I am so sorry that I haven't filled you in on my life in the last two months. My life has consisted of either being too busy to blog or too homesick. Let me tell you. homesickness is a real thing and it sucks all of the energy right out of you! But let me go back and update you on my adventures since my last blog. Prepare yourself, it's gonna be a long one.
Sevilla: LOVED IT! But it was a bit too big for my liking. I got to see this place where they have filmed scenes from Game of Thrones (still waiting to watch the current season so don't say anything!) and I'm curious to see if it looks the same on the show as it did in real life, or if it's even recognizable. Also, I had Starbucks on this trip! It was fantastic, even though they spelled my name wrong...Sem instead of Sam. We went to this awesome mirador thing that's hard to explain, so here's a picture. You pay to walk around on the top. It was pretty awesome.
Then I had a few essays and midterms...I'll skip all of that. But I would like to say: You other study abroaders made it seem like I would never have any homework, and that I would REALLY never have any homework on the weekends. Yeah, that's a lie. In Spain, you get homework! Maybe not in every class, but for the classes that I do get homework, I get it every time we have the class. And some of the assignments are easy, but others are six page essays and 15 minute presentations. And there's always homework on the weekends, so if you are traveling you have to do it before you leave or when you get back, when all you want to do is go to sleep. Don't get my wrong, I love homework, but I was not mentally prepared for this!
After that my host mom got sick. And that was actually really scary. Over the weekend she had been saying she had the flu, had the chills and slept almost all day. Then on Sunday night (or Monday morning I guess) her and my host dad went to the hospital because she was feeling pain in her stomach and chest. We woke up to a note saying they had gone to the hospital. When I came home from class I was greeted by my host dad who told me she was still getting tests done and they didn't know how long it would be or what was wrong. Then later that night (during our culture class taught by our program directors) I mentioned if my program director had talked to our host parents. She called them while we were in class and made arrangements for us to eat at another host family's house because my host mom was having surgery on her gallbladder (we had to ask our English-speaking director to translate that one for us). We were told that the surgery went well but that she had a fever and wouldn't be able to leave for at least 24 hours after the fever broke. They hoped she would get to leave by Friday (she checked into the hospital early Monday morning). But my roommate and I were leaving for Spring Break that Thursday. We figured out how to work the washing machine to wash our clothes and then left on Thursday. Our host mom was finally able to come home while we were gone in Tenerife (keep reading to hear about this!) on Monday. We left our host mom a card and some beautiful flowers (which she loved) and we were pleasantly surprised to find her up and sweeping (I'm not kidding) on the Thursday we got back. She hasn't had any problems since and now has a special diet for two more weeks. Even though things ended up going great and she is doing amazing now, it made me realize a few things:
First off, I love my host parents! I didn't really think I would get so attached to them and grow to think of them as my Spanish parents. But for the first day when we really didn't know what was wrong, or for the days we were gone and she still wasn't allowed to leave the hospital, I was so worried for her.
Secondly, nobody knows how to do anything without her. Spanish culture is a bit different than American culture in that it still follows very traditional gender roles. Our host mom cooks all of our meals, goes grocery shopping, washes our clothes, irons our clothes (even our underwear, I'm serious), and does a full cleaning of the house every single day. This includes sweeping, mopping, cleaning the toilet, cleaning the bathtub, making the beds, remaking our beds when we try to do it but it isn't a very good job. So when that person goes out of commission, and you have no idea where anything is because this isn't actually your house, you feel so helpless. And to make things even worse our host dad and brothers were completely useless. They didn't know how to work the washer, luckily Kayley and I figured it out since we've washed our own laundry before. They didn't know where the laundry detergent was (I may have done a load of laundry with just fabric softener...it's hard when everything is in Spanish!). One day Kayley came home to find our host brothers (keep in mind they are 40 and 30 years old) starring at the toilet. We still don't know if they were attempting to clean it or had plugged it and didn't know how to fix it. So, the moral of the story is: men, learn how to clean and function in case something were to ever happen to your wife/girlfriend. I'm not saying you have to do all of the cleaning, especially because cleaning is my relaxation so I don't want you to take that away from me, but at least know how to do the stuff just in case I suddenly die and you don't know how to clean your own underwear or where I keep the broom.
Funny story to come of all of this: After they found out what was wrong with my host mom, while my host dad was away getting food, she tried to check herself out of the hospital because, as she says, "I had to come home and clean your laundry and make you a sack lunch for your trip! I had to take care of my girls!". She kept telling the doctors that they had fixed her pain and that's all that she wanted them to do, so now she was going to leave and then come back after we had left for our trip. Needless to say our host dad received a phone call from the doctors telling him he needed to come convince his wife that she needed to have this surgery or else she would die. When he got back to the hospital, my host mom had signed all of the release papers and was ready to leave. When Kayley and I heard this story we just about died laughing. She is so sweet and all she wants to do is take care of her family and her American daughters.
