semana numero dos! [week #2]

my second week here has been even better than the first! it still feels like a dream to me, i don't know if it's ever going to feel real! here's what went down this week...


monday 7/5: finally changed levels today! stayed with virginia in level 5 for grammer, but after break, we switched levels. i'm in level 8 now. much better! now i'm not bored out of my mind! my level 8 convo teacher is luisa. let me tell you about luisa. she's a very loud, very opinionated, very intimidating person. but she's fun too. i have to admit, i was a little afraid of her in that first class. all my friends and i from level 5 are split up, which makes me very sad. alexa went to 7, i went to 8, david went to 9, and kathryn went to 10! ah well, i guess i just have to make new, new friends. after class, we came back and took a little siesta. we were still trying to catch up on sleep from the weekend, so a siesta was a must. on monday afternoons, we have spanish film "class". we don't have to go, but i like spanish films, so we went. we ended up watching "la lengua de las mariposas", "the language of the butterflies", which was about the before and beginning of the spanish civil war in the 1930s. it was a very interesting movie. quite sad, although most movies like that are. even though i like spanish films, this one had unnecessary nudity and sex in it. there was no point to it, and you aren't even warned! ugh. ever since fransisco franco died and the censorship was lifted, the spanish have just got hog wild. anything goes with them. it seems to me like they are in their hippie phase, like our 1970s, but with more technology, and no war to protest at the moment. everyone here smokes and drinks, and pretty much does whatever. they view life as one big party that we are meant to enjoy, in any way possible. i can almost hear them screaming "free love!" at me. my heart breaks for them. they are all looking for the something that's missing in their lives, they're scrambling to find something to fill that hole, but what they don't realize, is that it's a God-shaped hole, and nothing can ever fill it but GOD. and then there's the catholic church. don't even get me started on the catholic church. toledo is and has been known as the city of three religions: catholicism, judaism, and muslim, and is well-represented by each in architecture and style throughout the city.  sunday night, haley was telling us about the conversation she had with her spanish brother david about beliefs and religion. he was telling her how much he and his family hate the catholic church and how christians are all hypocrites. she just tried to explain to him how she believes that it takes a daily and personal relationship with Christ Jesus our Savior. she said he seemed receptive, but at the end, he brushed it off as being interested in every religion. but as we were walking home, i got the idea to have my mom send me the spanish bible that i have at home. i got it last year on the mission trip to new orleans, and i've been hanging on to it ever since then, trying to figure out who i could give it to. and almost a year later, God places that someone in my life. i don't know if because of this, their family will come to accept Christ, but God has opened the door of opportunity, and i can't pass that up, not when an eternal life is in the balance.


tuesday 7/6: had my new grammar teacher for the first time this morning! ana made me feel very welcome in her class. she told the class that no one should worry about the pressure of being right or wrong when answering a question, because people make mistakes. she makes that class fun! convo is always interesting with luisa. she just talks, talks, talks, talks, talks. haha. after lunch today, elyssa and i didn't feel like a siesta, so we went out and walked around zocodover, and we stopped in the little cafe place and had batidos, which are basically just milkshakes, not my favorite here, but i guess they're fine. around 7:00, we had our dance class. i feel like i'm not that good at it, but it was a lot of fun trying to learn it! after dinner, we were itching for something to do, so we walked to zocodover.


wednesday 7/7: today did not start off well. i started getting a headache on tuesday night, and by early morning wednesday, it was really bad. when i get bad headaches, i need dark and quiet, so i stayed in bed. it was weird not going to class, but i knew if i did, i wouldn't be able to function later. at lunchtime, i went down and ate with elyssa and pamela, i don't even remember what we ate. spain played germany tonight, and thankfully, my headache was gone by then. i don't know how i didn't have one after, or even during, that game. it was quite a game! so nerve-wracking! but i knew espana could do it! haynes said spain would never make it, well look at who's in the FINALS! after the awesome win, some of our nabraska friends invited us to have drinks and tapas, like appetizers, with them at a bar close to zocodover. it was fun, we just chilled. we were exhausted, so we decided to go home and sleep.


thursday 7/8: class today was fun. we talked about don quijote and how he was such a huge literary figure in spain. luisa, my convo. teacher asked us to come up with a literary character that our whole country identifies with. it was so hard! i don't feel like there is one literary character that our whole country identifies with. when we finally decided on one, it was huck finn. i guess that huck finn as a character, and mark twain as a writer are important parts of american literature. thursday afternoon and night, us girls got together and decided what to do for our free weekend. we threw around a few ideas like granada, barcelona, and valencia. we finally decided on valencia and started planning things. there were no hostels in valencia with available lodging for friday and saturday night, so we started looking for a hotel. we found a pretty nice hotel for about 100Euros for both nights. the only thing was, it was a 2-person room, and we had 5 people. so we decided that we could fit 5 people in a 2-person room, so we booked it. then we got online to buy train tickets. we found cheap(er) tickets from madrid to valencia on the slower train, so we decided to go ahead and get them. well, when we were purchasing them, something went wrong with the website, and the tickets weren't bought. rachel and haley had to leave to catch the last bus so they could go home. so i spent the next hour trying to figure out what had happened and if we could find other tickets. the only tickets i could find were tickets for the high-velocity train, which were double what we were going to pay for the slower train. we were really bummed, because none of us were planning on spending that much money on this trip; we were trying to go as cheaply as possible. so i left the computer alone for a little while, trying to figure out what we could do. about 20 minutes later, i got back on the website to check to see if we could get the tickets, and they were there! those tickets had not been there 20 minutes ago! so we bought the tickets, and we were back to our original plan: take the bus from toledo to madrid, 5E; take the slow train from madrid to valencia, 23E; stay in valencia for 2 nights, 20E/person; slow train from valencia to madrid, 23E; high-velocity train from madrid to toledo, 10E. and we were going to the market to get some food to take with us so we didn't have to buy too much food once we got there. it was a great plan, i just wish it had gone the way we planned. but that's another story for another time. ciao!