jumbled thoughts

i think i'm getting into a rut here. i need to travel or something. even though i've only been back in granada for 3 weeks, it feels like forever and it feels like i do the same thing every day, go to the same bars, and see the same people. and it's cold here and in my apartment. stupid winter blues.

but have no fear! thanks to inspiration from my best friend who will be taking a class to become a yoga teacher, i bought a yoga mat and decided to do start doing some yoga. and starting next week i will have the two busiest but most awesome months.

some cool things that have happened in the past two weeks...
-we've won first place in pub quiz two weeks in a row! i don't want to jinx it, but if we win tonight (or get second) we will win free dinner and a flamenco show.
- today an old man started talking to me while i was waiting in line and asked me if i was from granada. earlier an old woman had stopped me on the street to ask where something was. do i look spanish? i sure as hell don't sound spanish.
- i'm going to belgium
-i taught an entire class by myself and i think i did great!
- the whole school stood outside today to sing a song about peace because it's peace day. some of the kids were way into it, others not so much. either way it was funny.
- i think i may actually have learned how to save money.... i don't have the strong desire to blow my paycheck on clothes
- i ate indian food and sushi (on different nights obviously)

barcelona vs real madrid

last wednesday was "el clasico" in spain, which i think is a cup where the two best teams play against eachother? (that's what the 13 year old i tutor told me, but there's always a language barrier... and i don't know much about football (sidenote: yes, i've started calling 'soccer' football.)) craziest thing i've encountered in spain. football is number one, family is second, food and drink are third, and working is 4th. nothing is more important than football. and here in granada, mostly everyone is split between being a real madrid fan and a barça fan, since the granada team isn't very good. but on my way to hannigans to watch the game, every single little bar or restaurant was packed with people watching the game. and when i got to hannigans, i could barely move. luckily at halftime most people moved outstide to smoke so i quickly snagged a better seat. i had missed the first goal by madrid, but when barça scored the first time everybody went crazyyy. screaming in spanish and english and about how that was a bad goal and oh barcelona sucks but madrid sucks more blah blah. the second barça goal was even crazier, with beers spilling everywhere and obscenities flying. i can't wait for the rematch next week! (barcelona won 2-1 by the way)

besides the excitement of the football game, nothing too crazy going on here. school has been going great, the weather has been really nice, and i finally did laundry. and i'm going to rome in 3 weeks!! and i figured out that i can listen to the flyers on the online radio, so basically life is good!!

fish and chips and chips and fish...

back in spain after an amazing trip to london!! i can add london to one of my top 3 favorite cities... it is so cool and fun. it's a crazy mixture of old and new. you walk along the thames (pronounced tems) and you see st pauls cathedral with a backdrop of a crazy looking new building. shakespeare's globe is a block away from an oddly shaped modern building. the people were so nice too, which i found out as i got my passport stamped by the cutest little british man who couldn't understand why i would ever visit the UK in january.

we got to london on the 5th. after checking into the hostel and taking a little nap, al and i went to this tapas bar that her dad insisted we go to. it was soo amazing, their tapas rivaled spain's!!! then we went to this tiny little blues bar that had been al's favorite place to go when she studied in london. the next day we wandered over to st paul's cathedral which is so beautiful. we climbed up into the dome, which was a little scary, but it had amazing views of the city. next we crossed over the thames to take a tour of the globe theatre. it's not the original globe, which was destroyed in the great fire of 1666, but it's an exact replica, with the thatched roof and everything. after the globe we headed to the national gallery which had some beautiful paintings but was a lot smaller than i expected. we saw some cool stuff there and then went to meet up with sean!!! we had a fun night with him just hanging out at the bar near our hostel, but unfortunately we're not as cool as his new friends, so after i bought him dinner and some drinks he was off. we wound up meeting up with my british friend, and he took us to this bizarre club where the music hurt my body. kelsey and i left within an hour.

the next day al was out of commission because of her crazy night at the club, so kelsey and i did some sightseeing. we first went to westminster abbey but were 10 minutes too late! it closed at 1:30 and we got there at 1:40. but it was still pretty from the outside. then we walked through st james park towards buckingham palace. the animals in those parks are crazy! people obviously feed them a lot, so even squirrels will come up to you and take food out of your hand. after we snapped some pics of the palace, we met up with sean at the british museum. such a cool place!! you could spend days in there and still not see everything. we saw the rosetta stone, some pieces of the parthenon, and a bunch of other stuff.

sunday we had to leave :( we were able to fit in a quick trip to portobello market, this really long street with a bunch of cute shops and restaurants. but of course, there had to be some sort of problem on the way back! we got to the airport an hour before our flight (a lot of times with ryanair flights they don't even open the counter until an hour before the flight). we were moving right along, and about to get up to the counter, when their network crashed. so instead of immediately doing something, they waited 20 minutes before our flight was leaving to tell us to just go through security. long story short, we ran onto the plane minutes before it was supposed to take off. i hate ryanair.

anyway... it was really hard for me to get back into my routine here. hopefully next week will be better! the days just seemed really long and tiring, and the kids have been crazy. but thank god it's the weekend!!

no place like home for the holidays....

woww. i can't believe my time at home is almost over. i head back to europe tomorrow! first stop is london to visit seany, then back to españa to finish up the last 6 months! you know how they say absence makes the heart grow fonder? that also applies to home. i had to best time being back with my family, seeing all my old friends, and just driving around. needless to say, as stupid as it sounds, i'm sad to leave good old wilmington delaware. but i know that it's the easy way out to stay at home where i'm comfortable. and to be honest, these next 6 months are going to fly by... al is coming with me to london/spain, so a little piece of home will be coming with me! and then the whole family will be visiting me in march!

i had a great night tonight with two of my best friends in the world... we're all on different adventures. victoria is heading off to australia in a week or two (until september!!!) and al will be heading off to california after her adventures in spain. it's funny how far apart we'll be, but i think we will all have similar experiences. and none of us know what we're going to do after. all we know is that right now we're trying to grow and mature and just figure things out. and it's funny, i kind of thought i would have everything figured out by the time i graduated college. and here i am heading back to spain for 6 months and then god knows what.

isn't it crazy how people can be friends for so long? and even though we all change, we're still as close as ever. ahhh it will be hard to leave tomorrow! but i'm still excited to go back. and thank god i'm not as lost as i was going in september!