I don't have a title for this.

Hey guys!

I want to start with the concrete, actual stories before getting into the varying speed of time, so here goes.

This past Wednesday, we got a snow day! I, of course found out about this at a dreadfully early 7:00am (since I normally get up at around 8:15am here, that feels waaay too early) when I heard the gasps (yes, literally gasps) from my host sisters' room. By 7:30am (again, this is reaaaly early) I was out the door in inadequate snow boots and ruffled hair. I hung out with one group of friends until the started walking to the edges of town, where the hills are way to steep to walk on with shoes that don't stop slipping, and then I found a different group of friends who were (thankfully) being lazier. So I want with them and we watched some shows (turns out day-time TV isn't better here in Spain than it is across the pond), and then we all sort of drifted off to our respective houses. Unfortunately, that was the end of snow-day excursions for me, I fell really ill that afternoon, and am indeed still recovering. 

Another funny story, though this is more of a generic representation of a conversation that has happened a bunch of different times with various boys in my class.

Them (to someone near by): Ask her if she knows how to say "spoon" in English.

Me: Spoon.

Them (still to the someone near by): She understands Catalan?

Me and the someone near by: Yeah. Duh. Catch up. 

The underlined text is in Catalan.

So that happens with more frequency than one might expect, but it doesn't bug me. It would be way worse if they thought I spoke more than I did (which happens to some of my fellow AFSers here in Catalonia).

So now on to the varying speeds of time.

Picture this: You are sitting in catalan class (where the teacher hasn't even bothered to learn your name, and clearly has no intention of giving you a grade or work in the class) watching the seconds tick by and you are thinking to yourself how it would be a miracle if this class ended before you are fifty. 

So this is a fairly common situation I find myself in, although just in Catalan class, the other are far more interesting, and here, I see time passing slowly, like molasses in January.

This view of time is pretty common, though sometimes of the scale of "this week" or "this year abroad" but it is all the same basic view of time. 

The other way that time moves is fast, like out-of-control skis sliding unimpeded down the slopes. This can happen on the scale of "this year abroad" or "before i leave for college" or "my life" (though strangely I never have this problem in Catalan class).

The cool thing about this is that officially, its an optical illusion, since seconds don't ever actually take longer than other ones. But take away the human concept of time, and you are left with just your perception of things. A year can fly by and feel a short as a really dragged on Catalan class.

So that's my take on that. 

Hope you guys are having a good start to the month of February, and I will post again when I have more fun stuff to tell you guys!

The Halfway Mark

I MADE IT!! 

Well, I half made it. And that means a pie celebration! There is a bit of a debate about what kind I should make: pecan or apple, and so the compromise that they came up with (without, of course, consulting me) was that I would just make two pies. :)

Since my life has been pretty uneventful, I have only two things to recount (and they're both theater-y).

The first was last Wednesday. I went with my school to Barcelona to see "Mar i Cel". I'm not sure it plays in English, but for anyone out there who speaks Catalan, PLEASE do yourself a favor and see it. It is truly amazing. One of the most impressive things about the play is the ginormous boat that it takes place on, which has ropes from which they do acrobatics and even a compartment underneath, where they hold prisoners. Now, let me tell you, if this is impressive from the audience, it was even more impressive when they let us (just my school) go up on stage and climb on it. It was AWESOME!

The other theater thing was this past Wednesday, and it was hilarious! It was here in my town, so the theater was tiny, but it was in English! The two actors were actually british, and were delighted to here about my exchange. The beginning was a bit boring, their movements were highly over exaggerated to compensate for the mediocre english level here. But then, they started picking people from the audience, and when you see the quietest kid in the class playing a "sexy waiter" it's definitely worth the two euros we paid.

That's kind of it, just one more thing to show y'all.

I got my hair cut!

(Sorry for the bad photo, I'm not photogenic.)

