Photos below:
I took this picture because i thought it was really cool to see some kids skateboarding in front of the Royal Palace. People come from all over the world to see this, and this is literally where spanish teenagers just hang out.
The table set for Thanksgiving dinner
And the Christmas lights that line Gran Vía, a famous street in Madrid. The whole city is decorated and looks incredible.

Merry Christmas!!

Just wanted to send you an update and wish you all a Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays. Everything is going great here in Spain. It is everything i expected and much much more. My birthday was wonderful, i spent the night at Emma's house the night before and then in the morning her family made me an apple pie and put candles in it and sang to me. Then the following weekend was Emma's birthday and we went out to a dance club called Independence with some of my friends. On Thanksgiving I attended a huge Rotary dinner with all the exchange students in Madrid as well as the Rotarians. We had an interesting meal that consisted of a drumstick and a small serving of potatoes. Dessert was an orange cake that was not very sweet, but I can't blame them considering they don't celebrate that holiday here.

I wish I had tons to say, but honestly everything I do here has become my life, I go to school, hang out with friends and occasionally travel to Southern Spain (Jerez) to visit my host Mom. I just got back from their yesterday, I went down to celebrate and early Christmas with her. It was great, the whole house was decorated with a tree and lights, very similar to the US. For Christmas dinner we had shrimp( by the way they serve it with the eyes and whole head attached) along with raw salmon and lemon as appetizers, and for the main course lamb that was marinated solely in salt and olive oil (like everything here), and salad. For dessert an apple tart and chocolates. After dinner we opened presents and my host mom got me a cute sweater dress and a beautiful scarf.

Here in Spain Christmas is celebrated a little different than the US, most people now a days celebrate it like we do, with Santa Claus on Christmas eve and ect. But some people celebrate what is called "Tres Reyes" the The Three Kings, on the 6th of January. Little kids leave their favorite pair of shoes out and the Three Kings come and fill them with candy and presents, like stockings. Then they leave a present, like Santa. But, my family has always celebrated Santa Claus, therefore we celebrate Christmas on Christmas Day.

Tomorrow I am going to Barcelona to spend christmas with my host father and his sister, along with my host sister and host brother who has returned from the US, do to problems he had there. I am really looking forward to getting to know that city, because my host Dad grew up there so its a perfect opportunity. Other than that, the language and everything else is starting to click here, and I feel more at home every day.

I attached a few photos of what i have been doing:

I forgot to add, i also went to the Reina Sofia, which is a famous Modern Art museum here in Madrid. Emma and I went and explored one out of 4 floors and we got to see Picassos famous Guernica (picture below).. It was wonderful.
Also below... Rastro and Sam, Jesse, Emma and I.

Hello everyone,

Sorry it has been awhile. Halloween was great, I went to a small house party with some of my sister's friends. I was really surprised to see that everyone was dressed up, and the whole house was decorated. Since then I have just kinda been settleing in. Going to school (kinda) and hanging with friends. I hang out a lot with a girl named Emma, she is also an exchange student from Fort Collins, Colorado. And then also a boy named Jesse who is from upstate New York and a girl named Sam who is from Minneapolis. It is really fun to get togher with them and speak english, but at the same time I sometimes feel guilty for speaking too much english.

The weekend after Halloween was Jesse's birthday, so Emma and I took the bus about 30 mins out of the center of Madird to a town called Majadahonda, where Jesse and Sam live. We baked him brownies from to box-brownies that Emma's Mom sent her and bought him silly gifts. We even put 17 candles on a tiny brownie for him! We went out to a great Italian restaurant for dinner and the Emma and I went back into Madrid.

The weekend after that I went to a street market here in Madrid called El Rastro with Sam and Emma, it is every Sunday in the center of Madrid. It was the second time I had been. After we met up with my host Dad at the oldest bar in Madrid for a delicious lunch and after we went to a theatre that also has a cafe in it and got hot chocolate (which by the way is more like hot pudding here). It was a great day in the city.

