Two and a half months in...

So I'm finally starting the blog! I didn't have internet in my apartment until a couple weeks ago, which made it very difficult to update.

But for starters, these are my roommates:

This is me, Noemi, Heather, and then Brianna, my best friend from home...Brianna obviously doesn't live with us, but she was visiting the weekend we took this picture haha! We live on the western side of Ciudad Real, about 10 minutes walking distance from the city center. The city is very small...it only takes about 35 minutes to walk across the entire thing! Here are some pictures of our piso (apartment):

This is the salon (living room)...Jeff sent me those beautiful flowers for our 1 year anniversary :)

This is one of our two bathrooms ^

^This is our kitchen...washing machine but no dishwasher ugh! And no clothes dryer either.

My job is very relaxed and easy. I work Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, and the normal school day ends at 2pm. However I have an hour commute each way, and on Mondays and Thursdays I give extra English lessons so those days turn out to be pretty long...Mondays are the worst: I leave my piso at 8am and don't get back until about 7:15pm. But during the normal school day, I teach 3-11 year olds. The little ones are SO CUTE, oh my goodness! Spanish children are WAY better looking than American ones, haha. Their eyelashes are insane! But anyway...I teach at two different schools. The one in El Robledo is the main school, but for two hours on Mondays, and well as my extra classes on Thursday, I teach in a town called Pueblonuevo. Pueblonuevo is VERY small; there is only one infantil (preschool) class, which is ages 3, 4, and 5. There is also only one primaria (kind of like 1st-5th grade) class, which has 9 kids across three grade levels! There is also one class for "middle school," but I only teach a couple of those kids in my private lessons. So needless to say, of the children I teach, I know everyone's name.

Because I only work three days a week, it leaves me a lot of time to do other things. On Tuesdays, I always cook a big Spanish comida (lunch, which is the main meal of the day...it's normally three courses) for my roommates and myself. I also get to take siestas (naps) all the time because the town is so traditional; everyone closes during the siesta hours, so there's never anything I can do outside of the apartment! I also get to sleep in a lot, which is great, because the Spanish lifestyle is very nocturnal. When my friends and I go out on weekends, we don't leave our piso until at least midnight (normally about 1am), and we stay out until about 6am. The first couple weekends of this were tough, but I've gotten used to it now, haha! Here's a photo of some of my friends:

From left to right, there's Ekin (he's from Istanbul and very interesting to talk to; he's here studying abroad), Noemi my roommate, Kylah (she's from Florida, doing the same program as I am), Me, Steven (he's from Boston, also doing the same program), and Heather my roommate.

It's a shame that I wasn't able to start this blog sooner because there's so much to catch up on!! I think for now I will try to organize my posts into subjects or somthing. :)