It's been too long since I've updated. If anyone was reading this, they probably stopped when I didn't write for 2 weeks, but oh well :)

The last two weeks have been filled with apartment hunting, starting school, trying to avoid eating doner kebab (my Spanish replacement for Chipotle), and killing cockroaches. That's right, cockroaches. Once we found an apartment, we also found our little visitors crawling all throughout our kitchen. They have since been dealt with, but it involved a bottle of raid, hunting strategies, tears from our landlady and an exterminator.

My piso is way north of the center in Valdezarza, and my school is very far south in Valdemoro, so that leaves me with an hour and a half commute that I make twice a day. I know that was a bad decision, but we were desperate for a place to live, and I've already started getting used to it. We were so desperate because we were living with DeAnna's old roommate Berny for, I don't know, 5 or 6 days. If anyone has seen my pictures on Facebook, she is the woman in the pink hat that posed all over Madrid and made me take her picture. She is from Argentina, knows all sorts of famous people, has a poster in her room that says Jesus, te amo. -Berny, wears slutty clothes, tells people she's 28 despite the fact she has a 21 year old son, has published books....you see where this is going. She might also be a compulsive liar. The jury is still out on that one.

My school is awesome. Although the kids are pretty poorly behaved, I really don't blame the kids. Imagine you are 6 and someone is talking to you in a language you don't understand. All your friends are around you, and the teacher lets you have pencils, erasers, pencil sharpeners, and sometimes even clay on your desk. Then the teacher asks you to do something from a WORKBOOK! Yeah, I probably wouldn't pay attention either. So I work with 1st, 2nd and 3rd graders, and the older the better for me. The 8 year olds can understand and produce so much more English. They also have a really strong desire to communicate with me, and it's very endearing to watch them try. We tell all the students I don't speak any Spanish. One day I'll catch them saying something bad.

I had a great weekend with Emily and DeAnna, which are the 2 lovely ladies I am living with. We are fairly calm throughout the week since we have to get up at 6:15 to 6:30 in the morning. Plus, the metro closes at 1.30 am. However, Friday and Saturday there is a night bus called the buho (owl in English), that runs all night from downtown to our apartment. That gives us the opportunity to stay out as late as we want, just like the Spaniards do. It's been fun :)

This next weekend I'm going to Granada, so that's next on my agenda. I'm leaving Thursday when I get out of school, and I am very, very excited. I get to see my friend Juan, who we met when Emily and I lived there, and we are also going to try to hunt down our host mom Carmina. It should be great!

Last but not least...I love and miss all my friends and family!