Baby It's Cold Outside

Let me begin by apologizing for the tardiness and even more for leaving things on such a sour note.
Things have, however, been looking up and since my last post I have been great!
First, immediately after the last post came a very fun couple of days where we went to a few different Christmas markets. We loaded up the trailer with four kids (myself included), two parents, some bread and cheese, and two iPods full of music, and we embarked on the journey to a town called Vic. This sounds probably more dramatic than it actually was but confined spaces and this family are not always the best of friends. But this time (and I'm not a big believer in miracles so I will put it down to the Christmas spirit) no one yelled. No one. For more than 24 hours. Anyways, the Christmas markets were, well, Christmas-y, and we had fun wandering around the decked-out streets, tasting all of the free stuff possible.
A couple of weeks later, I had one of the best excursions since I've been here. I went with my school to a football (soccer) game in Barcelona. From the fact that we won 8-1 (I think, I can't really remember), to eating popcorn under a really warm blanket with my friends, to climbing to the very highest point where we could see the whole stadium, the night was just really magical.
Until the next day. We had gotten back at two o'clock in the morning and school was not waiting for anyone (not even the 80% of the student body who were zombies after only sleeping a couple of hours). However, even the sleepiness of the day after couldn't mar the happiness of the previousness evening.
Next up on the list of fun December things is the scavenger hunt/intercultural lunch that we did with AFS in Barcelona. We all met up and split up into groups. They then gave us little clues as to where we had to go to get the next clue. Unfortunately, like most AFS things they sort of lacked organization, and while we ended up seeing a lot of Barcelona and having fun, there was a pronounced lack of motivation towards the end. The lunch was amazing though. Every kid and some families brought a dish that they like from their home country. I brought chocolate chip cookies and biscuits, both of which were gobbled up pretty fast.
After that came Christmas Eve and an awesome (albeit very strange) celebration. Here goes. It starts a couple of weeks before Christmas when the log (called the tió) comes to the door. We then put it in the hallway and every night the little kids put a bowl of food for it to eat over night. It's not a picky eater, anything from the typical apple to popcorn to really whatever works just fine. Then, when the log is finally full and ready to poop (which happens on Christmas Eve) the actual celebration begins. The kids are sent to the kitchen to pray and sing Christmas carols (if they don't do this, they won't get presents), and then when the adults call us back into the living room, we begin to beat the logs with sticks and sing a song. The lyrics are not very poetic, they consist mostly of commanding the log to poop adequate presents and threatening it with an even worse beating if it doesn't. Happy Christmas. But anyways, when the singing is done we open what can only be called a butt hatch and lo and behold, a great pile of presents come out! It is truly as strange as it sounds and I spent the vast majority of the night laughing my head off, but I suppose that's a good thing.
Christmas day is really only a day to recover from the excess of candy eaten the night before (a bit like November 1st in the U.S.).
The next noteworthy event was "cap d'any" or New Year's Eve. Now, one of the most obvious cultural differences between here and there becomes apparent on nights like this where there is an abundance of parties. That is that teenagers (about 15 years and older) have curfews of between 3:00am and 5:00am. It is basically unheard of to leave earlier than that and I when I finally ended up on the walk home with some of my friends who live nearby, we were also joined by parents, and even grandparents who were just coming home from their respective gatherings. What? If you walk outside in the suburbs at 3:30am (even on New Year's Eve) you are most certainly not going to see you 75 year old neighbor walking home. But anyways, welcome to Catalonia!
I actually had a really good time, people are really happy around here, especially on party nights. :)
The next and final fun thing to happen before the dreaded return to school was the 5th of January, the day/night of the Kings.
The procession starts at nightfall, the streets full of eager children and parents. You hear in the distance loud, regal music, and slowly three carriages come into view. Perched on each one is one of the three kings. The kings throw candy to the audience (which kind of hurts if it hits you on the head) and you can hardly walk because there are children crawling everywhere to get the fallen candy. This year, there was a slight snafoo involving the size of the carriage and an archway they had to get through, but in the end they all squeezed through. Then, once in the main square of the town, the kings make a speech and throw some more candy before everyone goes home. But wait! There's more! Once we are all home, a king personally comes to each house bringing gifts! I got a very cool watch, and a bunch of rubik's cubes (for my sister and I to share). They also brought me and my two host sisters matching scarves (beautiful).
That's about it as far as celebrations, I want to reiterate that I am NOT having a terrible time here, the problem is that the urge to write comes mostly on bad days, so unfortunately you guys here more about that then the good. This isn't a very good excuse, but there you have it.
Thank you guys for bearing with me and I hope you all had a really awesome holiday season!!!

P.S. The title is very true here, it is usually in the 30s (farenheit) not counting windchill. The problem is that there is no precipitation so it doesn't snow...

