da escola, irmás, voos na avións, e visados

(School, Sisters, Planes, and Visas)
   
          Well, first of all, I am officially enrolled in the school IES Illa de Tambo in grade 1° de bachillerato, in the Natural and Health Sciences Course for the next school year! The school is right in the center of town and about 3 km from my house. My host sister also goes there and is in my grade. We won't have classes together (she is taking different courses) but I'm still glad she'll be able to show me around. 

El instituto / my school

Also, my school's list of textbooks

         Speaking of my host sister, I've finally gotten to talk to her! For a long time, I heard nothing from her and it worried me. Finally I added her on Tuenti, the Spanish Facebook, and we got to chat! It was great, she's really nice and cool and I think we'll be good friends. She told me they actually don't have 2 dogs- they have FOUR! :D   Then, I recieved an actual letter from her! She had sent it before we chatted and I was so happy to get it! It was so sweet, and I love mail (who doesn't?). Seriously my host family has been beyond sweet in their emails, I'm SOOOO excited to meet them! 

my host sister is awesome

one of my host dogs ♥

      
Okay, time for the visa story:  
I went to the General Consulate of Spain in Houston this morning to apply for the visa! Houston is about a four hour drive, and the consulate is unusual in that it doesn't accept appointments, you just walk in.  The day started terribly because I overslept by an hour (I was supposed to be up at 4:45... didn't wake up til 5:40), and I had to rush and make a ton of copies at the last second, and we were low on gas and the car's registration was expired and I was certain we'd be stopped and everything would go wrong, but somehow we got to Houston fairly on time. Then we had to find a bank with a notary for one last form, and the first places we tried didn't have one. But we found one eventually, funnily enough in the same building as the Italian consulate... but not the Spanish one. 
At this point things started looking up, it was still pretty early, and we arrived at the consulate just fine. The lady just took my papers, she was extremely nice and thankfully I had all the papers. It ended up perfectly all right! I'm still worried about getting my passport back in time for departure- it will be pretty close, but I am going to try not to stress about it at this point. It's out of my hands and there's nothing I can do except wait and hope for the best!

probably took an entire tree for all the necessary paperwork

The Consulate building

me by the seal thing at the door... haha sorry for the bad quality

     I've booked my ticket out of Austin! I'm going to visit family friends in Boston and then take a train to New York for orientation. I'll be packed and out of here August 29th, although I won't actually be with my host family until September 8th (coincidentally that's also the holiday of the Virxe do Porto, the patron saint of my host town. That's got to be a good sign, right? and assuming the visa does arrive in time... fingers crossed!) Packing is starting to be on my mind... it's just absolutely crazy how fast time has gone. There's still a lot to do here and I really can't even imagine saying my goodbyes, even though at the same time all I do is think about Spain. I don't know how to write what I'm feeling now. It's just crazy.

I actually got this fortune cookie! Pretty decent for once.

TWENTY-FIVE DAYS IN AUSTIN 
 ¡veinte y cinco!

25.   what kind of tiny number is that?!?

Familias de Acollida

Host Families

       Exchange is supposed to be about the people you meet all over the world, and your host family is a huge part of your year.  I know I was incredibly lucky to find out mine so early.  It's not that easy writing to my family, though. How do you start to get to know the people who are opening their home and family to you for a year? We email in Spanish and I make lots of mistakes and use Google translate more than I'd like. For one thing, after talking to them for 4 months I learned that I should be addressing them using a different, less formal, version of "you" (as in, I was speaking to them formally the way you'd speak to a really important person, the Queen of England maybe, instead of family). A couple times I've almost told them that I was sending them some arms (I meant hugs! In Spanish the words for "hugs" (abrazos) and "arms" (brazos) are just one letter off.) Everyone wants to hear that they will be getting some body parts in the mail (Not). I definitely have stress dreams about going, despite how excited I am about it. My subconscious has gone through all the worst possible scenarios (from a nuclear crisis to leaving after a semester because no one would talk to me) in my dreams. Shut up, Brain, why are you messing with my positive attitude here?! 
           But seriously, I cannot wait to meet them in person in just 2 more months!

My host family has a beatiful garden with fruit trees and flowers. In September the apples and pears will be ready to eat, yumm!

Oh, did I mention it's practically a small farm?  These are some of the chickens, or gallinas. Fresh eggs every day!

♥ ♥ ♥

Last spring,  my parents and I decided to be a host family. It's really hard to describe how it was to be a host sister. It was just a big change to adjust to a new member of the family. I'm an only child, and there was suddenly a new teenager living with us. It was strange at first to explain things that seemed like normal daily life and sometimes miming to communicate, but by the last few months we were really close. I realized that exchanging is a new and challenging experience for the family as well as for the student. Hosting was one of the best things I could've done to get the full AFS exchange experience.  I hope it will help me empathize and connect with my own host family because I've been in similar shoes. and I think the most important thing I learned is to not be afraid to speak up when I'm there!




Here's a visual of the placements of AFS Spain students so far! Just shows that you really can be placed anywhere.



View AFS Spain Placements in a larger map

 

Hope everyone's having a great summer, and Happy Independence Day USA!