Blogging is kind of like a chore.

I have some free time and I feel bad about not updating on this yet, so... hear you go.

We went to Madrid last Friday for a field trip. I enjoyed it, we walked around as a group and saw where all the museums/palaces/cathedrals are. Madrid is a beautiful city, expensive but beautiful. The day after that my Spanish bro (the one that is my age) was refereeing a soccer match, so I tagged along and tried to communicate with the Spaniard next to me in the audience. I successfully told him the score at halftime, thank you very much, and also I learned that Spaniards love it when people visit their country- this man was very happy to hear that I was studying in his hometown. I think a lot of times we feel unwanted in other countries because we travel around in packs of Americans, speaking our foreign language and looking very intimidating to the locals. Think about it- when you see a pack of Chinese people at college, are you interested in going up to them and welcoming them to the USA? No, you look at them once or twice, which can easily be interpretted by them as us being snooty Americans. Or something along those lines.

Classes here seem to be on the ridiculously easy end of the spectrum. This may be a result of the teachers just trying to go really really slow, as we are all still adjusting to the language change and to Spanish life in general, but either way I'm not working very hard thus far. The interesting thing is that I am learning a ton, in fonetics, Spanish history and culture, or whatever else I study, and I'm really enjoying it. Which leads me to a mindblowing question... why doesn't this happen anywhere else in my life? Why in every other instance don't I learn a lot and enjoy it? And why does it take so much more work to get such a smaller amount of satisfaction? These are questions to which I have no answers, I won't even try.

Such are the woes of my life... outside of schoolwork, my life here has been very social, much more than I thought it would be. I figured I'd awkwardly sit in my room a lot, but I don't! Most of my free time is spent either eating with my Spanish family or out with the other students from my program. So that's good news. Hopefully I can keep the English-speaking to a minimum, so as to learn more Spanish. Given that my whole purpose in being here is to learn the language, I think that's a reasonable aim.

Also, we are supposed to talk in Spanish and only Spanish the whole trip, even to each other within the program. We had to sign a contract and everything, which I intend to take mildly seriously- I'll be the guy who responds to English comments in Spanish.

I don't know how to segway into this next part so I'll just go straight into it: the other night my Spanish brothers were asking me something at the dinner table- "Has visto ______" (Have you seen_____?). I couldn't figure out what they were saying, until finally one of them got a good enough American accent together to stutter "Star Wars?"

(DISCLAIMER: if you didn't already know I am a nerd you are about to find out that indeed I am)

Well, I told them, of course I've seen Star Wars. For one thing my dad loves it, and for another thing I was raised on it. I'm pretty sure I have been both Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker at some point for Halloween. So anyways, after dinner I usually just go straight to bed, but that night we watched Starwars episode III in Spanish, and I gotta tell you, I do not regret it. First of all, I found it hilarious that they called R2-D2 "erre dos!" the whole time. After declining some "hashis" from my Spanish bro, which I can only guess is hash, we got into a discussion of the plot holes within the movie, as well as our moral objections (for example, how can somebody "lose the will to live" when they have two newborn babies to raise?? Madness!).

Anyways, now that you all have had a glance into the past couple weeks for me, it is time that I bid you adieu for the time being. La cena is almost ready and I refuse to be late. ¡Hasta luego y buena suerte!