Host mom: "Are you going to Gijon tomorrow"
Me: "No we decided not to go"
Host mom: "Want to go to Leon tomorrow?"
Me (not wanting to ever be considered rude): "Sure"
Host mom: "Ok, we'll leave at 8:30am"
Me (my internal voice): "Oh crap"
Leon is a province in just south of Asturias (the region Oviedo is in). My host mom was taking me to her "pueblo" in Leon where she grew up. I was under the impression that I would see Leon, see the house my madre grew up in, eat some food, and then return to Oviedo promptly. Wrong.
Here's what really happened:
8:30am- beep, beep, beeeep. I lazily rolled out of bed after just five hours of sleep the night before. I slammed some breakfast as my host mom rushed me out the door excitedly. I got dressed, we packed up our stuff, and loaded Samy the dog into the car.
8:50am- we hit the road.
9:00am- we make a pit stop on the way out of town. We stop to pick up a Brazilian/African man. Random? I thought so. Turns out my host mom pays this guy with food and conversation to work on her family house. She told me he was Brazilian, but then I asked him and said he was from an African country. He spoke French, about three English phrases (How are you? Where are you from? How do you feel today?- that last one is kinda odd), and some Spanish.
10:00am- awkward silence in the car on my behalf.
10:30am- we arrive in her pueblo. It was quite far out of the way of any other civilization. At first I thought it was a ghost town that we'd pass through. All the houses were within about a half mile radius. The tiny town was in the cradle of rolling mountains. Every house was adorned in cobble stone and surrounded by greenery. It was quite picturesque.
11:00am- after getting a tour of easily the oldest house I've ever been in, the madre & the man get to work around the yard. I decide to go for a walk around the town.
11:03am- done with the walk. Just kidding. I made the walk last at least 45 minutes. I snapped pictures around every corner as I stumbled across hidden bridges and obscure farm life.
11:45am- I return to the house for some relaxing time before lunch. Once I got back in the house I was freezing. And I don't just mean a little chilly. I mean freezing. The weekend before it had snowed all over Leon. I swear it was cold enough to snow the day I visited. My host mom even made the comment that she thought it was colder inside the house than outside. Great.
12:00pm to 4:00pm- I read my book. That's right. Four hours of reading. It was nice to be able to really relax and enjoy my book...until I finished it. Then I started going crazy. My host mom and the man were working in the attic while I sat in the kitchen and twiddled my thumbs. At one point my host mom came into the kitchen to find me huddled next to the old school portable heater with two jackets on. She then informed me that if I wear my jacket in the house I would get sick the next time I went outside because my body would be used to the temperature of two jackets. I was forced to shed a layer. Just dandy. I sat there, one jacket less, and waited for lunch or some excitement to come along.
4:30pm- lunch time. Yummm. We ate these white bean things (an Asturian specialty) in a hot stew with plenty of bread on the side.
5:00pm- ok, I thought, it must be time to pack up and head back to the comforts of Oviedo. Not so much.
5:30pm- my host mom tells the man to take me up the mountain by her house while she cleans. It was awkward. His Spanish was lacking, my Spanish was lacking. Neither of us really wanted to walk up a mountain together. It was okay though, the mountain turned out to be a slightly elevated hill that only took five minutes to get to. It was a beautiful view from the top.
6:00pm- the madre, the man, Samy the dog, and I go walking around the town waiting for Samy to "hacer caca," which literally means "make poop". I've never wanted something to poop so badly in my life. I just wanted to go home.
6:15pm- we go to a very, very, very old lady's house. She was a family friend of my host mom's. She seemed really sweet but I had zero idea as to what she was saying the entire time.
7:00pm- we leave the pueblo!
7:30pm- my host mom decides to stop at a gas station and clean her car in the car wash.
8:00pm- as I'm dozing off to sleep in the back of the car my madre asks how I'm doing. I tell her good, but tired. She told me I could sleep in the car- she didn't mean it. She then proceeded to say things to me every five minutes just as I was beginning to hit dreamland.
9:00pm- home, sweet, home. Or, well, Oviedo.
It was really neat to see where my host mom grew up and what her childhood must have been like. It was also cool to see a true Spanish pueblo. The tiny town was beautiful. With that said, this day was probably the day of my worst homesickness. As I sat in my madre's family home I couldn't help but to think how much I wanted to be in my family home. That was rough.
Also, I want to formally retract my statement in my last blog post about becoming anywhere close to conversational in Spanish. On Saturday I sucked it up in terms of attempting to speak/understand Spanish. I didn't understand 98% of what was said that day and I was only able to reply to everything with "si".
The language of Spanish: 1
Kate: 0
i'll bet you were homesick because the temperature of that tiny house you were in sounds like the temperature of our house in san ramon from november to march.
ReplyDelete