I'm still alive! We walked around for roughly 3 hours trying to find a cybercafe, and I'm finally in one with access to a real computer for more than 5 minutes. There are so, so, so many details that I could write pages and pages. I'll try to make it short and sweet, and tell the longer stories later:
House: nice. I live on the outskirts of town by the golf course in a 3-br apartment. I have a temporary roommate from Oregon State until Thursday, whose name is John, is a preppy kind of guy, and is pretty helpful in getting the basics covered. I have my own room even with him there, and after he leaves I don't even have to share a bathroom. I think the family's a little loaded, because it is a small-ish European apartment, but all the fixtures are modern and new and it's surprisingly spacious by Euro standards. I'll take pictures before I leave to give you some decoration ideas.
Family: very nice. Soledad, the woman, is sweet as can be. She speaks English (they both do) and she also studies German, so she understands very much what it is to be a student in a foreign language. She's very easy to understand and very accomodating. She drives a Citroen C2, which is a tiny bit bigger than a Mini, and it was fun to be zipped around town in my first afternoon here in it. She's a flight attendant usually, but she's four months pregnant and so she took off from work, and therefore hosts us. John says she's 30, but like most Spanish women sh´'s well-preserved. Carlos, her husband, is supposedly 39 but looks no older than 30. I think he works in animal testing :\ He's a nice guy, but at the same time he's got a very assertive manner about himself. That said, he goes way out of his way to take care of me. He's learning quickly what I like and dislike about food, and the food I eat is progressively becoming more and more familiar, and I'm trying fewer completely new foods but I still try something with basically every meal. It helps a lot with the localization process not to have to stress out about not liking what I'm going to eat. That had me in a mess for a few days but I'm much improved. Oh, and Carlos drives an A4 diesel - those things are cool, you can slam your foot down and you ··zoom·· but the engine doesn't rev up. Another reason I suspect they're a little well off.
Life: best explained in person, but I'll say that my waking hours are 8am to about midnight and then much later on weekends. It's hard to get enough sleep, but I'm getting by.
Language: easy. I'm getting by without problems, natives who I talk to compliment my skills, and I translate for most of the other students. As a result...
School: boring. I take two classes every day, Spanish culture/history and advanced grammar. The culture class has a really nice teacher who's easy to understand, but the subject matter is all kinds of boring. The grammar class will be a little bit tougher (but still mostly material that's right on my level, minor improvements and such) but the instructor is a lot harder to understand.
That's about all I can think of for right now, except for one major detail, ··my cell phone works.·· The number is 011-34-617-654-367, and that's to place a call to me from the US. (011 = international access from US, 34 = Spain country code) It's free for me to receive calls of any kind, but placing calls is expensive locally and ludicrous internationally. You're more than welcome to call me, but keep in mind that Spain is 7 hours ahead of Texas, I get out of class at 2pm, and meals are at 3pm and 9pm here, and I'm usually in bed by 12pm.
