First things first. I did not get the highest score on our English exam that we just got back the results of today.

But I wasn't expecting to. Just beacuse I speak/write/read/understand English perfectly doesn't mean I know what the verb "to swim" is in the pluperfect tense. Nor the future progressive, past conditional, imperative, or any other tense.

I still got the second highest score though, and my grade was basically perfect, so I don't really care about it.

It did leave me a little confused though. They're were other questions that I got "wrong" but I can't figure out why. And the way the teacher explained them to me, didn't make any sense. Plus I didn't really care to pester her about it, since my grade is basically perfect.

But can someone please tell me how the following sentences are "incorrect"??

1. The film is based on a book, but I didn't read it before I saw it.
2. When she got to the check-in desk, she realized that she forgot her passport.
3. Oh no! We missed the bus! I can see it down the road.
4. The team has won the competition three times in the past.
5. My father had four cars by the time he was 20.

Last Wednesday, November 10th, two of my neighbors, their cousin, Mateo, and I went to Real Madrid game. It was against Murcia, and Real Madrid ended up winning 5 to 1!

I had a really good time, and it was really fun, and after seeing how great it was, I think I'll have to go back for another game. About a week ago I finally wrote down my bucket list of things to do in Spain before I leave, and of course going to a game was on it.  That's one more down, and God knows how many more to go, as my list is constantly growing. But I think this is the first time in my life that I'm getting things done really quickly, but I guess it helps that they're all things I want to do really bad, so procrastination isn't an option.

The other things that I've already crossed off are to go to the Toro and the Parque de Atracciones. And other one's will get crossed off soon, like to visit Toledo, and make a dinner for my host family (Thanksgiving).

Here are some of my favorite ones I've written down so far:

• Learn to like tomato (Tomatoes have always looked so good, but I've never liked the taste, and since they're used in so many foods here, I figure I might as well try to learn to like tomato, and actually, I'm starting to enjoy it already)
• Visit every Metro station in the centro (So far I've been to 123 out of 194)
• Fail a class (What? I've never done it before, and it's sure to happen here. It's a good life experience, right?)
• Be able to use Spanish slang without sounding like a retard that's trying too hard
• Go to Barcelona
• Understand at least one entire class of Philosophy

Here are some of the pictures I took from the game:



From left to right: Me, Mary Beth, & Catherine.




Yep. It was Kanye West that did the interupting. Go figures... But at least Taylor Swift isn't alone now, right?

But no, it was definitely planned. And it was a cool surprise for all of us because no one knew that he'd be there.

After Kanye sang one song, and Thirty Seconds to Mars resumed and then finished, it was Katy Perry's turn.


She sang a bunch of her songs, but the best one by far was her performance of her new song Firework, which is the one that aired live. She's doesn't sing particularly good live, but when fireworks started going off every which direction, it made it one of the most memorable songs of the night for me.

Here's the video clip of the song from the show:


MTV saved the best for last with Linkin Park. I don't know what it is, but people here seem to be completely obsessed with Linkin Park, and when they came on the crowd went absolutely insane.

Linkin Park's performance was also the longest, lasting over an hour. It was like it was their own concert since they played so many songs. Just song after song after song.

And actually it was more than that two, because since we were waiting for so long before the concert, we actually saw their practice session and soundcheck, and it was funny since all of the artists only speak English, and the majority of the crowd doesn't really understand it, not many people knew what they were saying in between songs.

After the sound check, Linkin Park's lead singer said "Wow guys, thank you all so much. I think that's the most cheering, and the biggest crowd I've ever experienced for just a soundcheck." Mary Beth, Catherine, and I were the only ones near us that thought it was funny. And then we thought it was even funnier because that's when we realized that no one understood anything. I think it'd be so annoying to always be listening to music that you can't understand the meaning to, but that's what it's like for almost everyone here.

Linkin Park was definitely my favorite. They were the best performers live, and they're my favorite out of the four people that we got the chance to see. I'm actually surprised that I have my voice today because we definitely sang along to everything, and cheered a lot in between.




