El Teatro

This past Saturday evening was the second and last night of the musical Dracula here in Spain. I had an absolute blast dancing along side a bunch of extremely skilled dancers and actors and I am going to do my best to take you back with me and relive it!

I started dancing at the Escuela Preforming Arts here in Castelldefels at about the start of October I think, and I instantly felt a part of something great. Lucky for me we actually started learning a brand new dance the day I began, and from the very start of the dance I could tell that it was going to be very different than anything I had ever done before. 

First of all, these guys learn fast I mean we learn a full dance in one night! And this is no normal Hip-Hop class, this is Street Dance. I mean, obviously by the name of the class I knew this before I began, but I didn't expect it to be so different! The closest thing I can relate it to is the dancing in the flash mobs of Step Up 4 Revolution. It is fantastic, and incredibly challenging! 

Anyway, a week or two later I learned that this dance routine would be in a full on theatrical show. Not only that, but I would also be added into dances that these guys had already been practicing for weeks (super intimidating) as well as learning others with the full crew, and perfecting these dances within 4-5 weeks time for opening night. I mean we were literally learning some of these dances two weeks before the show! It was madness of the very best kind! 

And of course what is a show without tech week? Oh did we have tech week! Literally getting to the theatre at 6 on some days, 8 on others and 9 on others, and always leaving at 12. Yes that is 12 on school nights for a week and a half straight, doing the exact same show over and over again, and yet it never got boring! There was always something new and exciting or unexpected thrown into the mix each night. Dracula was undoubtedly a success, even if we didn't fill every single seat in the theatre, I believe that doing a show is only 40% for the audience and 60% for the performers! 

Here are some pictures to take you through it all!

The Theatre 

The Transformation Pt. 1

The Transformation Pt. 2

The Transformation Pt. 3

The Crew Pt. 1

The Crew Pt. 2

Now we are back to learning new dances for fun and man is it hard! However it is so exciting as well, and these guys just make it 10x more enjoyable! I am so proud to be a part of this crew! 

The Week at a Glance

Monday:

Just a normal day of school and afterwards STARTING at about 9 o'clock PM I had dance. This week I had dance everyday at about this time because it was the equivalent of tech week here! I love theater here (not necessarily more or less than theater at home, I try not to compare things here with things at home because they are simply two entirely different things). The people are so incredibly nice and I swear you step onto that stage and there is no other care in the world beside the part you're playing, which in my case happened to be a vampire.

*Side bar* Being a vampire is A LOT harder than you would think! I have a new found respect for the actors of Twilight, Vampire Diaries, True Blood, etc cause man, it is not easy to pretend to me a vicious man eating monster hissing at one another without bursting out laughing!

Tuesday: 

Another normal school day, another long tech day from about 9-12:30, yes that is on a school night and that is the time I finished, I didn't get home until about another 10-15 minutes later! But I didn't mind because these people, I swear are just so darn fun! Being that it was tech week, we were able to sit in the crowd and watch scenes that we weren't in and this small crowd got a little rowdy! For example, since this show is an original (I think) created by the director herself, the songs are not written specifically for the show, but actual popular songs of the past in present. In addition, some songs are even in English. 

Back to getting rowdy... at one point in the show Dracula sings, You Sexy Thing (I Believe in Miracles), with his male "assistant", which I am sure you can imagine to start with. Add on top of that, a Spanish accent, the fact that this male assistant is similar to an experiment gone wrong so throughout the show he is constantly twitching and jerking around, AND THEN just multiply that by 10! It is just fantastic, and since there are only two of them in this number, the rest of us were sitting in the audience laughing along having a good time. All of a sudden a bra is thrown on stage. We LOSE it then! So there is just one example of the many fun and interesting things that happens in the theater here. Not too different from NY I might add.

Wednesday:

We had a school field trip to a little tourist town, two train stops away called Sitges. Here we were allowed to walk the streets, look around, then later we went to the movies to see a movie in English. Yay for being able to understand the entire movie. However, we went to see "The Beasts of the Southern Wild"which I mean was good and all, but the entire movie was spoken in southern slang, not at all proper English and if the whole point was to see a movie in English..... I'm just saying it wouldn't be my top choice! Anyway, since the movie ended at about 12:30 we all returned in Castelldefels at around 1 and were allowed to go home from there. Teatro later as usual, then sleep at last!

Thursday: 

Regular old school. Then theater with makeup, fake teeth, the works for dress rehearsal. All went smoothly, but the nerves of others definitely started to kick in. Me? Not sure why, but I wasn't nervous at all! Maybe it was the fact that I wouldn't really know anyone that would be sitting in the audience, besides my host family of course, who would happen to be sitting front an center of it all! So yep, all went swimmingly and the 24 hour countdown began 'til show time!

