As I promised in my last blog, I’m going to try and write more often (a menudo, as would be said here). Hopefully it will give all of you a broader perspective on my experience here.

About a week ago, like many other American high school juniors, I took the test that adolescents generation after generation have learned to dread: the SATs. The way I endured these timeless tests, however, was very different from the average American high schooler’s experience. To start with, I had to wake up at 5:00 in the morning. So much for the advice people always give to “get a good night’s sleep before the test.” Then, we had to drive about an hour and a half, to another city. The test site was an International School in the town of Sotogrande. The experience gets stranger. I can just picture all the Paly juniors in their classes or in the library, having the SATs administered to them, all 400 of them. The experience was very different from mine, seeing as how there were three of us, but one girl was taking the SAT 2s, so she doesn’t really count.

Although it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that would really affect your experience, I think being one of just two taking the test made the whole thing very different. The anxiety that typically hangs in the air during a standardized test wasn’t there. It felt more personal, or as personal as a standardized test can feel. I suppose that’s because both of us were there of our own will, more or less. I think when you take the SATs at your high school, with hundreds of other people, it feels about as much like your own choice to be there, as it is a milk cow’s choice to be on the farm. (Some of you may notice that I refrained from using the typical “cow to the slaughter house” analogy, but I felt anyone reading this after having taken the SATs needs to be a little more pepped-up rather than deflated). My point is the initiative was in our own hands. I think it was a positive experience.

Another thing I wanted to mention, while it’s much less interesting, it’s important to mention because it’s a very typical experience for anyone who’s spent any time abroad. The “experience” I’m referring to is being sick. In the five months I’ve been here, I think I’ve gotten sick at least six or seven times with any number of ailments from colds, viruses, to flues. Some might want to attribute this right off the bat to the water, or the food, or whatever. Although the fact is that there are a lot of viruses out there that we aren’t immune to in the US, just like there are a lot of viruses in the US that, Spaniards wouldn’t be immune to.

It’s no brainer then that getting sick abroad is very common. It definitely is also one of the least fun things that you can happen to you. There’s nothing like being stuck at home, watching TV, and blowing your nose all day. One of the positive things I got from being sick so much is that I found a very useful way to learn new expressions in a second language: watch Ruleta de la Fortuna (aka Wheel of Fortune). You know you’re progressing when you can guess parts of the puzzle, or even solve it, on your own. My conclusion from this: if you go abroad, take vitamins.

Well, I’ve come to the end of yet another blog. This one seems to be considerably smaller than those that preceded it, but I’m hoping it will give me freedom to write on more or fewer topics, depending on the state of things here, and more importantly, I’ll be able to write more often.

Good news for all you Paly students: you’re more than half way through the year! Congratulations! Keep up the good work. It’ll get harder and harder to focus, and as a Paly student myself, I can’t help but say: I know how you feel. But we’ll make it through. Peace.