My Momma's Tostadas

Ahhh! It's been awhile now friends, which is whyyy this is going to be ridiculously long.

If you couldn't tell from my month long gap between blogs, I am tired of the internet. It's been hard to rely on the internet as my only way of communication. I do get random phone calls every once in awhile but it's just the concept of not being able to pick up a phone and call anyone I want, even just to say hi. I really shouldn't be complaining though because had this been 100 years ago we would have nothing haha.

Since I've last posted, I've gone on 2 trips to other cities in Spain - Toledo & Sevilla. Both have been through the school and both have been a lot of fun. Toledo was just a day trip but Sevilla was 2 days, so we got to stay in a hotel one night, woo wooo. I have one new picture album up of Sevilla ( http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015753&id=1042110068&l=1891e) but have so many more pictures that I need to still put up, hopefully soon. I am learning pretty quick with these trips to museums and cathedrals that my love for art is much more modern than I realized haha I'm still trying to appreciate the beauty in it though and take it for what it is. I have enjoyed the architecture in the Cathedrals a lot but to be honest sometimes I think it's just too much haha there is such intense detail into every little thing it's hard to grasp the amount of time people actually put into it. I've been doing some sight seeing in Madrid too and one of my favorites so far has been the Palace. It's craaazy to me how people actually lived in that place at one point in time and went about life like it was normal hahah, both my friends and I were really just amazed with it. I have a lot more trips coming up too! I'm headed to Cadiz this next weekend for Carnaval. It's celebrated all over Spain but Cadiz is said to be the heart of it so I've booked a hotel for 2 nights and a round trip bus with about 20 other people to get a first hand experience of this madness haha. From what I've picked up it's basically the same thing more or less as Mardi Gras but bigger? Either way, the pictures I've seen look out of control and the costumes we've all bought are even more ridiculous, so it's bound to be a crazy/amazing/sunday-will-be-the-death-of-me weekend haha. After that I'm in Madrid for the weekend but then go out to Ireland for 4 days, accidentally the weekend before St. Patricks Day! I'm going alone and staying with a relative (irish blooood holla!) and then hopefully meeting up with friends of friends at night. Either way, I'm not worried, they speak english there so I can get around just find with new friends I'll make. After Ireland I'm back in Madrid for one more weekend and then it's Spring Break!!! Tisean is coming out to visit for the first 5 days of it and then the rest of it is still kind of up in the air (I get 2 weeks!). I'm looking at hopefully Morocco & Portugal. If not Portugal, Barcelona or somewhere else in Spain. After break I get back and only have a month left!!! Can't even believe it. Within the last month I'm going to Segovia & Salamanca. Once the semester's done, the day after my last final I'm meeting Henry (and maybe Poppems!) in Paris! Where we will live the life of french people for 5 days :) haha thennnn I'm going to be all over England visiting 3 or 4 different people for about 7-9 days (nothings final right now). Thennnn! back to Madrid to fly out of here and head back to the states!!!! Where I will spend a week or so between New Jersey, New York & Boston. And thennnn! hahaha I will be flying out to Veronica's graduation in Oregon (woo woo!) and finally, somewhere in the middle/late June, I will settled back into San Diego :) (until August when I go back to Boston hahah). Craaazy! I know you're exhausted from just listening to it all haha, Everything is pretty much a done deal besides my plans between leaving Europe and getting to the graduation - I'm not exactly sure if I'll visit Boston or not, and things like that. So you all have a lot to hear about coming up within the next few months :)

