Sam Goes to Spain!: Our First Local Chapter Orienation

After 65 years of exchanges, AFS knows how your moods will change throughout the year. The mood cycle is like a wave, it goes up and down, and AFS plans their orientations to be during the predicted down times. We had our first local chapter orientation last Saturday.

Saturday morning I got up and was ready to catch the bus to Madrid. I had planned on riding with Angie and Elizabeth, AFS friends that live in the town directly below me, but I missed the bus. Not because I was late, but because my host mom went into the bank for one minute, so I was holding the dog, and the bus chose that precise minute to roll up and drive away. I was standing right in front of it. I had to wait an hour for the next one to come and go by myself. Once I was at Príncipe Pío I met up with my friends and a volunteer and we took the metro to our stop. I had thought that the orientation was going to be in a hostel somewhere in the actual city of Madrid, and that we were going to be able to explore the city. I was wrong. The hostel was in the middle of some forest-y area, right next to an attraction park, and we had to walk for twenty ish minutes down the road with all our bags. I never saw any cars on the road, it was only used by bikers and runners. So even though my shoulders were killing me by the end of it, at least the walk was pretty.

The three of us got there late but we jumped right into the activities that they were doing. The theme for the orientation was play a 10 minute game and then talk about our feelings for the next 40 minutes. The games were supposed to make us think about our feelings, which coincided with our feelings about our experience so far. While this was relevant, I feel like it was information that we all knew already. We did a few different things but my favorite was when we had to make a skit about the topic we were given. My group got "school" and it was fun to create and play out the skit. We also had an "excursion" which was just us walking on a trail around the attraction park's parking lot.

By far my favorite part of the weekend was being able to see and catch up with all my AFS friends. There was so much to talk about, so many new things to share. People vented about their families and lives (especially one of my friends who switched families down to the Madrid chapter) and it was nice to remember that we're not going through this alone. I'm not going to lie, it was fun to speak native English and have people understand me. Even if the people here speak English, I have to speak a lot slower and they don't know any slang that is a part of every teenager's vocabulary. And it was also good to just laugh. Here, right now, at the point I'm at with my language skills, I can really only laugh at situations; basically any jokes made in Spanish fly right over my head. So, yes, I enjoyed being comfortable and joking around with my friends. I also made several new friends, and got closer to the ones I already had. It's cool because I think we're actually going to hang out together now and do things in Madrid and everything. I had a great weekend with them all.

Basically, spending time with my AFS amigos was fun and the orientation part was not. Actually, I was pretty disappointed with the orientation. The activities could've been a lot better and still as beneficial and a few of the volunteers were... unsatisfactory. I'm not going to say more than that, but those volunteers were less than what I expected out of AFS.

After we were dismissed on Sunday, a few of us left to walk to the metro station. Again, on the road, they had some sort of triathlon going on. I caught a glimpse of a lake and I realllllllllllllllllly wanted to go in, I miss the availability of the ocean and lakes in California. We got to the station and (with minor help) we bought our tickets and waited for our train. A few more AFSers joined us, and then we were on our way. At the Príncipe Pío station we all split up and it was again, Angie, Elizabeth, and I. We forgot that our bus only comes every hour, and we ended up having 50 minutes to kill, so we grabbed our bags and went shopping in the Príncipe Pío mall. I'm pretty sure that the Príncipe Pío station is like Madrid's equivalent of Grand Central Station. It has several levels and a bus terminal and a shopping mall attached to it. We went into a bunch of different stores, even though they were mostly carbon copies of each other. They had a very "Hollister" feel to them, except with trendy European clothing; they were dark and everything was super overpriced. The only thing we ended up buying were our bags of candy. It was a fun way to waste the time.

We boarded our bus and went home. When I walked in I was surprised to see that my older host brother was here. I think it was his birthday, we had cake and then just hung out for a while. I started feeling super exhausted from the orientation, so I went upstairs and slept for a few hours. I felt bad about that because when I woke up they (Carlos and his girlfriend) were gone, but I had thought they would still be here when I woke. Oh well.

So, pretty decent weekend. I'm looking forward to the next orientation in October. But hopefully that one will actually be in the city and we can explore a little. We'll know in a month.

Adios,
Sam