P.S.

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Cultural Differences!!

One of the first things we started noticing since arriving in Spain is how much more publicaly affectionate Spaniards are with their significant others than we tend to be in the States. We never see it at our house because Maria is single and Alba is too young. However, Sunday, Maria's older daughter Leticia and son in-law Phil were over for lunch (which is more like the US dinner). We had all sat down to eat and other than the fact that we had no idea what was being said because they were talking to one another so fast things were going just fine. About 10 minutes into the meal, they were all mid conversation and Leticia was even mid bite and her and Phil lean into each other for a kiss. Maria and Alba seemed to think nothing of it, and it continued to happen every few minutes throughout the whole meal. I guess thats just normal hear, but the whole time all I could think about was the strange looks I would be getting from my family if I were to be doing the same at home and all of the teasing they would be doing later.
We have also seemed to acquire a brother! There is a guy in our ward who we noticed our first Sunday here, because he and his fiance had coordinated outfits on. Thursday morning he was down in the kitchen when we went down to eat breakfast. It was awkward at first because he didn't say anything to us, so finally in Spanish I asked him his name, and we had a small conversation in Spanish with the little bit I know. We were gone all weekend and up until yesterday morning we thought he only spoke Spanish. I was down there eating breakfast and he said do you know where the cups are, and it took me a minute to realize he had just said it in English and I had to almost process what he said as if I were trying to translate it, and finally spit out an answer. So then we proceded to have a nice conversation in English, and I was able to find out that he was born and raised in Sweden where in school they teach you English and Spanish so he was pretty much fluent in both languages before he even left Sweden. He served his mission in South Salt Lake City and I loved his description of the people there..."25% are active members, 25% are inactive and loving every minute of it, 25% are anti and doing everything they can to bring others down with them, and 25% have no idea what is going on as far as the Mormon church goes." His girlfriend waited for him the whole 2 years and he just got back in December and they are now engaged!
Last night for FHE we went to this store called Alcamp which is like a super Walmart, and we had a picture scavenger hunt. We were in groups of two and had 10 minutes to find as many things on the list as possible. A few of the groups were stopped by the Alcampo security and asked why there were so many people in there taking pictures. When we explained that it was a game, they were really confused and just kind of smiled and let us continue on our way! It was lots of fun. Heres a picture of some pigs feet, I think thats about the weirdest thing that was on the list. The grocery stores each have a section where there tons of meet in these sac type things that hang EVERYWHERE!!! Its enough to make me want to hurl and the smell doesn't help AT ALL!

















Yes, Twilight is pretty much just as big of a deal here as it is in the states!















They love Hannah Montana here as well!!

hmmm...

well the captions under the pictures didn't publish the way they appeared when I was writing it, so the little one liners that make no sense with the sentence that they appear to be a part of, are probably captions to the pictures a ABOVE them, not the one below!

Alright, it has been much too long since my last blog update so this one will probably be a long one! So last Friday we went to an art museum called the Prado museum. It was pretty cool...I suppose :/ It was huge and there was a ton of art in it and we spent about 3 and a half hours in it. I guess I just got museum fatigue or something. After the museum, a group of us found this huge park to wander through. It was so nice because it was sunny and much warmer than it had been while we had been there so far. There were some cool fountains throughout and there was a building called the crystal palace. It was all made of glass...SO cool looking! There was also a huge pond with row boats that you can rent and ride around in. We decided not to go on them that day, but we are planning to spend another afternoon there and take a picnic lunch and rent row boats!! That night a few of us bought ingredients to make oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and we went to our teachers house and made them, and surprisingly they turned out excellent!!!

On Saturday we had train tickets to go to a city called Cuenca! Its about a 2 hour train ride from Madrid and we were supposed to leave Madrid at 8:50am but our bus was late picking us up, so we got to the Alcala train station late, so the next train to Madrid put us there at about 8:50 and we got to the gate of our other train at 8:53. It was quite a site I'm sure to see 4 girls full-on sprinting through the train station throwing our bags through security and running all the way to
Us walking to the park!
gate 15 which was, of course, at the very end, only to find out that the train was no longer there and having about 30ish passengers and employees just looking at us with pity knowing exactly what had just happened. Then we had to attempt to, between the 4 of us, come up with enough words in our small Spanish vocabulary to explain that we missed our train and ask where we needed to go to find out about changing our ticked to the next train. We were sent to three different places before we got to the one that could actually do it for us, and it cost us 4 Euros each to do and didn't leave until 12:23. Needless to say we had time to kill yet we didn't want to go
Playing on the swings!!!

