"SMELL JOUR FINGAHS!!"

Hello, hello! I'm finally writing because I finally have time & energy...and health. Since the last time I wrote I have had the life drained from me from the preschoolers and in the past two weeks have been different kinds of sick three times. Living the dream, I tell ya.

Anyways since it's been so long of course this post would be like 55 pages...but since you all complain they're too long the way it is, I'll try to post about everything in three different segments...Halloween, preschool, and the apartment shenanigans. This post is dedicated to Halloween...which you probably couldn't tell from the title but you soon will.

Oh Halloween...where to start? Well first of all I'd like to thank my family and friends for all of the care packages you sent...I offically have so much Pumpkin Spice Via that I don't have to hoard it and I'm in love!! It means a lot as well because I know sending things internationally is expensive and it makes it easier to be away from home. You'd think after being here for so long I'd get used to it but I feel like it's the opposite for me. Anyways I was a pumpkin and I was adorable (not to toot my own horn but...toot toot). I ended up going out with my Spanish friends AND Canadian friends so all was well with the world.

At school, since it might be my last year, I wanted to do the coolest activity I had with all the students I possibly could. Thus far my greatest achievement as a teacher has been the Dead Man In A Cup game. At least in the eyes of my students...to recap, I close all of the blinds, windows, and doors so it's almost pitch black in the room and I tell them that a year ago, on Halloween, a man died. I don't know how, or why...but he's dead (insert slitting throat and dead face motion...they love it, gasping, cupping their mouths, squealing..) I explain that I went to the police station (otherwise known as the super market) and collected his body parts which are in 9 labelled white cups. Their job is to reach into the cup, feel (not look) and if they dare, smell, the "body parts" and then write on their paper what food it really is. Granted, this game is more for the Halloween experience than English language exercise, but I'm also a cultural assistant and it's arguably the most memorable activity we do all year. Because they're so young they find it nearly impossible to dissimilate what they're feeling from the idea of it being a body part so it TOTALLY freaks them out. Last year I only did it with 5th and 6th grade because I was afraid it was too scary...but this year I opened it up to 3rd and 4th grade as well. My 6th graders already knew what to expect so this year I made sure to make their food especially disgusting. I used frozen peeled grapes for eyes, mussels for the tongue, and canned sun dried tomatoes for intestines. I also boiled some carrots and put pistachio shells on them for fingernails...those were SUPER gross because even out of the cup they looked like putrid dead fingers. It was AWESOME.

But of course, in the end......Colonel Nun stole the show.

I was worried about doing the activity with my 3rd graders because they're a bit behind the rest of my classes...and I'm not sure why, but they are just...slow. They're my favorite students by far, they adore me, but academically they could use a push. To give them this push, Colonel Nun only speaks to them in English..........in her broken, poorly pronounced English. They have no clue what's going on at all times and one student, Flamboyant Daniel, came up to me one day and told me he had a secret...I asked what it was and he whispered in my ear "Chelsea I don't like the teacher....she scares me. Don't tell her!!!" .............hahah. Oh by the way, her name is Sister Maria Jose but she refuses to let any of the students call her by name. They all call us by our first names, or profe, or teacher...but she insists they call her "Da Teacher"....well, "Da teachuh" because of her "British" accent. All of the other teachers joke around and call her Mary Jo behind her back....which I find hilarious because she's the most intimidating human being I've ever met in my life and "Mary Jo" just does NOT fit the build. It'd be like finding out Hitler's nickname was Teddy, or Alf.

