I'm going to try something new for the next few blog entries. I'm going to begin them with the top five things I'm grateful for from the day's happenings. Let's see if this helps to start centering me better.
1) The look Sara (one of the teacher's at my colegio) and I exchanged in passing between lunch and classes. It was one of those "omg.wtf.you understand.hi.how'syourday?yeah,minetoo." looks. It made me so happy I almost started to giggle. She invited me to visit her town sometime and have a coffee/beer and hang out a few days ago. It was really sweet and I feel like she actually meant it. When I'm not flustered and in crisis mode, I'm totally going to take her up on the offer.
2) Finding the book I bought and began to read on the train ride home. It's in Spanish and called, "The Green Gel Pen." Sometimes I pick books based on their cover. Other times I pick books based on their title. This was totally one of those times. I read the back cover and it's about a guy who lives the same day over and over again basically without ever actually LIVING, but then gains the power to live the dream he had the night before each day and how it changes his perspective. It's totally what I'm experiencing right now and I'm so excited to read it. Maybe this will be the first book in Spanish I actually finish! I think so. :) I'm underlining all the words I'm not sure of - and there are so many! - but I understand all of it. It's very strange how that works out, but makes me feel good about my Spanish reading comprehension!
3) Having that moment today, for the first time of this trip, when I was listening to someone talking to me and realized afterwords I didn't know whether they had been talking to me in Spanish or English. :) It's a great feeling. I also starting actually understanding some of the lunch gossip today, which was also exciting, as it's been way too fast and colloquial for me to grasp the past two weeks, but I've certainly been trying.
4) Getting to sleep in until 9:30! I love Thursday mornings. :)
5) Mustering the courage to make myself enter a beauty salon and get my face defuzzed. It's a really daunting task in a foreign language, and I'm really proud of myself after three days of telling myself I would, but then chickening out, I finally did it. :)
Today was my sleep in day, followed by a few classes, then defuzzing, then going to Madrid for Rock the Vote - an American party at the big club, Kapital. But I was refused admission because I hadn't printed out my proof of registration. :-/ I was actually pretty bummed about it, but told myself that there was no better place to be turned down than in the middle of Madrid, so I strolled past the Prado, up Calle de las Huertas, over to Calle Principe, through a bunch of plazas, over to Mercado San Miguel, to Plaza Mayor, up through Sol and over to Gran Via (where I had that delicious pizza again! yummmy!), metro to Sol (to go book hunting - I realized phone solitaire is taking over my life and isn't going to improve my Spanish) and back to Alcala. It was a nice stroll, but strolling for hours and hours alone kinda got tiresome, (and it made me sad to realize the thing I loved doing more than anything in the world now only makes me mildly blissful... :-/) and I was happy to come home to Abby and Katie sitting on the couch, excited to see me and tell each other all about our days (and our crazy Senora who apparently says we're way too untidy for her - especially my chair full of clean clothes that she can SEE from the street through our window!! HAHA WOW...).
Tomorrow's two classes at the colegio, and then our first day of Master's classes. Yay! Finally something I KNOW I'm good at - studying.
XOXO
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