too far with the risk of again missing the train. We looked at the list of destinations that the metro goes to and pointed to one randomly and went there. There wasn't a whole lot to do there, it was more of a residential area, and to be honest I don't even remember what it was called. We wandered the streets and took pictures of some of the cool graffiti we saw, because if I have noticed anything in the country of Spain, it is the ample amounts of tagging talent that is so prevalent. They are constantly cleaning the streets and there is no litter to be found anywhere, yet they could care less about the walls that are completely covered in graffiti. We were able to make it back to Madrid with plenty of time to catch our train, and because we left so late we were only going to have about 4 hours in Cuenca. We got there and made our way up to "The Hanging Houses" or in Spanish "Las Casas Colgadas" which gives Cuenca its fame. They are these house that are on the edges of cliffs and the whole little town is built on this mountain. It has narrow steep streets with cute little houses and restaurants everywhere! I loved it! And once we were
Mark and I having fun with fountains!
there we decided we needed to come back for our free weekend that we had coming up the next weekend!
So, this weekend we went to Cuenca! We left on Thursday right after class and spend Thursday afternoon until this afternoon there! We found some really cool places to hike around there. One mountain we hiked and at the top was a huge statue with Jesus at the top and Mary at the base. And from up there, we could see the entire town of Cuenca, it was definitely one of the coolest things i have ever seen!! We found a cute little cafe to eat lunch at and we knew enough Spanish to be able to order something that we
The Crystal Palace!!
liked and we understood our waiter and all!! We were proud of ourselves. We wandered through the town and looked in all the fun shops throughout, and just happened to stumble upon a mall! We weren't even looking for it, it's like it came to us! Next to the mall was a McDonalds so we went and got McFlurrys with KitKat. McFlurrys here, we have discovered, are waaay better than the ones in the states! They give you not only a ton of Kitkat, but they also put hot caramel on it as well!!! It tasted SOOO good. For dinner last night we went to this delicious Italian restaurant in the mall. We loved it so much that we went there for lunch again today. One thing
Huge pillars...seemed like a good photo op!
about Spain is that the main meal of their day is lunch, and they eat it around 2 and have their siestas (naps) right after. So everything, but restaurants, close from 2-4. When we were eating lunch today, we were really enlightened on the importance of lunch here. We each ordered a standard plate of pasta like we would have in the states. While we were there waiting for our food and then eating our food, we were noticing the people around us each having what seemed to be 2 whole meals with wine, then a dessert and then a cup of coffee. The first "meal" wasn't even just a like a salad or appetizer seeming thing, it was like a plate of pasta and then a personal pizza, or a
Some cool architecture, no real significance.
plate of pasta then more pasta with a different sauce. Between our plates of pasta and the bread they gave us, we were having difficulty finishing our meals and we were appalled at the thought of not only having twice that much food, but adding on a dessert and coffee to the end of that as well. I don't know how America got the labels about being fat and lazy because from what we saw today, these Europeans eat a ton, and they get a whole 2 hours in the middle of the day to close down for eating and sleeping. I guess I should just be saying, I don't know how these people stay thin. It was a very fun weekend though, but it is nice to be back in the good ol' Alcala!!
Making cookies!!



















Soo delicious!!!!!!!!















The start of our venture into Cuenca!!





















Narrow streets of Cuenca!!!!!!
















You can kinda see the town from here
















This is the center of town where everything is!!














That is Cuenca, and the red bridge is a really narrow bridge that is really high off the ground. You have to walk across it to get into the little town!!



Sorry for the lengthy post, lots happens in a week!!!

The Fun Continues!

Tuesday and Wednesday late afternoons and weekends were both spent roaming the streets of Madrid. We went to a bunch of shops and went to another one of the chocolate and churro places! This one was WAAAY better than the one in Alcala and I am so shocked that no one has opened a place like this in the States! We also found this sweet music store that had records and cassettes and old CD's! We took this picture in that store, me holding my Bob Marley record, and Sami with her Beatles! Yesterday we tried to go to the Palacio Real, but it was closed for Royal Ceremonies! Then we tried to go to a museum that was right next to the palace, but it closed at 2:00. Such luck we were having! But we took some pictures in front of both of the buildings because they were pretty!