This past weekend I went to Jerez to visit my host Mom again with Nerea. Before we left I found out that my host brother (Nerea's brother, Fernando) was most likely coming back to Spain, because he got in a little trouble with Rotary in the US. That whole weekend, my host Mom and Dad tried really hard to find ways to get Fernando to stay in Minneoplis, but in the end he had to come home. In the midst of all the confusion I had a great weekend, I went to my fist discoteca, and it blew my mind. There was a guy on stilts dancing on stage. I also watched a bunch of movies with Nerea and relaxed.

Fernando is in Madrid for the week, and then he will be moving to Jerez to live with my host Mom and attend high school. So thanks to him moving, I dont have to move families, I am very fortunate.

Other than that I have just been living like a Spaniard, learning lots of spanish still, and trying my hardest to speak it.

Just some funny thoughts:
1. They don't have bagels here, and it is quite depressing.
2. The weather is still very warm here for the middle of November.
3. They don't celebrate Thanksgiving here, but Rotary has put together a dinner for all the exchange students.
4. I don't have school from Dec 23- Jan 10, and will most likely be spending Christmas here in Madrid, which will most likely be beautiful because I have seen the lights they are putting up in the city.. I don't know about New Years.
5. Spain is very power conservative, almost all houses hang dry all the laundry.
6. Still reading Harry Potter in Spanish and I am learning lots of Wizard vocabulary.

I will be visiting two former exchange students, Julien and Victoria in Paris France from Feb 20-28 and I couldnt be more excited.

Hope all is well, all good thoughts*

below Sevilla, famous light tower that used to be covered in gold and the Plaza that the movies were filmed at.

above Strait of Gibraltar and the Peak along with a picture on the only ski resprt in Madrid

Almost 2 months :)

<>Things here are going great. I am starting to fit in and realize that I am living here, I am not on vacation. It still blows my mind, and I have to pinch myslef all the time still. I went to Sevilla/Seville with Nerea and my host Mom. It was absolutely beautiful, but very hot. I was a lot bigger than I expected and I could just feel the history walking around there. We took a bus tour so i could see the whole city and then had lunch in the center of the city. I also went to an amazing place named Plaza de Pilatos while I was in Sevilla it is where scenes from Lawrence of Arabia and Star Wars Episode I were filmed! While I was down south I also got to go to Tarifa which is a small summer town right on the Strait of Gibraltar. It is famous for windsurfing. I got to see Morocco from a distance! I can't beleive I was that close to Africa, I hope to take the ferry (30 mins) there one day and explore. I explored a little more of Jerez, where my host Mom lives, it is also very rich in history. It was built 1000 years BC, so the streets are so narrow in the center of the city that sometimes you have to fold in your mirrors to get through.

Other than that I have just been going to school everyday and occasionally taking a trip into the city to meet up with some exchange students. On last Saturday about 25 exchange students met up at a main train station in Madrid and took a series of 3 trains to the mountains above Madrid. When we got there we all hiked about 5 miles to the top of the highest peak in Madrid at about 8,000 feet. The name is El Pico de Peñalara, The peak of Peñalara. It was beautiful and it felt so nice to get out of the city for a little while. I noticed how quiet it was up there, life in the city is always loud. It was nice to speak english for a day also, and I absolutely love the exchange students. I have made some of my best friends in the Rotary students.

Language here is getting way better, sometimes it scares me how much I understand. I have started reading Harry Potter and that is quite a challenge, but I am learning lots of vocabulary.

Halloween is this weekend and my host sister is going to Jerez by herself, I chose to stay in Madrid and dress up and go out with the rest of our friends. The boys happen to be dressing up as the Village People and it should be hilarious. They dont carve pumpkins or trick-o-treat so it will be a different feel, and it will be the first Halloween in my life where its not freezing and snowing!

Hope all is well!!

Below:

Tapas, Cathedral, Royal Palace, Segovia and Lamb

Lots to Catch up on

So

much has happened since I last posted. Things here are still amazing, everyday gets a little bit better. I constantly have to pinch myself to realize what I get to see.

In a nutshell this is my last couple weeks...

