We sleep in 3 hour increments!!

The past week in review...

hola friends! this past week has been crazy but full of many hilarious stories and adventures. Elizabeth and I started class on tuesday which we have together (thankfully) for 5 hours each day in the smallest room in the world.. essentially an office. Classes are interesting, we like 2 of our teachers alot, one is really funny and all the guys in the class are in love with her, but the 3rd is kind of annoying and elizabeth has to sit next to a girl with the smelliest feet in the world and the class is so small we both get wiffs every so often, so thats unfortunate AND in one of our classes everyone is essentially fluent which we love since it means we are humbled every day (kidding, it stinks).

Other than just class, we have also had several planned events with our group including: a visit to the Cathedral which was gorgeous and interesting to hear all about the history of Granada and Ferdinand and Isabella (who are buried here) , an arabic tea ceremony where we saw a belly dancer and heard her tell the stories of 1001 nights and sinbad the sailor, and finally, an "intercambio"where the program arranged for us to have tapas with some local spanish students... it was so fun and we loved making friends with some of the locals so we can hang out with them some more! ALSO tomorrow we get to see the Alhambra which will be incredible!

lets see... we also have hit up the discotecas several times which are crazy but so incredibly fun. the hard part is that things dont get hopping around here until around midnight or later which makes for sleep in little increments... so here is a typical day for us:

7:30 am- wake up (except the one day that we went running, we'll see if that happens again)

8:15- Eat "breakfast"- heres the thing about breakfast in spain... it doesnt really exist. This fact has caused elizabeth and I many hours of starvation during class from 9 am to 2:45 when we finally eat lunch. therefore we have to pack several snacks, however we are both beginning to run of granola bars and may eventually have to settle for spanish twinkies from the vending machine. All they eat here is bread and olive oil.

8:30am- 20 min walk to class which causes our feet to become grimey and always includes elizabeth tripping at least once on the cobblestone and me sliding on the limestone sidewalks

9-2:15 pm- class- for 5 hours makes for an incredibly long day keeping in mind the smelly feet and the starvation

2:45 pm- delicious lunch with our senora and senor, finally

sidenote: we absolutely love our family... but we adore our senor. we dont really understand him that well because of his strong lisp but we have realized that he is incredibly sarcastic and therefore the cutest old man we know. For example, he collects little knives and uses a different one every meal to slice even his bread. also he chuckles at his own jokes (the ones we dont understand), his face has a permanent tint of white due to the sunscreen he applies every day even though we dont think he goes outside all day. anyways he is adorable and his name is manolo and we love him.

3:30-7:30 pm- siesta/ group activity- if we have a planned activity (which we usually do) we only have time to do homework before we leave, otherwise we try to squeeze in a tiny nap

sidenote: on the rare occasions we attempt to sleep for an hour or so, annoying street workers decide to use the stinkin jackhammer right outside our window... building a subway in the city comes at a high price... our sleep!

7:30- 8:30 pm- tapas/ walking around/ shopping/ helado, etc- we love wandering around the beautiful streets here and trying to ask random strangers in spanish where things are

9:00 pm- another delicious meal with our family- both meals include some awkward silences and alot of us trying to get as much practice speaking spanish even though its hard and we aren't very good at it, but we make a great team!

9:30-11:30- NAP!- its true, sometimes we nap after dinner so we have energy to go out! if we dont nap we do our homework or relax in our room

11:30- 3- discoteca!

sidenote: on the weekends some places dont get going until around 2 or 3 so it makes for much later nights

3-7:30- sleep!

so that is the summary of our days in spain! we would love to tell you more stories (ask elizabeth about the day her skirt blew completely up in the air and exposed her backside 3 times or the time we got locked out of our apartment because we are retards and cant use our key) ... we will fill you in again as things happen! we appreciate your prayers!

much love,

janelle and elizabeth