The group of us that attempted to visit the Palace~(left:Me, Jessie, Sami, Kiley, Lara, Lauren, Sanra, Allyson, Front:Kimball and Ben)















Sami and I and a side view of the castle.




















Front of Palace





















Sami, me, Allyson, and Sandy in front of the museum















The four of us again!


Today I GOT MY PACKAGE!!! It was nice to see the US postage all over the box and wonderful to see things inside with English writing on them! we took our first siesta since having been here! Then after lunch we decided to go see a movie with Sandy and Allyson! We went to the theater and decided on Madagascar 2!! We had about 45 minutes to kill before the movie started so we went got some ice cream at the ice cream place right by the the theater! It was delicious ice cream!! The movie was all in Spanish, but I am kind of starting to feel like I am understanding more of it! We opted for the more kid friendly movie since our level of comprehension as far as Spanish goes is at probably about a first grade level and we thought that maybe they would use simpler phrases. After the movie we went to a little restaurant and got some huge french fries with 4 different sauces to dip them in. It was SO delicious!
















My delicious caramel ice cream!















MMMMMMMMMMMM!!! Delisioso!













Again...delicious!













Our french fries with all of our sauces!

Monday Monday

Nothing too exciting happened today, except for the fact that I went JOGGING!!!! One of the girls in my class, her name is Lauren, and I decided we needed to be more active because we really don't walk around a whole lot. We take the bus or the train most of the places we go and walk short distances here and there. We had a good jog, although I'm sure i looked wonderful in my gray ski long johns with hot pink shorts over them. It is very cold here and my lungs were killing me for a long while after the run, but we did well and I felt much better after it. We had our first FHE tonight also and we went to a chocolateria where we had this really thick hot chocolate and churros to dip in the chocolate!! It was delicious, although I have heard theres one in Madrid thats much better!
This is what they looked like!















This is a small part of my family home evening group!

Well yesterday was my first experience at church and I kind of got a head ache from all of the effort I was putting into trying to understand what was being talked about. Our Sunday school teacher was awesome though because he used a lot of hand motions and gestures to help us to get the gist of what he was talking about. After church we had a four course meal! We started with this soup that was kind of like a chicken noodle soup without chicken, and then we had a bunch of veggies. We had a carrot, a potato, some Brussels sprouts and garbanzo beans. Then we had some meat, I think it was like roast, and then we had ice cream. It was tasty! Then we met up with some friends of ours and went walking through town taking pictures…






Our almost daily visits to starbucks!























Some cool building we wanted a picture in front of!



















Crazy totaled car!!














And here it is again!













There is graffiti EVERYWHERE here!















Random dance studio of some sort

I forgot to post this picture on the last post but Sami wanted to make sure we remembered this momentous occasion when I finally had my luggage!

MY LUGGAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On Saturday Sami and I went to the airport to see about getting my luggage. We went to the lost luggage counter adn they told us they still didn't have word on where it was, and they went us to another counter in the baggage claim area. Sami had to wait outside because she didn't have a boarding pass. I waited in line here for about 45 minutes only for them to say the same thing and thell me that I could go take a look for myself in these big rooms full of unclaimed luggage. There were tons!!!!!!! I spotted mine right away and met back up with Sami. She had met a couple of Spanish people who spoke English! The one guy had learned it just by watching movies in English, so we have started trying to watch a movie each night in Spanish. We ate a little lunch in the airport and headed home. When all was said and done we had spent 5 hours taking this journey to and from the airport. Not exactly what I call a fun day in Spain, however I was more than excited to see my luggage had indeed made it here and that I would now not have to wear my vans to church the next day!!

We here are the few pictures we have taken so far!















This is our bedroom!!














We found a claire's in the mall!




















some random billboard thing that we thought was going to be the entrance to some cool theme park or something, but it wasnt














Alba and I in the snow!!















Our family of snowmen!














the snow stuck to everything














All three of us in the snow!!!