HoneyNut Cheerios

You may be wondering how exactly I came to be wandering around this tiny town alone, crying and eating HoneyNut Cheerios out of the box at 9:00pm on a Saturday, but then again, so was I.
I guess this story starts with Thanksgiving. After chatting with my family on the actual day of, which was hard enough in and of itself, I then made a sort of spanish-rendition of Thanksgiving dinner for my host family on Saturday. Apart from making me appreciate the work that the adults in my family do every year to make that happen, it was a pretty hard day in my life here abroad. Every detail that was different seemed to scream at me that I am all alone, a world away from everything I love. So, even though the dinner itself was pretty successful, it made for a less-than-joyful start to what would become an ever-worsening week.
The next blow came on my Dad's birthday. It was the first time in my life that I hadn't been able to be with him for his birthday, which was so very much harder than I had expected. I missed burning chocolate chip cookies for him, I missed the feeling of Christmas season officially getting here that his birthday always brings, and I missed my Dad, and everything that makes him the best dad anyone could ask for.
Before I could have a moment to breathe, of course, I had a piano recital to deal with, and all of the stress that goes along with that. Now, I'm not exactly a new-comer to the whole piano-recital thing, but somehow having to play in a whole different setting, while knowing half the audience is a little bit more stressful than I had anticipated. I did do OK, even though my fingers shook for a good fifteen minutes after I stopped playing.
This brings us to Saturday.
I started off pretty good, standing outside for 4 hours (in 3-degrees- celsius weather) with my class selling pastries at a Christmas market in the town's main square, and hanging laundry out to dry once I got home. After my fingers and toes finally warmed up, I spent the afternoon in a sort of cold-induced limbo, where going outside seems unthinkable, but the house just seems to shrink and shrink and shrink until it feels unbearably small.
I'm not sure exactly sure what triggered my sizable mental breakdown, whether it was the violent outburst of screaming coming from one of the little boys' rooms, my host sister and I's misunderstanding, or a combination of the two, but I suddenly felt the very panicky need to get out.
So I did.
I wrapped myself up in a couple of jackets, a couple of pairs of socks, and a couple more scarves, and I went for a walk. I took some random turns until I finally got myself lost on the hilly cobblestone streets and then set out to find my way home. On the way, I came across the church, which was still holding mass, a really quiet little square where someone had put up cute little Christmas lights, and a creepy statue, which I'm quite confident will still be giving me nightmares twenty years from now. When I finally got back to a street I really recognized, I headed over to the grocery store and found (to my great delight) that there was one last, lonely box of HoneyNutCheerios standing in the cereal isle.
I of course grabbed it at once, and headed back out into the cold air, and began eating them right there. I'm pretty sure I looked like a crazy person, and almost definitely somebody I know saw me, but at that moment, with Fall Out Boy's song Sugar, We're Going Down Swinging playing a little too loud in my ears, I could not care less.

PICTURES

I'm So I haven't posted in a little while, mostly because I haven't had a whole lot to write about it. It has been requested that I post some pictures of my town and life here so here goes.

Alright, from the very beginning. This is the train station in Madrid, where I was with AFS. 

These last three are from the second or third day when I hiked up a mountain with a group of friends to support Catalonian independence.

9/11 in Barcelona where they "celebrate" the anniversary of the day Catalonia lost the war against Spain. As you can see, it involves festive costumes.

Selfies with the sisters :)

Paella is as good as you've ever heard and better.

The childrens and the grandpa at a birthday. They're SO CUTE!!

The back porch.

Playmobils galore!

A neighboring town. Gorgeous!

Yay for beach days!

Panallets: sweet little candy-like treats made of sugar clouds and happiness. 

My class and I did this fundraiser where we sold baked goods and chestnuts to raise money for our end of school trip.

The beautiful Montserrat cathedral.

SAGRADA FAMILIA (aka another gorgeous cathedral)

The next pictures are some of my favorite from this (very European) town, enjoy!

So we ended with a nice sunset, ain't that sweet? 

Ok, so those were some of my favorite photos of my time here thus far, I hope you enjoyed them and I really will try to be more punctual with my blogging.

Adios!

Things Going Abroad Has Taught Me

• Flying internationally with 20ish other students with equally heavy luggage and equal clueless-ness has very few perks.
• One of those perks is that friends are made quickly under that kind of pressure.
• Shared interest helps too.
• Friends don't necessarily need to speak the same language, smiles and pointing to food is really enough to connect about.
• The Zurich airport is stunning.
• The Madrid one, not so much.
• AFS orientations are fairly the same even internationally.
• Spiral staircases are really hard to lug luggage up.
• Unpacking your clothes, toiletries, etc. makes a place feel like home pretty fast.
• Not too fast, of course.
• European plugs are a pain, or I guess just the conversion.
• Starting school in another language/country/culture is very stressful.
• People are never as bad as you think.
• Being bored for hours upon hours upon hours of classes provides a lot of time for doodling-skills improvement.
• Not enough, however, to produce any actually good artwork.
• Harry Potter rocks.
• Smells can be really reminiscent of home, and can cause a huge amount of heartache if, say, your having a bad day.
• Letters that your parents may have written WILL bring you to tears every single time you read them.
• Hot chocolate is oh-so-much better in Spain.
• The holidays in other countries, however different, are often still pretty rad.
• I can use basically any word I want (see above "rad") while speaking english, and people think I am sooooo cool.
• I do not want to learn English as a second language, its really hard.
• What having siblings is like, the good, and the really-really-oh-so-very-much-not-so-good.
• How to sit my butt in a chair, work for three hours, and get exactly no words written.
• Just because "Spain" is associated with "warmth" does not mean that it doesn't get butt-freezing cold here in the winter. It does.
• A good scarf is essential for keeping warm.
• A good scarf is also great for fashion.
• Pizza is universal.
• I like running.
• There is such thing as too much nutella.
• There is also such thing as too many 1000 year old castles, although I have not yet hit my limit.
• Sometimes, the differences between people go beyond "cultural differences", you might actually not get along with them. 
• And that's OK.
• Just don't be a jerk.
• Because then the exchange student you were a jerk to might write about you in her blog, and no one wants that. 
• Making lists is a very fun pastime for a friday night when you are dead tired and just want to eat dinner and go to bed.
• If you just want to eat dinner and go to bed, get your butt out of the chair where you are sitting writing a blog, go make dinner, and then go to bed.
• It is very important to wish your blog-readers good night before leaving them hanging with a non-captioned list.
• It is OK to break the rules occasionally.