Tenerife: the Hawaii of Spain. It was beautiful. I loved the beach. But man was it HOT! The first day we laid out on the beach for two hours, and I may have forgotten to put sunscreen on the upper part of my back, and I may have gotten really really sun burnt. And it was terrible because I have to sleep on my back but it hurt to lay on my back. We pretty much just hung out on the beach, walked around and shopped along the waterfront. One day we went to Mt. Teide, the tallest peak on all of Spain. How many people can say that? It was so beautiful and we were above the clouds but man was it windy, and I was not prepared for the cold! My GU sweatshirt and 3/4 length pants did not do the trick. Then on our second to last day I was laying under an umbrella to protect my sun burnt back when I may have accidentally fallen asleep and completely burned my legs. Not just one side of my legs, I rolled around and got the entire surface of both of my legs completely red as a lobster. It hurt to walk, it hurt to bend over, it hurt to sit down, everything hurt. Then after our flight into Malaga we had to stay the night in the airport because the bus to Granada wasn't leaving until the morning and we're poor college kids. Sleeping on the airport floor could have been worse, but it actually kind of helped soothe my sun burnt legs since the tile floor was cold.
Something unexpected about Tenerife is that everyone speaks both English and Spanish (or some who only speak English!) because there are so many tourists from the UK who come to vacation. It was so funny because the entire trip people kept asking us where we were from because "our accents were funny". And all of the people who could speak Spanish would ask us why were were in Tenerife if we are from America so when we told them we are studying Spanish they would start talking to us in Spanish, telling us we should practice. It was so refreshing because when you're in Spain, Granada or any of the other touristy places we've gone the Spanish people you interact with sneer at you, or send over the employee who speaks English, or when you speak in Spanish they tell you to speak in English. Which is so frustrating because HELLO I'M HEAR TO PRACTICE SPEAKING SPANISH, I already know how to speak English. Very few times have I interacted with a Spaniard employee and had them be nice to me or encourage me to speak in Spanish with them. So it was so refreshing to be in Tenerife where the people actually want to help you improve. Also, everyone was always so friendly and happy. They literally didn't have a care in the world. I could live there. If not live there, then at least go back for a long vacation, this time with more powerful sun screen and multiple applications of it. Because we got back a month ago and I JUST stopped peeling. I have never peeled like that in my life. It was disgusting.
We just recently (last weekend actually) took a day trip to Ronda and I think I might have left my heart there. It was beautiful and so GREEN. That's one of the things I miss the most, fields of green grass! Ronda is a small (very small) town divided into old and new Ronda by a river. Everywhere you looked was a beautiful photo waiting to be taken. It is completely surrounded by mountains and our tour guide knew everyone she ran into on the street. It was the perfect small Spanish town that I would want to live in if I were to ever live in Spain.
I know all of this seems like a great time, and it was and is the time of my life. But every single fun time I have, I can't help but feel homesick and sad too. I am so unbeleibely grateful for the life I live and the wonderful opportunity I have been given to travel the world and see places I never would have dreamed of seeing. But when I watched the sun set in Tenerife, all I wanted was to be watching it with Hayden. When I go on guided tours I think of my parents and how much they would love all of the history and sites I am seeing. When I walk around or sit at a cafe people watching, I think about how much more fun it would be if Alex and Sydney were here to people watch with me. I can't help but think about how different this experience would be if I were doing it with all of my friends and my loved ones. Every adventure is bitter sweet, because I am living a once in a lifetime experience, but all I really want is to be living it with my loved ones. And when I feel homesick, all I want to do is lay in bed. But then I feel guilty for wasting time laying in bed, for not traveling and making the most of my experience here. Everybody said traveling abroad would be the best time of my life, but they never really warned me about how hard the homesickness part was.
But every day I wake up, bringing me one day closer to hugging my friends and family, one day closer to helping the ones I love. I spend time with my wonderful host parents, I go to class, I do my homework, I talk to my friends and family back home, I spend time with my intercambios (Spanish students learning English), I go out, I travel, I make the most of my time here. I cherish every moment because I know I won't ever get this opportunity again. I'll come back to Europe, that's for sure, but I'll be a tourist, not a student studying and learning about the language and culture that I have come to love. I have a great life, and I can't complain that I have been giving this wonderful opportunity to study in another country. And I can't complain that I have such a wonderful boyfriend, parents, and friends that it breaks my heart to be away from them for 5/6 months. I live a blessed life and I am so grateful for it.
With my semester ending in less than a month, prepare yourself for a "Lessons Learned" blog post in the next few weeks. And then I will begin my next chapter: A month long trip visiting my boyfriend and his family in beautiful Sydney, Australia.
I apologize for how long this post was...sometimes I get carried away.
