Today I learned a multitude of ways to say "hot mess" in Spanish. Quilombro/quilombera, estoy echo un desastre, or for particularly bad cases, desmadre. Ask Facebook and you shall have answers.
Today was the first day of exams. I found out my program mandates exam days for our classes. The professors would prefer to have more time to finish chapters and such but the program demands they test us today. And because they clearly love us so much, they decided to spring a placement exam on us today too, just to make sure we're in the right level of Spanish. Seriously? So I had three tests today. Not so fun.
I stayed up really late and woke up really early to study. I made flash cards and everything. My tests were on Basque and Spanish so I wanted to do well. I'm really out of practice with verb conjugation (haven't had a Spanish class since junior year of high school...) and Basque is pretty difficult to learn. I even made flash cards to study from, something I never normally do. I think they helped. Except for one that I made incorrectly. I misspelled the Basque word xagua (meaning mouse) as xagat on my flash card and consequently spelled it wrong on my test. Oops. In my defense, it was after midnight when I made the flash cards.
We had to write a composition as the second part of our Spanish test. The topic was our first day here in San Sebastian. In preparation, I went back and read my blogs from around that day. They aren't very long because I didn't do much that first day. I wrote more about the day before and the day after I got to San Sebastian. The day before I had been in Toledo, and upon returning to Madrid, I went to the Reina Sofia Museum. The day I arrived in San Sebastian, I kind of just rested in my hotel room. The day after that though I met my amazing host family. That was a good day.
Today was decent. I survived my exams and I think I did well. I had absolutely no brainpower left after that but since I don't have class tomorrow, I don't need it. Although I did have a minorly embarrassing episode where I simply could not open the door with my keys. I normally do not have trouble with it but today it was the impossible task. My host dad heard me fumbling around and he opened the door for me. I hadn't even imbibed anything that would even remotely impare motor skills. Coca cola and cafe. But nothing of that nature. Hence the hot mess. Lack of sleep+ lack of brain function= inability to do simple tasks. Q.E.D. Hot mess.
Oh, and my friend Abby may point out that after class we had coffee together and afterwords I dragged her through an entire grocery store just because I wanted to see what they sold. I was nerding out on the variations of Coke they sell. They apparently sell Coke without caffeine. What is this new devilry?
I took a nap before going out with my intercambio (language exchange partner). I desperately needed it. We chatted for a couple hours entirely in Spanish. No English this time around. The only time I really speak English anymore is with my friends. Just about all my classes are in Spanish and my family here of course always speaks Spanish. It's weird to think I left the US on August 28th, arrived in Madrid the 29th, got to San Sebastian the 2nd of September, moved in with my host family the 3rd and now it's the 20th. I'm getting so much more comfortable with my Spanish.
My intercambio gave me a booklet on the best pintxo bars in the city. I'm totally trying every one of them before I leave this city.
I saw a horrible car accident on my way back. A car had hit another and flipped over right in front of the cathedral. I dont know the extent of the damage or injuries but flipping over isn't good. Thursday nights are just as crazy if not more crazy than Friday nights. Most university students don't have class on Friday so there are a lot of cheap drink specials. Don't drink and drive. Just don't.
There was traffic because of that accident and so I arrived a little late for dinner. My host sister and I had a simple but tasty pasta salad. It was pasta, tomato, cheese, and tuna in a balsamic vinegar and olive oil dressing. My host sister pointed out that her mother had started preparing bacalao. I'm ridiculously excited about this. Bacalao is one of my favorite foods. It's a very traditional Basque preparation of rehydrating dried mackerel in milk and/or water so it becomes a creamy paste that you can either fry into croquettes or make into salad. My host mom is planning on the salad route, a traditional Navarran salad made with red peppers.
Can't wait.
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