Trips and Other Stuff

okay so I havent written a blog in awhile. I just havent really been in the 
mood, but last night I skyped with my family and my friend Emily (also my 
brothers girlfriend). My mom told me how people have been asking why I havent 
posted in awhile, and emily informed me the screen outside my schools main 
office advertises my blog. Therefore, I feel obligated to finally catch up and 
make a post. Since I havent written one in awhile this one might be pretty long 
and choppy with scattered thoughts. To start off, these past few weeks have been 
been pretty hard. I expected this to be hard but didnt realize how hard it 
would be. Hahaha If anyone has talked to my mom this past week you know overall 
how its going for me. Anyways I'll try to explain some of my struggles but for 
most of it I am just going to try and write only about the positive things.

I've tried to limit talking with friends at 
home, but still give in and have a few friends I'll talk to at least once a 
week. I finally skyped some of my friends for the first time last week. First I 
skyped 2 of my best friends Logan and Jenn. Right when I saw there faces I 
started balling my eyes out! Both because I was so happy to see them and I also 
missed them a lot! It was nice to catch up with them and hear about what's been 
going on in their lives. After I skyped with my friend Kurt, this time I was 
able to compose myself and not ball my eyes out like I did with Logan and Jenn! 
It's been weird not being able to talk with my friends that I am used to talking 
to everyday, but I was happy I skyped with them:) My friend Andrea, who I've 
mentioned in other posts, is another exchange student who went to my school. She 
had some problems with her host family and last week changed families. She's now 
in the center of Madrid. It's only been a few days without her in school, but I already miss her a lot:( Her last day we had to give a presentation for Chemistry/Physics. It did not go so well. I had everything written on a paper that I read from, which I think I did okay with. When the teacher started asking me questions everything went down hill. I was so nervous so I couldn't comprehend anything he was asking me and I just stood at the front looking like a deer in the headlights.He was nice though and told me to calm down and it was okay. When we finished he said we did a good job though. Anyways the past weekends I traveled to Cadiz and Paris! This was really awesome.

Cadiz:
I originally was invited to Cadiz for Carnaval before I arrived in Spain by a 
girl I became friends with through the exchange student Facebook page. She is 
really nice, but unfortunately she ended up leaving the program early. Luckily 
my friend Nirmala lives in Cadiz too, so I went to visit her and go to carnaval 
with her instead. It was amazing! Cadiz is a beautiful city! Nirm lives about a 
2 minute walk from the beach, which was great. We went to the beach a little, 
but it was really windy so we didn't stay for long. Andrea, nirm, and I all 
needed a haircut so we decided to just go for it and get our haircut in Spain! 
We were a little nervous that maybe they wouldn't understand us and suddenly all 
our hair was cut off! It turned out good though, and the people that cut our 
hair were really nice! Carnaval was in the center of the city so we had to take 
a bus to get there. Carnaval was so energetic and exciting with all the people 
dressed up in costumes and people singing and dancing on the streets. It was 
packed with people though, so it was hard making it through crowds with Andrea, 
nirm, and nirms friends. I'm not sure how to correctly explain carnaval so 
here's an explanation from wikipedia:

Los Carnavales is one of the best-known carnivals in Spain. The whole city participates in the carnival for more than two weeks each year, and the presence of this fiesta is almost constant in the city because of the rehearsals, recitals, and contests held throughout the year.

It is a widely held opinion that the city of Cadiz is blessed with the wittiest people in Spain, so it is not surprising that the main characteristics of the carnival in Cádiz are the acerbic criticisms, the droll play on words, stinging sarcasm, and the irreverence of parody. While some carnivals, elsewhere in the world, stress the spectacular, the glamorous, or the scandalous in costumes, Cádiz distinguishes itself with the sheer cleverness and fertile imagination of its carnival attire. It is traditional to paint the face as a humble substitute for a mask.





It is easy to get involved in the fiesta even if one is a visitor and knows no Spanish. On Saturday, everyone wears a costume, which, many times, is related to the most polemical aspects of the news. However, the Carnival of Cádiz is most famous for the satirical groups of performers called chirigotas. Their music and their lyrics are in the center of the carnival.


Now the weekend after Cadiz I went to Paris with my school. I loveeee Paris and 
for those of you that don't know, it was actually the reason I became and 
exchange student. So here's the story: I went to Europe over the summer with my 
school in the US. We went to London, Paris, Florence, and Rome. I fell in love 
with the city of Paris and thought the language sounded so beautiful. I am not a 
history person, but was actually interested in the history I learned about Paris 
when I was there. So I came home and had this desire to learn French, I bought 
Rosetta Stone with my own money and literally spent so much time in the summer 
learning French. I swear I'm not lying! My friends Logan, Jenn, and Alyssa would 
make fun of me because I was ALWAYS doing Rosetta Stone! So one night I was like 
hey! Being an exchange student would be cool, I'm gonna look into it. I did some 
research and then presented a slideshow to my parents of why I should be an 
exchange student. When they took the idea seriously we began to consider other 
countries. Spain ended up winning for several reasons, but mostly because I was 
actually learning Spanish in school, and French isn't even offered (I ended up 
exchanging my French Rosetta Stone for Spanish by the way) ANYWAYS MY PARIS TRIP

PARIS 
Obviously it was amazing because it's Paris! A majority of people speak some 
English in Paris, so at restaurants, stores, etc. workers spoke to me in 
English. For some reason I always accidentally replied in Spanish just by 
natural instinct because they weren't Native American speakers (whenever people 
in Spain speak to me in English I always reply in Spanish) it's hard to explain 
that feeling but it was weird. I did learn some simple phrases in French to use 
just so I could be somewhat respectful to the people of France (yes I don't 
remember any french I learned in the summer). I finally got my first Starbucks 
in Europe!! I'm not a huge die hard lover of Starbucks, but it's the closest 
thing I can get to my dads coffee shop Jo for the Road, which is 10 times 
better. It was funny because the language the French and the Spanish shared was 
English, so whenever we needed directions they asked in English. I don't know 
why the teachers never asked for Claire Andrea and I's help because we kept 
getting lost. I never knew when they were asking for directions though, or I 
would've listened to the directions we were given. Overall Paris was great and I 
had a lot of fun:)

Segovia
Segovia was just a day trip I took with my host family on Sunday. It was only 
about an hour drive north of where I live. First we went to a palace and 
explored the gardens, which were very pretty. After we went to the actual city 
of Segovia which was also very beautiful. In the city we at a "traditional 
Spanish" restaurant. At this restaurant they have this tradition when someone 
orders a baby pig to eat (yes the whole pig comes out on a platter). The person 
in the restaurant then presents the pig to the whole restaurant (idk what he 
said though) and then cuts it with a plate. He took a regular plate and just 
pushed it onto the pig everywhere. The meat is really soft to make this 
possible. After he finishes cutting it he simply just throws the glass plate 
where it shattered in front of us. The plate doesn't actually cut the pig into 
separate pieces so after the plate is thrown they separate the pig and serve it 
on plates for us. It was a pretty interesting thing to see! 


This week I'm finally going to go and actually explore madrid for our 
interhispania trip (interhispania is my Spanish company I came through and 
they've organized some trips for us) I'm really excited to see the other 
students and hear how there lives in Spain are going!

I'm too lazy to put all the pictures on my blog because it takes a long time to individually pick each one so heres a link to my Facebook album with my pictures from the past trips and other pictures I finally uploaded. 

https://www.facebook.com/camille.wyand/media_set?set=a.651584874899615.1073741832.100001443265031&type=3