I think that I should have updated my blog a lot sooner because i now have a long list of things to write about :S
So, some key words describing what i have been up to in the past 2 weeks: School,wakeboarding, hockey, shopping, friends, eating, packages and parcels, exams, break down, skype, family,and AFS camp.
Everyone asks me how things are going and i think school is one of the most regular (and unavoidable) things in my life at the moment. To be completely honest, i am finding school very hard. This is due to the language, first of all, not being able to understand the teachers is very challenging, friends, and well... boredom. In class, generally, i sit by myself, and this is not always by choice. Since the first day arrved at school everyone seemed to be already sitting in seats of 2, so consequently i had to find a seat by myself. I thought that this would change but it hasn´t, i actually find that some days - very awkwardly - other students walk into the class and see that there are not many seats and they will look all around the class before coming and sitting next to me. Makes me feel rather, rejected haha. Especially since everyone says that "everyone wants to be friends with the exchange student" which was true in New Zealand, but not so much here. I get the odd person asking me where i´m from and how i like spain, but apart from that, there´s no special treatment. Some days,i think that i must be doing something wrong. Maybe i didn´t make a good first impression? I mean, i have a group that i walk around with at school, but i really thought that more people would want to talk to me. For a while i really wanted to change schools, but this would be really difficult and all the schools here in Catalonia are in Catalán anyway and friends say that its just the way the teenagers are here in Castelldefels.
Following on from school, i have had a few exams in the past few weeks... how fantastic they have been! Nobody even tells me that there is an exam and i walk into the class and all the desks are separated for the exams. Of course i know that i´m not really capable of doing the exams but i just find it a little bit rude when the teachers don´t even hand me the exam paper, they skip me every time and i have to ask them, specifically, to give me a paper. So the exams scores range from 0 - 10 i believe... not sure if you can get less? But here it works very different to New Zealand because there are no internal assessments or projects (just one that you work on for the whole year - a research, written report and presentation that has to be between 25-50 pages), there are just lots of tests. This sucks because all my friends are always busying studying for these exams. For my first exam i answered one question and got a 1 out of 10. For the next exam i received another 1 and today i got my castellano paper back... 0.4 out of 10. Now the reason why i wasn´´t sure if you could get less than 0 is because, here, every time you answer a question wrong you get - 0.1 and for my philosophy exam it was multi choice questions... so you know what i did ... a,b,c,c,d,a,b,d... you get the picture. I chose any random letter - didn´t work out so well for me.
Oh and wakeboarding! That´s something i have been trying. At first i was pretty good, making great progress on the practicing cable - so i tried the big cable. I managed to do a full cycle on my first go but after that i couldn´t even get off the platform. It´s a lot harder than people make it look! Not only because it´s difficult but because it kills your arms and legs, you have to hold a slighly bent position at the knees - that´s got to be fantastic for the thighs though!
The crew at the Olympic Canal (wakeboarding place) are awesome, they always make me feel welcome and are just soo lovely! They´re the type of people that i was expecting in Spain, such pleasant people to be around.
Hockey. Ahh hockey. I feel like the more i play hockey here, the worse i get. Yup, that would be about right hahaha. It doesn´t matter what position i changed to on the field...i feel like i have forgotten how to play :( And i miss having one of my besties Joella playing hockey with meee! So basically, i´m not really enjoying it but i need to play for the exercise! It´s about $55 a month too, very expensive :/
The food here! I really expected it to be a lot healthier, so now, yes, i am freaking out about getting fat!!! AFS (Another fat student) no thank you! My family in particular is rather unhealthy, they (we) eat pasta, rice, bread and meat, not many vegetables and not much fruit. From next week my host mum will be working so i will have to make my own lunch after school, so i am actually looking forward to that! Salad! Yoghurt! Fruit! I already feel like i have put on a little bit of weight and i want to cry :( Very pleased that i walk for about 1 hour everyday due to walking to and from school - at least that is something!Hopefully you have been looking at all my phtos in my Spain food diary!! If not, check it out :3
Friends <3 now i am not just saying this because i am an Exchange student... but seriously Exchange students are the coolest people you will ever meet! The people i have met here with AFS are absolutely awesome. Katerina, Zanete and Pamela, love them to bits and i have only met them like 3 times!! Every Exchange student is so different but we have this one big thing in common that connects us all,that nobody else could ever understand! I am catching up with them this weekend, going out for dinner in Barcelona and then having a sleepover at my house!! Soo excited!
I have also been the mall a few times with friends and made another new friend out of my host sister´s piano teacher who is the same age as me. Last night i finished school early and had a lovely lunch with my friend Cristina and her family for her mother´s birthday. Her family is always very sweet to me. They´re like my second family away from my second family hahaha.
My lovely mother back in NZ has sent me some parcels in the mail which i was very excited about!! I opened the first package to find a book in the series that i really wanted to read (in english)which i was very happy about, but discovered that my mum had sent me book number 3 instead of number 1, was disappointed... but my amazing mum bought and sent me the 1st and 2nd book in the series as soon as i told her :3 Such a fantastic mum i have, i miss her a bunch! She also sent me my christmas present... very early, it´s a bit mean but at least i will have something to unwrap at christmas time. I am kind of dreading Christmas... without my family, and familiarity. No BBQ for me this year. I have a feeling that i will cry, actually that is a definite, but at least i have skype and i can talk with everyone and kinda be apart of their christmas because it will only be christmas eve here. I have told my host mum that we have to have pavlova and ambrosia! So hopefully she will buy the ingredients and i can enjoy that here with this new family of mine :)
So at the very beginning of this blog i did mention the Word "breakdown" but i´m not going to post about it on this blog. It would take to long and i have to watch what i say on here, but if anyone wants to know what´s been going on behind scenes you can message me and we can talk! :) I´d also love if people wanted to skype or send letters, so talk to me about that tooo!
Alright, i think i have covered just about everything. I have been sitting here for 2 hours writing this, so i hope you read all of it and enjoyed at least some of it.
Don´t worry, i am surviving here in Spain and i think i am slowly adapting more and more everyday. It is nearly 2 months since i have been here and it still seems so crazy.
I will keep you posted,
much love
Victoria-Rose <3
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