Anyways the first problem with Colonel Mary Jo came when I was explaining the activity. I explained to them what was happening, I tried to explain quite clearly that there was FOOD in the cups, not body parts...and it was a fun game. I asked Mary Jo to help me explain and she turned right around and repeated what I had just said but in broken English, without a word of Spanish to help them. So I shrug it off, assume they'll figure it out as we go on...but notice they they are becoming increasingly terrified the more they touch the food because they never actually understood that there weren't real body parts in the cups. Therefore on their little slips of paper, where it said "Eyes", they wrote down "ojos".....because they thought they were real eyes. Other students who were mildly more intelligent, but not abundantly so, decided to count the objects in the cups. So for eyes they wrote 2. For fingers & fingernails they wrote 4. For tongue they wrote 1...but they STILL thought they were touching a dead man's body parts. I'm trying at this point to not bang my head against the wall and give myself a concussion. Finally MJ explains, super exasperated, in her growling Spanish that it's FOOD, it's not actually body parts, and that starving people in Africa could be eating this food that we're using for a game to nourish numerous families. Womp, womp, womp...so much for the fun Halloween game when we're the cause of starvation in third world countries. The game continued and everytime anybody reacted and said "Eww, gross!" she'd yell "NO!! Ees no disgusting!! EES FOOD, JEW EAT!! Babies!! Jew haf to guess!! SMELL!! JEW CAN SMELL!! SMELL JOUR FINGAHS!!! MY BABY LOOK!! JEW CAN SMELL DA FINGAHS!! (insert action of Colonel MJ smelling her fingers exageratedly). If that didn't scare the hell out of them then nothing ever will.

The next day's class came quickly and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to better explain the game since Mary Jo was not only not helping me explain, but killing all of the fun as well. I used all of my best gestures and body language to help explain to the kids that these are NOT real body parts (wink wink) but FOOD, normal things that just feel like body parts...not to be too scared! It's a fun game. So we get into a circle and we start...the kids are already looking really queasy and unsure of what to expect and the first body part is the eyes (grapes)...so the kids are touching, feeling, and the grapes are pretty flacid and gooey because they're no longer frozen...and then Mary Jo starts in...in Spanish even. "Careful!! When you touch the eyes they start to roll around!! Don't touch them too hard or they might jump out of the cup!!!............JES, JES....DEAD MAN'S EYES IN THE CUP, CUT FROM HIS FACE!!".......Hold your damned horses Mary Jo!! Where did that come from!? Yesterday you were depressing and suffocating all the fun and today you're literally scaring the crap out of them? What gives? I thought it was just an impulse so we continued...but as we continued her commentaries got darker and darker.

Lips (wet marshmallows): BABIES!! Feel da two leeeps...he can't talk anymore!! If you all talk too much in class that's what happens! Your lips fall off your face! And then they'll end up in the cup like the dead man!! Squishy and sticky lips!!

Intestines (dried tomatoes): Be careful babies! Da intesteens...dried and curled up together...it's like the stomach but longer where all of the food goes! Maybe there is some old food left over in there!!

Tongue (mussels): Babies he might lick you!! With his dead lifeless tongue...is it wet?? JESS?? Well he must have died recently!!

I thought we were going to lose someone to the toilet to go throw up, honestly. After this I was convinced she's bipolar. I love her, and she has even declared her love for me one day (that was a weird scenario...the kids all ran to me and hugged me one day and said "Chelsea, I love jew! You're my best friend" and her response was "JESS JESS I love you too, now SHIT DOWN. SHIT DOWN NOW!!") but she's so freaking special. Which is one of the reasons I love her, haha. She's seriously a loose cannon and you never know when she's gonna blow. It just so happens that this time she blew all over Halloween. Most kids who attend a Catholic school fondly remember the nuns smacking their hands with rulers...my 3rd graders will probably always rememember Mary Jo smelling her hands and screaming "SMELL JOUR FINGAHS!!!!"

Hopefully soon this week I'll update on my next source of entertainment and lack of patience: Preschool!

Chelsea's English Masterpiece Theater

Good evening, Spain, and good afternoon America! You all win, I blogged instead of cleaning. I am a master at rationalizing the shit out of anything, though, so I unloaded the dishwasher, reloaded it, and prepped my breakfast for tomorrow...that covered my "productivity" quota enough to write to you fine ass people and procrastinate the cleaning of the bathroom until tomorrow. I also poured myself an ice cold glass of sangria...I'm doing an experiment to see if it makes me more interesting. You can all vote later. Oh and I will not be saluting Russia anymore because apparently if you use their native language they aren't interested in reading your blog anymore...ironic. It also could be that I trusted Google Translate a little too much and said something heinous in Russian. We say potato, they say vodka.

