So, I´ve been here a week, but it certainly doesn´t feel like just one week. It´s probably because of all the things I´ve done in the past few days (it seems as though I only have two weeks left to live...) and the siestas. It´s like the morning and afternoon is one day, siesta, and then the evening and night is another whole days (much shorter of course, but some days have felt that short).
Anyway, there´s so much to tell, I probably won´t be able to share everything.. I´ve been to San Sebastian 3 or 4 times (I can´t exactly remember right now) and it´s a very very beautiful city. We went to watch the waves crashing against the beach and this other area where there´s a big sidewalk type thing that is about 2 meters above the ocean and sort of goes out into the ocean past the beach, but its still attached to lland. It´s pretty hard to describe, but anyway, there were waves that were around 4 meters tall, it was insane.. But very beautiful.
School started too, and since everything is taught in Euskara (basque language) for the most part I´ve been pretty confused. I was put into a few classes with kids that failed the class or need more attention, which is pretty helpful, but at the same time the kids are a ot louder and rowdier, so it´s harder to focus. Then again, the work is easier, so there´s a balance. My teachers have been pretty accomodating. I have two textbooks that are in Castillian instead of Euskara and a few of them talk to me in Castillian too. Overall, it´s not so bad, but we´ll have to see how things go in the next few weeks, as I´ve only had 4 days of school. Of course, English is pretty boring for me, but I suppose I couldn´t expect anything better.
I had my first AFS orientation yesterday. It was in Bilbao (an hour´s drive, but after the 6 hour bus drive from Madrid to San Sebastian, it seemed like nothing). I didn´t get to see a lot of the city, but there´s plenty of time for that. The orientation itself was just about going over the rules (for the 50th time, but that shows how important they really are) and talking a little bit about first impressions. After we were introduced to our ¨tutors¨ (liasons, aka the AFS volunteer that we can contact at any time for help or questions or problems etc) we went downstairs and we got to talk to eachother (the AFSers to eachother and the host parents as well). I talked to a girl from Canada for a while who live in San Sebastian, and we ended up getting along pretty well, so I think we´ll probably spend some time together in the future (its a 10 minute train ride, so its pretty convenient).
As for the everyday things, I can pretty much understand everything people say in Castillian, except when they talk reallly really quickly, which I guess is a lot of the time. The food is great and I don´t mind the different mealtimes. Everybody spends time in the living room and not too much time on the computer. With that said, the world cup of basketball final is on right now, and it´s the first time Turkey is in the final (Turkey vs. USA). I´m going to watch it with my host father, so I´ll write more next week.