Halloween Doesn't Exist

Dear Halloween,
     I am writing to you today to tell you that, in the course of my study abroad here in Catalonia, I have discovered that your reaches are more limited than I had previously imagined. In the stereotypically American way, I had assumed that the holiday I celebrate was somewhat universal, and have now learned that no, thank you very much, it is not. In fact, the people here are actually a little bit offended when others bring up Halloween, replying with a rather haughty, "No, it's Castanyada."
     What is Castanyada? you ask, shocked to hear that you are not quite so powerful as you would have liked to believe. Well, I'll tell you. Castanyada, for those of you who speak Catalan, is just what is sounds like: The Celebration of Castanyas (chestnuts). People eat copious amounts of these delicious, slightly musky nuts in the week coming up to Castanyada, as well as Panellets (I don't know if all these capitalizations are necessary, but I'm gonna keep on keepin' on until someone tells me I shouldn't and seeing as how I speak English better than the whole town, I don't think a lot of intervention is coming my way). Panellets are made with ground nuts, sweet potatoes, egg, water, and sugar, and are formed in to little cookies that are either spheres, mushroom-shaped, or in logs. They are then coated in whatever you want (the most typical and possibly most delicious being pine nuts) and baked in the oven to absolute cookie perfection.
     So all of that is the more traditional sense of the Castanyada, but what it means to us modern-folk is all of that, plus a huge party on the 31 of October. Now, hearing what I've heard about Spanish parties, I was a bit apprehensive about going, but I did (because EVERYONE goes) and the one thing I wasn't expecting happened: I had a lot of fun. They play a mix of English music (which is great because people just keep asking me if I understand and then look really amazed when I say I do) and Spanish music (which is great because it's spanish and great). I asked my host parents what time I should be home by, and was really, really surprised when they said 3:00am, sorry for the early curfew. But then, somehow, wandering the streets of the town, and dancing ridiculously with friends, the hours passed by quickly, and I was so surprised when 3:00 came and I was one of the first ones to leave. Anywho, (I don't know how to spell that word, but I really want to use it, sooooooooo) I had a really good time, and any anxiousness I was feeling completely dissipated.\
     Although you may be feeling a little jealous of all the attention I am giving another holiday, this is actually good for me, because it prevented me from being homesick for the lovely Halloween party that takes place at my house in the U.S. every year, even though at times I do still miss it.
Hope you had a satisfactory turn out of young-ins dressed as hooligans this year,
Love always,
Fogg

Dear School,
I GOT A 7 ON MY SPANISH TEST WOOHOO!!!!
Love/Hate (you know our relationship),
Fogg

Dear Catalonia,
Your vote for independence is coming up quickly. Although your people are divided as to whether or not you should have independence from Spain, yellow bandanas are going up all over town in support for you, all over the region.
I understand that the politics behind this all is very complicated, and that, as of the last time I checked, the vote is actually illegal, but I think it is worth a shot to try.
Also, you have a very interesting culture as far as languages go. I'm sure you already know this, but I am just learning and it is still quite surprising at times. Although the vast majority of the people here speak Catalan, if there is one person in a group who needs to speak Spanish, everyone switches. Also, if you speak to someone in Spanish, people will answer in Spanish. These are both very well and good, until you are trying to learn Catalan, and people are not very compliant... I am working out tricks to get people to speak in Catalan to me (by the way it is a beautiful language), and I am learning more and more everyday.
Thank you for hosting me,
Fogg

Dear Readers,
I cannot quite believe the statistics (I have over 1,000 page views from places like China, Germany, Russia, Canada, and Spain) but I would like to thank you all for reading my still-slightly-clusmly attempts at blogging, and for all the amazing comments that make my day(s). Be sure to check back semi-regularly (seeing as how that is the frequency with which blogposts appear)!
Love,
Fogg