Two weekends ago I went to a tiny little castle town about 1 hour and a half out of Madrid with my host Dad, Pepe, and Nerea and the Morenos, which is the family I went to lunch with the last time. We walked around this historic little village and then we went to this tiny restaurant for lunch. This part of Spain is known for their lamb, so that was what we had for lunch. Lamb, salad and of course BREAD! They cook the lamb in an old fashion oven and its pretty much the whole body and lots of butter, but it was delicious. After lunch we hopped back in the car and drove about 20 mins to Segovia. Its famous in Europe for its huge aqueduct. This was probably one of the coolest places I have been in Spain. Very European, narrow streets, plazas and historic sites. That day there happened to be a festival going on in the town so there were soldiers marching through the town and tons of people dancing. It was a great day and I was blown away at all the beautiful things I had seen.

This past weekend I went to Jerez to visit my host Mom, Arantxa. It was a very clean, quiet city about 30 mins away from the Atlantic ocean. Nerea, her best friend, Sara, and I took a bus about 7 hours to Jerez. Spain is beautiful, very golden with lots of vineyards and cotton fields. It reminded me a lot of California. On my second day there I went to my host Mom's apartment on the ocean. It was absolutely beautiful. She has a place in a little fisherman's town on the Atlantic. Its really close to Cadiz. We traveled along the cost for like 3o mins and the showed me a river that runs from the ocean to Sevilla. On my second day I went to what they call a "Feria"which translates to fair. But it was actually more like a rodeo/horse show, except there was no roping or bull riding. We watched them bring horses, ponies, cows, calfs, and bulls into the ring while listening to them talk about their breeders. After, everyone gathered together for lunch and some flamenco!! Flamenco is a type of music and dance. For about 3 hours I listened and watched flamenco. Its very beautiful. The next day we took off back for Madrid and I was actually excited, I missed my new home.

Yesterday I took the day off from school and went into Central Madrid, to see more beautiful monuments and buildings. Nerea, her good friend Sergio and I went to the Royal Palace, a building where the kings and queens should live, but now you can tour it and then we went to Plaza Mayor, which is a beautiful famous plaza here in Madrid, I also go to go to Almudena Cathedral which is right next to the Royal Palace. It is the first church I have been in since I got to Europe and it blew my mind. After all the sightseeing Sergio and Nerea took me to a typical Spanish restaurant for lunch. I payed 10 euros to get 4 tapas (Little tasty combinations on a piece of bread), a main dish, drink and dessert. It was a ridiculous amount of food but absolutely delicious! Tapas are amazing, my favorite was raw salmon rolled and stuffed with crab and mayo with a special sauce and a deviled egg on top. The rest of my day consisted of a tour of a famous market here and a famous bakery and then a relaxing afternoon in Parque Retiro in the Center of Madrid. Its absolutely beautiful.

Some more funny things:

1. At my host mom's I had an "American Hamburger" that consisted of American hamburger meat dipped in mustard, mayo and ketchup. No bun or veggies. Ha

2. The eat their pancakes with hershey's syrup.

3. The smoking is starting to drive me crazy. During recess at my school, everyone goes and smokes even 13 year olds.

4. Everyone thinks its so weird that I have natural pink cheeks.

5. Spanish people can never make up their minds, it takes them like 30 mins to decide where to go for lunch.

Language is getting better, I am starting to understand a lot more. All I need is time. I will soon be reading Harry Potter in spanish to help me out..

This weekend I am taking the train to Southern Spain with Nerea and we are going to Sevilla and then Granada. Monday is a holiday for Spain so I am going to Granada for a fiesta!

I can't believe I have been here a month today and I have already done all this traveling.

Hope all is well, I am sending snow wishes for Tahoe.

All good thoughts*

Dev

La Noche en Blanco Futbol!!

Busy Weekend

Maloneys the exact size. Well I had a great weekend here in Madrid. Friday night I went out to Maloneys with Nerea and got home around 430am. This is normal here, slept until 2:30pm the next way. I felt really weird when I woke up. Saturday I ate some Telepizza (The Dominos of Spain) and then got ready for La Noche en Blanco which is a huge festival here in Madird. All of Central Madrid is ipen to the public, so people can visit all the museums and monuments for free. They light up the whole ctiy and it is absolutely beautiful. I walked about 30 mins into the city with my sister and a couple of her friends to meet up with some of the American Exchange students from Madrid. Turns out we had to wait a hour for them to meet up with us because there was so many people. My sister went back to Maloneys and three of here friends and I met up with the exchange students and showed them back to Maloneys. Once again I got home at 5am and slept till 3pm. Sunday was the big day! Futbol!!!!! At about 5:30 Nerea and I joined 5 other friends and drove the the 2nd biggest soccer stadium in the world Real Madrid! The first biggest is in Barcelona-which just so happens to be Real Madrid's number one rivalry.

