Pasapalabra" (pass the word).  It's an awesome game show.  Still super corny like the ones in the US, but pretty fun and sort of easy for me to follow along.  I'm sure I'll get better at understanding what's going on the more I watch it.

And today we went to church!  Almost everyone in Spain is catholic.  The church was beautiful.  More stained glass in one place than I've ever seen in my life.  It was pretty easy to follow along, too, since I know the structure of mass.  All I really got out of the sermon, though, was that Jesus needs us to be lights for the world.  Oh and he talked about Mary and Elizabeth being cousins; I don't know why (the gospel was out of Luke).  Simple enough.

You know those stereotypes everyone has about Spain in the United States?  THEY'RE ALL TRUE.  All of them.  I've only been here a week and I walk down the streets saying to myself, "Stereotype confirmed, stereotype validated."

-Everyone feeds you until you explode and you get a dirty look if you finish but don't want anymore food.
-Women do everything.  Cook, clean, mop.  Piedad yells at me if I try to wash a fork.
-Everything is a stick shift.  Even the big big buses.  They roll backward before they go forward.
-There's graffiti everywhere.  Well, not everywhere, but most places.  Especially on the highways and buildings and such.  It must be why Graffiti Pete is such a big deal in In the Heights.
-Women talk at the same time.  In person, on the phone, anytime of the day, women are always trying to talk over each other.  It results in yelling most of the time.  And it happens constantly and I'm not exaggerating even a little.  You know Gloria from Modern Family?  Exactly.

But seriously, I'm really beginning to enjoy my time here.  It's a lot different but there are things here that I can get used to.  For example, it's totally acceptable to pass out for a nap at literally any time of the day.  And for however long you want.  Definitely have taken advantage of that almost every day.  I miss home like crazy; my family, my kitty, streets that are familiar, oh and being in the same time zone as everyone I communicate with.  That's a big one.  But I've been told a million times already that I won't want to leave when my time is finally up here.  It's probably true.