Today is our first day of classes. I successfully woke up, ate breakfast with my host mother, walked to the bus stop alone, caught the right bus, got off at the correct stop, and found my way to school, only to discover that I am not in the section of the history class I thought I was. Oops. So it turns out I don't actually have class today! Which gives me a little time to blog and then go out and find some notebooks and other various things I need.
And now to go back in time a little bit. On Monday, the day I arrived, I met my host mom. I was exhausted out of my mind, but that worked to my advantage a little because I was much less self-conscious about how bad mí español is, so I just tried to talk as well as I could. Which turned out to be pretty successful because the next day when she picked me up to take me to her house, she remembered and repeated a bunch of things I had told her to her husband and daughter! And to explain a little, there was a change in my host family at the last minute so I am not living with a single mom and a 5 year old, as I had told many of you, I am living with a couple who have two grown daughters, ages 28 and 32. Their daughters both live in Toledo and the younger one comes home a lot.
Anyway, I went to their house yesterday and it is BEAUTIFUL. They have an apartment in Polígono, a neighborhood outside of old Toledo where a lot of my classmates live. Their house is so lovely and elegant! There are four floors and these beautiful (and steep) marble stairs that go from the garage floor all the way up to my room at the very top of the house. My room is adorable! I have a bed and a desk and a little table with chairs around it and a nice big dresser. It was hotter than anything last night, but I still slept like a baby. I'm going to have to put up pictures soon.
Mí familia is so nice! Isabel and Antonio (mí mamá y papá) are very sweet and understanding of my Spanish. Even though they told me last night that I talk very well (haha), very well meaning that they can understand me. There are times when I'm trying to say something and then the gears in my brain grind to a halt, my words turn to gibberish, and I have to just laugh and say lo siento....my best phrases with my family so far are "sí sí" "está bien" y "no entiendo" (I don't understand). I also met their younger daughter Erika last night, she was very nice and asked me lots of questions. My family liked talking about how I don't look American at all. Antonio said I probably had German ancestors and I was impressed that he knew that.
After dinner (tortilla española y ensalda con acetite de oliva), we watched Grey's Anatomy en español! That was so fun. It was actually a really terrible and intense episode that I do not recommend watching, but it was really fun to watch it in Spanish and Isabel was so into it and Antonio kept making fun of it. They talk reallllly fast on Spanish tv but I started to understand more the longer I watched.
I will write more later because I found out the my family does have wifi (pronounced "weefee" here) so I should be able to use my laptop there. And now I'm going to go explore with a girl in my program. I adore this city already, it's like a fairy tale city. Every time I caught a glimpse of the city on my bus ride into the old part of Toledo, my brain just exploded a little bit with happiness.
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