I tried surfing for the first time this weekend. Of course, it was a miserable failure, but I couldn´t expect anything more. I went with a friend from AFS that´s living with a family in San Sebastian. We actually ended up spending more time eating than surfing, but I suppose that´s just the way things work around here.
I also watched a movie in San Sebastian (part of the festival de cine going on here) which happened to be in English. It´s called Invasion of the Body Snatchers, it was in black and white (made in 1956, I think). I thought it was a pretty good movie.. I´m going to see another movie this Friday. My host mom has been going to watch multiple movies a day on the days she doesn´t have to work. She´s an artist (photographer, not sure if I mentioned that already) so I suppose it´s pretty fitting that she´s interested in the festival. I find it pretty cool.
But anyway, that was my Sunday, a little more relaxed than Saturday. Saturday morning I watched my team´s soccer game (couldn´t play because of some papers that need to be sent to Madrid with my signature), saturday afternoon I watched a women´s proffesional game (superliga) and at night, I went to the stadium in San Sebastian to watch Real Sociedad (San Sebastian team) play against Real Madrid. Madrid won 2-1, but Real played really well, so I was content. Other than that, I got to see Ronaldo, Ozil, Khedira, Xabi Alonso, and many more... It was quite the experience.
As for school, which probably sounds a little less eventful than the weekends, things have been going alright. I have to make double the effort to understand what I´m learning (in Castellano, too, not even Euskera), and then to actually answer questions from the textbooks also takes an immense effort. Nevertheless, I find that I´ve been able to manage with most of the homework and the work during class. So far I haven´t missed or not been able to do a single assignment, so I think for my first few weeks of school I´m doing pretty well. I´m more eager to learn (Castellano, Euskera, and the stuff we´re learning in class too) than I ever have been. It´s really satisfying when in History class I understand what I´m reading in the textbook and I can reply to the questions about it, even if it does take me a lot more time than it would if I knew the language. I feel acclomplished after every assignment I finish, which I guess is pretty cool.
And as for the rest of my life here, everything´s going pretty smoothly. I was surprised to see on my watch that it was the 20th already. 10 days until October, wow. Day by day I learn more and more and understand more of the language, the culture and the lifestyle they have here. It takes me a while to fall asleep (no matter how tired I am) because I hardly have time to think, so when I lay down to sleep everything that I haven´t had time to think about during the day runs through my mind. I still find myself thinking about things that happened in America, but then again, I have only been away 20 days. I´m still transitioning from Tenafly to Urnieta. But, I can´t learn everything at once, so I´m not concerned about that. Poco a poco, as everyone here likes to tell me. Little by little, it will all fit together.
