Here's to the end of laziness

You know it's funny, in Spain I really enjoy Mondays. You know why? Because it gets me off my ass. Woke up at 9:30, made some oh so good peanut butter toast, and walked over to the center (alone, Stacey had gone over earlier to work on hw). Got there with time to spare before my 11-12:30 lit. class. Lit. was great, as usual. Of course, Pilar is awesome, and a joy to have as a professor. She went into more detail about contemporary Spanish history, which is fascinating. We talked about censorship, and I learned that during Franco's dictatorship, censorship was so tight that Spain had not even seen nor heard the Beatles for the first time until the mid-70's following Franco's death. Funny that that's one of the few facts that I can remember right now. But truly that sucks, hehe. Also, men were not allowed to grow their hair out, and women were required to always wear long sleeves and long dresses and whatnot. If a movie came here that exposed a woman's chest (not actual breast, just the collar area), they had editors paint over the film to make it look like a full dress. Can you imagine old Hollywood ball scenes with women fully covered by their ball gown? It makes no sense. Franco was bad news, man, a friend of Hitler and Mussolini and all that jazz. No good. Class was great, I feel badly because we're all pretty captivated, so I think it comes off as zoning off to Pilar. She always asks for questions and we never have any! I mean, none of us really know much about Spanish history, and it takes a few extra minutes to digest the facts because they're presented in another language, so we can't really begin to think of questions so much. Ah well. After class Stacey and I hung around the center a bit; she worked on hw for her grammar/comp class while I worked on my blog (of course), and looked up flattening irons online since I blew mine out last night. OK, let me have a shallow moment here. My hair iron has been working just fine with the converter all this time to my delight; I turned it on this morning, and although the light turns on, it doesn't heat up. Ugh. So annoying, I'm sorry, I'm such a girl about my hair sometimes. They sell flat irons at Corte Ingles, but Courtney told me that they kind of suck (she blew hers out, too). I was looking up irons on Amazon and Vidal Sassoon online and such, but all only deliver in the U.S., and lord knows those will get blown out again. No good hair irons attach into the Spanish outlets, so I guess that I may just have to settle. What a bitch, I tell ya. To top it off, my camera batteries have been charging all night, and still it says that they don't have enough power to take pictures. So apparently my batteries are duds. Furthermore, tomorrow is going to be a major trip to Corte Ingles to exchange batteries and buy a flat iron. Well, there goes most of my weekly allowance. Well, the upside of it all was that Melissa and I spent a good portion of that early afternoon on a Swiss website about this recreational sport called dogwagon pulling or something. It's the funniest thing ever, it's like dogsledding, except not on snow, and on wheels. It's this huge thing in Switzerland, I guess, how random can you get? We were crying from laughter, I suggest that you check this sport out. It's just so random, and kind of cruel in a way. What inspired it is last Thursday walking home from the flamenco show a bike went whizzing by us, being pulled by a sprinting dog! How unbearably random and absurd. We were laughing for what seemed like forever. It's like reindeer! So yeah, that's the background story behind dogpulling. The end. Anyways, we left the center around 2 and were home in time for lunch which was pretty simple, yet good and satisfying. It was a big bowl of spaghetti and meat sauce! It was actually quite good, the sauce was homemade with lots of onion and really good, high quality meat (not the ground beef crumbles we're used to in the states). It was served with some simple greens with oil and vinegar, and an orange for dessert. After lunch I did a bit of reading, and then Stacey and I left for the center again around 4 for Stacey's 5-6:30 grammar/comp class. While she was in class, I started making preliminary travel plans! Everyone seems to be starting to plan trips. So this is what it looks like for me:
This weekend: Cadiz, Feb. 24-26 Portugal, Mar. 9-12 Paris, Mar. 24-26 Morocco or London, end of April Ireland or Amsterdam or Germany (Munich?), end of May Ibiza and/or Barcelona. That's on top of our program excursions to Granada, Malaga, and Cordoba on various weekends, as well. Wooo! I'm so excited to travel Europe (and perhaps Africa), I can't even believe it. AND I'll probably go to Italy, Greece, and hopefully Prague with the parents in June! So happy! All this travel, however, takes a lot of planning, and a good chunk of money, so it took me the whole hour and a half of Stacey's class to look up all of my possibilities. I also need to cut back on spending so I can use the majority of it for travel (!!!). Everything is actually pretty reasonable, except for Ireland, Amsterdam, and Germany, which is why I need to maybe cut one out of there. Oy. Decisions, decisions! I also started looking into activities and such that I'd like to do for my bday, cuz everyone keeps asking me what I want to do, and I never know! There are wayyyy too many choices. Katie told me then that she'd plan something with the girls, so I guess I'm in for some insanity. Oh man. After all that planning, I was ready to go. We got back, I did more internetting (I added some more webshots that I took from other people, check 'em out!), and then dinner happened at 9:30. Dinner was good, but a bit disappointing. We had an egg omelet, salad, and this deliiiiicious potato onion thing. But Maruja didn't make a lot of it, and she and Maria del Mar took huge portions of it, leaving not a lot for the remaining 3 of us. Losers. So after dinner I ate a granola bar...dipped in peanut butter! Oh man, I'm terrible with the peanut butter...just so happy to have it back. Then I watched some CSI Miami with Maria and Marta, got tired, popped a Melatonin and called it a night by 11:30. I hadn't slept much the night before, I didn't have class the next day, but it's always night to do that whole "early to bed, early to rise" thang. I'm actually writing this Monday night, first time I've been fully caught up with blogs, woohoo! So, GOODNIGHT!