Snails and School

This is what I ate this weekend. What did you guys back home have, chicken nuggets?

This weekend we went to the beach every day, and I learned how to stand-up paddle board. It's not just a foreign thing, you can do it back home too, on the big lake. On Friday and Saturday it was wavy and I fell a lot, but by Monday I could make it to the farthest buoy and back without clumsily face-planting into the water with the whole beach as my audience. It's a huge balance thing, but I learned if you don't think about it too much, it's pretty easy and you stay on the board. I also met my first Medusa. They're ugly guys, big blobs that sting you. Like a jellyfish, but weirder. 

So, today was my first day of school. I was pretty excited. It was my first time being "the new kid", and it wasn't only that, but also "The American Girl". I stood in front as everyone stared at me and a bouncy lady with orange hair introduced me as "Thethelia" (that's how they say their C's here, it's like everyone has a lisp). I sat down and the teacher then proceeded to lecture for two hours in Catalan (this is a language separate from Spanish and I had no idea what she was talking about, or even what class I was in); so naturally, I was happy when suddenly it was 11:00 and time for a half hour break. After that I went to Fisica, which is Physics, and I didn't really know what I was doing I just kind of followed this boy named Santi because he was friendly and told me where to go. I liked Fisica, which is ironic because I do not think I am capable of learning Physics in Spanish, but the teacher was fun and it was a smaller class and at the end the kids gathered around me and asked me things like, "so does your name mean yes-yes?" My last class turned out to be an English class, which felt like a miracle at the time. I felt like the smartest person in the world when I was the only one in the room who knew the synonym for "concerned". We got done around 2 today, and some other kids from my class walked home with me. It was nice. Tomorrow I go to school from 8-1:30, 3-5. The schedules are different here, the days aren't all the same. I still don't know what classes to go to- I think they all thought "that American girl is silly" when Alberto and Santi flipped a coin for me to decide whether I would go to Biologia or Electrotecnia- but that's ok. I'm a go with the flow kind of person.