Hola Toledo!!

January 14, 2010

What a day. My flights were all on time and they actually managed to get both of my bags to Madrid, so all in all, a mostly good experience…Well, that’s besides getting searched by TSA and having my carry-on bag taken apart and searched. And the good experience doesn’t include having my carry-on bag checked while sitting at the Chicago airport terminal waiting for my flight, which was apparently too full to fit everyone’s carry-on. I still am in shock that my bag made it to Madrid.

After customs we went out of the Madrid airport and easily found Yuki who was waiting with a “Toledo” sign for us. We then boarded a coach bus and took off for Toledo, an hour-long bus ride. The ride was mostly uneventful, except for noticing that there are “Muebles” stores everywhere. How anyone could sell that much furniture was beyond us. We also saw quite a few Mercedes-Benz dealerships, although one had some…classy…dumptrucks outside of it. Spain definitely wasn’t what I thought it would be like, observing it during that bus ride. It’s very dry, and hardly anything was growing except for a random shrub here and there. The towns and suburbs seem to be very spread out, with lots of wide spaces in between them, but then the apartment buildings are all crammed together, usually connected.

Once we got to the Fundacion we checked in and then had lunch. I’m not quite sure what I ate. There was a yellow soup with potatoes, calamari, and other fish in it, I was not this dish’s biggest fan. Then there was another gravy-type sauce with chunks of what turned out to be bread in it, once again, not my favorite. There was also meat served with the meal, a type of pork-chop in a red sauce, which looked spicy but actually was pretty tasty and not spicy at all. They also served a cup of fruit soup (very good) and salad (with oil and vinegar as the dressing…not my favorite yet). There were also other pasta salad things that I did not have room to try.

After the meal we met and received a tour of the Fundacion. I’m planning on posting pictures later.

Right before we met our families (remember I was going on very, very, very little sleep during this whole day) we had a meeting where family information was gone over. A lot of topics were covered, and to be honest, I was way too tired to even keep an attention span or be able to translate the speaker’s rapid-fire Spanish…soo I’m doubting I got as much out of that as they wanted us to, but neither did anyone else.

I was so frightened to meet my parents. And go figure, I was the first to be called. A tall (about my height) guy (in his 50s? 60s?) stepped forward. I walked down the stairs (because we were previously upstairs) to meet him and got to do the infamous Spanish cheek kiss greeting, which actually didn’t go as bad or as awkwardly as I thought it would. We then went into the cafeteria again for treats, coffee, water, etc. Turns out my host-mom’s sister also does a homestay for this program, and so I was able to meet her and her and her student (Anna) sat at our table with us. We sat for quite a while chatting. It was almost impossible to understand what my host-dad was saying at first. His accent seems pretty thick (to me). But, eventually I got a little better at understanding, however speaking was a different matter. I think I was way too tired to even try speaking Spanish, so none of it came out right. The conversation flowed ok, and then we took a taxi ride to our apartments. The taxi ride was crazy. The roads in Toledo are so tiny that a car can barely fit through or make a turn. I thought we were going to scrape sides with so many things the whole time, but somehow we didn’t. I live exactly where I was looking at on Google maps! It’s a cute, 2-floor apartment with 3 bedrooms. I think this is the first time that I have ever had my own room. The first floor has a bathroom, kitchen, living room/dining area. Up the stairs to the left is my host-parent’s bedroom, and to the right is my bedroom, Olga’s (my 29 year old host sister) bedroom, and a bathroom. Olga and Matu (what I’m supposed to call her, not Matutina) work until 9 so it was just host-dad (not sure what I’m supposed to call him yet…oops) and I from about 5 until then. He’s very nice and showed me pictures of their past homestay girls and talked everything from US politics to the Haiti disaster to Spain’s history to their sheep farm in Leon. We still had a lot of confusions as he speaks no English except the random words he’ll cry out when I’m saying them, and I speak sketchy Spanish as of right now. However, overall, I would say that conversation went relatively well. Then we had a very awkward conversation about whether I should wear shoes in the house (I ended up not, and then getting made fun of by Olga’s boyfriend) and whether I wanted to continue talking, nap, or unpack. I chose to unpack. Once I was done he showed me around the neighborhood a bit, telling me where my bus picks up and drops off, and also where to buy school supplies. We continued to have awkward conversations until Olga returned with her boyfriend. Shortly after, Matu arrived home and, after opening the gift I gave them, set to making dinner. She said dinner would consist of pizza (“Do you like pizza? Yes.”) and soup (“ Do you like sopa? Yes.”). Well when dinner rolled around we ate soup, it consisted of tiny noodles, tinier than macaroni, and had a salty taste to it. I actually really liked the soup. Then we had pizza. Spanish pizza is nothing like American pizza. I still can’t believe of all the things I ate tonight that I had trouble getting pizza down. Pizza?! We had French bread with this thick sauce stuff (I forget the name) consisting of lettuce, tomatoes, onions, peppers, and some mystery ingredient that we never did get to translate right. This had an interesting taste, but was actually pretty good. Much better than the pizza by far. They then ate the cheese I brought (they just cut it off in one huge portion for each person to gnaw on…). I helped as much as I could with dishes before Matu chased me to bed (I am exhausted). My room is cute, a bright pink comforter on a pretty small bed, a desk and chair, and an armoir in the corner for my clothes. I like it. J

I don’t know if it’s because I’m so exhausted or because my family is nice enough to be like my family from home, but I do feel a bit homesick tonight. No time for that, though! I have to get up at 7:30am to get ready and catch my bus to school by 9!