It's been a while since I last wrote!
In that time, I had a week of classes, tutored the 6 kids, and SPRING BREAK! :)
The night of the last day of classes, Jacque (my old roommate from the first month, if you recall) and I took an 8 hour bus ride to Barcelona. We checked out the city for a couple hours, saw a great big cathedral, a cool park, went past the chocolate museum and the Picasso museum and walked down "Las Ramblas" a street where they have a lot of entertainers, vendors, etc. Then I took a bus and a plane and ended up in Germany.
There, Dani met me at the airport. It was really cool to walk out of the gate and see her and a friend standing there waving at me with an Indiana flag and a big paper with my name on it!
We drove to the Netherlands, dropped off Dani's friend and eventually made it to Muenster.. the city where Dani studies.
And so began my spring break. In Muenster, Dani and I had a good time. Cooking, checking out the city, BBC documentaries, parties, and .. well, sleeping. It was great! Dani put off doing homework to hang out with me, but I didn't stop her from doing ALL homework.. I actually helped! :) I read to her from an autobiography in English that she had to read. She pulled me through the city in a little wagon as I read to her one day, then the next day, she pushed me in a wheelchair. It was pretty funny, for us as well as those around us. Me shouting out the words of an English autobiography to be heard over the noise of the street in the middle of a bunch of German people giving us funny looks. Even weirder when Dani wasn't making a special effort to be gentle as she pushed me in the wheelchair. I almost fell out at one curb, and Dani looked like quite the horrible caretaker :)
At the end of the week, we went to a big Easter bonfire at the house of a friend of a friend. It was great, but then I had to head back to the airport and back to Barcelona.
In Barcelona, I quickly booked a hostel through a bus station info center, found the hostel.. which was more like some lady's apartment with spare rooms to lend out :) It was getting kinda late, but i wanted to do SOMETHING that night. So i hopped the subway to Guell Park, took the 383473 escalators (only 5, really, i think) up the hill to the park, climbed and climbed and made it to the top, where there were 3 crosses in a clearing.
I was by myself, and had the most amazing view of the city. It felt so surreal. Like a sublime moment when I have to ask ''what did i do to deserve all this?'' I felt like i was in the clouds, with the city glowing, laid out in front of me.
Then next day, i had to check out of the hostel, and so i toured the city by myself pulling along my little blue suitcase. I thought it would be.. lonely.. to tour Barcelona by myself, but it was actually very nice. I got to silently contemplate all the beautiful building and sites and everything. Of course I thought of people a lot, thinking, MAN, i'd like to show mom this, or this friend that, or on and on. but it was really nice.
I'm back in Madrid now, finished another week of classes, and midterms are next week.
I just got an email yesterday.. I've been 'accepted' to go to Peru in the fall! I put accepted in apostrophies because I'm really not officially accepted, IU's has just said that they're recommending me to study there.. and i just have to wait for the Peru University to accept me.
So now i have a lot to do to prepare for that, but I wouldn't have it any other way :)
Spending a few days or weeks filling, copying, scanning, faxing, and emailing forms is so worth spending another semester in a foreign country.
So, all's going very well for me now. Next week I think I'm going to start tutoring another class of 2 girls, ages 10 and 11. So that'll make 8 students total. I'm really looking forward to that :)
I'm getting better at cooking.. although I need to find more of a variety of fairly simple things to cook on the stove. The weather's getting warmer all the time. It was in the 60's today. My roommate's are great, I'm going to a party with Henrietta tomorrow. and... I'm very happy.
I miss you guys, it comes in waves (mostly when I have time to think at all!) I love hearing from you! Keep writing! .. or start if you haven't :)
aschmies@indiana.edu 74 down, 96 days to go.
