First One of December

Happy December! Nothing much exciting going on here. I have this week and the week after until Christmas break. It goes from Sat Dec 20 to Wed Jan 7. So nice long 20 days. The only things I know about what we're doing for Christmas is that we're going to go over to my host aunt's house and eat a lot. The apartment here is a little decorated, they hung a (small) strand of lights in the window and there's little Christmas figurines around.

This next couple weeks in school are really test filled. But at least some of them are makeup tests, but then I have to do most of the makeup tests... I usually fail all of the tests anyway. The classes themselves are still terrible. I think they might even be more terrible now because we've taken enough tests and homework that my grades show horrible I'm doing. And in the beginning I felt bad for my teachers because of how badly behaved the kids are, but now I see that they bring it upon themselves. I only have 1 teacher out of 9 that doesn't seem completely cruel.

I had a really good weekend a few days ago. It was a fiesta weekend, so I had Monday off. On Saturday, it was a holiday because December 6th was when the new Spanish Constitution was signed. And Monday was a holiday because it's the Virgin of Madrid Day or something like that. Well, anyway, on Saturday, Susanna (the girl from Holland) and I met in Sol and bought our Twilight tickets at a theatre called Yelmo Cines that plays all movies in English with Spanish subtitles. Then we took a walking tour that was free and all in English. We went to a bunch of churches and the Opera house and the Palace. We had to leave early though because we wanted to do some souvenir shopping. So we went shopping and I bought a bunch of stuff that I really love! By then it was dark and the Christmas lights in the city were on and there was tons of people! It was really hard to get from place to place. But at 6:30 we ate dinner at McDonald's and Shayna and Cayle met us there. So the movie started at 8pm, and we wanted to get there a little early. So we left and got to the theatre at 7:35. There were tons of people waiting in the lobby because they wouldn't let anyone go up until about 10 minutes before the movie started. So we waited and got a bag of popcorn. Then when it was time we went up. Our seats were pretty good. In the middle more or less. We were all hoping to see the HP6 trailer, but they didn't show any trailers :( I didn't really love the movie. There were parts that were funny, but the parts that I liked weren't in the books. Probably because the parts from the books weren't exactly like the books, so of course they weren't as good. Shayna and Cayle (who had both read the book) felt kind of the same. Susanna (who hadn't read the book) really loved it and was asking me to explain the book series the whole way home.

So after the movie, we wanted to go to Plaza Mayor and get something to eat. So we walked there and unfortunately the venders were packing up their stalls and the Christmas lights were turned off. But there were still plenty of people. We ate, then left on the Metro. And that was our night.

Then Susanna spent the night at my house. We got up, ate breakfast, and then went in the Metro to meet with Shayna and Cayle again to go the the big flea market they have here called El Rastro. It's a long confusing story, but Shayna didn't end up getting there until 1:30, and Cayle couldn't come at all. But when she got there, we were all hungry, so we went to a pizza place and sat and talked and ate for a couple hours. Then we went back into the Metro. Susanna had to meet other friends (she was moving to another part of Spain and this was here last weekend) and Shayna and I were going to Sol to do some more shopping. But by the time we got to Sol, I only had 45 minutes. So I didn't shop much, but it was still fun.

And that's my big weekend. Now it's icky school again. And Luis (the kid of my host parents that's supposed to be in Nevada) is coming on the 20th just to be here for Christmas. Then going back to Nevada on the 4th. A little bit ridiculous to spend $1000 just to come home for the holidays, I think.