As of right now, I'm doing alright. It's a rollercoaster and like I said above, I really do miss the luxury of the telephone. School is still hard :( My spanish class just moves so quickly because of the amount of material we need to cover so it's been a challenge to keep up. I'm hoping it'll turn out good though. To be honest I really don't feel like my spanish has gotten much better. I just recently started hanging out with my 1st real spanaird friend haha! It really is helpful because it legit forces me to listen attentively and talk in spanish; I need to continue to reach out. I'm still struggling with the language barrier and how greatly it affects the perspective of life I am forced to live in and see. I just really like things straight, I like to see how things REALLY are, not the surface bullshit that consumes so much of our daily lives. And to get to that is almost impossible here. On the optimistic side of that I'm trying to enjoy the basic things in life that don't necessarily require words, because when spanish comes inI swear half the time I don't know if someone is angry or happy or laughing or crying lol. Funny story as an example of what I am talking about: Cris, my hermana here, told me she had a friend coming to spend the weekend here. I'm like cool! I wonder what her name is. Out of her rooms walks a guy. haha I'm like alright alright, i had guy friends too when I was 13... but my parents wouldn't let them spend the weekend living at the house (he slept downstairs) haha. I've been trying to figure out her relationship with my Senora and Senor for awhile now and just can't get it. 13/14 is such an interesting age and I wish I could see her well enough to know what stage she's going through right now. Same goes for the parents, it's their 1st child starting her teenage years, and I wish I could see better how they are reacting to it all. My Senora, Rocio, is really cool and modern. She's young and I feel like if my spanish was better I'd really be able to get close to her. Anyways, so out walks Arturo (the friend) haha. I learned on his last day at the house it was the first time Rocio and Marce had ever met him! So I'm thrown off more now as to how they let their 13 year old duaghter have a 16 year old guy spend the weekend at their house? This whole time I'm wondering if they are really "just friends" because he was a little cutie (no i'm not a creeper lol) and Cris was a little different around him. So after he left and Cris and I were alone for a little while, I throw it out there and ask about him. She nonchalantly is like oh he's my boyfriend, you didn't know? WHAT! lol I'm like uhhhhh no? lol How would I have known that? She's like oh yeah we've been together since July. 7 months!!! Are you serious? hahah I guess Rocio just found out about him like a week before he was coming out to see her (way to pull a Monica-living-with-Francisco and telling Dad a week before we visit hahahahahahah). So I'm sitting here puzzled at how stupid I am for being so out of the loop. I guess while he was here Rocio put up traps around the house so he couldn't get from the basement to Cris's room in the middle of the night!! hahaha I was dying laughing as Cris was telling me all this. She put like 10 chairs all over the stairs, tape on both their doors, bells on the handle, string on the floor. hahah I'm just like, howww is this all happening, at the very same time that I am living in this exact same house?! I have this great image in my head of me peacefully wrapped up in my covers sleeping the night away as Rocio (who I imagine to be dressed in black) plots these traps all over the house lol haha So that was amusing, it gave me a little insight to how hilarious Rocio is hahaha

Cris's birthday is this Wednesday (14!) and she had a fiesta at the house last night. It was a costume party so I was a Potentially Pregnant Professor hahaha (I looked huge. And this family has a sense of humor, so it worked.) surrounded by twenty five 13 and 14 year olds in all these crazy costumes. It was so interesting to observe them all. Like I said above, it was hard to really catch on to what was happening between everyone because people kept leaving and coming and when they said they were going to the park to "hang out" but left with plastic cups and a coke bottle I couldn't decide if they were realllllly innocent enough to really just be drinking the coke or if one of those 13/14 year old boys had a little alcohol in their backpacks. haha, I think they really were just innocently going to the park but I will never be quite sure since I am , obviously, pretty oblivious to a lot of things here lol. I said in one of my earliest blogs my host family here is very musical and bright, so a lot of Cris's friends were from the Conservatorio (the music school she goes to after regular school). It was just interesting because there was always some kind of artistic thing going on. They love taking artsy pictures and singing, they played on the piano a lot, and the guitar too. Happy birthday was sung with violins that busted into this violin concert. They all held hands and danced in circles and in pairs. They would line up and perform for each other. They would sit in circles and take turns singing different songs. They acted out a skit from a play they knew. It was just very different from what I got to experience as a 14 year old and I don't know exactly why - I think it's partly the cultural difference between Spain and the US but even more so the difference in Cris and Me (as 14), and how we were both raised. Music is a huge part of her life so she is bound to surround herself with musical friends too. It was just interesting (I know the word 'interesting' is getting repetitive but that's the only way I can think to really explain it right now), because beyond the activities they had, the way they acted towards eachother was just much different, they are SO affectionate. Also touching eachother faces, and giving eachother kisses, and always embracing and hugging and holding eachother. They were just very warm and affectionate (I've noticed the affectionate thing with the city in general though, PDA is out of controool here haha I've learned to love it). So then I also wonder how this group of friends compares to different groups at their school. Since it's all I see of the youth here in Spain it's all I really know.



Now that I'm half a novel in, I guess I should wrap it up. Know that I am doing well and just trying to take in as much as I can in the best way I know how. Thank yooou for taking the time out of your day to see how life is over here in Spain. I miss you guys like crazy and hope that things are going well. I'd love to hear from you on how YOU are doing so if you ever have time throw me an e-mail, a Facebook Message, whatever works best for you, and let me know what's going on in YOUR life - all of it, from break downs to build ups, the beautiful things and the messy hard things that are still beautiful, I'd love to know how you are. Because don't forget, we're all in this together :)



until next time lover,
besos y abrazos
apb