This calm Sunday night will be spent shitting my pants and worrying about finally starting work tomorrow. I was going to visit my school on Friday just to say hi to everyone and get the kissing thing out of the way (although for better or worse I'm getting used to being kissed by coworkers) but my other teachers caught wind of it (because all my coworkers are gossips and thanks to WhatsApp are able to do it light years faster than ever before...a very key reason why I love them so much, haha) and arranged an impromptu meeting with our new principal. The old head nun (not to be confused with the bat-crap crazy yet loveable leather-skirted nun) changed schools [read: got rotated to another school] and we have a new one. Her name is Sister Solitude of Youths. Or Sister Loneliness...of Youth. It's really not fair to translate it because it sounds better in Spanish, Sister Soledad...but it's kind of funny to do it anyways. It makes me want to sing Sister Christian to her for some reason...which is even more ironic, if you consider the lyrics.

You know those boys don't wanna play no more with you, it's true...MOTORIN'! What's your price for flight...in findin' Mr. Right?

Is that blasphemous? It feels pretty inappropriate...but come on, so funny. I can't wait to tell Jenny, the new assistant at our school. I'll feel better if I'm not the only person singing "MOTORIN'!!!" in my head when I see my boss.

Anyways, my meeting with Sister Christian went really well. She met me, was impressed by my Spanish, and offered me a "promotion"...although after I considered everything I'm going to use "promotion" in air quotes because I have a feeling it's going to be a big pain in the ass. Rocio, our English coordinator, called me Thursday after she heard I was coming to school and asked in confidence if I would be willing to work more hours. She was so excited to be the first to tell me the school wanted to offer me three extra hours a week (which doesn't seem like much but I think I'll end up getting an extra 150 euros a month...which means I can travel more and get bitten in the ass less by my little prick private class kids) with the preschoolers. I told her no problem, I'd keep my mouth shut (because Sister Christian wanted to be the first one to break the news) and pretend to be surprised. Let me tell you how surprised I really was, though, when Sister Christian asked how I thought I'd handle working with the 3-5 year olds..........................3-5?

This chick is 3 years old. (By the way, there is an abundance of hits if you search for "Smoking 3-year old"....like DIFFERENT three year olds. What the hell is going on over in Thailand?!) Okay, granted, I don't expect many of my new students (...okay, so I don't expect any of my new students...) to be chain-smoking miscreants but I wasn't expecting 3 year-olds. Last year we had tossed around the idea of me teaching the oldest kids in preschool (the 5 year-olds) one hour a week...which would only add three extra classes. Sister Christian sprung it on me that I would be teaching ALL of preschool. I believe I have blogged in the past about my visit down to Spain's version of pre-school. I think all kids must attend school in Spain once they are 2-3 years old. Most of these students can barely manage to not soil themselves in any given two hour time increment. I visited one of the teachers I used to work with down there last year and her only job (that I witnessed) was her making sure none of the "students" murdered or seriously injured their fellow classmates with obscure sharp objects around the classroom and that they didn't shit their pants. Literally. One kid did shit his pants. That's it. How am I going to teach them English? Sister Christian was quite adamant about not speaking a word of Spanish with them (which is also going to be a challenge since I quit pretending last year) and suggested I use story-telling and puppet theater to facilitate English, so they could just hear me speak and absorb. I can just see it now, Chelsea's Masterpiece English Theater presents "Who Crapped In The Corner?; A Fecal Mystery [based on a true story]." Based on my previous experience of only fifteen minutes, I'm quite positive by the end of the year they will have mastered the phrases "Why are you holding your crotch?", "Do you have to go to the toilet?", "We don't go poo-poo on the floor", and "Stop hitting each other." I feel like I might be being a little pessimistic, but on the positive side there's guaranteed to be an overwhelming amount of material for my little blog here, so......yay? Yay! In the end, adding all of pre-school, I will have around 600 students, total. Luckily, in pre-school, I only have 20 minutes with each class...so best or worst case scenario, it won't be too difficult to squirm through. Through which to squirm. I am an English teacher after all...never end a sentence with a preposition. Or use fragments.

