Why I have not written
So I feel like I should explain why it is I have been so incommunicado the past week. Shall I tell you all? Alrighty then!
Sunday (the day of my last entry) I spent all day working on a three-page outline for my 15-page DIS paper in Spanish. Then I went to the lab to print it out, along with the three other Spanish papers I wrote for my lit class last week.
Monday is where the fun starts. I went to my internship for the normal seven hours. I had some great conversations with the students, particularly the little kiddies, and even taught them for a while. It was a lot of fun. After my internship, my teacher informed me that would be my last Monday, since the next two are holidays, and the last Monday I am here, he will attending rehearsals all day here in Valencia. That means I did not get to say goodbye to the kids, who were all asking me for my autograph and pictures. That made me really sad. Then I walked home, since it was nearly 8 PM and still light out. That felt great. I proceeded to work on my 30-page paper, which is due on the 21st, and is completely saved on Frenchie's computer since he is in Andalucia doing whatever. I went to bed pretty late.
Tuesday I got to school at 9 AM and the confusion of my anthropology class set in. None of us ever have any idea what is going on in there. Apparently there was some paper due that day that half the class knew about and half did not. I was part of the half that did not. I turned it in on Thursday and I am sure he won't notice. After Anthro, I worked in the lab all day, the entire time chipping away at the paper even more. After my shift was up, I waited until 4 for my "boss" to show up so I could talk about next week's scheduling, and, after 10 minutes, I went home. There, I cooked some pasta for 10 minutes because I knew I was not going to eat until close to midnight again and I was going to walk for an hour, ate the pasta, and ran to the doctor's office to get the bandages on my hand fixed. At the doctor's, I was writing a love note to my teacher BJ as a joke, as part of a creative writing assignment, and who do I see walk in? BJ!! I hid in the corner so he didn't see me, and when I asked him the next day, he did not. Phew! By the way, he thought the love note was hysterical. Anyways, I left the doctor's at about 5:15, after finding out my wrist was getting better, and had to walk clear to the other side of town, but I was determined not to take the bus. I walked there, and made it only five minutes late, but I was all sweaty and gross. Eew. I had some questionaires for my internship paper for the students to fill out, and to my surprise, ALL of them wanted to do it. That gave me some great info to work with. After my internship, I went BACK to school to work on a presentation for the next day in my lit class. Naturally, I told my partner, you type, I dictate, in order to get it done quicker. Within two and a half hours, we were done with a full powerpoint presentation. Phew! After that was done, I checked my mail to find a suprise. Uh oh! My professor at the University of Maryland is going half-time for the next two years and this could result in some "programmatic changes." In other words, "bend over and hold on to your ankles." I was pretty bummed, but not angry, because who can you be angry at in that situation? I went home at midnight, worked on my 30-pager for probably 15 minutes, and went to sleep after my roomies cheered me up about my situation, at about 1 from exhaustion. What a day!
Wednesday I woke up at about 12, which was later than I wanted, but I just could not get up. I did some laundry and made myself look presentable since I had a presentation afterall. I got to school at 2:30, and the first thing my friend said to me was, "You look STRESSED." He said he could tell by the enormous dark circles AROUND my eyes (They have moved from just under to around, great!) My presentation went really well, considering I wrote it and knew exactly what to say. My partner did well too, and thanked me for writing it. After that, I went to the lab to type my Anthro paper, but that never happened because I had to tell BJ the news about Maryland and see his reaction to my writing assignment. After he stopped laughing, I showed him the letter I got. During this conversation, my teacher from my internship, Ignasi, walked in to give me some information for my paper with Ignacio from our school, they started talking to BJ about soccer, and it was all over from there. Ignasi left after about 15 minutes, as he had to go home and pack for his drive to Italy the next day. Yes, he is driving from Spain to Italy. The sad thing is that it is only 15 hours. That is only one or two hours more than from Orlando to DC! I live in the wrong country! Anyways, BJ and I talked for awile about what I should do, and then Dr. N walks in and says, "Are you ready for that meeting?" I had a meeting at 5:30 and it was already 5:40. BJ and I never finished, but as is my week. The meeting in Dr. N's office was with myself and this other girl who are attending grad school. He basically said to us, "I just wanted to congratulate you two on going to grad school, and as an academian it makes me very proud. I am here for both of you whenever you need anything, and I hope we keep in touch." That was great! He totally did not have to do that, and went out of his way to do so. It was great! After the meeting, I had my DIS with him, and I said if I did not have some tea, my lungs would explode, so in order to avoid the mess (he said), we went to the Cerveceria to have some tea and coffee to discuss my outline that I worked on all day on Sunday. We, as usual, talked about that amongst other things, and before we knew it, it was 7:30. I was about to go home before we had a group dinner at 9:30, and I had to work in the lab for 30 minutes at 9, but my friend Michelle said it would be a waste since it was raining, and gave me a jacket so I could just stay. The jacket was really the only reason I was going home. I wrote my two antro papers in the lab, since I was aware of the one due on Thursday, closed the lab, and went to dinner with everyone at an American restaurant. Everything had either ham or something like it, and since it was Passover, I felt like I shouldnt. Therefore, I got some vegetable quesadillas in order to curb my hunger. The dessert was a brownie with TONS of fudge around it, and a scoop of ice cream. Can I tell you how wonderful that was? I was in heaven! So much for the, "I am eating vegetables ONLY till I get home so I can be skinny when I see my boyfriend." I suppose 3,000 calories one night wouldn't hurt me, right? After dinner, my friends wanted to go out, but I only wanted a tea, so I walked home with BJ. I did not want to stay out late, and it was only 12:30, so I was ok. Too bad BJ and I talked until 1:30!! Then, when I got inside I talked to Rachel and her French boyfriend until 4 AM. I really cannot ever sleep.
