A Disney Kind of Day

I'm writing this in a great mood. I've been listening to Disney songs all day today since my "tutoring" session with two kids, Daniel and Andrea, involved my doing a Peter Pan puzzle with them and ended with me being desperate to listen to You Can Fly! AND since I just received a fantastic birthday/living in Spain package from my ever-so-thoughtful Aunt Cindy and Uncle Mark! They are literally the best. A beautiful new purse, peanut butter, a buckeye for good luck, and throat coat tea were among the contents. Thanks y'all! I also just finished reading Anna Karenina (long as HAY-LL, but so good!) and I have for the very first time read in a book the way I feel about my spirituality and soul, which is very exciting. Basically the whole last part of the book, I was thinking "This is me! This is exactly how I think about life and God!" (Not Anna's narrative; rather Levin, another character who is, in my opinion, the main character of the book! I won't get into how ridiculous Russian novels are now, though).

So, this last week has been pretty great! I am really loving working with the kids at my school. Today, for instance, I ended school by teaching two classes how to make origami frogs. We watched a video telling a version of the Princess and the Frog story and then made the frogs and then decorated the frogs. These kids are too funny. Every time I moved on to the next step they all said "Like this? Like this? Teacher! Like this?" 

(They have a tendency to say "teacher" instead of my name and whenever they do that I say "you know my name!"  and they look at me like I'm insane. And then they look down and say "Katrina" sheepishly). 

It's funny that we're supposed to pretend we don't understand Spanish, because most of the time when these kids are speaking in Spanish, I really, truly, have NO idea what they're saying. So it's kinda nice being able to say "I don't understand Spanish. Either speak in English or go ask Rebeca!" They try so hard. Some of them just look at me like "are you kidding? I have no idea how to say that in English." but most of them really try to ask their question in English. It's truly admirable. 

This last weekend was pretty good, too. My friend Steve and I talked a while ago about how, every once in a while, like 10% of the time, we get a "what am I even doing here? am I wasting my life? I should be home!" feeling, and I had a little bit of that this weekend. I am one of those people who can't be left alone with their thoughts for too long, else I'll start questioning literally everything about my life. To combat that, on Sunday I went to Parque del Oeste, (The West Park, very original name) and walked around and took pictures and wrote postcards to people (which I have not mailed yet...) The crazy thing was, there was NOBODY around! I mean, this day was BEAUTIFUL. Sun shining, hardly a cloud in the sky, a gorgeous 70 degrees, cool breeze, and not a soul in the park.

 No one there. 

Hmmm... no one there, either...

Oh, there's a person!

no, that's me... 

Still nobody! Nadie! No one!

At least where I was. You know what there WAS, though? 

The remains of the previous night. 

MMMMM, yeah. Boxed wine. Botellón. (The Spanish have a word for drinking in the streets and generally partying/drinking. Botellón. Literally "big bottle" hahaha. This is an entire collection of liter boxes of wine. 

When I saw this vast expanse of dirt, it was glittering, sparkling in the sun, because of all the broken glass in the area. Lovely. Can't really tell in this picture though... D:

Anyway, that was Sunday afternoon, earlier in the weekend was great! Begóna, Laura, and Carlos (Laura's boyfriend) played dominos together! And not just any dominos! Carlos has the exact same set of dominos that my family has, except his set goes up to 12 instead of 15! We played Mexican dominos, which I had never played before and which involved the little plastic trains in the set that I had always wondered about. It was very fun! Also this weekend, I watched The Abyss with Begoña and tried watch Isabel (a new popular show over here about, guess who!) with Laura. Isabel is in 14th Century Castillian so it's almost impossible to truly understand, but it was fun regardless! 

If I can, I will upload pictures of our dominos night later, but right now they are not working ):

And not to forget! Friday I went with my friend Hannah to el Museo de la Reina Sofia. They have an exhibition right now called "Is the War Over?" Which is basically "art after WWI" It was pretty cool! There were some rooms I couldn't even stay in because they just freaked me out, were really creepy, etc. My favorite piece was called "God is Dead" and it was just a big metal egg shaped thing that sparkled. Like... what. I love/do not understand art. I'll try to upload the picture of tha later, too. 

Anyhow, now I'm headed back to my piso to go to bed and sleep before school tomorrow! Buenas noches!