June 15-16 – Fany’s Surprise Arrival, Lots of Rain, and First Exam

Tues. June 15th

After my Literature class today, our housing & safety director, Alice, invited the 4 members of my class to go to a café with her. We all got different types of pastries and mine had chocolate in the middle, which was yummy. We hung out and talked for a while and filled her in on what we did that past weekend and how our homestays were going. It had also poured the night before and was drizzling a bit during the day. I thought my beautiful island was protected against the rain but sadly it’s not always sunny in Palma.

During my break, I started working on my essay for my literature class about Don Quijote de la Mancha that’s due on Thursday. I also had to study for my first exam in my language class that was tomorrow, Wednesday. We originally thought the exam was going to be just on grammar but then in class, our professor said it was going to be on everything that we had covered from the first day of class up until today.

For dinner that night, Loli told me that we were going to eat in the family room so that Jaime and the rest of us would be able to watch the fútbol game on TV. I learned some more vocab words (after desperately trying to describe “the man that stands in the net where the ball goes” a.k.a. goalie or “portero”). At 10 PM, I decided to return to my studying.

About 5 minutes after I went back to my bedroom to continue studying, I heard someone walk through the door, which was weird because everyone that lives in my house was there and accounted for. Then I heard shouting, laughing, crying, and more shouting. Curiously, I walked through the hallway and I first saw Eva and Sira. Then I saw someone I hadn’t met yet and through the process of elimination realized that it was Loli and Jaime’s third child: Fany. Fany lives in Malaga and planned a surprise visit to see her parents! Loli was completely shocked and kept hugging and kissing her daughter. It was a really precious moment. Fany and I were introduced to each other and then I heard the story about how she hadn’t contacted her mom in 2 days and how only Toni and Eva knew about her surprise visit. She’s going to be staying with us for 1 week. While she was talking with us all, everyone kept telling her to speak more slowly because I wasn’t able to keep up. I told them that it was ok and it reminded me how my mom is always telling me to slow down when I talk fast in English, especially when my Nana can’t understand what I’m saying. Some things are universal. : )

After the initial excitement died down and Eva and Sira left, I unfortunately had to return to my bedroom and continue studying for my exam.


Wed. June 16th

Today in my literature class all of us were actually able to stay awake because we talked about random stuff instead of analyzing poetry for 2 hours. We talked about the different disasters that happen in different parts of the U.S. (specifically PA, CA, and AL), and got to talk about random stuff like what the dress codes at our school are and what are we most afraid of. It was a pretty fun class.

After class, I went straight home so that I’d have the maximum amount of time to continue studying for my exam and to write my essay (yes it’s occasionally hard to turn off the devoted student in me…even for a pass/fail course). I was very successful: I napped for a little bit, studied, wrote a page of my paper, and studied again.

All 3 classes had an exam today so they decided to put us all in the same classroom. I was definitely not a fan of the exam: all of the grammar sections were really confusing and didn’t clearly explain if they were looking for present or past tense verbs. There were also 2 random vocab phrases that we had never learned before. And there was 1 section where there could be more than 1 possible answer. I talked to my friends after and the reaction was mixed. While we were taking our exam, our professor was watching the España fútbol game on her computer. She promised she’d tell us if/when Spain scored a goal. After students started finishing up, they joined her in the front of the room. I got to watch the last 13 minutes of the game and watched Spain unfortunately lose 0-1 to Switzerland. Our professor was using very colorful language to describe her reaction to the game, which was interesting.

After the game was over, our professor had previously promised us she would take us out for churros. Six people from our class went and after walking pretty far, we found out that the churros restaurant is closed until June 20th. So then she told us there’s another pretty good dessert place and we walked over there instead. I got chocolate ice cream and ate a piece of my friend’s Ensaymada, which is a typical dish from Mallorca. Afterwards, I returned back home.

After dinner, Loli and I started talking about random things. She told me some stories about Fany and I revealed my embarrassing story that I didn’t know who she was originally, which made Loli crack up. Then we started talking about love and boyfriends so I told her the story of how Josh and I met and she told me how she and Jaime first met. We talked for about 45 minutes and it was really easy to make conversation with her. We also talked about how glad we were that we got paired together and how I’m an example of a successful home stay story. She joked that if she has a future home stay student, they’ll have to compete with my experience because I set the bar pretty high. And I joked that when I return back home, my parents will have to strive to reach Loli and Jaime’s level (just a joke, mis padres reales).

I then decided to finish up the conclusion to my essay and just as I was about to email it to my professor, my internet connection to the Wi-Fi network died. I tried going to the front of the house, and then the spare bedroom, and then the back patio and nothing was working. I started getting nervous because I knew my teacher wanted us to email it to her tonight. Finally, after 40 minutes of struggling, I got a connection and sent the email off 5 seconds later. Success!

Tomorrow is the end of the school week (yay!) and I don’t have any more exams/essays until the following week. And Friday is our last group excursion and we’re going to Sa Dragonera for the entire day. ¡Hasta luego!