new roommates.

After my trip to the Basque Country this weekend (stories and pictures to follow soon), I came back to my house to discover two new American girls living with us.

My señora had mentioned that there might be two girls coming to stay with us. What was lost in translation, however, was the fact that they would be there for the rest of the semester.

When I signed up for housing, I knew I wanted to live with a Spanish family and I knew I wanted to live alone, for a few reasons. One, after having my own room and my own space in Boston this summer, I knew I would have a hard time transitioning back into having to share a room. Since the school could not guarantee that we would each have our own rooms, I decided to fly solo.

Second, and more importantly, I didn´t want to speak English. Ever. My señora doesn´t know any English, aside from the names of her favorite actors. I prefer it this way because it forces my Spanish to improve, and that´s what I´m here for. Only 2 out of my 4 classes are in Spanish, so I wanted to expose myself to the language as much as possible.

Now that these two girls are here, it becomes a bit more difficult. One of them is 2 years younger than I am and doesn´t speak (Spanish OR English) very much. The other one is a year younger than I am and speaks Spanish just as well as I do, but CHOOSES NOT TO. Last night the four of us were in the kitchen having dinner, and the new girl was telling me stories about school and studying and friends, and was speaking entirely in English. Great for the girl who doesn´t know Spanish, but my señora had no idea what was going on. Every few minutes I would turn to her to tell her what we were talking about because I felt so bad.

Technically I´m supposed to tell the school that this is going on, because apparently the host families are not supposed to do this, but I don´t want to get my señora in trouble. She´s been so welcoming and accomodating, and in the grand scheme of things it´s not THAT big of a deal. I´m traveling every weekend until I leave, and there aren´t that many more weeks left. The girls are nice, and I can continue to speak in Spanish even when the other girls aren´t.

Things might get ugly, though, when we start fighting for the bathroom…