El Conquistador: Extremely eventful classes

The title of this post was just an attention grabber so everyone would want to read this post, in reality it is quite misleading, so I hope it doesn't bore you, but you have already started reading so you can't stop now!

Now that everyone has settled in and is used to being in Valencia, my life has slowed down a bit. Classes are good, none of them are too difficult. In my conversation class we just converse about random things, I have no idea how we are going to have a midterm in that class next week since we have learned less material than I learn in the first day of a math class. My other two classes are a little easier to follow the structure. They are both a lot of reading and writing, I have already had four papers due and read a couple of stories that went way over my head. I wouldn't say anything is too difficult but motivating yourself to do the homework here is quite the task for all of us. However we are very lucky that we have an excellent teaching staff, which makes it much easier to understand the two century old Spanish literature that we are currently reading.

I still do have my fair share of free time, sometimes we will go to the beach or río and hang out, other times I babble non-stop at my host-mom. We have had some very in-depth conversations using some very simple words, it can get frustrating sometimes not being able to clearly express what you want to say. The rest of the down time I have (which is still a lot) I lay in my bed and watch shows and YouTube videos or play solitaire. I could probably beat a solitaire game on my phone with my eyes closed.

The food has been excellent since I have been here, I only have one complaint. They cook with a ridiculous amount of oil, yesterday I went to play basketball and there is a dangerous chance that I was sweating pure oil, I was shimmering more that I usually do, although that could just be from my bronze bod carved by the Valencian sun... its probably a mix of the two. Only twice have I sneakily thrown my food out to avoid eating it. Both times were because our Madre left early and just left the food sitting in a pool of oil, I just couldn't do it.

I had a cooking class after school last Thursday that was an absolute blast! We made two paellas and a traditional Valenciana drink called Horchata. It is a drink made from tiger nuts, sugar, water and maybe milk (I can't remember), it was delicious and very sweet! The paellas were a squid paella and a chicken paella. My job was to clean the squids. This consisted of pulling out the heart, cutting off the tentacles, removing the spine, ripping out the insides, and then peeling the skin off... in that order. It was very gooey and fun, however my hands smelled like squid for the next ten hours no matter how many times I washed them, that part wasn't fun.

I am enjoying the calmer week days, we normally have one excursion a week. Tomorrow we are headed to the aquarium! I am loving my trip more and more everyday, and the people here are great!