Thursday I walked into anthro at 9 AM, and once again, the first words out of everyone's mouth were, "My God, you look like a zombie." Once again, thanks for the compliments. I turned in my work, and once again, sat through a class where none of us had any idea what was going on. I did find out, though, that our final paper is 5 pages single spaced, instead of 3. That is ten pages more I have to write! As if I need more work! We took a "practical case", which was practially reading comprehension. Great! One of the questions was, "How does the viewpoint of the role of God in the life of the main character compare to that of the Christian one?" This is not something we have discussed in class, and since I am not Christian, I took a stab in the dark. I started off....well, since I am JEWISH...and then crossed it out. Turns out after talking to some of my friends about how I thought the question was unfair, they put exactly what I crossed out, or "Well, I am not Christian..." I should have done it. I suppose that question is fair when you are Spanish, because everyone here is Catholic, but, out of a class of 7 people, only two are Christian, and we have been over this before! Gees. Oh well. After this class, I worked on my paper forever in the lab, and the time passed so quickly, before I knew it, it was 3 and I was off. My evil frien left two HUGE sleeves of chocolate chip cookies from the states right next to where I was working (she wrote, "Happy Easter" on them), and I ate more than I should have. Come on, they were talking to me!! Anyways, I justified it with the fact that I was going to play soccer that afternoon, since it was the first Thursday I did not have my internship and could play. I was very excited. When it was time for me to get off from work, I stayed until it was time to play soccer (nearly another two hours) doing work. Right as I was going to change, Dr. N came back, and my friend wanted to talk to him about our antro teacher "just for 5 minutes." That five minutes turned into an hour and I missed the whole game! It was a great converstaion, though. We talked about how one student here gave attitude to a teacher who is the sweetest living creature alive, and Dr. N said, "It is like kicking a teddy bear." I could NOT stop laughing. Ten minutes later we had moved on to a new topic and I was still laughing. It was great. After this, I went home and worked on my paper forever. The usual. My roomies were both gone, so I had a quiet apartment to myself to do my work and got a huge chunk done. I was so exhausted I fell asleep at 12, and had even forced myself to stay up that late. I needed it.
Friday I woke up at 10:30 and got started on my work right away. It was Good Friday, so it was not like there was anything else I could do. At 4:30 I went to the lab and worked until 8:30, still working on my paper. After that I went out to dinner with some friends and ate entirely too much, but I needed to. Then I got a tea at my Iranian friend's pub, just to say hi, and went home at 11:30. I ran into Mayre, who had just gotten home from Madrid, and naturally I wanted to know her story, so did nothing on my paper for a while. I started it again at about 1:30 after she went to sleep, and typed until about 2:15, when I had finished another large section. I was typing about a time when I spoke to a student, and it nearly made me cry. The story, which is too long to write, is just really touching. I will get to it another time. It also made me think how little time I have left here. It was rather emotional. I sent Brandon an email because he had just told me that his stomach hurt and could not sleep at all, no matter how he tired he was because he was running around like a chicken with his head cut off and could not enjoy himself. Sound familiar? Then I tried to go to bed, but naturally could not sleep because my stomach hurt a little and my eyes just did not want to close. I thought maybe it was from the Penne with four cheeses that I had eaten and consumed an entirely large amount of lactose, or from stress, or from both. Who knows? Well, even 7,000 miles away Brandon and I have to deal with the same crap! Then our phone started to ring, about 3 or 4 different times. I think it was some time after 3, so whoever it was, I was ready to kill them. Mayre finally picked it up. I heard her say, "Hello", and then I drifted off to sleep, thankfully.
Which brings me to TODAY (finally)...I got up at 9:30 to go to the doctor's and get my bandages changed, because I had to be there before one and figured it would be jammed. I looked at the temperature and it was 46 degrees and raining. It is the 10th of April!!! Oh well, I got dressed and tried to bear the coldness. As I walked, I saw the fruit store behind my house was open, and I was happy about that. I went to the doctor, which was DESOLATE, and waited for about five minutes before anyone saw me. When the nurse took the bandage off, she said, "Esta bien," and told me she was leaving the tape stiches off so that it would not be so humid anymore. She said to come back Tuesday, but it was fine. That is a good thing. Next I stopped by the fruit store to stock up, since everything will be closed the next two days for Easter. I walked home from there, which is about 30 seconds, and got pretty wet, as the rain got harder as I walked. Now I am sitting here typing for the past hour, and have so much to do today. I have already done 22 out of the 30 pages of my first paper, but I still have the 15 page paper as well, in addition to the 10 page anthro nonsense. These are all due next week. I hope Frenchie comes home tomorrow night so that I can keep using his computer, which has been my best friend all week. After that, he is off to France. How sad!
Now, I am going to get cracking. I hope this entry fed the addiction some of you have! The only good thing out of all this work is, at least it is too cold and miserable to go to the beach, so I have another way to occupy my time instead of feeling like I should be there while sitting on the couch and eating chocolate!