Cheira Bem, Cheira a Lisboa

Hey everyone! I'm determined to catch up on posting soo...

rewind to the weekend of December 6th- that is a four day weekend in Spain because that Thursday was Constitution Day, a national holiday, (and if Thursday is a holiday so of course Friday too of course).  SO, having some extra days, my host family and I went to Lisbon, Portugal! We left around 8:30 and got there for lunch, I love how close everything is in Europe. It was absolutely beautiful. And it was the first European big city I've really been in, since the arrival in Madrid can't really count because I didn't see any of the city (although I have now visited since then but that's for another post).

It was so much fun. Seeing monuments, being touristy, visiting ancient castles, seeing monuments and paintings and architecture and graffiti, eating, listening to traditional Fados, people watching, eavesdropping on Portuguese, and fighting an overwhelming urge to shout "I SPEAK ENGLISH TOO OMG I LOVE YOU" every time I overheard snippets from British or American tourists. That is what you get when you're isolated too long from your native language, at least in my case. We squeezed in a ton of things in those few days and it was insanely hard choosing just a few photos and not uploading all of them. But here they are. They are also all credited to Antia because my camera died 5 minutes after we got there and these are hers.

One of the first things I saw were the long seemingly-endless streets. Living in a little town these days it was almost a shock.

A main plaza

the adorable classic street trolleys! we rode in one and it was fun.

This is a former hotel that is now the train station. I adored the architecture, up close the details are fantastic

the padres and I in front of the Hieronymites Monastery (so are the next 2 pictures, it was stunnning)

View of the city

The padres and I at the Lisbon Arc de Triomphe

We found a giant map of the world and I stood on my two homes!

The next 2 pictures below are at the Tower of Belen: (this morning was super foggy but normally there is great water views from here... it felt so isolated not seeing anything at all)

Looking over the city! No, it's not San Fransico, it's definitely Lisbon.

This is the giant Jesus looking over Lisbon from across the water, like the one in Brazil.

Sorria, você está em Lisboa

It was truly a beautiful city and I'm so glad I got the chance to visit.

New Year, New Blog Post

So it's a brand new year. 2012 was absolutely amazing, and I have no doubt 2013 will be too. In just the past month that I have neglectfully not blogged about (yet!) I have visited 2 stunning European capitals (Lisbon and Madrid), finished a trimester of school in Spain, survived the holidays away from home, turned 17, dreamt in Spanish, went to the beach, went to snow, caught a bus on my own, decided I like coffee (at least Spanish cafe con leche...), avoided blogging, etc....

A few goals:

• Keep studying Spanish like crazy.

• Raise my grades here in Spain.

• Send postcards/messages/packages to family back home finally (so if you're reading this, just know there will be something on it's way soon!)

•  Try not to get too behind in blogging.

• Probably most importantly, learn all the words to the Macarena.

I have some more posts and pictures from vacations to put up, but they'll have to wait until next weekend. School starts up again tomorrow... Here's to a great start of the rest of the year!

What does being 17 feel like without a new pair of red-and-white striped koala pajamas? Luckily, I don't know. Buckets of love from Spain to all of you back home. ❤

I realize this blog makes me look a little obsessed with koalas... oh well.

Allariz

(pretend this was posted December 1, 2012. It's catch-up post day today)

My parents and I went to a little town called Allariz a few hours inland for the weekend for a presentation of my host mom's books. It was a really cute little town but pretty cold!  Probably my favorite part was the bookshop because there was a ladder (so obviously I pretended I was Belle from Beauty and The Beast).

There were also lots of cool tree reflections in the river that I tried to get pictures of because they seemed so autumn-y. I don't know.

the skies were a little grey that morning

14N

November 14, 2012
FOLGA XERAL/HUELGA GENERAL/GENERAL STRIKE


So there was a general strike here and I went to the protest manifestation in Pontevedra... over a month ago. (Better late than never, right? ....right?) Spain is in fact in an economic crisis and has been for several years now, as you (I hope) probably know already. I definitely won't try to explain politics or economics in this blog (not that I could do it well enough even if I wanted to).  But the point is a lot of people here would like a change.

