too much food? maybe

I'll never go hungry here. I've never complained about being fed too much food, but I'm constantly about to burst. My host mom worries that I'll starve to death so she constantly encourages me to eat. "Chir duo, chir duo!" she says. "Eat more, eat more!" I apologize in advance if I'm making her sound like the wicked witch in Hansel and Gretel; I am aware that she only has good intentions. Personally, I'm just worried that I'll gain a ton of weight. It's okay though, because soon I am going to force (I say force because anyone who knows me well knows that I hate exercise with everything I own) myself to go to Pulsation, an enormous gym that we can see from school. You probably don't realize the what extent to which I am describing enormous is. I'm telling you, it's gotta be about 20 stories high, no exaggeration. I'll take a picture tomorrow. Also regarding exercise, SYA is on the sixth floor of BNU #2, and we aren't allowed to use the elevator, so I'm kind of forced to exercise at least a little bit every day anyways.

Billy seemed to warm up to me more today. We played a game of chess in which he kicked my booty. He's really actually a nice kid. And I found out more info on Shu Shu. Yesterday morning I asked Mom how they were related, and she kept saying it was hard to explain, and I felt like there was something more to it. But this morning while we were eating breakfast she told me that he was her boyfriend and that she and Billy's dad are separated. She was using a quiet voice because Billy was on the couch, so I feel like it's a sensitive subject. Been there done that.

Oh, and here are some pictures of the apartment:

My room

The balcony in my room

Host pets. Not quite as cuddly as Charlie. Acceptable

 The living room balcony

The view from the living room balcony (those aren't clouds, by the way)

My bathroom

Today we went out and bought me a SIM card for my iPhone, so I have 3G!!! It's only about 10 bucks a month for 1.3G per month, which is what I use at home anyways. Later we're going to get me a bike and school supplies.

In the duration of me writing this post, I had to take a 1 hour hiatus. This is because the internet went out, as it does quite frequently in this house. I feel kinda bad about that especially since Mom bought two routers just to make sure I could have a good connection.

Later today, Lizzie, a girl whose apartment building is across from mine, and I are going to walk around the city. I'm a bit worried that I'm going to get lung cancer or pneumonia, but I'm willing to take the risk. The driving situation is also pretty terrifying. I'm half convinced that people completely disobey traffic signals. There have been points were cars were all over intersections and it looked like havoc. And they WILL NOT stop for pedestrians crossing the street, either. At one point, we were driving on a two lane street, and my host mom went in the left lane to get around cars in front of us, something that only an insane person would do in the US. But somehow, it all works. If someone is coming towards us head on in the right lane, they will move to the left. If a pedestrian walking across the middle of the road and a car is coming towards him/her, he/she will not run to the other side of the street. The pedestrian will simply stop while the car makes its way around. There are no hard feelings, as there would be in the states. The harmony kind of beautiful, in a twisted way.

I'm sure some of you Salinas kids are wondering how Jackson and I are. We manage to get a few texts in every day, and we've gotten to Facetime once. I miss and still love him like crazy, but our situation has not gotten in the way of our experience. The immensely inconvenient time difference is just something we have to get used to. 

Besides Jackson, the only other person from home that I have been able to contact face to face is my dad. This morning was the first time that we were able to Skype. We kept missing each other for the past three days and we finally got a good connection. Oh and dad, I know you're reading this, and I just wanted to mention that I forgot to tell you to bring a large suitcase when you visit because I need you to bring home the stuff that I overpacked. Thanks!

Yesterday we were split into groups to go on a scavenger hunt. Our group finished the hunt, but ended up messing around for the rest of the time. At one point we saw an advertisement for the iPhone 6 in front of a knockoff-Macy's-type department store and we went all over  the store asking employees where it was, expecting to find it, but we stopped once we realized that the advertisement said that it would be out in a couple months. 

There's solid recap of the past few days for ya. Mom and I are gonna leave to get pencils and such. If you want to talk to me directly, the best way would to download "wechat" on a smartphone and make an account from there. Later skaters