In other good news, I'm finally 7/8 settled in to my apartment. I was avoiding it like the plague because I hate unpacking (which seems weird, I know, but it simply reminds me how much crap I have accumulated in Spain and makes me seriously depressed thinking about how I'm going to eventually get it all home once I decide to move home. I haven't thrown away one copy of Cosmo since I've been here...I wouldn't say I'm a hoarder but I'm only 5 bottles of nail polish, 3 gel pens, and a missing pet trapped in my clutter away from officially qualifying for the title. Luckily I don't have a pet (that I'm aware of) so I won't ever legitimately qualify. I unpacked all of my stuff-stuff and am still in the process of unpacking my clothes. I got through two huge space bags and two small space bags, got really excited and took a celebratory nap, and then when I woke up realized there was one more big space bag...so I gave up and am leaving that for later. Like tomorrow, or next weekend. Or 2013 if the world doesn't end. If there was anything more than that one space bag I was seriously considering burning all my clothes and becoming a nudist. I'd have to move to the coast to a beach town to fit in, and I'd for sure be the cutest person on the beach considering all the old wrinkly nudeness I've seen...my boobs would also be the perkiest, since the other women at the beach practically step on theirs...actually this scenario is getting a little too appealing, so let's change topics before it becomes my reality, haha.

I'm surprisingly home alone, even at 11:30 p.m., because Paco is still with his boyfriend in Sevilla and Irene left to go kayak down some rapids or something. All I could understand while she was squealing excitedly about it was "so much water!!...so fast!!!....the terror!!! EEEEK!!" I'm assuming it was kayak-related. Let's hope. Paco left me homework this weekend before he left....I was supposed to practice Mario Kart in the next level of difficulty so he could race me once he gets back. I adore him but he's the worst influence ever...and I am, equally, to him. Numerous times this past week it's been 12:30 a.m. and he comes crashing in, "SHELLTHEEEEE....eeets time to play da Mario!!! Come on, leetle squeetle (squirrel) I'm goin to ween to jew!!!" (he's going to beat me...he can't remember "beat" so he always mistranslates to "I'm going to win you". Hilarious). I always wonder what our neighbors think because we are quite loud...one time last week I actually beat him. I was on my A game and he kept having bad luck...and I beat him. All of Madrid could hear him screaming "COME BACK JERE JEW BABY BEETCH!!!!!" as I won. (My character I always choose is Baby Peach, so he thinks he's being super clever...unfortunately the name has stuck and now anytime he wants to play he no longer calls me Shellthee, he comes bounding in and yells "Baby beeeetch, we have to play!!" Luckily I don't think the neighbors understand him.) I don't think, without proper video evidence, I could explain how serious Paco is about Mario Kart. He's never met anyone who can challenge him and he loves and hates it at the same time. One time I came home and he was listening to music in his room, blasting it at full volume, so I assumed he was busy and started playing on my own. He comes in a little bit later and threw a fit. "What are you doing!?! You're playing and you didn't even invite me to come play?? YOU'RE TRAINING!!! I can't believe it you're training so you can beat me!! IRENE!!!! She's been TRAINING!!!" My life not be high speed and exciting but you can damn well bet I would never train for Mario Kart to beat my gay roommate.

Except this weekend. I definitely did this weekend. But don't tell Paco...I'm gonna let him find out himself :D Love you all, pray for me and my first week of 21 hours.

I'm In Love With A Boy Named Paco

Hello America & Spain! And my two viewers who always manage to pop up from Russia...привет! (I Googled that...it means "hello" in Russian...feel special you two creeps).

I know I haven't written for a little while, but if we all take into consideration how often I wrote last year (due to emotional roller coasters and lack of will power) this is pretty good, right?

The good news is that so far everything seems to be going really well. Last year I ended up in the wrong apartment, far away from Madrid, with the wrong roommate...and to top that off she was never even home, so it was like I lived alone. I think that started the year off on the wrong foot....so I'm looking to really make up for it this year.

