hey,sorry i haven´t written in awhile. theres too much to write i don´t know where to begin. im safely in santander. jose and manolita, my host parents, are very nice. the bus ride was fine. we watched movies and i took a cab to manolitas place. i entered the wrong building and some guy was mad at me for waking him up but i finally found their home. they´´re wonderful people. jose fell out in the street awhile ago, he´s banged up pretty bad, but hes doing fine. manolita is so nice. when i arrived i ate paella, yesterday for lunch i had paella and fillete con papas fritas (meat with french fries basiaally) and for dinner i had tortilla. she is an amazing cook. my room is so nice. its an upstairs room and i even have my own bathroom too! jose used to draw up blueprints and building plans for architects, but he is retired now since nowadays computers and CAD do all that sort of thing.
last night jose and manolitas daughter, elena, and her husband came over so i got to meet them. there´s so much write. i could sit here and write for days about all of it, luckily a journal is required for this program so i will write everything down.
i had a test this morning, i think i did okay. today i will probably go to the beach with some people because the weather is beautiful and when there´s nice weather in santander you have to t ake advantage of it.
i have a four day weekend coming up and my friend, kelley and i, were talking about going to the canary islands maybe. the four day weekend is in october.
speaking with jose and manolita is kind of rough. they can understand me for the most part. i understand what they say but when they ask me questions i can´t really understand. i fee l like im doing well though. everyone here is very nice. the teachers are awesome and i think classes are going to be really fun.
im also going to get involved in some sort of club. its required and it should be a lot of fun. the clubs are cheap because they´re subsidized and i can take a cooking class or do a sports club. for my program im required to be in a club.
right now i´m writing this post in the paraninfo of downtown Santander. yesterday i walked to find the university and i walked past the stadium when a futbol game was about to start. i couldn´t go because i didn´t have the cash on me, but i will go to a futbol game before i come home. the people here drive crazy! they park crazy too. when they´re rounding corners they have the pedal to the medal with they´re tires screeching. everyone rides little vespas too. they all park their cars up on the sidewalks ( i guess they probably have to replace their axles frequently), but anyway yesterday when i was walking home from the stadium i was the only one walking that direction. pretty much the whole city (and this isn´t a small city there´s around 200 thousand people living in santander) were ALL going to the stadium. i would have gone to the game but i didn´t have enough money and i was alone. so it´s on my to do list.
