I thought that I should write a quick post informing the world that I have returned to Oregon safely. The flight was long but fine. I am now with the family and getting over jet-lag.

My final day(s) are here. Within 48 hours I won’t be in Spain. On Sunday I had a going-away party and said my goodbyes to most of my friends. They left on Monday to go to the beach in the south of Spain for a week. They invited me to come along, but because I am leaving on Thursday, it wasn’t possible. Yesterday, I hung out in the morning with a few friends who hadn’t left. Afterwards, I had my last lunch with Ramon, the English teacher who organized my Spanish school’s mini exchange with Boston. Then I did some last minute errands. Today I started packing and getting my stuff together. Well, this is probably going to be a last post as a Rotary Exchange student. I’m going to try and make the most of the end of my time in Spain. It has been a great year I and I feel like I have a lot of people who I will return to visit and stay in touch with. We’ll I’m off. I’ll see a lot of the people who read this in person, quite soon.

Last Saturday I picked up my mom from Madrid’s airport. Sunday we spent in Madrid seeing the touristic stuff: The Prado Museum, Sol, Plaza Mayor, Plaza de España, and a little more.

Monday we left early in the morning to Marrakesh. There we stayed with my aunt, Sylvie, in her Riad house in the Medina. A Riad is a house centered around a patio. Because of the design it stays quite cool in the patio even while the weather outside is unbearable. We walked through the narrow streets with a mix of people, motorbikes, and donkeys. We visited some amazing ancient palaces with tile work and carvings from centuries past. And the big center square with tons of people, good food, and a plethora of eccentric things.

We returned to Madrid Thursday evening and spent the night there. On Friday we took a 6:30AM high speed train to Córdoba. This city had some remains of what we saw in Marrakesh, but very very different. We visited the Mosque-Cathedral and many other beautiful sites and stayed in a hotel in the winding narrow streets of the Jewish Quarter.

It was really nice to see my mom after the months that I have been away. Now I feel that the end of my year in Spain is within site. That comes with a mix of emotions. I will try to make the remaining 18 days as good as they can be.

One of the most bizarre things that I saw in Spain when I first arrived was the milk. Yes, the milk. Milk in Spain is stored in the pantry, unrefrigerated for long periods of time, until open. Once open it is put in the fridge like I am used to. But during all that time unrefrigerated here, it doesn’t go bad. For 8 months I pondered how it could be so. Today, I found the answer. Milk in Spain, and much of Europe, is processed in a sterile environment and put through a UHT, Ultra High Temperature process to make it last for up to a few months. Wikipedia knows more: UHT. Maybe this will reach the States sometime, but it is going to take a while for people to get accustomed.

This weekend was a 3 day weekend and I went with my host family to Benalmádena. This weekend marks my third weekend traveling along the Mediterranean after Barcelona and Alicante. Benalmádena is a town in the south of Spain in between Málaga and Marbella. My host family has a small two room apartment there. We left on Thursday afternoon and arrived Thursday evening at dinner time, 10PM. On Friday we went to the beach for the morning and then to Puerto Banus for the afternoon and evening. I had gone to Puerto Banus before. It is a really rich port with brand names and fancy cars. On Saturday we went to the beach again for the morning and relaxed around the apartment for the rest of the day. On Sunday we returned to Madrid. Throughout the trip we ate out. And my host Dad, being the food connoisseur that he is, took us to delicious restaurants. I had a ton of great seafood. In my previous travels and I have been with other exchangers and we don’t have the financial resources to enjoy the Spanish Food as it should be enjoyed. Overall, it was a really nice trip. This week I don’t have anything super big going on. Friday there is a graduation dinner for all the “seniors” from my school. On Saturday my real Mom is coming to visit me and she will be here for 8 days. As of today I have a month left. That isn’t much time, and I think it is going to go too fast. But I’ll try to enjoy it as much as I can before it is over.

Last Friday I finished school. On Saturday I took a train to Alicante. A friend of mine, Erik, (another exchanger) lives there and invited me to come down and visit the beach. When I arrived on Saturday, the weather was worse than in Madrid. It was cloudy and sprinkling a little. So instead of going for a quick tour of Alicante we just went to Erik’s house. In the evening the weather cleared up a little and we went to see a community play with Erik’s host brother. The play was performed by high school age students and reminded me quite a bit of U.S. high school plays. It was about a Spanish girl who goes with her father to another country to find work. The girl has to deal with people who blame the countries problems on immigrants and making friends. It was interesting because in Spain there is a lot of immigration and the play obviously reversed the situation with a Spaniard going to another country. Overall, I thought it had a good theme and was entertaining. After the play we went to a Tea Shop, Teteria in Spanish, and played some Spanish Trivial Pursuit. Spanish Trivial Pursuit regards Spanish Trivia, like the second highest mountain in Spain, who is the bad guy in a Spanish comic, etc. Then we went to a bowling alley.

On Sunday two other exchangers who live in different towns nearby Alicante came down for the day. The four of us went to the beach for the day. It was a nice day and we managed to go swimming, although I cannot say that the water wasn’t cold. Afterwards we went to see the new Star Trek movie, in Spanish, of course.

