My Intercambio is awesome!

Today I met with my intercambio. Intercambio is a program to help students studying abroad with their spanish and the local you are paired with, with their English. I had been praying to get someone that I really clicked with and wanted to hang out as much as we could, well my prayers worked! I was so nervous before meeting with her today and for a few minutes I thought she was not going to show. I had that nervous feeling of every girl walking my way was going to be her, so my I would get nervous energy and then the person would keep walking on. haha. Take a deep breath and then anticipate the next being my intercambio and being shot down again. Oh well, finally I saw her walking up and for sure knew it was her! Almudena is her name and she is awesome! Right away, we got along. Beso on each cheek and straight to talking. It was easy and comfortable. I just can not even express how happy I am that we got along so well! I so badly wanted a perfect fit to actually make a local spanish amiga and improve my Espanol at the same time. We went for a cafe con leche, that she paid for, I insisted but settled with "I got the next one". We sat and talked for about two hours at the cafe. Our families, friends, school, and so many other random topics. We even got on the topic that breast feeding burns 500 calories a day alone. HAHa, I don't know how I explained that in spanish but I did, must be getting better ;) She has a serious boyfriend of 6 years, Loca!

She seems very confidant and is so easy to talk to, and we can't even speak the same language, that's saying something! After a lot of good convo at the cafe we made our way down to the Rio and sat and talked for another hour. It was so funny because we tried to play a joke on a group on Americana's next to us at the river (not a mean way at all, just silly) I think me and Almudena we not exactly on the same page but it turned out really funny anyway and both couldn't stop laughing. Ahhhhhh, what a great day! She told me her friends wanted to meet me, which is awesome because I would love to meet them! They were laughing when they read my e-mails to Almudena about when and where we were going to meet and such. I attempted to write in spanish and I knew it wasn't correct but also my point was definitely getting through. She was teasing me a bit but it became more funny because Rachel and I had laughs when we read her e-mails. It is so funny the way we each put our words together in each others languages. You can understand what they are trying to say but it is written correctly. Here is an excerpt from our e-mails:


Almudena:

I live in Seville every days but weekend I go to Marchena. Marchena is my town.

On morning tuesdays I go to english class and on afternoon I go to university class from 15:00 to 19:00

wendesdays I has got free day. Cuando tu quieras quedamos. ¿Donde podríamos quedar? donde tu quieras.

debemos concretar la cita ok??

Besosss 

 
My reply:       

Estoy libre de 2:30 - 5:30 en miercoles. Quieres conocer en Cafe India cerca de Cathedral a las 2:30? Mi espanol es no muy bien, espero que podamos ayudarte cada otro. I am very excited to meet you! Hope Wednesday works :) 

Ah, this will be funny to look back on. Well it was a wonderful day and we are meeting for lunch tomorrow! Yay! so I know she liked me too! ;)

And to top off a great day Rachel and I went out for a tapa and cerveza and sat by the Rio an took in the beautiful view overlooking all the street lights reflecting off the water, ahhhh, I just love it here!
To make things even better we had our cena con la familia and it was full of laughs. We talked about going out in the states and old men always buying me and my friends drinks at the bars. HAHA, it led to some fun conversation and more laughing of course. Obviously discussing this with my guapo host hermano, Marcos, made it so much better. Yup, I have a crush on my host brother...so easy on the eyes. To bad he is 36, but hey age is just a number right? hehe. Apparently in Spain being called "Gordita" is a good thing, well at least when it is referred to your piernas (legs). We also talked about this tonight because Rita grabbed my legs this morning, "Ahh, que guapa, gordita!" I said, "gordita! Rita! Por que? Gorda es malo!" She insisted it was good, but still the thought of being told any part of your body is something close to gorda (fat) even with the "ita" (tiny) at the end, doesn't sound good. Anyway, we had laughs all around about this tonight as well, as I made many jokes about it with Rita tonight. Such a great day and night for me! Gracias Dios para mi vida!


Met with Almudena again today. Once again it was great! It is like we have been friends forever. We had great conversation today it even got to a deeper and more personal level. It is interesting because when we are talking about more serious things the language barrier makes it more difficult to really express ourselves but still we both understand the significance of what we are saying. We have the same humor and are both very patient with each other. We are meeting again on Tuesday to go to Plaza de Espana. I can't wait! I feel extremely better about my spanish this week compared to the past month of frustration I was feeling. There was a definite learning curve. Now, everything should start getting easier little by little, I hope. :)