Friday: 

School was a bit different on Friday. In the grade above me, each student had their own huge research project to do and each student in my grade chose three presentations they wanted to see, and once those three presentations were over, we were allowed to leave school. I watch one presentation on some sort of cancer like diseases (I was lost OK, the classes were all different and I couldn't find my friends so I saw someone I knew and followed them into a classroom and this was what the presentation was about. The girl did a fantastic job, I might add!). Another presentation on disorders of how one sees themselves, for example eating disorders, working out until your skin is literally about to burst, all things about self image wrapped into one 40 minute or so presentation. The last presentation I saw was about Hip-Hop as a culture. After this was all over, my friends and I went to the mall just to look around. And wouldn't ya know it, I didn't buy a thing. Later, I gathered my things together and headed off to the theater to start preparing for show time! Here are some photo's and video clips of the stage and during and after the show. (Hope they work!)

Sha-La-La

Time Warp (Spanish Version)

Saturday: 

Saturday was pretty low key. I slept pretty late, since I had a late night before! (^^The show started at 10 PM^^) Then Roman, Ana and I went to the nearby mall so I could buy a birthday present for a get together I had later that night. When we returned to the house the three of us played some pretty intense rounds of Mario Kart, and lets just say, living in another country has NOT affected my racing skills ;) . 

Later I walked to the meeting place for this little birthday get together. I wasn't sure what to expect and I was a little nervous at first, because I don't know if you can understand unless you have been in this situation, but meeting and socializing with people, especially new people, in a different language is EXTREMELY nerve wracking! There are just so many things to worry about! If they will talk to you at all. If they do, will they be patient with you, or just walk away when they get bored. Will they try to speak in English with you, and then you will have to awkwardly explain to them that even though you don't know Spanish very well, it is really important to only speak in Spanish, because that is the only way you will learn. Well, I got lucky! There was a girl from my class there who I had never really talked to before and she came right on over to me and we talked the whole time! We talked about travel, Christmas, all sorts of things, and she never got bored! She even said that I was a better Spanish speaker than most other exchange students she had met in the past. Now, this compliment is nothing out of the ordinary. I am not saying that to sound cocky, its just that the Spanish people are always so nice and encouraging with one another and this is just a typical compliment of theirs'. In reality, it means a lot! It's just a little reminder that some people do admire your bravery of stepping out of your comfort zone and trying to learn something completely new, so thanks guys! (Americans are really nice too, but I don't think we openly express our compliments as much. We should! When I get home I am definitely bringing that trait back with me!) 

Not done with Saturday yet! So the birthday celebration included us walking to the mall, sitting at McDonalds, taking LOADS of pictures (taking pictures here is like a huge thing, like these people probably spend more time taking selfies than the average person spends breathing! Then we went upstairs, and sat like little rednecks in a corner lit candles on a cake and literally ate it off the cardboard pieces from the candles. It was pretty darn classy! OK, brace yourself, still not done with Saturday. So after walking home from the mall, we ate some dinner as a family and then some of Emma's friends came over as well as their exchange students (I forgot to mention that we have a sixth member of the family this week because Emma is doing an exchange with the Canary Islands through her school this year). We played some more Mario Kart, and some poker. Luckily we only use dry beans because I am AWFUL at this game! We called it a night around 1ish maybe 2, not quite sure, but Emma's friends left and I went to bed and was out like a light in now time!

Sunday: 

Sunday started a bit early, 10:45ish with Ana Maria bring churros home from work! Emma, Carla (our exchange student), Ana Maria and I went to town on them churros! Afterwards we got dressed and headed to Emma's volleyball game. However, Emma is currently injured and can't play, so we all watched and cheered together! After the game we went out to eat. We went to a little Japanese restaurant, where I ate, you guessed it, Japanese food for the first time! Fun fact: Although I know Chinese food and Japanese food is different, its pretty similar, anyway, in the US my dad doesn't like Chinese food, and here in Spain Roman doesn't like Japanese food. See where I am going with this?! My families are basically clones!!!! 

Alright so we ate the Japanese food family style, ordering lots of plates and sharing everything, and it was really good! Afterwards, we headed back to the house. Emma and Carla hopped a train to Barcelona, and I headed off to dance to practice, yet again, for the upcoming show Saturday. Dance was great of course, but I since I was at dance, I unfortunately missed the invitation from Emma to go to the movies with them to see "We're the Millers", a movie that I have literally been waiting to see since before I came here, so that was a bit of a bummer. However, it's just a movie, I can see it some other time. Ana, Ana Maria, Roman, and I had dinner together of pasta and meat sauce, and now, we are just chillin' on the couch watching New Moon.