Real Madrid played a team called Xerez-which is where my host Mom is from. Who by the way I just recently went to lunch with, she is a very sweet lady and I will be visiting her a lot this year. My first visit is in two weeks. But anyways back to the soccer scene, Real Madrid won 5-0 and scored 4 goals in the last 20 mins it was a great game. Just being in a stadium that holds 90,000 people cheering for soccer gave me goosebumps. It was remarkable. People really do scream GOALL!!!! haha Soccer is HUGE here. People eat, drink and breathe it. Its pretty much the only thing in the news. And I am slowly but surely becoming a huge fan as well.

Other than that school is my new interest. Well kinda. I take a public bus at 800 in the morning 7 stops and walk about 8 blocks to an instituto (6th grade-12 grade) called San Juan Bautista. I take six classes every day that consist of spanish grammar, english, philosophy, french 2, history of spain, geography and economics. Its crazy. As of now I don't understand much, so I usually just read or study spanish. I have made a couple girl friends but the guys just stare at me. Its pretty funny.

Some more funny things about this amazing place:

1.Everything in my school is green, every shade.

2. The girl's toilets in my school don't have toilet seats.

3. Students have to buy all their books for school here.

4. The littlest things make my day here, just like the other day I met Nerea's good friend, Borja's dog. His name is Torr and hes a huge white fluffy dog with diabetes. I absolutely loved hanging out with him.

5. School here is waaay harder than the US. Students don't really go to school to be social, they go to study.

I have no plans for the weekend, but I'm sure something will come up. I am looking forward to going to Xerez on Oct 1. Hope all is well.

Muchos Besos

above:lightswitch

< seafood lunch with family and friends

Some side notes:

1.We eat bread with every single meal here, and I am not talking a slice of bread, I am talking your very own small baguette. It is time to break out the running shoes!

2. Spain loves English, everywhere I go people just want to speak English to me, even if they have not taken one minute of English in their lives.

3. I thought people at home were bad drivers, no.... I have never seen people get sooooo close to other cars while going like 40mph in my life.

4. I have yet to find a bathroom that contains a trash can within it. It is the weirdest thing yet.

5. Coca-cola and Fanta belong is equivalent to water here. And they serve coke with lemon everywhere people go.

6. American music is their favorites and it is awesome to hear them sing when they don't speak English.

7. (Picture Above) All light switches look like this, and they are always outside of the bathroom instead of in it. Oh and they switch down for on and up for off.

I am attending a futbol game this weekend! Real madrid vs (I believe)

Xerez. I start school on Wednesday and I am going to see the Backstreet Boys live in Madrid in October. :P

Hope this made you laugh!

Un beso (One Kiss)

Devon

Another Couple Days in my World

Hmm...where do I start, well everything is going great I am slowly but surely starting to fit in in Spain. I went to an American bar with Nerea called Maloneys. It is the size of my bedroom and the capacity is 33 people, but they usually pack aout 150-200 people in there. The only beer they have is Budwieser and everyone here has a weird obsession for it, and Maloneys is one of the only bars in Madrid that has it on tap, I just so happened to run into about 35 american exchange students mostly studying through a program from UCSD. They also serve Sangria, which is a spanish red wine that at one time had fruit soaking in it, so it tastes a lot like fruit punch. It is delicious. I really enjoyed meeting all of Nerea's friends, they are all very welcoming and fun. One thing that drives me crazy here is the smoking. Every restaurant I have been to, I eat next to a family constantly smoking throughout their meal, but this is totally normal in Spain and in most of Europe. Thankfully my host dad, nor sister smoke at all.

Every day and night I eat lunch and dinner with Nerea at the coffee table in the living room (picture above) and watch ridiculous spanish television, but it is one of my favorite times because I get to talk to Nerea.

