la familia

I can only imagine how creepy this might seem to my host family, but I wanted to show you a picture of them so here’s a picture of a family picture. That’s Carlos, Araceli, Carlos and Ivan in the front. Nevermind, the picture's coming tomorrow...

So, I definitely have a cold, which is weird because I don’t know what to do about it here. I asked my mom if it’s normal for students to get sick the first few weeks with all of the adjustments and stress, etc. Her fix for me was something called moxa (?), which I still don’t understand. From what I gathered it’s a type of ancient Chinese medicine that comes in the form of a cigar sized stick of packed herbs. We went outside and she lit the moxa, which burns kind of like a cigar, and then she held it over points on my hands and arms that she said are correlated to my throat, etc. She told me they use it often in her studio and she uses it when she feels sick as well. I don’t feel any better, but it was definitely an interesting experience. I think I’ll go get Tylenol tomorrow.

For whatever reason we all had a rough day today. It’s like all the stress and lack of sleep and different schedule all caught up with us and we were all dragging this afternoon in class. So, I’m sick, exhausted and totally overwhelmed and my friend Jessie and I just totally broke down on our walk home and went to Burger King. It’s funny how soothing a big order of fries and a Whopper can be. And what a plunge in quality it is from the spaghetti with homemade meat sauce my host dad made for lunch. I was so convinced I was not going to be “that American”, but man it feels so great to be full.

We took a placement test this morning that we are finishing tomorrow afternoon with an oral interview and then we have the rest of the afternoon off to get ready for Seville. The bus leaves at 9:00 Friday morning and we’ll spend the weekend there.
bss