OOPS Haven't gotten around to blogging lately! Sorry, everybody. whoever's reading this. How can I explain it, my attitude about blogging? Hmm.. well I think I feel the same way about blogging as I do about cleaning my room. If you know me, you know I don't like cleaning my room. I hate it actually, rarely do it, but when I do, I'm always glad I did. That's exactly how I feel about blogging. Where to start? Well this week was really great! Maybe one of the better weeks here so far. The weather has been beautiful; of course it's still colder than I'd like, but the sun's out and the afternoons are really nice! Yesterday we went to the school where we're going to volunteer every Wednesday! It starts next week but we got to see the kiddos. They are just the cutest! I think (from what I understood from our meeting with Concha - yes, that is her name) we will be having structured conversations with the kids, asking them things like, "What's your name? What color is this?" Random questions about things they're learning to say in English. I think the age is pretty young, like 11-14 or something. Sheesh. If only we'd been learning our second language then! We learned today in Carlos' class (spanish civ and culture) that it's a requirement in the region of Madrid for schols to make kids bilingual, or something like that. LOVE Carlos' class. He so cute. AND he cancelled class once this week and once last week! Which made me like him even more, until I realized that here in Spain, they make you come back some random afternoon at a really inconvenient time and make up the class you missed... yeahh. In my conversation class we learned about this huge festival in Valencia called "Las Fallas". It happens every year the week of March 19, which is the day of Saint Joseph, as in Joseph the father of Jesus, so it also happens to be Father's Day! It's strange different countries have different Father's DayS! I just figured they were the same everywhere. But back to Las Fallas. It's this huge festival leading up to the 19th and it starts by the carpenters making huge float-like people and decorations out of leftover wood. These are the fallas and they line the streets of Valencia! Then, on the 19th I think, when it's ending, they burn everything wooden that they built and have TONS of firecrackers and more fireworks than you've ever seen. It's really fascinating.
Here's how big they are!!
And here's one on fire!
It's February now, and since February 1, me and Juanita are not allowed to speak English to each other (according to p-money). We really tried the first day, but of course we have our slip ups when no one's around. It's amazing how hard it is to do that! It takes SO much longer to get a point across, but I think it will help a lot if we actually do. She just came in our rooms and when talking about our trip to Belgium this weekend she said we had better speak spanish to each other while we're there or else it will be obvious on Monday. yikes I'm scared. Fun fact about Belgium - They speak Flemish, a mix between German and French. Of course 95% of europeans speak like 5 languages so not like it matters but I thought it was cool. We are flying into Brussels tomorrow morning and then taking a train to Bruges! It's supposedly da bomb, google it. Hopefully our taxi actually comes at 4 AM. I called and got one reserved but you never know with this country. I mean the language barrier. Well, gotta go pack! Adios!
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