Twisty Toledo

They say drinking a crap ton of water is the best way to deal with jet lag, and, yet, despite the 50 billion ounces I´ve been drinking, I feel like I have one of the worst hangovers known to mankind, simply because of the lack of sleep. One would think after going on tour with a metal band this summer and staying up for 72 hours on 4 hours of sleep I´d be used to something like this, but still, my body´s not taking it well.

Despite this, however, I couldn´t have chosen a better city to have studied abroad in, simply based on how old everything is and how easily a simple person can get lost in here. El Casco, the old town - where the Fundacion is, is all cobblestone roads that are so narrow that there´s essentially nowhere to run to when a car comes flying down at you, but it just makes it all that much more thrilling. I have a feeling that it might just take quite a bit of time to figure out how to navigate my way around the city. That was the one thing that everyone really warned about with Toledo - apparently the streets wind around and around and sometimes suddenly end without any sort of warning. I´m still alive though and apparently found my back to the Fund, so maybe it´s not as bad as they were making it out to be.

I had to laugh a little bit last night because everyone was so nervous about the whole host family ordeal and meeting them, while the only real thing on my mind were the most basic of human needs. It´s kind of hard to freak out about something like that when you haven´t slept in god knows how long and you just drank 5 bottles of water. The good news is that the family that I was expecting, with 25 and 30 year old host brothers included, is really only just the mom since all the sons have moved out already. I don´t know what it is, but all my host moms to date have all been ridiculously adorable and absolute sweethearts. Even better than that is the fact that she doesn´t seem like the type that´s going to be giving me crap about not eating meat or dairy. Apparently she has a passion for all things that come from the ground; I have a feeling we´ll get along swimmingly.

As of right now, it seems that everyone else is freaking out about being so far from home, while it still hasn´t really sunk in for me that I´m here for the next 3.5 months until I move northward towards other adventures. One would think that I´d be peeing in my pants, but right now the need for sleep and food is taking importance over just about everything else, that and the desire to go traipsing through the city.