Monday we took a train to Valencia and visited the City of Arts and Sciences. This “city” is a set of five contemporary buildings designed by a Valencian architect, Santiago Calatrava. Each of the buildings is really uniquely designed and impressive. There is an Imax huge screen theather, a science museum, art center, aquarium, and garden. We went to the Imax theater and saw a movie about the Alps and the science museum.

On Tuesday morning Erik went to school and I went to a castle in Alicante. Then I returned to Madrid.

On Monday I had my first and likely last appearance on Spanish TV. Note: not a small town TV channel but a national channel called Cuatro! I went with some friends to be part of the live audience of a TV show, El Hormiguero (The Anthill). It is a comedy-esque show which also tries to focus on the news and politics and sometimes has guests. We had to go an hour and a half before the show to check in and later returned before the show started. The show was pretty good and I found it decently humorous. The audience is shown roaring and laughing throughout the show and when I got home my host parents told me that they had seen me. It was also cool to see how a talk show like program (you know, the ones with the desk where the host sits) work and the behind the scenes. It was all broadcast live and we could see how someone has to decide which camera to broadcast and when to switch views and put on the effects. It was all pretty well done. So now I can check being on Spanish Television off my list of life goals!

This weekend another exchange student, Erik, came up to visit me. He lives in Alicante in the south of Spain along the Mediterranean. He came up on Thursday afternoon and stayed until Sunday. After arriving on Thursday we went to the Prado Museum and the Buen Retiro (the big park in Madrid). On Friday we went to Toledo. This was my second time in Toledo. I enjoyed it again and saw a few things that I hadn’t the first time. Erik found a large broad sword and bought it. We carried it back on the train to Madrid as unsuspiciously as we could. On Saturday we did the Madrid tour. This included quickly seeing the center of Madrid, Sol, the 4 huge towers of Madrid, the largest flag of Spain, Picasso’s Guernica, and almost a bull fight. It wasn’t actually a bull fight. It was a competition of bull jumpers. There were 16 young men who would go out into the bull ring and wait for a bull to charge them, when it was extremely close they would jump out of the way. Some even went as far to do some tricks. One did a back flip over the charging bull. This was a pretty cool event and they didn’t even injure or kill the bulls. Today on Sunday we met up with a third exchanger who lives in Madrid and went to El Rastro, a huge open air market with tons of booths. I saw a lot of great souvenirs ideas and have to return to buy some stuff. That was my weekend and tomorrow I have a short three day week of school before I go to Barcelona next weekend.

A few weeks ago I saw an old friend on Facebook and contacted him. I asked him what he was doing these days and told him that I was living in Madrid doing the exchange student thing. This friend was Felipe Castro, who did a Rotary Exchange with Cottage Grove High School 3-4 years ago. He happened to be doing a two-year exchange from a Chilean university to a French one. And, during his spring break was planning a trip to Spain. So we said we would meet up in Madrid.

On Wednesday I met up with him and his group of travelers (other students at the French university from Italia, Spain and Russia) in front of the Prado Museum. This time, unlike the last time I saw him, we spoke in Spanish. Before he was learning English and I the native speaker. Now, it is reverse. It’s nice to talk with some who really understands an exchange, having done one himself. It was cool to catch up on the last four years and to have someone else who knew anything about Cottage Grove and its high school. He sends his regards to all those back in Oregon and many of you Rotarians who helped him, and me, with the exchange program.

The coincidence that he happened to be living in France, and visiting Spain, just a few weeks after I talked with him for the first time in all those years, was quite extraordinary. It reminds me of a time when my two uncles, (my mom’s brother and dad’s brother) ran into each other randomly on a beach in Thailand. While maybe this is not as haphazard, it still took some chance.

In other news, I have three weeks left of school until I finish on May 8th. Afterwards I’ll have a little bit over a month until I return to Oregon.

Here in Spain the spring break coincides with Easter, or Semana Santa, the holy week. I had this entire week off of school and the coming Monday. Our house here has seemed to be really full until now. This morning my host dad’s mother left. She had been here since I got back from Italy (almost 2 weeks) because she was a little sick and couldn’t be living alone. Last weekend, I had another exchange student from Pamplona come and stay with me. He had to take the A.C.T. on Saturday, but the rest of the weekend we hung out. My host cousins came over a few times and spent the night once. So overall, the house has been quite full. Today and tomorrow it will be the normal five of us, and on Monday some family friends from Mexico are coming.

All over Spain there have been parade/processions for the holy week. The processions consist of people carrying huge figures of the Jesus on a cross or other religious figures. There are a lot of people who dress up in the typical robes of Semana Santa. This robes look exactly like the Ku Klux Kan. Wikipedia even said that the KKK uniforms originated from this Semana Santa robes.

When school begins on Tuesday, I will three more weeks of school. I am going to Barcelona for an extended weekend at the end of April and we will see what other travels I can procure. Jumanji, which I seem to have never watched, is about to begin and my family says that it is mandatory to have seen it in their family.