Homestay...

When we had gotten our accommodation information, we received a map and a roommate. I had not yet met the girl that would become my roommate for 4 months, so I of course started asking around. Her name is Nicole and she goes to Indiana. She seemed very nice at first, so I was happy. The map I was given was zoomed far in so I couldn’t tell where I would be relative to everything else. So I asked Joaquin to help me find my house. When he saw where on the map I was he gave out a little laugh and pointed to LITERALLY the edge of the map (on another map of mine, I am not even on the map.) Oh well, at least there are other people in the program by me to walk with.
The day I moved into my home stay I got up early so that I could FINALLY buy a phone, which was perfect because everyone would be separated from now on. Finally I heard my Señora’s name (María Roman Coco) called for me to come forward. Nicole was not yet down so I was alone with her. She was so sweet though. Greeted me with a kiss on both cheeks and asked me about everything (definitely slowing down her normal talking pace). When Nicole got down we took a cab to our home stay. It’s an apartment in a cluster of identical apartment buildings. It’s very cute. There are six rooms: Nicole and I share a room, Maria’s bedroom, Tere’s (her daughter) bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, living room. The first thing I noticed about the kitchen was the actual leg of a pig out on the counter (in Spain, they don’t refrigerate how we do)
María is so funny and very motherly. She takes singing, guitar, and computer classes. So she is always very busy and isn’t home during the day much. Whenever she is home though she is always singing. When I had a horrible stomach ache from trying ham I told her and for three days she put me on a strict diet of bland foods so as not to upset it again. Now whenever I leave she tells me not to eat anything that would hurt my stomach. Since being here, the meals have overall been pretty good. I think María has finally come to understand that I don’t eat meat. It’s still served a lot but I just don’t eat that and then she remembers and says “I won’t say anything eat what you want to.” Before she would always say eat more eat more and Tere would tell her to leave us alone. Haha. They are very funny together. Tere is a police officer in training, but she just finished training and finds out where she will be working in a few days. I can tell it’s kind of a rough subject because Tere doesn’t want to leave her mom alone. Tere is very nice and talks to me a lot. Especially because for the first two weeks I had an intensive language session very early in the morning when she would be leaving for work.
There were twelve groups for the two-week session and two of the groups had 9am class. I of course was in one of those two groups. Thankfully, Jessica also had class that early and lives close, so we would walk the thirty-five minute walk everyday together. The intensive session was not bad. It was a lot crammed into a two-week period, but it was nice to get it over with so quickly. My other good friend here Chrisy had the same teacher right after me, so we could go to our outside of class assignments together. One assignment was to go to a movie called “La Mujer del Anarquista” so we went to a matinee showing on a Saturday. We bought bags filled of gummies, which you can mix your own from drawers and drawers FILLED with different kinds of gummies. When we walked into the theater we were actually in the front of the room underneath the screen. It was so awkward; thankfully no one else was in there.
More stories from home to come I’m sure.
Love
Franny