February 2

I have started a new routine. I found that if I still set my alarm for 8:00 I can hit snooze once on my alarm clock, skip my shower, and still get my same cup of coffee before taking off for class. The cafeteria has a lot of little packaged breakfast treats and I have started to take two everyday for the walk to class. Class was a new learning experience, as always. In literature, we talked about different types of literary devices like simile, hyperbole, and paradox. After literature, we had my favorite class.

Today, we reviewed European geography (countries and capitals) but the tricky part was the activity/map was in Spanish. Even though a country sounds pretty similar between English and Spanish, there are completely different spellings and pronunciations for every country. We were told that we needed to memorize all the countries and capitals by our first test, should be interesting.

I love Tuesday and Thursday classes because I finish up at 12:15. Its always warm enough outside for a great walk back and plus I finish an hour and a half before some people. Alex, Mary Claire, Caroline and I ran a few errands on the way back toward our dorm. I got my good smelling, dry and clean clothes from the rooftop. I was so excited to have clean clothes again! I ate around 1:30 and quickly finished before I went up to the roof for a little rest and relaxation.

We stayed on the roof until 5:30. As a group we went to a really good, old place for churros that was called la Horchateria. Horchata is a very popular, sweet drink that is white and almost smoothie-like. Ryan ordered some and I tried it. Way too sweet for me. Churros are a sugary dough that is kind of hard but easy to bite through. Each person received a coffee cup full of warm chocolate and a plate of Churros. We dipped the Churros in the chocolate and enjoyed every last bit. The combination of the dough and warm chocolate hit the spot.

We were only a five-minute walk from the dorm so we hung out for a while before dinner. I showered and had a very relaxing hour and a half before dinner. Dinner was Curry Chicken with fries and really good pizza bread that they make. Like always, I ate every last bite. Since it was Rebecca and Leah’s 21^st birthday, we all went to O’Haras for a little bit.

I talked with four med students, three of which were from Valencia and one was from Madrid. It was really fun because this was the first time that I actually did what they call an “intercambio”. Basically it means that I speak in only Spanish and they speak in only English. I have been really happy with the development of my conversational skills; I do get frustrated sometimes though because I can’t remember the word that expresses what I really want to say so I settle for a word that means about the same thing but not completely. Neither here nor there, I have loved meeting so many different people and learning what interests them. I was so tired and with having class at 9:00 I went to bed relatively early.