As you all should know, I have a gay roommate. Sometimes I feel like it's wrong to single him out as the gay roommate...he's also the only male roommate...but it seriously is the best way to describe him. I swear I'm not marginalizing...if anything I love him more for it. You should all be gay and maybe I'd love you more too, haha. Kidding...mostly.

Anyways I'm in love with Paco. We've only been living together for a week now and it's already a very strong relationship. He's very sassy and very effeminate....not drag queen effeminate, just...normal effeminate. He's also very quirky...for example he's in love with Toy Story. Yesterday he introduced me to his Toy Story dolls...he has Buzz, Woody, Bullseye (the horse), and Jessie (the cowgirl)...if you turn them on and put them together, they talk to each other. Just to clarify, this is where the gay-roommate clarification comes in. Let's all imagine that my roommate last year, Manuel, the one-man star of Carrie in our apartment, had these toys. Coupled with his chronic schizophrenia and talking to his other personalities in the shower (that he was completely unaware of), the addition of Buzz and Woody would probably send me screaming for a straight jacket from the nearest loony bin. And to be completely honest with you, if he DID have those dolls, I wouldn't be one bit surprised. He was a very nice guy but also very unfortunate to live with (especially near the end). Paco also has Toy Story shower gel, Toy Story posters, and tends to leave the empty boxes from his dolls around the house as decorations. Clearly he's going to be a breeze to shop for at Christmas.

Paco also comes in a two-part package. There's Paco...and then there's his boyfriend, Beto. They are polar opposites...Paco is sassy and outgoing and Beto is quieter and relaxed. My first night in the apartment Beto came over and rummaged through all of the stuff I brought from America....including but not limited to my nail polish, my muffin mixes (don't judge, they're cheap and easier to make than muffins from scratch), my stickers for the kids, my Halloween paraphernalia, and my hair spray. He's nosey but in a loving way. Last week I made muffins and they spent a good 5 minutes picking out which cupcake papers they wanted me to make them in. They gave me shit for awhile too because Paco says that I have brought "all kinds of vices and corruption into this apartment"...for the past week we've been battling on Mario Kart until at least 1-1:30 in the morning. I told them I didn't have to make the muffins, I was just doing it to show them, and they freaked out. "NO NO NO, you are GOING to make them, we're just gonna get fat, that's all... But yes, make them.... Now. Please."

Another fun dynamic to the apartment is that Paco speaks pretty good English. Every once in awhile he'll come bursting into a room (he has to make an entrance) and shout "Eets time for da Eengleesh hour!!! From now, we must espeak en only da Eengleesh!" Unfortunately Beto does not speak any English, and they tend to get in very huffy fights when Paco declares Da Eengleesh Hour and Beto doesn't want to participate. I tried to tell Beto he could start slowly and practice with me to get better (he's taken at least 5 years of it in school) but he gets very flustered and just tries to absorb into the wall, usually. Paco started screaming at him one time "Come on now, Beto!!! Jew know da Eengleesh!! Jew can espeak weet Chelsea, ees berry easy!" I tried to talk to him with the most simplest question I could think of, so that he could appease Paco and feel accomplished...so I asked him slowly and caring "How was your day?" Beto stops, thinks a second, and says, "My name ees Beto." That threw Paco into a bit of rage, haha, and lead to a pretty intense fight where Paco started yelling at him in English about how he wasn't thinking and should know more and Beto ended up cleaning to relieve his stress. I don't exactly understand how the two resolve their problems because magically, 20 minutes later, they were fine again. I was really kinda worried that my English Hour could be the straw that broke the camels back for the couple of 3 years...but apparently that's normal for them, haha. Paco then told me, "Beto wans, when he ees growing, to be working een a laundry becos he loff clean...he loff to take away de dust an do da vacuum." The fun thing about Paco is that he understands me most of the time and I also understand him...but he also makes a lot of hilarious mistakes. For example one night, after I made the muffins and we were cleaning up, Beto said in Spanish "A mi me encanta mojar las magdalenas en la leche." But it was English Hour so Paco clarifies and says, "Beto say dat he loff to wet da moofeens een da meelk." I thought I was going to die from laughing. I tried to explain the numerous things wrong with this sentence but that only armed Paco with more inappropriate vocabulary than he already knows. Another time I was doing the dishes and Paco asks me, "Do jew see da paper here on da freedge?" I had noticed it, actually, the first day I went to the apartment. They have a collection of magnets on the fridge and one little flyer for Latin escorts who do "all services". I hoped, and figured, it was just a joke but I did think it was pretty funny considering the tenants. "Een dees apartment we loff da prostitutation. I saw dees paper, on a car, and I say to Irene 'we HAVE to take da paper, ees so funny!! Because jew know, I am a prostitute too." And then he ran off and had a dance party to Ke$ha.