I finally went shopping! I now don't feel super out of place wearing american attire. I took the Metro with Nerea to central Madrid, Gran Via, and went toa couple stores such as Zara(which is pronounced thara in Spain, along with all Zs and Cs), Mango and H&M. It was great, but the exchange rate...not so much.

This past weekend I attended a Rotary orrientation at a college campus about 30 min north of central Madrid. I got to meet about 50 students that are all living in Spain for the year on Rotary Youth Exchange (A picture of a few above). The cafeteria food was absolutely horrible and all of us could not wait to come back home to the food of our host families. It was a great weekend and I now have some American friends in Spain.

Today is Sunday, and it just so happens to be a big family day in Spain. I went to lunch (at 2 o clock) with my host father's best friend's family. They have a daughter that is 14 and a son that is my age. We went out to a seafood restaurant in a very nice part of Madrid. It was absolutely amazing. I had the best Paella I have had yet. (For those of you who don't know what Paella is, it is a famous dish here is Spain and it is basically rice cooked in broth with seafood and saffron.) After lunch we went back to their home and the daughter, Patti, had me help her with her english homework and told me how much I look like Hannah Montana and how she really wants to go to California. I felt like a Goddess. We all played an old famous Spanish game that consists of an iron square board with a backboard and contains a bunch of round holes and a frog with it's mouth open. You take small metal washers and throw them at the board, if you get it in the mouth its 50 points, anywhere else it is 10. It was interesting, but fun.

my room> :)

Central Madrid shopping my favorite place so far :)

First Days in Spain

Hello everyone!,

I finally made it to Madrid yesterday at around 330pm after 14 hours of traveling. My host Dad (Jose or Pepe) and my host sister, Nerea, picked me up at the airport and took me back to my house. The very first thing I noticed in the airport was the smell of cigarette smoke and the fact that the airport is HUGE! I finally got my luggage jumped in my host father's Lexis to drive home. My house is on the third floor of a nice apartment building I guess I could say. Its two stories the bottom story has a small kitchen, living room and dinning room along with my host fathers bedroom. Up a tiny spiral staircase is my room and Nerea's room its more like a big loft. We have a t.v. and a couch with a spinning bike thankfully! And of course a bathroom. It is a very high end house, we have a maid named Pepi, she does not speak any English, but she speaks slow to help me and she is very sweet.

Last night I went out to tapas with my host family and they were absolutely delicious! Tapas are like appetizers or little dishes served on top of a small piece of bread. We ate at around 9 and got home at about 11, i was extremely tired so I slept for about 11 hours last night. This morning I woke up and ate breakfast, a pice of toast warm chocolate milk and orange juice, then Nerea and I took a bus into Central Madrid. It was by far the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. The architecture here is amazing. There are tons of fountains and statues.And Nerea and I walked through the Central Park. We got a coca cola at the top of a nine story building called Corte de Ingles which is a lot like a Macys. After a ton of walking Nerea and i took the Metro home which was nuts, tons of people. Pepi made us some lunch that consisted of a Russian salad which is like hard boiled eggs, beets, tomatoes and such cut up with a sweet dressing its delicious and we also had these things that kinda look like pot stickers but they are filled with flavored meat, they were also delicious. After that it was time for SIESTA! We watched some ridiculous Spanish talk show and now Nerea is napping and I am emailing.

Now the big question, hows the language. Well its really hard, but my host Dad and Nerea have been speaking mainly english so i can start to feel comfortable. I try to speak back to Nerea in spanish and she helps me. My host Dad says no more English from here on out and I am glad because I really want to learn. Other than that, they just speak very fast and the accent is hard to understand, but I will eventually get it. It is only my second day here.

Tonight I am going out with Nerea to a bar called Maloneys to meet Nerea's friends that are all very excited to meet me. It should be interesting.

Last Day in the United States

Hello everyone!

My time has finally come. It has been so hard talking and hearing about how much fun all the other exchange students are having while waiting for all my travel plans to be finalized. But, the time is finally here. I will be flying out of Sacramento airport tomorrow (Sept 7, 2009) at 12:05pm! I will then connect through Minneapolis to Amsterdam, then Amsterdam to Madrid.

I look forward to the most amazing year of my life so far and couldn't be more fortunate for Rotary and my whole family getting me here.

Talk to you Soon!

Devon