Key memories

I'm on the fifth floor of the apartment building.  Each morning my host siblings and I take the elevator down to walk to the school bus, but I have started taking the stairs when I'm by myself for the exercise.  Today I am  taking a walk, it's Saturday, and my host parents are gone for the weekend it is just me and my host brother holding down the fort.  I recognize rugs and flowers on each floor as I climb the stairs to my year long home.  One of the apartments on the fourth floor has an animal skin rug in front of their door, I can't indentify the animal but I feel uncomfortable walking over it's sad face.  I  silently judge the people who live behind that door everytime I pass by it.  I hold my keys in my hand, the building is always locked and the apartment auto locks so after unlocking the ground floor outside door I keep my keys out for the apartment.
Saturday is my day to take out Lesca, the family dog.  She is a german shepard and amazingly nice and obedient.  I wake up fairly early and say good bye to my host parents, they ask how the movie was that I saw the night before.  El red social, or The social network, is a movie about the creator a Facebook and all the problems he went through getting the website going.  I enjoyed it but all the characters spoke ridiculously fast and on complicated topics like copyrights and liability.  A lot went over my head and I think I'll have to watch it again when I get back to the U.S.  My host parents leave and I start reading "Sin Blanca en Paris y Londres," by George Orwell. In almost every sentace there is a word I have to look up and reading a page takes around a half hour.  It's a lot of work but recently has been getting better, at the start almost every other word would require flipping through English-Español translations and I found very little enjoyment in reading but devoted a great effort into the dictionary in the hopes I would learn the language quicker.  If I had worked this hard in school back in the U.S I might be going to Harvard or Yale next year, so maybe I'm learning better work effort over here, I blame my old high school for the lack of motivation they instilled in me.  I actually know what was different between my study efforts here versus my efforts back home and I can pinpoint exactly where Fairport went wrong motivation wise, pretty girls.  Yep, a 100 percent on a math test looks nice but it does nothing to make you more attractive to the opposite sex.  Here, if I don't study, girls write me off as a bumbling idiot and move on to someone else who has a vocabulary better than a seven year old.
After some studying I call my family on Skype for the first time in the month and 1/2 that I've been here.  We talk for about a half hour during which time my host brother leaves to go to a football match, he says he'll be back around nine.  The computer here has a camera but no microphone, so for a minute or so my parents and I play an international game of charades until they call me on my cell phone.  Since Alison is not home I promise to call them back later and hang up barely able to contain my excitment.  It seems so amazing to be able to see my house and hear my family when they are halfway around the world.  I grab Lesca's leash and hitch it up to her, my plan is to take her out then have some food and then surf the web, by that time I might be able to call my family again.  I only have about two hours to kill between 4:30 and 6:30 my time but I know it will feel like forever.  I'm trying to make a timeline in my mind when I close the door, suddenly the whole timeline falls apart.  Lesca goes to the elevator and I turn around towards the door, I push it and shake it back and forth. It's locked, I don't have a key.  To calm down I give myself a slap to the face and decide that someone probably has an extra key and I can just find them and talk to them.  With my new plan in line I head downstairs and out the front door.  I hit my face a second time, I'm now locked out of the building.  I take Lesca for a short walk and come back to the door, I start trying floors on the intercom.  Fifth floor, no answer; forth floor, no answer, ground floor, "Digame."  I take a breath and put on my pitiful voice.  I try to sound as lost and scared and humiliated as possible, "Soy un intercambio de los Estados Unidos.  Vivo con César y Sophie."  I stutter and sigh in a very believeable performance as lost, scared, child.  For those of you who are wondering, I have very little dignity, my honor means nothing if I'm stuck somewhere and will miss my family's call.  The door unlocks, I sounded pitiful enough.  I run up to the fifth floor and start checking under plants and mats in the hallway for an extra key, no luck.  My next plan is to find my host dad's body gaurds, I think one lives upstairs because I see him coming down everyday.  His apartment is empty, I go across the hall and knock to find a man who I have never seen before, the pitiful voice returns.  He directs me to the forth floor and the buildings owner, I stand on the animal skin waiting for the door to open.
It turns out two older folk own the building and have an apartment that was importated straight from American old-person sterotypes.  Plates are set up as art on the wall, shelves are full of glasses and silverware that have cleary never been used but are simply trophies old people take from one another when they win bingo or their other favorite game, compare our children and grandchildren, if you old parents or grandparents don't have a lot of pretty, but ultimately useless, table settings, you should start looking for a new job, after all the pride of your elder is at stake and they don't have any bingo talent.  There is also the sterotypical old people couch, decorative pillows and quilts are so abundant that sitting on it is impossible but they will invite for you to sit down, always.  I'm sitting on the couch and I get to know the pair through my increased Spanish vocabulary.  After about thirty minutes and some phone calls the man tells me that there is one more person who has a key, Maria. She is the house keeper and will be at the train station at 7:30 it is currently 7:00, so I have missed my family but there is another adventure waiting for me.  It takes me fifteen minutes on a leisurely bike ride to get to the train station.  I'm don't have a bike, and I am in charge of Lesca, and there are clocks all around the city counting down my time left.  This is every adventure movie I have ever seen, so I start off at a run, I have to get to the station before the orcs kill the king.  Lesca does not seem to understand the urgency of our mission, she gets distracted by other dogs on our run and chases after them forcing me to pull her back on the route.  She fails to understand the urgency of reaching the cure in time.  I feel fit and strong, I have been running 10k recently for exercise and the distance doesn't tire me out.  I reach the station with five minutes to spare, the movie ends anti climatically with a clear margin of victory.  I meet up with Maria and forget for a moment why I ran all the way to the train station, there were no Russians importing meth, why on earth would... oh yeah.  I take the keys and begin the long walk home.  I Skype with my family for an hour and César gets home at around ten.
When my host parents get back the next day I tell them the whole story.  They take it in good humor but when I tell them stuff like this always happens to me the mood changes.  They offer to buy me a keyring-necklace so I will always have them.  I refuse.  After all I would rather be running all around town with a dog than look like a person who wouldn't remember something as clearly necessary as keys.