day 101, man

so today marks that very-special-not-actually-that-important-101st-day.

I haven't done anything toooo exciting lately, but im having a great time. i'm getting closer to my friends and that in itself is just super relieving. my best friend here is laura, who I met the orientation day at school. shes 2 grades higher but we walk to and from school together. she's honestly my favorite person here. we always speak in English (she's Spanish but a fantastic English speaker), and with her i just laugh and we make jokes but we also talk about serious stuff and life and I cant believe ive only known her for 3 months. im helping her with her college applications and Thursday and Monday we're going to play soccer together with some of her friends. I love her bunches.

I guess another update would be that im hopefully joining an orchestra soon. my neighbor plays professionally in an orchestra, and we went and asked him and he gave me the bassists number so hopefully I can get lessons or something. so that makes me super excited.

also, I just learned how to make the tortilla espanola, so when I get back to the states I can show off.

so that's that. I would have more pictures and such, but I have most on my phone and its a pain to try and transfer everything.

happy 101 days to meee

M

a red tinte

this past weekend one of my spanish friends decided to dye all of his hair red. so of course,all the rest of us had to do some too. on Friday we didn't have school (I asked a couple people, and I heard it was constitution day but also that it was immaculate virgin mary day or something like that, so either of the two, all that mattered to me was that we didn't have school), so we went and bought dye, and walked to my fellow friend maria's house. and speaking of marias, there were 3 of us out of our group of 7. yeahhhh

 

 

so that was super fun. the girl in the bottom two pictures is marta, and sometimes we walk to or from school together, and shes pretty cool. im so thankful for my friends here. just that they accepted me and are helping me with my spanish. its great.

 

so otherwise this weekend... lets see. on Saturday I got together with my friend jameela and we watched an indian movie that I really enjoyed, and we made our own lunch! haha I know that's not much of an accomplishment but we had to look for all the food and that was hard enough.

 

then today I went to church, and ate with family and now im a-writin the blawg. so yeah

 

M

 

p.s. I dont know if anyone gets the pun in the name, but tinte is hair dye in spanish, and like red tint, and yeah sorry im not that funny

 

p.p.s today is my 3-month-aversary, so happy anniversary to meeeee

weekend with Mary

so this past weekend my exchange friend Mary, who lives in the canary islands, came up to visit Madrid and stayed at my house. so basically a weekend long sleepover. score.

so on Friday she came and settled in, but it was late so we just ate and went to bed. well, not really went to bed, but we were hanging in my room talkin. then Saturday we went into Madrid and I gave her the tour. its really cool knowing that I know Madrid well enough to be able to show people around and know where things are. its a great feeling. so we went to plaza de espana and puerta del sol and plaza mayor and gran via and palacio real and it was all super cool. in gran via they were having another protest. not surprising. so then we got ice cream and wasted our time until 3. I want to add that I saw these pants that I really liked and this guy was like 10 euros and im like mmmm im gonna think about it (meaning I was seriously going to walk a round a bit more and think about it) but then he was like 'okay, for you 8 euros' so im like okay i'll take 'em. so I wasn't even meaning to barter it down, but hey, whatever works. so then we were to meet some other exchange students and see catching fire. and oh my goodness I loved it. I think it was a huge improvement from the hunger games and I cant wait to see the next 2. so then after the movie we all hung out a bit, but then mary and I were both pretty tired so we headed home. but it was a great day. some pictures:

these performers we figured were from some university or something, but they were just walking around and singing and playing and it was great.

 

on the train

 

plaza de espana

 

plaza mayor

 

plaza de espana otra vez

 

our favorite street performer

 

palacio real with the view from the gardens

 

and us cuties.

 

 

but yeah that was saturday. then on sunday we were home for lunch and i took mary on a walk around aravaca. then she went into Madrid to see some of her American friends who were visiting Madrid and I got to study. yay. but it was needed. so then today I had school but mary went again into Madrid to see her friends, and she got back later and we hung out some more and took her to the airport. a sad day. but overall the weekend was fantastic. shoutout to mary who made it awesome, cant wait to see you in febrero

 

M