I will go ahead and jump right in:
...Well, now I will go into details. The enjoyableness of this orientation stemmed from the free time, which mainly consisted of groups of us sitting around together, making jokes, and sharing experiences with each other. I can't really make it sound incredibly enjoyable in writing (descriptive words/writing isn't really my forte), but it was fun enough that I can say that this past weekend was probably my favorite out of all of my weekends in Spain. So there you have the "details" of free time. Sorry they couldn't be more descriptive and in-depth, but that just isn't my thing. I'll try to work on it though.
4:00. Unfortunately, siesta time is now over. We go out to meet the rest of the group on the blacktop, or greentop would be a better word for it since it was green-painted cement not black asphalt. Once everyone is there, we get into a big circle and begin doing numerous different dances. One of them was new to me, the other two were ones that I did in camps at home when I was 6 or 7. While not as bad as some of the other activities, there are still much better ways to spend my time.
Somewhere between 4:45 and 5:15. We head back inside in order to do more volunteer led activities. Everyone displays an immense amount of excitement. Not really though.
5:15 ish. We split up into groups again, but this time the groups are different than before. We begin by taking a sticky note, writing down one word to describe any aspect of Spain (the directions were not very clear here), and then folding the sticky note and putting it in a small bag. We then drew a random one out of the bag and stuck it to our forehead. We then took turns asking yes or no questions to try and guess the word. One girl in our group got it right away because she saw what the girl next to her wrote and realized she had that one. She then spent the next 20 minutes sitting there doing nothing while everyone else in the group kept asking questions. Yes, everybody else either didn't get the word on their head or took over 20 minutes to. While everyone else in my group simply overthunk it, I simply had no idea what was on my head, meaning that, even if I could have looked at it, I still would have not known who or what it was. Due to the lack of clear instructions the word I got stuck with was "Almodóvar". One person in the group besides the person who wrote this knew who this was. (For those of you who don't know, Pedro Almodóvar is a Spanish film director, screenwriter, and producer. His better known works include the Academy Award winning All About My Mother, and Talk to Her. For more info, click here). To say the least, I did not find this activity incredibly fun.
5:40 ish. We continued group work, this time being given a sheet of paper with four columns so that we could write down problems with 1. our family, 2. our friends, 3. school, and 4. Spanish culture. I also found this activity rather boring because I didn't really have anything to put in any of the columns, so I wrote down incredibly minor problems in three of the columns and took long enough that the volunteer leading our group finally said I could leave the last column blank. We then cut out the columns, folded them, and put them in a bag. We then spent the next hour or so picking random problems out and discussing them within our group. This was somewhat helpful, but after awhile the solutions all kind of began to become the same.
7:45. Woops, it looks like some time kind of disappeared in between now and 4:00, but you get the gist of what we did, and the times aren't really that important. Anyway, this was the beginning of time off. I am not calling this free time because I think it was actually supposed to be used on more activities, but one group was locked in a separate room still working on the problems thing, so the rest of us just hung out.
8:30. Dinner, which consisted of some kind of soup with some kind of main dish with yogurt to finish it off. Really just an average meal.
10:00. Return to the activity room to do the last organized activity of the night. Mind you, I say organized tentatively because, once again, instructions lacked depth, which allowed creativity to run wild. Anyway, this activity had us split into three groups in which we had to create a short skit representing the average family in Spain. We had a little less than an hour to work on it before we presented. I will go ahead and list the skits with the one that met the expectations of the volunteers the most to the one that met them the least. The first skit was easily the most well done, thoughtful, and realistic of the three. It consisted of a family with an exchange student sitting around in the kitchen. Some of the family starts yelling at each other while the exchange student accidentally sets the stove on fire. Then it ends. The ending was rather abrupt and disappointing, but it wasn't a bad skit. The second one was a little more outrageous. It again portrayed a family in the kitchen, or dining room, whichever one you prefer. The thing that made this one a little more extreme was that all of the family (even the grandparents), were smoking and snorting cocaine (there was also some yelling between family members but that was a somewhat insignificant part of the skit). Not really what the volunteers were looking for. And now the last one. It started out with the women in the kitchen cooking. Then the daughters come in and people start arguing and yelling. Then the Dad arrives home with the new Arabian exchange student they are hosting. So far, it is pleasing the volunteers and meeting their expectations. But then it continued. The next bit consisted of the Dad smoking during dinner, ordering the Arabian kid to fetch him more alcohol, and physically abusing the Arabian kid. The skit ended with the Arabian kid pulling off his jacket to show he had a bomb strapped to his chest. While we, meaning all of the students, seemed to enjoy this activity a bit more than the other ones, some of the volunteers were a little shocked and, needless to say, were not extremely pleased with the outcome. Actually, I should change some to one, because there was only really one who really tried to control everything and everyone all weekend. While the other volunteers seemed to be enjoying themselves, she seemed to take her job kind of seriously, which put a bit of a damper on things. But it also gave us something to talk and complain about, which is always an important thing for a teenager to have.
11:15. Beginning of free time.
12:05. End of free time. Everyone up to bed.
12:30. Everyone in my room in bed with lights out.
Various points throughout the night. I wake up for roughly 30 minutes at a time. Unfortunately, the snoring got to me tonight. While Jón was smart enough to fashion ear plugs for himself, I was arrogant enough to think that I could sleep through the snoring another night. Needless to say, I was wrong, and, as a result, did not get enough sleep. Just a comment regarding this guys snoring before I move on: It was a very interesting snoring pattern. It would start out really quite, and then, over the course of half an hour, it would escalate in volume until the point that it was equal to someone banging pots and pans next to your ear. Then it would suddenly cease, leaving the room quite for half an hour before it would begin again. Anyway, I just thought that was kind of interesting.
8:55. I get up and start to prepare for the 9:00 breakfast.
9:15. Me and the other boys plod down the stairs where all of the girls are already waiting. We then all go in and eat breakfast, which consisted of toast, cereal, and juice.
Break time for me. I'm a little tired out from writing, so I will try to continue tonight after basketball practice.
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