My host sister didn't feel like going to the manifestation- we were missing school and she wanted to use the time to study. My host dad told her, "there's more to life than making perfect grades. You have to get out there in the world and make your voice heard. When things aren't quite right, you have to go and do something about it. If the government is making the wrong choices and it'll leave the students without a future, staying at home won't do much good." (And it was actually much more inspirational than what I've written because I translated if from Galician to English and I wasn't actually involved in the conversation so I could easily have missed parts and also it was a month ago and I didn't write it down, it's just as close as I remember, so I'm sorry if it's lost some meaning). 

This just struck me as a pretty "American" attitude. Taking a stand and fighting for a change. I did end up in a family not too affected by the Crisis, but I can still see perfectly well life isn't easy for everyone here. And what makes me the most sad (is saddest a word?) is that I don't know what can possibly be done to make things better because there are problems everywhere in the world that seem solution-less. But I hope things will get better with all my heart.  And I wish hoping would be enough.

The sign says "Din que chove pero mexan por nós." which means "they said it's raining (having hard times) but it's disaster for us" (I'm pretty sure). There were some really neat signs but I didn't get any pictures.

Merry Christmas, Feliz Navidad, Bo Nadal

Lots and lots and lots of love to everyone back home from me (and from my most handsome host niece and nephew)!

TRIMESTER 1

Today's post is to just to briefly celebrate the fact that I have almost completed one whole trimester in Spain!

Tomorrow is the last day before winter vacations and we get out at 11.

Possibly the most beautiful moment of the day was my whole class clapping for me after our teacher read out my final grades.

Contemporary Sciences: 5
Gym: 6
Philosophy: 3
Galcian: Exempt
Spanish literature and language: 3
English: 10
Educational Attention: Not Applicable
Biology and Geology: 6
Physics and Chemistry: 3
Math: 5
Technology: 7

Above 5 is passing, 6 is good, 7-8 is notable, 9-10 is basically perfect. So I only failed 3 classes in total, which is actually fewer than I´d expected! My goal is to improve them all to passing for the next trimester. I'm most surprised by the technology grade, my teacher must have given me more credit for doing the applied exercises in the computer lab than I thought because we only took one test and I got about a .5 /10.  And in English my teacher didn't make me take the tests so I didn't exactly earn it besides writing a couple summaries for novels in Spanish I read during class (which I prefer a whole lot to just about any class). Gym should probably be higher, but that's never been my strong point (hah literally because I'm not strong get it?). My teacher is cool if somewhat crazy (but I'm pretty sure that's a general trait for PE teachers anyways usually). 

Enough about grades! Instead here are some of my favorite new Spanish words:

• burburjeante  (bubbly)
• cosquillas  (tickles)
• murciélago  (bat)
• estrafalario  (bizarre)

And finally, the world isn't ending and there are beautiful rainbows to be seen over Marín!

Credit to Jorge, who took this a few days ago. How awesome is that?

o día doce

So today is a pretty neat date, 12/12/12.  In Spanish, el doce de diciembre. In Galician, o doce de decembro. It´s extra cool in Galician, because doce means sweet as well as 12.

My Christmas package from home arrived! I arranged the shockingly-well-wrapped-for-an-Atlantic-crossing gifts in my window along with some Santa themed window stickers and it really does feel cozy and Christmas-y!

Otherwise I really don´t have too much to update, just living life over here across the pond. I´ve been trying to learn the subjunctive mood in Spanish lately, fun stuff. And not exactly interesting material to blog about, so I better leave it here for today. Not to mention I should be studying for my last exam of the year, yay! Just physics in my way until no more tests until the next trimester in 2013. (Oh my God, it´s almost 2013 where did the time go.)

As soon as I get the pictures from my sister (my camera died so they´re all on hers) I´ll post about my weekend in Portugal!

In the meantime, here is a sweet note my Spanish friends put in my backpack. It´s Spanglish to the Xtreme, hahahaha. (Love you Lara and Iria if you see this!)

translation: Amy! What a surprise! We love you, not since forever, but yes forever. 2012-infinity

 In conclusion today I will not be leaving you all with a gorgeous lanscape/ sunset, I like to avoid predictability at all costs. So here is an ugly tree to change it up.

Hope you all have a super sweet day!

xoxo,
gossip girl

(just kidding it´s me Amy)

(good one)