Sorry, this post is out of order! We will be staying with the same family here in Alcala for the entire time. The mom, Margarita came home today from a vacation and we were really excited. Ricardo, the dad, has been acting really strangely towards Kristen, my roomate, so we wanted a women´s presence in the house. Ricardo has also been fixing all our meals, and while he isn´t a bad cook, he likes to make food that typically a guy would make when his wife wasn´t home, aka french fries, pizza, etc, and we wanted some authentic food. However, Margarita informed us that she is in school and her finals are coming up, so she actually won´t be cooking for us. A little dissappointing, but I can get authentic food when we travel.
So something weird happened today with Ricardo and Kristen. Kristen told him she wasn´t eating last night because she was fasting for church. He is a member of the church so he should understand this, but it caused a problem. This morning she told him she was continuing her fast until six o´clock so she wouldn´t be eating lunch. He started asking all of these questions and arguing with her about what constitutes a fast and claimed that she only wasn´t eating because she didn´t like his food. She said she liked it and he called her a liar. She is going into international relations and he called her a politician and said she was already learning how to lie. It was extremely uncomfortable. Melissa was in the backseat with me and started asking about the words I learned for mullets (punks) and mohawks (cresto de gallo) to ease the tension. Then, Ricardo asked who was the better driver out of all of us in the car. No one heard so Kristen said she was in jest, and then he decided to hold a competicion and told Kristen he was going to make her drive us all to the train station when we went to Madrid later in the day. Driving is scary here so Kristen really didn´t want to and thought he was trying to make a fool out of her. We don´t know why he is being so weird! This was on the way home from church, so a few hours later we went downstairs to go and he was sleeping. We were all afraid of him because of earlier, but it was way too late to take a bus. Finally Kristen decided to wake him, and we had to drive the neighbor´s car so she didn´t drive. When we got back from the Madrid, he made us dinner and said that Kristen was a picky eater. It really is odd that he is picking on her. She hasn´t done anything and the rest of the time he is so nice! I guess if it gets bad they can find us another family, but I really like it here so I hope not.That was a long story, sorry. But it is just bewildering to me because Kristen is so nice and polite.
Here´s another funny story. We went to Madrid yesterday and split up when we went home. Kristen decided to stay longer with our neighbor Leslie and I went home with our neighbor Melissa. We took the metro to the train station and went back to Alcala. We got home about 8 and tried to find a bus back home. The buses don´t come as often on Saturdays, so Melissa and I were freezing our butts off for at least 20 min waiting at the stop. Finally we got on and rode for about ten minutes. The bus driver stopped at a normal stopped, but then turned to us and said ¨Final,¨ and pointed for us to get off the bus. We were in the middle of Alcala and we had no idea where! We were not sure what to do, but we decided to look for the other bus that passes by our house. We were really afraid it had stopped running or we´d miss it and have to wait a half an hour in the cold, so we were running like maniacs trying to find the right stop. We finally did, so we started looking at the schedule to see when it was coming. We waited a loooong time, so I turned and asked if any of the other people were waiting for our bus. They said no, but a nice man told us the number 3, which we needed was still coming, and I told him how we had been on the number 10 and it had stopped. While this was going on this old black lady overheard us and started asking us questions. She got really agitated and kept saying ¨The 10 doesn´t pass by here!¨ She held up her hand in a fist and kept talking about how the number three buss passed by a giant black hand like hers. She just kept insisting over and over no matter how many times we told her we didn´t need the number ten, that it wouldn´t pass by, and then she would wave her hand around in a fist and talk about the number three. She kept making all of these gestures and yelling, and Melissa and I just tried to ignore her. Finally the bus came and we tried to ask the bus driver if it was going to all of the stops, but he couldn´t understand what we wanted so we just sat down. We were on that bus for about ten minutes and then he stopped and told us the line was ending so we had to get off and reboard. It was so lame! About a half an hour later, we finally got home, an hour and forty-five minutes for the whole trip.
Last funny thing, today I walked up the stairs and Junior, the son, was standing in a doorway in his underwear. He said hello and didn´t even try to get out of sight and I was so embarrassed that I said hi and ran back down the stairs. When I went back up with Kristen I insisted she make a lot of noise so it wouldn´t happen again. More soon!