Here's the video of Linkin Park's Waiting for the End, which is the one that got aired for them:


The whole night was one of the most fun days I've had since I've been here, and definitely one of the coolest concerts I've ever been too, especially since we were so close and right in the middle of it all!

I had a lot of fun over here celebrating my seventeenth birthday over the weekend, but to be honest, I'm kind of glad that it's over (I'll get to why in a second).

Friday night I celebrated my birthday with my friends from school, almost my entire class of thirty something kids came, plus some kids from other classes, and so there must've been about forty people there. It was really fun and it was really social, and I got to talk to a lot of the kids in my class for a while and get to know them better, which is really cool because now this week I've been hanging out with a lot of them, and not just the group of kids I joined originally.

Then Saturday night, most of us in AFS in Madrid took a bus together to a little town about 45 minutes outside of Madrid named Soto del Real because that day was the birthday of a girl in AFS named Pinja from Finland. She had a party at her house, and she had some of her Spanish friends there too. We spent the whole night listening to music, and socializing, and dancing.

One of the best parts of the night was when the Spanish kids taught us the dances to Spanish songs, and we taught them the dances to some American songs, including the YMCA, the Hokie Pokie, the ChaCha Slide, Cotton-Eyed Joe, and we attempted Square Dancing, but it didn't work out too well..

Sunday, we had Marta's sister and her family, and Zeke, another AFSer from Missouri over for lunch, and then I got to Skype with my family, Rita, Uncle Jeff, Aunt Amy, Taylor, Madison, and Cameron, and I opened up the birthday present my family sent to me in front of them. I got a lot of Reese's and Peanut Butter M&Ms, which is good because neither exist here (Nor does Cherry Coke which I'm still trying to find). They also sent me Thanksgiving dinner supplies because I'm going to cook a Thanksgiving dinner for my host family.

Never take American supermarkets for granted, because whenever I want to cook something here, I can never find the supplies. A couple weeks ago, I wanted to make burritos, but we couldn't find refried beans. A few days after that we ended up going to a Mexican restaurant, and they had no idea what refried beans are. Hmmm...

Finally on Monday, (November 1st is a national holiday here so I was lucky to not have school on my birthday) I woke up and carved a pumpkin with Mateo. It was a day late, but who cares. Mateo really liked it, it was the first pumpkin he'd ever carved in his life! (Halloween barely exists here).  Then Marta, Mateo, Sara, Jorge, and I went to a Japanese restaurant for my birthday lunch, that night for dinner, Laura (my host cousin) and Sara came over for dinner, and they put candles in a pan of brownies for me to blow out.


There was a slight problem with that however..


If you look at the bottom of the candles, this is what happens when you put them in right after a cake, brownies or whatever right when it gets out of the oven.

It took us a while to notice that though. They put the candles in, sang me Happy Birthday, cut it up, and then we noticed that it looked like the brownies came with a filling. Though unfortunately not of frosting..

We all just laughed about it though. The wax was easy enough to pick out, and the brownies still tasted really good.

But now here's why I'm kind of glad it's all over. This is the first time since I've been here that I've actually legitimately missed everybody. Yeah I've missed people, but not enough that it was always on my mind or whatever. Thankfully it didn't last very long, just a day or so, but it put things into perspective for me. Apparently it's not quite as easy as it had seemed to just walk away from your nice, secure, normal life and move to a new place to start all over.

Another random thing is that now, in the two days I've been at school this week so far, I've already been asked about 29384398423847 times from random people if I had to repeat a grade. Why? Because here they decide what year you start school by the calender year, not the school year. Here I'm in the class of 1994 because it's the second to last year, just like I would be in the U.S. as a Junior. So now that I'm 17, and everyone else is 15 turning 16, people think I had to repeat a grade, which is not good for my ego. :)

But I guess it's completely normal for kids to repeat grades here. Today I learned that a few of the kids in my class are actually 18, which means they had to repeat two grades. And no one feels ashamed or embarrassed by it either. It's just perfectly normal, which is weird because back home, I would be so embarrased if I had to do Junior year or whatever two or three times over.

Oh and one last note: Is it just me, or does it seem really weird that I just had my last birthday as a kid?
(Sorry if that scares anyone)