Back to the Grind!

Well, now that I survived my fun weekend in London, it's back to the grind of schoolwork! Yesterday was our first day back and we flew right back into the school mode. I did really well on my conversation/composition exam so I was really happy about that! That's the class I'm not actually getting any credit for though, but I still did well. The sun was shining and in the afternoon it actually warmed up to about 78 degrees! It was gorgeous and sunny and almost felt like summer. I'm not sure if I'm ever going to be able to wear my shorts though, because it is freezing inside the school!! I don't really understand why, either. It's actually warmer outside than inside. We had an amazing lunch yesterday and it was a nice welcome back to Spain. The first course was pasta with marinara sauce and cheese and the second course was potatoes and fried chicken. YUM YUM YUM. I even got to have ketchup with my chicken, and for those of you who know how much I love ketchup, you'll know how extremely happy I was. :) I also tried a new kind of fruit which I loved! It's called a paraguayo and it looks like a donut-shaped peach. It's less fuzzy and less messy, but super delicious! I don't know if they have them in the US or not, but they are definitely something I'll be eating a lot of here! Many of them are now grown here in Spain. Here's a link to a little blurb about them if you're curious for more info :) http://www.ripe4offices.co.uk/fruit-gallery/item/root/paraguayos.html

After dinner last night we stopped by the house of my host mom's uncle very quickly because it was his birthday. I met a bunch of people including a girl named Ana who's about my age and is studying Early Childhood Development. She was super nice and it was fun to talk to a local that's my own age for a change. We had really yummy tarta and then headed home. He has a little dog named Cocoa and a beautiful cat, but I learned that Marta is allergic to cats! We stayed there for about 15 minutes and by the time we got home her one eye was completely swollen shut and it was still halfway swollen this morning. I've never seen someone react to an animal allergy like that before! Poor girl. We had fun though because in the car ride there she asked me if I know any songs in Spanish and we sang a couple and then sang a few in English that she knows. It was so cute and fun. I'm excited for her birthday party this weekend. And the pool outside our house is open now so I'm hoping we can go swimming sometime soon if it warms up!

Today has been another busy day. Classes are going well. In my conversation/comp class we are working with the use of prepositions. We have to write a long reflection about what we like to read/movies we like for tomorrow so that'll be good practice for me! In my culture class we have been studying a few of the museums in Madrid and the art they have. I find that kind of stuff pretty interesting. I had a test in my literature class today about poetry and analysis. We had to answer a few questions, divide a bunch of words into syllables and figure out where the stress is and what type of word they are, and analyze some poems for their rhyme, type, meter, etc. and identify figurative language use in a bunch of lines. It went pretty well I think, but some of that stuff is hard to interpret! In our dance class we have finished the 3rd part of the Sevillana dance and only have one more part to learn! It's amazing how fast we are learning, but we do have some bad brain lapses once in a while! Haha. We had beautiful weather again this morning, but this afternoon  it thunderstormed! I was going to run but that killed my plans. So I ended up relaxing, doing laundry, and taking a nice nap. Now I have some time so I am going to work on my homework and dictionary assignments so I can get to bed at a decent hour! Tonight I think I am going to teach my family some simple American card games! I brought a deck with and the cards are different here and Marta wants me to teach her a game or two. I'll probably try Go Fish, Old Maid, and Snap. It'll be fun. :)

Hope you all have a Happy Wednesday!!