!?Que Pasa!?

Pictures... 1. This picture is of me at the Turron factory, except the turrons, which are chocolate and other flavored truffles, no esta aqui! We toured the museum and tried some samples. Everyone here loves the candies.. I brought some home for mi madre and she gave me 20 kisses as a thank you haha.
2. This it the path I run on, if I am not running on the sidewalks by the port or the beach. The roots of the trees grow above the ground.. some of the coolest trees I have ever seen.
3. Mike Resoski made it with me to Espana, this one was taken in my room.


Well, I have officially been here for over a week and I am really starting to understand what it means when I say "I live in Alicante." This is my home for the next 4 months, so I better start getting used to all this craziness (aka things promote what they call "culture shock").
Here are a few ejemplos...

1. On top of the washing machine, next to my clean clothes and a few feet away from the kitchen counter, happens to be where my family keeps their pig. Yes, they have a dead pig, complete with hooves that chills in the laundry room and when they need meat, they chop some off.

2. All food here has eyes. If the meat does not come with eyes when you buy it, it means it's not fresh, and why even serve something without the eyes that prove it's fresh.

3. People here, NEVER use a thumbs up to mean "good." Yup, learned that one the hard way. Mi madre asked me if I liked the food, and I said, "Me gusta la comida" as I grinned and put both thumbs up. I did not know that I was really saying "Me gusta la comida" and signaling "up yours."

4. I learned this one the hard way at well... Mom and Dad, don't be mad... but mi madre if I liked wine, and of course I said yes! The next thing I new she had poured 5 glasses for me to try, of different types of wine of course! She kept asking me if I like them, and of course I did, so she told me to drink up! All of a sudden, I started feeling drunk, but what was I supposed to do? I stopped drinking, but of course all my friends found it humorous that my Mom encouraged me to drink.


5. Spaniards don't know what ground hogs are, and they will never, by any means understand why we make a day out of seeing an animal's shadow.. try explaining that one in Spanish.

6. People here, are CRAZY about Barrack Obama! way more so than I thought they would be... Today, I asked for my cambio (change) after I bought a coffee, and the people around me started chanting "Obama, Obama Obama" just because they heard the word change.


I am sure there will be many more situations like these, and I sure hope so, because laughing at my mistakes and awful Spanish skills can be almost fun. Today I opened a bank account here, and I accidentally asked the lady if it was free to use my wallet in the ATM... I meant to say my debit card.. She thought I was nuts.

I hope everyone is doing well! I would send everyone packages and gifts, but I just found out it costs 15 euros no matter the weight, so I'll go with postcards instead : )