I love Halloween

First and foremost I would like to thank my aunt Maureen for the wonderful package. It had pop tarts, candy corn and lots more. I brought a lot of it to a little Halloween party and helped spread our magnificent culture.

I have been up to a lot lately and I haven´t informed anyone for a while. I get kind of lazy because my classes are really easy and I rarely have homework. I like being busy and I never really am here so it makes me very lazy. Halloween was great here, I haven´t traveled much lately but we may be going to Barcelona this weekend.

In Spain they don´t celebrate Halloween and they are very against change, but us Americans are the same. My art teacher said if a Spanish child came to his door and said trick-or-treat he would call his parent an imbacil. They don´t have costume shops or Goodwill stores so I had to be creative and use the sheets on my bed for it. I wore a toga, made a torch from the shoebox Maureen sent me, and made a head thing with some ivy leaves i got from outside. It was cold so i had to bring a coat with it and I looked like i was wearing a dress lol. They don´t use safety pins so I had to use clothes pins, this was a bad idea because my German friends Ruth thought it would be funny to pull the off at times. This caused my to be half naked in public, but I yelled at here a lot. We went to this party and these Spaniards asked me why I was wearing a costume. I love Halloween, and in years i bet it will get more popular here.

Last weekend my friends rented a car and they invited me to travel around the state here. It was really pretty, but Pamplona, the city i live in, is way nicer than than the rest. We went to this monestary in the mountains, this sweet ravine, and it was just nice to get in a car and see the countryside. I should put some pictures up to show you all.

I am always tell you what I do but there are many things I feel here that are just odd. Today we talked about racism and here it is much more prevalent than in our area. Of course it exists everywhere, but here one profesor said to the students, ¨Africans have the biggest lips in the world¨. This wouldn´t fly at our schools so it is weird to hear that.

I also realized that everyone feels like they can say stuff about america. We are used to hearing it, but it is weird how every country can do that. For example, if some Spaniards came to the states we wouldn´t normally say our opinion of their politics or their people. I am with foreigners in all my classes and they say things about our country, our president and our people that are just annoying. We wouldn´t directly say things about Europe to people from there but since our media and society is so broad and well known, people find the need to give their opinion always. I may not be explaining this perfectly, but everyone knows our business thru the media and it is kind of annoying.

Spaniards also make fun of people who can´t speak perfect Spanish. They even sometimes tease the people from Latin America. I am sure this exists in the states as many of the small farm communities are filled with racist people, but I just am not used to it. I am learned tons about intercultural communication and my advice would be to never make fun of a person learning another language. It is really discouraging and if you have ever learned a language you know it can be tough. I haven´t had any bad experiences but it is just annoying, no one is perfect. If languages were all meant to be perfect there wouldn´t be much diversity so bring on the bad grammer.

The school I attend if supposed to be the Harvard of Spain, but I would not even compare to it to our schools. Here they only learn about their subject and don´t take generals. They have very young profesors and it is so odd. I often see them out on the town on the weekends. I saw my Spanish teacher out with her friends partying last weekend. I know a profesor here who is fresh out of college teaching a marketing class. I would never take a class taught by someone that young because they won´t know too much about the real world. I am fine with my Spanish classes here, but I can´t believe people think this school is amazing because it doesn´t have much prestige.

Everyone should live abroad though because it completely throws your mind of a loop but there are things that should be the same, like religion. They only have Catholic churches but it is still christianity. I am a religous person and even though everything is different, you can always turn to this for the same advice. It is a nice thing to have but I need to find a protestant church because I don´t like being excluded from communion, but I understand.

My friends just told me I need to write some funny stuff in this blog so I will write some good stuff soon.