Life in Alicante

Well I figure I'm pretty much settled in here in Alicante. My class schedule is finally worked out, and I pretty much have my routine down.

I have an awesome friend from back in the Bay Area who says he can help me with my programming stuff, which is super cool! I freaked out a bit because we have our first program due in three weeks (we have to make a two player chess program) and I don't really know the language yet. Apparently the kids in the first semester class learned a bit of C/C++ in that class, and so we are supposed to be able to do this chess game with just that knowledge, but I don't have any of that knowledge yet! So I've been trying to go to class, learn new parts of the language, go to "labs" and work on the program, and teach myself the language through internet tutorials in English (cuz it's super hard to learn another language in another language!) and it's just been a bit crazy. But Mike's a savior and he says he can help. So that's awesome!

Also, one of my "intercambios" turned out pretty well. This girl Raquel is studying to be an English teacher for native Spanish speakers, and she has her official licensing exams in June. So she wants to practice speaking and have me help her with pronunciation and grammar and all that stuff. It works pretty well actually because you really learn a lot about a language when you have to explain it to another person. Also, she studied in Scotland for a semester as an Erasmus student, so she knows the drill, and she is answering all of my "dumb" questions like "How do I make photocopies?" It's pretty cool. And she says in return for me helping her with her work, she'll help me with mine, which is awesome because I have a literature class where I have to write a paper type thing. So having a native speaker check it over will be awesome!

All in all things are working out pretty well here. I miss everyone from back home, but I'm having fun here also. So it sort of evens out.

My parents are coming out here in three weeks for a week during my "spring break"! I'm way excited about that. We're renting an apartment in Barcelona for a week. Apparently I've been designated as the "DD" for communication in Spanish because (and I quote my father here) "I don't know Spanish and your mom doesn't want to deal with it". I think she underestimates her abilities, but I'm perfectly fine with translating for them. I'm starting to think and dream in Spanish, so I think I'll probably be ok with being the liason!

The culture here is super different. It's 12:15am on Friday night (er, rather Saturday morning) and I'm sitting in this cafe which also happens to have free WiFi. Usually they close right around midnight, but apparently not today. At midnight there were three big groups of people here besides me. Fifteen minutes later the cafe is completely full! It's insane! But I enjoy it, since I'm sort of a night owl anyways. Most kids don't even go out until right about now anyways. From about midnight to 4am is the "going out" time for most kids here. Crazy...