Basically, my room is tiny but I love the relaxed environment of the new apartment. Irene, the girl, is hardly ever home because she is into every hobby under the sun. She loves kayaking, repelling, climbing, playing guitar, playing piano....and one night she came out of her room super proud because she had written and recorded a song she wrote about kayaking (she's doing a great job of combining her hobbies, haha). I'm pretty sure she has ADHD but she's quite fun too. Besides the fact that they both talk at the speed of light (and Paco is from Sevilla so he has a lisp with every S he says...he already told me "Chelsea, from now on I'm going to call you ShellThee, because that's how I'd say it in Sevilla.") I think my Spanish is also vastly improving because our television doesn't have a remote control right now and everything is stuck in Spanish (I usually cheat when I'm watching programs I love because the dubbing is so awful). So for now I feel like I'm exactly where I should be. School doesn't start until Monday, so this week I need to actually start unpacking and make a concerted effort to really settle in and stop procrastinating. I'll try to update one more time before we start school, because Lord knows that will bring a whole slew of new adventures. Ta ta for now!

Here I Go Again...

It's that time again! I can no longer drive, I sweat at all hours of the day and freeze my ass off at night, drink my weight in water and sangria, get shamelessly gawked at and hit on by all Africans or men over the age of 50, and have reduced half of my caloric intake. That's right, I'm back in Spain!! Yay? Haha...

I will admit that this journey back has been less eventful, which by all standards is amazing considering my past experiences. I don't think it will ever get easy to make the big change, to either country, but I keep deciding to do it so I guess I'm not allowed to complain. Clearly I had a hard time at Christmas coming home, simply because I couldn't actually GET home without a complete nervous breakdown, but it wasn't a breeze in the summer, either. It was mostly biological...I was still on Spain time and I couldn't sleep well, so I put on Univision (the Mexican channel) so things would seem more normal. Clearly my life is in shambles, haha.

Anyways, back to the return journey. My airplane from Indy to Washinton Dulles was shittastic. I have some friends in America, and I won't name names, who cannot drive for shit. They double-foot the accelerator and the brake and really try to push your gag reflex to the limit......they'll accelerate to the speed they want, then let off & let it slow down on its own....then speed up again quickly...then slow down....then hit the brake...then accelerate....are you getting nauseated while reading this? I am by just typing. It also really gets your neck prepped for a good whiplash. Anyways that's what the pilot was doing with the plane. You'd hear the jets rev up, my ears would pop, we'd ascend a little bit...then all of a sudden, silence. The jets would stop, we'd start to fall substantially, my stomach dropped...then the jets came back on, and we'd go up, and my ears would pop.....then we'd fall again. I finally hunched over my legs because I've realized that if I'm hunched over, my stomach doesn't register the changes because I'm pretty disoriented. I managed to look out of the corner of my eye and the guy across the way from me was staring at me. I'm almost positive he thought I was going to throw up and seemed really excited for a digestive pyrotechnic show. Sorry, dude.

