El Fin de Semana

My host sister and I at the Discoteca

Well I'm just finishing up my first weekend in Spain and let me tell you this...the Spanish know how to party.  Thursday night there was a welcome party for the students of the fundacion at the bar next door, Enebro.  Every drink you ordered you got to roll dice and if you got a higher number than the bartender your drink was free!  Plus almost all bars here give you free food (tapas) with your drinks so I ended up paying for one drink and getting several drinks and lots of food for free.  We ended up going to a couple other bars in Toledo and it ended up being a super fun night!  Friday morning we had our tour of Toledo.  We took a bus around the city and then had a guided tour of the oldest part of Toledo where a lot of the important landmarks were.  After the tour everyone was feeling very tired and hung over so we decided to be the stereotypical Americans and go to McDonald's.

I must say it was the best quarto de libre (quarter pounder) i've ever had!  Saturday night we took the bus out to Buenavista which is another suburb of Toledo and after a lot of wandering around found the discotecas!  Basically there is this huge park and parking lot where everyone brings their own alcohol and drinks before they go to the clubs.  There are five discotecas right in a row that all play different types of music and cater to different ages and they're all open until about 6 or 7 in the morning!  We had so much fun and I randomly ran into my host sister! She was super nice and bought me and all my friends chiptos (shots).  She gave me a ride home and we didn't end up getting home until about 6 in the morning.

Needless to say I slept most of the day Saturday.  Saturday night I went to a block party for my friend Katherine's block.  It was really nice to meet her host parents and talk with all of her neighbors. Today for lunch my host mom made Paella which is a traditional dish of Spain.  It was basically rice with vegetables, mussels, clams, and shrimp.  It was very good but they use whole shrimp which weirds me out a little bit.  I forced myself to eat a lot today because she keeps telling me every day that I don't eat enough...which is strange because in the U.S. everyone always tells me that I eat a lot.  You'd think Spanish people would all be fat judging by how much they eat but everything is much healthier than it is the United States.
          I'm becoming a lot more comfortable living with my family but there a few things that are hard to get used to.
 1.  Lights-Electricity is very expensive here so the lights are off all the time.  When I first got here and my light would be on in my room during the day my host mom would come turn it off!  If you leave your room to go to the bathroom, you turn off the light.  Even in the lobby of my apartment the lights stay of unless you turn on a switch that turns them on temporarily so you can get to your apartment.  Even in public restrooms if you're on the toilet for more than 20 seconds the lights turn off and there's a switch in your stall to turn them back on!
2.  Shoes- Shoes or slippers are worn in the house at all times.  You never walk around in bare feet.
3.  Meals-  Breakfast is eaten at the normal time but lunch usually isn't until around 2 and is the biggest meal of the day.  My family doesn't usually eat dinner until about 11pm and it is a much smaller meal than lunch.
4.  Besos-  Everyone you meet you give them two kisses, one on each cheek.  They also do this every time someone leaves or comes home.  If someone introduces themselves to you, you give them dos besos.  I don't know how I feel about kissing random strangers but i'm sure like everything else i'll get used to it.

One thing that was not hard to get used to...my seven books for school cost 80 euros.  That's about $100 for seven books.  Clearly I'm not in America anymore!