From Day One on......

My favorite story to tell so far is about my host cousin Pepong. He is a ten-year old midget. Actually, I need to give him some credit, he is a large midget. Whenever he came over to stay at my host family's house, we got to travel to the beach. In his words “Soy el mejor surfista,” (I am the best surfer) which he then proceeded to try to teach me, who has never been on a surfboard, how to surf. To put this in perspective, I used to be one of the whitest kids you could have seen, in a country of very tan people, on a surfboard. I mean, next to the surfboard, in the water, having waves and waves of saltwater welcoming itself, aggressively, into my nose. All while my midget cousin is yelling at me to be as good as him. This image was good enough for my host mother to sit on the sand, snickering every time I got knocked over by a wave. In my defense, they were pretty big.

My family is very caring, they have a great sense of humor and are fun to travel with, I really like them a lot. My host mother, Yesica, has helped me with literally everything, may it be Spanish Classes, Rowing, becoming a resident (Wooo!!!). I try to go to my host club meetings every two weeks. I have a small club, totalling to about 8 people. I have made plenty of friends in school, rowing, and in my family. In Europe, the only way for me to let people know I am from Arkansas is by saying where it is in reference to Texas, and I am still not sure if everyone knows I am from Arkansas. My language acquisition is going great! There are so many things that I wish I knew before and that I hope I can tell people before they go to Spain, or any country.