So ya, there is my week in a nutshell! To wrap this up on a slightly different note, tomorrow marks the 25% mark of this wonderful journey of my Spanish life! (I am reading your thoughts as you're reading this mom ;) but ya know what, :P !) So there ya have it! Time does go by and I am thoroughly looking forward to the time I have left here! It's just always nice to know how much you have already accomplished! Lot's of love! Have a nice week! Love Emily!

A Nudge in the Right Direction

Let me start this little post off by saying, before I came here yes I was a believer  in God, but not to the extent of most in my family and church family. I was more of the kind who questioned and challenged the validity of the bible and the right and wrong in every situation. HOWEVER, through my travels so far here in Spain I have, without a doubt, discovered God. The God who does in fact have a plan and purpose for my life. The God that has blessed me with so many wonderful people, experiences and love in my life. And the the God that will guide me safely back home to my family in June.When you are so incredibly far away from everything you have ever known and life seems impossible, this is how you truly find God.

Along those lines, today in school God sent me a message. I know it sounds cliche, but hear me out!

Today in English class a boy, about 19 or 20 years old came in to do a little presentation. Lets just say it was another sign / blessing that this presentation was in English! This guy, about a year or two ago, was just a regular high school student like anyone his age. One day, he decided he didn't want to waste his youth in a school and live the life of the ordinary so he simply stopped going to school. After some time of playing video games and sitting around thinking about what he wanted to do with his life he, literally, went out, bought a backpack and WALKED, alone,  from one end of Spain to the other. When he returned he decided he wanted to do some more traveling, but didn't have the funds to do it. So he went off to a small country to the east of Italy, alone, and worked as a waiter for eight months to earn the money he needed. He then bought a bike, biked around some of Europe, hopped onto a boat and returned to his home in Spain for a second time.

As if this wasn't enough, the boy decided to do MORE but, again, needed the money to do so. So he did some research online, hoped onto a plane and worked as a nurse in Ghana, yes that is Ghana, Africa, for two months. Once he completed his nursing time there, he returned to Spain, bought a new bike cause some jerkface stole his, and rode from Spain to Germany then down to Greece and hoped another boat and arrived in Spain yet again. And this was all over the course of TWO YEARS! 

Now I was feeling a bit down before this presentation today (cause that's just what happens when you are an exchange student, you have your ups and your downs) and as if I was ready for a break. Ready to crawl into bed and wait for a vacation or for the day to come that I would fly home and just continue my perfectly normal life in New York, but this guy made me realize how many people wish they could go on an exchange or do something extraordinary with their teenage years. He showed me that this time is truly the only time you have to do these crazy things before you get stuck in the routine of an ordinary life and wish you had done something like this in your youth, but I am doing it now. It took me awhile to realize it, but I am strong, brave, and I will NEVER regret this experience for as long as I live. In the future I will look back on this trip with such pride for completing something so few have actually done.

There will always be the questions, "Do you miss your family?", "Why are you living here when your are from New York?", and just why in general. Here are the answers to your "whys", plan and simple. I believe that through missing your family more than you ever imagined was possible will help you appreciate them and every little thing they do for you when you are finally reunited and once again in their arms. I believe it doesn't matter where you go, but the fact that you can prove to yourself, and others that you have the courage and the strength to just pick up and literally form a new life from scratch in a place that is new and uncomfortable to you, is an experience everyone should have the opportunity to witness. And I believe WHY to do this at all, is to be the change you want to see in the world. Be an inspiration to others and simply live life to the fullest!

Going into this post I didn't intend to transform into some motivational speaker, but ya know what that is what was on my mind and I just felt like sharing! Plus by not only experiencing my physical experiences vicariously through this blog, but also my mental experiences, just helps you understand on a deeper level what it is like to be an exchange student. Also, to appreciate the weight of the finish line when I finally cross it, out of that gate in the airport, and right back into the best thing I have ever known, my family. 

Here are some pictures of the latest and greatest from Spain.

The large fountain found in Parc de la Ciutadella.

Ana, Ana, Me, Emma

Emma, Me, Ana, Ana

A picnic in the park.

A giant statue at el Centro Cultural in Barcelona.

Birthday, Halloween, & Finishing October

Happy November!

I know it may sound strange, but there is no greater feeling than accomplishing another month as an exchange student. As of now I have officially lived two months away from my family (torture) and have eight months full of potential left to go (which doesn't sound that long to me to be honest). 

Let's start off with my birthday! My birthday celebration started right off the bat at 12:15 AM on October 30th with a Skype call to my family! They sang to me and held up a cupcake with a 1 and a 6 candle and we took a family photo and blew out the candles together and it was literally the cutest thing ever! I love my family so much! After that I opened the package they had sent me. Inside was, a t-shirt from Digitour that I unfortunately missed because I was here (love that shirt by the way!!!! Thanks guys!), a silver necklace with a silver pendant of flowers with an inscription on the back saying Happy 16th Birthday, and 2 packages of Pringles! Oh and I forgot to mention, they sent a crown with 16 written on it that I wore throughout this whole Skype call! We basically could have been in a scene of a movie it was just that cute!