SNOW :(

This morning we woke up to snow!! I was not excited, since most of my clothes are not here I was not equipped for this weather. Luckily my roommate packed ample amounts of just about everything so I have been able to borrow anything I need. She even brought two cord converters which has really been handy! We were supposed to meet at the train station this morning at 10:00 to go to Madrid with the class, and we left the house at about 9:30 to get to the bus to take us to the train station. We waited for the bus for until 10 mins to 10 and the buses never came. Two other women that were there with us started talking about how, from what we could understand, the buses probably weren't operating today. It would take us about a half hour to walk to the train station and we knew that everyone would have left by then, so we went home. We explained it to Maria and she was able to find the cell number from a friend of hers to Brother Brown (our study abroad director). We told him what happened and he said for us to just stay home and he would contact us later. I was very frustrated that he didn't say he would stay behind and wait for us to get there and then we could have met with the group or something like that, so instead we went back up to our room and watched a movie because the internet wasn't working. I think it is effected by the snow, but thankfully that has started working again! Today, so far, has not been one of the better days.

The arrival and first couple of days.

Hey!! ok, so it has taken me a while to get the blog up and going, but its up now and hopefully I will be diligent in keeping it updated regularly. I started the long trip to Europe in Sacramento and flew from there to Seattle, WA. Everything went well until I got to the Seattle airport to find that my flight from there to London, Heathrow had been delayed a whole hour, which turned into an hour and a half by the time we were actually leaving the ground. I sat next to an Egyptian lady on the plane and ate dinner and slept through breakfast on this flight, and made it clear across the giant Heathrow airport to my gate with about 10 minutes to spare before boarding my plane to Madrid. I had a feeling that my luggage wasn't going to make it on to my plane, and that feeling became reality when I waited and waited and waited at the baggage claim and no bright teal suitcase came out. I talked to the airline desk and the lady was able to locate my suitcase and told me it was had been put on the next flight to Madrid and should arrive that same night. She said they could deliver it to the place I was staying, but that would require giving them an address, which I, of course, didn't have on me. But the lady said not to worry because I would be able to call them with the address and they would deliver it the following morning.
I arrived at what would be my home for the next three months where I was greeted by my "madre" Maria and her daughter Alba (11). Maria hardly speaks any English at all and Alba speaks a little because she learns it at school. I had to explain the luggage situation in English and luckily Alba understood enough to tell Maria what was going on. She called to give the airline my information and they told her that they weren't sure where the luggage was and that they would contact the London airport and they would have to wait for a reply. Its now 2 whole days later and the are apparently still waiting for a reply! Needless to say, I still do not have my luggage, but luckily I had a carry-on full of clothes so I am at least getting by.
Yesterday we had orientation for school and we took a tour of the campus. It is called El Universidad De Acala, and none of the classrooms or buildings are heated so it is freezing during class. I was able to get to know some of the people in the group a little better yesterday and there are lots of fun people. There are 4 guys and 24 girls! My roommate Sami and I were the first to spot the Starbucks right by campus and spent our first euros there! The Starbucks worker gave me a very wierd look and questioned me when I asked for salt on my caramel hot chocolate. He asked if I meant sugar and I assured him that I indeed meant salt, and he handed me three little packets of salt! Later that night we went to find ourselves a hair straightener. We went to all the stores we could find in the area and we found everything but the straightener, including an alarm clock so that we no longer have to worry about waking up on time like we did this morning. For dinner, Alba made potatoes and cheese from her little chef's cook book. It was very good, but this morning at about 5am Sami and I woke up with awful stomach aches and could not go back to sleep. I think we need to get used to the cheese here or something. It wore of a by about noon, and today was the first day of class. We only had one class today so that was nice since we didn't well. It was our Spanish class and our teacher only speaks Spanish, but she is very funny and nice. Even though we felt sick we still managed to find the local mall which had a nice store called alcampo. It's kind of like a target superstore. We found ourselves a straightener, then went home for lunch. Lunch today was interesting...we had rice, an over easy egg, and slices of banana, all covered in tomato sauce (including the bananas). It was very different but not bad at all. We met up with the all the people from the group to go into Madrid for a few hours. We did a little shopping and just wandered the streets!
Aside from the fact that I don't have my suitcase, I am loving it here. Just hoping to pick up the language ASAP because I feel very helpless not being able to communicate well.