The World is Flat

There is still no luck with the airport stuff. I asked this time if it is okay if I come back sometime in February or March to check and they said that was fine. They don´t know why it is taking so long to get a response telling them how much I owe, but my ticket has already been changed to May, so there are no worries there. So I am not going to worry about it until classes start in February and I have a free morning or afternoon to take a trip back to the airport.

In other news, I have NO idea how I´ll be spending my New Year´s Eve. Today at lunch my host parents asked me if we ate grapes on New Year´s at home. I sort of looked at her funny and she explained that the tradition here is that they each eat a grape every time the bell rings at midnight on New Year´s. So everyone eats a total of twelve grapes to bring in the new year, and then they all run out on the streets. Apparently you can´t run on the street alone, though. You must have a friend with you or a lover... so I guess that means I´ll be watching the street running from my balcony!! I thought about going downtown to the touristy spots to see what kinds of things are going on there on New Year´s, but I think that I´ll probably get more of a cultural experience if I just hang out with my host parents. On the 1st all of the family is coming over for another large family meal. I´m not sure what the food will be this time, but I´m sure it will be delicious and the family will be entertaining as usual.

The last couple days since Christmas have been pretty good. I´ve spent a lot of time reading a book that one of the other BCA girls left with me when she went home. It is called The World is Flat and written by Thomas Friedman. It is "a brief history of the twenty-first century" and is really really interesting. I don´t usually read books like this, full of facts and statistics, but this one is so fascinating that I think everyone needs to read it to get a little dose of reality about how our education systems need to change to keep the United States where it is and prepare for the future of a flat world. Anywho, besides reading I´ve spent quite a bit of time with my host parents just around the apartment. Then, the other night, I got a really great surprise! The house phone rang and my host mom answered and looked all confused and said it was for me. It was Tim Polakowski calling me!!! He and I talked for quite a while catching up on the last semester. I found out that I had three of the same professors as he had when he was here two years ago. It was also nice to talk to him about Christmas because he knew exactly how hard it was since he spent it here as well during his year abroad. When I got off the phone my host mom was very confused because Tim had spoken to her in Spanish and I talked to him in English... She thought that he was a boy I had met here!! I explained that he had studied here two years ago and she understood, but was still impressed by how polite he was and how good his Spanish on the phone was.

Well, that´s about all for now. You should all look at Kacie´s blog (I added the link today) because she starts her semester in England in a week and has already been in Europe for about a week. I´ll try and write again at least once before I leave for my trip!