After the skype call, I went to bed and woke up to part two of the birthday celebration! I woke up to find a link sent from my sister in my inbox. I had been warned of a birthday surprise coming my way by her before, but this video topped ALL and ANY of my expectations. If you haven't seen it yet here is the link. Its a must watch! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyzn-S5CmcM&app=desktop When I got to school the kids there were exactly like how they would be in the U.S. They sang to me in the middle of a lesson, and then for the rest of the day repeatedly wished me a happy birthday! 

When I got home from school I had a nice lunch with Emma and Ana who were off from school for the week. During lunch I opened cards and packages sent from the rest of my friends and family! After lunch we played  Monopoly. We called it a 3 way tie because we had to leave half way through. Before we left, Emma, Ana, and Roman presented me with a gift. It was a like a cable knit sweater with a preppy blue button up underneath! So excited to wear that and so glad it was winter clothes, because I didn't really think to pack much of those.We left to go to the movies and see Elyssium which just gives you an idea how delayed some of the movie releases are here. However, its a bit strange because some movies come out before the U.S., some the same time, and some late. Not sure how that works, but I do know that We Are the Millers is about to come out here and Emma and I are soooooo excited! Sorry a bit off topic...

After Elyssium we went to dinner at Hollywood Fosters for an American meal. I had a fantastic cheese burger with fries, so that was exciting! During dinner Emma and I realized that the table next to us, a table of like 4 college aged boys, were definitely exchange students, talking in English to each other and Spanish to the waitress, as all exchange students do. Now we didn't introduce ourselves or anything, saying we were exchange students as well or anything. Instead we eaves dropped on their conversation for awhile hearing them say things like, "Wait what did we even order?". Emma and Roman, being the hilarious human beings they are, plotted things to say like "Oh you like horse meat too?" or "That's a great choice, the rat here is just fantastic!" Fortunately for the boys, we left before their food arrived. 

We skipped dessert at the restaurant  because waiting at home was a personalized cake with a 1 and 6 candle on top! They sang to me and then had me cut the cake, which I wasn't even half bad at! Ana skipped the cake because like Mari she just doesn't like it. Can we take a moment  to recognize that Mari and Ana have scarily similar mannerisms ? The other day I walked into the kitchen, there's Ana laying on the floor. It is the greatest thing to see some sort of bridge shared between two of my sisters. 

After cake it was bed time and the birthday celebration was over. It was a great, low key day, and I have got to say I am now relieved of two things.

1. The stress of throwing a Sweet Sixteen

2. Getting through my first (and DEFINITELY my last) birthday away from my family.

They say your birthday and Christmas are the two main lows during your exchange and I have successfully made it through one without a having a hard time!

Halloween.

Let me start off by saying that I have never been a huge Halloween fan. Sure its a nice excuse to eat a lot of candy and spend a late night with your friends, but I didn't think it was going to be something I was going to miss. Well I was wrong. I will officially be going trick-or-treating for the rest of my life because I am an American, and America, EVERYONE all over the world is jealous of trick-or-treating and I am going to use and abuse it for the rest of my life just to rub it in their faces!

Anyway... since they don't trick-or-treat here they just party instead. Now since I am officially 16, I am officially "clubbing" age in Spain. I am not sure how many of you are aware of the delayed time schedule they have here in Spain, but this night was a perfect example of how it goes down in Spain.

8:30 PM: Emma's friends came over and we ate dinner together.

9:00 PM: Went to Emma's room to finish last minute makeup / "costume" preparations.

9:30 PM: Left the house to go to the train station.

9:45 PM: Met up with more of Emma's friends by the train station.

10:10 PM: Hopped aboard our train.

10:45 PM: Arrived at the train station in Barcelona.

11:00 PM: Found our way to the club, which I should mention was right on the shore of the Barcelona beach.

12:15 AM: FINALLY made our way into the club after running from one line to another, and cutting the second line we found (what rebels we are ;) ).

12:30 - 4:30 AM: DANCED  ALL NIGHT LONG!!!

4:45 AM: Successfully hailed a taxi.

5:00 AM: Returned home safe and sound!

Ya. THAT is Spain for you! I would just like to say a huge thank you to Emma and her friends for including me in their plans and making me feel like a part of the group! I had an amazing time and truly feel like I had the true Spanish experience of Halloween! Thank you bunches! Hope you all had a Happy Halloween in the U.S.!!! 

The Halloween Crew

Our matching homemade t-shirts!