all the spaniards have their umbrellas out right now because the street is wet, and there is some kind of hard to notice mist in the air that appears to constitute rain here. it`s quite interesting to me.

today i watched amorres perros with rick (another SU student) before my DELE practice. we couldn't get the subtitulos to work in either english or spanish, so it was pretty difficult to understand, and i only got to watch half because my class started earlier than his, but it's safe to say it's a REALLY intense movie. (oh, yeah, and my school is awesome because you can check out almost any movie ever in whatever language and watch it in the library, either in an individual booth with headphones, or on a projection screen with headphones. it rules.)

oh yeah, so my class schedule is as such, for the next 3 weeks: at 10:30 i have class for two hours with a professora named emilia, and we work mostly on grammar and structure, and it's more listening. emilia is a bit older, grey hair, and is veeeery skinny, but not in an unhealthy way. she's just petite all over (except her voice; she has a big personality and is very funny) and she wears nice clothes, which fall on her the way i want clothes to fall on me but which they never quite do. (which is usually just fine.) also, emilia´s english is reaaalllly good, except today she was giving an example with brad pitt in it and she wrote it on the board, the way it sounds when it is said with a spanish accent, ''brat pitt''. we pointed it out and she laughed so hard, and just called him señor pitt after that.

after emilia, we have a 20 minute break, and then at 12:40 or so we have another two hour class, but this time with encarna, who is fiercely independent and fun. she works with us more on vocab, and we sit around and talk a lot - entirely in spanish, because her class room has a magic door into a world where no one has heard of english. it`s totally elementary school and i love it. she is very funny and expressive, and she tells us all the best places to get tapas, or the cheap mercados, or whatever.

when encarna`s class is over, we go home for almuerzo with our mama. the walk takes me 20 or 30 minutes, depending on if i`m window shopping or booking it, and which route i take, so i usually get home by 3 or so. we eat and sometimes take a short siesta, but we don't finish eating until 4, and i have class from 5 to 6:30 to practice for the DELE exam. the stuff in that class is seriously hard. i don't understand a lot of it yet, but maria, our tutor, says she's just showing us what we need to learn in the next 5 months, and how to study, and what to expect of the test when we take it. i'm probably going to have to sit for mine in seattle on may 24, which will suck because i leave here may 21 so i'll still be jetlagged a bit. i may change things so i can stay and take the exam may 23 in granada, if i can find somewhere to stay for the 2 days between the test and the end of the program, when my mama is no longer required to house me. there's always a hostel! wé'll see.

anyway, after DELE practice i have a few hours to myself before dinner, which is at 9 or 10. it's a great time to do errands or shopping or grab a cerveza or tapas with other students. or do internet stuff! it's friday night here, so after anna and i finish up here, we'll go home and eat, and then we have plans to meet friends at 11 to get some tapas and then go to a disco once they open at 2am. not really my type of schedule, but i´m super excited to try it once because katie, the girl who's kind of getting tonight put together, suggested going to el sol, a gay disco, which supposedly plays better music and obviously diminishes severely my chances of getting hit on by a drunk spaniard, which really doesn't appeal much to me. either way, it'll be nuts to see a spanish disco, and tomorrow i'll do something more chill. there's a whole verb for ''to get tapas'' and it's tapear. yay!

things are going great, and we have a tour on sunday í'm pumped for. anna - my roommate - is having a really tough time adjusting, mostly i think because she has a boyfriend back home, and she gets really stressed out if she doesn't get to talk to him every day, when she told him she would. i'm glad i'm not in that same boat. i called home once, and i've skyped with my mom twice, and email back a lot, which so far has been plenty, though i'm quite excited for tomorrow, it being saturday, because i'm hoping to be able to either call or skype home for a nice long talk with everyone in my family, see how things are going. (watch me crash and burn in two or three weeks. :P it´s bound to be less than fun sometimes.) but i've been sleeping through the night, finally, and dreaming, and i've walked to school and back by myself twice now and been just fine, and i'm starting to learn the layout of the city near where i live. just about time to expand some! so i'd best finish up for now. i plan to stop by a bakery on my way home and buy a treat, because they are so TEMPTING, staring at me from the window like that.