Quick Update

Well, here we are. October 1st.  October is my favorite month, and fall my favorite season. However, fall here so far has been more like summer, with highs of 80, sunshine, and 0% chance of rain projected for the next 10 days.  I went to the beach today and got a bit of a sunburn. Ha.  It's certainly not Ohio! But i am hoping the leaves will change around my birthday.

What do I have planned for this most glorious of months?

Trip to LONDON.
Trip to Cordoba.
Trip to MOROCCO.
My second cooking class.
Pilates class (in spanish), twice a week. We'll see how THAT goes.
Running! Tomorrow I'm going to take a picture of where I run. So beautiful.

EDIT: My running trail. It's too hazy to get a good picture of the mountains, but I love it.

And where I'm currently sitting working on my homework. I really did luck out with the setup here. :)

What else, my birthday? Not sure how to celebrate the momentous 21 in a country where I can already legally drink.  Perhaps I'll go to the bar and pretend I can't order anything until after midnight.  However, only in Spain can you tell a bartender, "Hoy es mi cumpleaños!" and he'll just give you a drink.

My midterms? YIKES!  I'm going to be home so soon.

With that in mind, I have decided to turn the whole of my attention to rediscovering my love for learning.  When I was younger, I loved to learn about everything and anything.  College however, had the negative effect where at times, I was preforming simply for a grade, or learning for a test, and nothing more.  From here on out, I will be trying to learn simply for the pleasure of knowing something I didn't before, and in this way, I'm sure my grades will be just fine, too.

What am I learning? I'm taking four classes, Spanish (obviously), Islamic Art and Architecture in Spain, Women in Mediterranean Film, and Arabic 101.  All of my classes have been great, and for my art class we go on a different field trip every week. That definitively beats learning off of a slide. Women in Mediterranean film is my first women's studies class, and I'm loving it as well. We get to watch movies that were influential to Spain, and it's only once a week. Can't beat that.  I only wish I could learn how to spell "Mediterranean."  Gets me every-time... And Arabic I'm really enjoying as well.  I love how organized the language is, and my teacher is awesome.  We started making sentences last week.  Not very exciting ones, as the only verb I know is "to love," but sentences none the less.

To help me on my Spanish language learning quest, I have the BEST intercambio.  He has a PHD in physics, loves movies and travel, and was wearing a star-wars shirt when we met.  Perfect.  We're meeting every week to speak for an hour in Spanish, or in English.  He even laughs at my child-level Spanish jokes.

Getting busy finally, and hoping to return to the states sound of mind, spirit and body.

Well, that's it for now...still hate ending this damn thing.

:-)