Orientation, Santander, and Being Sick

Knowing all of you bright, intelligent people reading this, you probably know what i am going to talk about. If     not, keep reading and see if you can figure it out. I realized a couple of days ago that I told you i went to Santander (actually looking back at my blog post i didn't. So Hey! I went to Santander! There, now you know) but i never did a blog post on it. So here it is! :)

For those of you that don't know (and if you don't, don't worry, I had no idea what Santander was when i first heard the name. If this is you, keep reading. If not, keep reading anyway), Santander is a city in Northern Spain about 4 hours away from Madrid. It is on the Coast and my host family has a house about 30 minutes west  of the city. October 12 is Fiesta de Espana (Spain's national holiday) so we didn't have school. So on thursday after school we left the house and drove up there. The next day was Friday, and Carmen, Fernando, Elisa and I went to some festival with cows. There were TONS of cows, but none of them were in any sort of enclosed pen, so you had to be paying attention because occasionally one would go on a rampage and you would have to run out of the way so you didn't get gored by the horns. Pretty cool. And there was a market there too, with vendors selling all kinds of things, from Garlic to Underwear (there was at least a few stalls selling JUST garlic or JUST underwear...). And the next day the whole family (minus Pablo) went to the same little town  to go to a different Market (for those of you that are curious and/or want to Google maps it, the house is in a little town called La Herreria and the markets were in a bigger (but still quite small) town called Cabezon de la Sal). Anyway, that was cool, and we got some cool bread stick thingys that were in the shape of a cane. After that we went to the beach and hung out there for an hour or so. It was super nice to see the water and just run around on the beach. Every night we would hang out by the fire and draw or play games or play games outside with Pablo and Luis' friends. One night we sat by the fire and played games and made newspaper hats and roasted chestnuts (over an open fire!!!!! Too bad it wasn't snowing... Maybe at Christmas if we go...). And it was SUPER cool because La Herreria is older than the US. Like a lot older. Like from the 16th century older. And the house was built in the 16th century. SO COOL. And we came home Sunday afternoon/night. So all in all a nice weekend.

Last weekend i had my first AFS orientation after the first one in September (it was the day after we got here, for those of you that don't know). We had to meet at a Metro Station in Madrid at 11 on Saturday. So i had to wake up early (earlier than i wanted to at least) because the train from Tres Cantos left at 10. We got there, walked to the place, got our rooms, and ate lunch. We then played some games and did some activities about adapting, assessment and stuff like that. Some great games we played:

• one kinda like catchphrase, but in the second round you could only say one word, and in the third round it was charades
• another like steal the bacon
• one were two people leave, and then return, and have to ask all the other people questions to find out what is wrong with them (like not wrong, but like why they answer questions the way they do)(i was confused too)

Also, the losing team of steal the bacon had to do a punishment. The punishment was to dance in front of the entrance to the theme park that is about 400 yards away. So me and the rest of the people on my team had to dance the macarena. And then everyone had to do this other dance. We had to march in place and then they would shout "LET ME SEE YOUR FUNKY CHICKEN!" or funky alligator or funky Michael Jackson and we would have to do either a chicken dance, an alligator dance, or a Michael Jackson dance. But what made it hilarious was the AFS volunteers accents. It sounded like they were saying let me see your f-ing chicken. So all the Americans and about everyone else was laughing. It was pretty great. And we had a good time. Great moments from the weekend:

• My thumbs: They all thought that it was hilarious that i have short thumbs (Cameron about peed his pants he was laughing so hard). But apparently Megan Fox has thumbs like mine. 
• Alexis got a dreadlock. (like i am seriously not kidding)
• We learned that in Spain they say there is 5 continents, not 7 (Antarctica isn't one and the Americas are one, not two)
• We had to write letters to ourselves, and it was cool to see everyone writing in there native language (like Thai, or Japanese, or Swedish)(We are such Americans)

So all in all it was quite fun (although we slept very little) and i am looking forward to the one in February.

And finally, I am sick. Ugh. It started Monday night, when i left Track early because my head hurt (i almost wrote "when me head hurt." My english is going down the drain...) and tuesday my head hurt a little and my stomach hurt some. And i didnt eat during recreo, which is a definite sign something is wrong. And then PE and the visa appointment didnt help (two hours of sitting on a train...). And today my stomach has hurt at least a little (sometimes more than a little) all day. But i still went to school because i had a test. So yep. But at least i haven't barfed yet (Hallelujah.). I hope I get better soon because i am going into Madrid on Friday and Saturday.

Miss you all! :) Hope life is going well!

Benjamin