My classroom, chalkboard and all.


My first trimester of school just finished, so I thought I'd share with you all how I did.

I definitely wouldn't be happy with these grades back home, but for here, for having nine classes in another language, in just the first three months, I'm pretty happy with how I did. I even failed a few, so I can cross that one off my bucket list.

The grading system here is 0 through 10, 10 being the best, and 5-10 are passing grades. But it's also different because here, for example, 7 and 8 are considered to be really good grades, because 9's and 10's a really hard to get. But in the States, a 7 would be a C, and an 8 a B, which more average than good.

I passed 6 classes, and failed 3, but I still have the chance to recuperate the failed classes with upcoming tests, or at the end of the year, so it's not set in stone quite yet.

So here are my trimester grades as they stand so far, best to worst (with a little comment):

1. English:   10 (no surprise there)
2. Physical Education:   9 (easy enough)
3. Technology:   9 (easy enough)
4. Economics:   8 (the grade I'm the most proud of)
5. Sciences of the Contemporary World:   5 (scraped by)
6. Spanish Language & Literature:   5 (thank you sympathetic teacher)
7. Mathematics:   4 (the teacher enjoys failing kids)
8. History of the Contemporary World:   4 (just barely, next trimester I'll get it)
9. Philosophy:   4 (what?! complete luck. didn't study once.)

Literally, in English, it means "The Fucking Turkey", but, it's what our Thanksgiving turkey came to be known as. Why? Because after a series of events caused our Thanksgiving dinner date to change a few times, El Puto Pavo came to be more of a liability than something to enjoy.

At first, the dinner was planned for Friday, because I didn't want to take on the challenge on a school night. But then, Thursday night, Alfonso came home with two things- the news that he'd have to travel on Friday for work, and a full chicken. We then had two birds waiting in the fridge, and the date was moved to Saturday. But that was when I dipped out.

I've been spending quite a bit of time lately with the family of Marta's sister, Paula. There's Paula, her husband Miguel, their three kids Claudia (13), Gabriela (10), and Martin (7), and they also have, more or less, and exchange student, Ben, but he's 20, and an intern at the AFS office here in Madrid. He's from Germany and he studied abroad in the San Francisco area a few years ago.

But anyways, they had to go this weekend to Valencia, a city of the eastern coast of Spain, on the Mediterranean, south of Barcelona, and I ended up going with them.

And so again, El Puto Pavo had to wait some more.

But I am so glad that I decided to go with them. Valencia is an absolutely beautiful city.


When we first arrived, the first thing that we did was drive to the beach to eat some paella. Valencia is where the famed Spanish dish originates from, so of course that's what we had to have. It also felt so good to see the ocean again, since the chance of finding a large, natural body of water in Madrid is like...nonexistant.


We ordered two types of paella, the original, and one with arroz negro (black rice), but it's actually colored with squid ink, and that was the best one.



Each pan is for four people. It's a ton of food, and it's traditionally just eaten right out of the pan, without plates, since the pan keeps it warm (I only know this because we had a tablewide argument about the "proper" way to eat paella).


Starting from the left, going around the table: Paula, Martin, Miguel, Gabriela, Claudia, Ben, Me, & Roser (Marta's oldest sister).

 After lunch, the adults and the kids went to an aquarium to watch a dolphin show, while Ben and I went out to wander around the city. At one point we found a bar to watch some soccer, and I found a nice piece of home nailed to the wall that made my night.




The next day was my favorite, though. We got up, and the sun was shining, and it was really warm (something that Madrid has been lacking for me, sufficient warmth) and we took bikes that the hotel had, and biked around the city.

Valencia has a huge park that takes up the space of where the river used to be (it's path got moved at some point), and it was incredible, with fountains, and sculptures, and jogging trails, soccer fields, rugby fields, a mountain biking course, a few skate parks, gardens, and who knows what else. It went on forever it seems like, and we didn't even ride through the whole thing.

Unfortunately though, I didn't fully understand exactly what the plan was before we left, so I left my camera back in the hotel, and don't have a single picture. On the bright side though, we're going back for Easter because Mateo's soccer team has a tournament there. I'm really excited to go back.

Finally on Monday, el Puto Pavo got the attention it deserved from me. I got home from school that day, ate lunch, and then spent the entire rest of the afternoon listening to music and cooking. I made the turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole, and a pumpkin pie.

I wasn't sure how I was going to get it all done, never cooking a whole Thanksgiving dinner by myself before, but surprisingly it did get done. And, if i do say so myself, it was pretty good.

But let me tell you, I have a whole new respect for everyone who's ever made a Thanksgiving dinner. It is a hell of a lot of work. It's a good thing I'm allowed to drink a glass of wine in this country, because I definitely needed it afterwards... :)

The turkey turned out good, the green bean casserole good, the pumpkin pie was square for lack of a circular dish, I didn't burn the gravy, and the mashed potatoes were..basically good.

The mashed potatoes really were the only thing that didn't turn out how I wanted, which is funny since it's like the easiest part. All I was trying to do was skip out on a little bit of manual labor (the mashing part) so I used this blender tool that Marta has. It turned the potatoes into more of a really thick soupy substance rather than light fluffiness, but whatever. They tasted the same, it was just a matter of texture.

We ate Thanksgiving with three other families, and when we sat down to eat, and everyone tried it, I was showered with compliment after compliment. I couldn't resist to joke with them, so I asked them, "so what other compliments can you give me?"

But they outsmarted me when one of them returned with, "well actually it's not that good, I mean, the stuffing did come out of a box..." But all in all it was a very enjoyable meal.

It could've been more enjoyable though, since we ate it while we watched El Clásico, the king of soccer games in Spain, Real Madrid versus Barcelona. I honestly didn't care who won (even though that's not something I let slip out, for safety reasons, you know..) I just wanted to watch a good game of soccer. And that is the last thing it was. Barcelona won 5-0. We turned it off after 4 because it was just so terrible to watch.

I think my meal made everything better though, and El Puto Pavo ended up being something very enjoyable.

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)

Definitely one of the more creative ways I've seen my name spelt here.

So after being here for over a month (which I still can't grasp that it's been that long already) I think it's time I finally put up a picture of host family, now that last night we finally took the first one that includes all of us.


Left to right: My host mom Marta, Me, host sister Sara, her boyfriend Jorge, host dad Alfonso, and host brother Mateo on the bottom.

Bull crossing signs are much more interesting than deer crossing. We even saw some wild bulls.