Dulles was not exciting...the worst part about travelling alone is travelling alone. You have to haul all your shit to the bathroom, to the shops, through the restaurants. Plus you feel pretty alone. I always try to spot a trusting old lady or family that I ask to watch my carry on while I go to the bathroom....I usually only have my clothes packed in it so it's no big deal. Some witch from TSA that was patrolling caught me, though, and wouldn't let me leave my stuff. She was so unfair, she told me I had to take it with me or she'd call the police. I personally think she had a Mall Cop Inferiority Complex, except more so since she wasn't riding a Segway....so I just didn't go to the bathroom for 4 hours out of spite and watched Weeds. SO MEAN.

Hmm, what else. On the flight here I sat next to an extra annoyed Phillipine teenage boy. He was so hostile and moody you would have thought he was a 13-year-old girl who was grounded from going to a Justin Beiber concert. I spent the first 5 hours of the flight fighting with him over the armrest. It's a delicate balance but everytime he'd put on his headphones I'd stab my elbow over so I could establish control. I usually don't care and curl up into a little ball anyways but our flight attendants were extra hip-y. Girthy hips. Wide ass hips. So everytime they'd walk past me they'd bust into my elbow with half their body without any apology and continue on, leaving their fluid rear practically waving at me with contempt as they continued on.

I arrived at 7:30 a.m. Madrid time on Wednesday, went back to Rebecca's apartment, and took a nap. Once I woke up I went off to see two apartments with no luck. The next day I saw 4 more and met Jenny, the new English assistant at our school. She's British! And awesome! She's still getting used to Madrid so I hauled her to all of my apartments. It came down to two that I liked....one was going to let me know because the roommates were going to decide and the other one was first come first serve. Of course I liked the choosey one the best but if I waited to hear from them, and they said no, and I went to the other apartment and it was rented, I'd be screwed. I was torn and didn't know what to do, and somewhat defeated because a lot of the apartments were being really bratty and mean girl about it (we'll let you know, we're going to choose the person we all like the best). It's been a really frustrating situation because 1.) they haven't asked me any important questions about myself or about my living habits or anything useful and 2.) I want to live with Spaniards to practice speaking Spanish but most apartments full of Spaniards don't want to live with a gringa foreigner American girl.

Before I even got here my mom told me "I'd find what I was meant to have"...so I figured I'd go home and call her to see what I should do. I trekked home, exhausted, and was about to call her when I saw a message from one of the apartment sites from a girl who liked my post and thought I'd fit in here. I almost didn't go because I had JUST come from the neighborhood and really didn't want to leave AGAIN to go all the way back...I'd be less lazy but Rebecca's apartment isn't on the same metro line or bus line so I have to transfer and I already hate the metro anyways...but I went just because her e-mail was so energetic and cute. I got to the apartment and I could tell just from listening to her that she was awesome. She's bubbly, short, fun, sassy. There were Abbey Road posters on the wall, an 80's pop art Lip phone (as in the phone is shaped like a pair of lips), a Dolce Gusto coffee maker (dyyyyying!), a beautiful bright living room and windows, lime green kitchen with a hot pink toaster, nice decent sized bathroom...the bedroom is small but the rest of the apartment was GORGEOUS. I stopped her in the middle of the tour and said I'd take it. I asked if Paco, the boy who wasn't home, was just a friend (because I'm not trying to live with a couple...ew) and she said "oh yeah, he's just a friend...look, here's me, here's Paco, and here's Paco's boyfriend."

THAT WAS IT, SIGN FROM GOD. PACO'S GAY & THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE MY APARTMENT!!!

Honestly, I'm surprised in hindsight that I didn't freak her the hell out. I told her I'd seriously go to the ATM and get the deposit at that moment. Unfortunately she had already had another guy who was really interested too and she had to discuss it with Paco. Um, please. I didn't tell her this but I've never met a gay man in my 24 years of existence who didn't like me and I was not about to have Paco be the first. We kept talking, I mentioned that I make pastries and crap and she got excited and decided she'd tell Paco to suck it up, she decided on me. I knew Paco wouldn't regret it anyways, though. C'mon. Gay men are my people. I'm a magnet. I explained that to her too. In the end they chose me and I'm here now!

The apartment is literally right around the corner from my apartment last year...5 doors down. I can walk to school, I can walk to the city center and spend all my money in the shopping district...it's beautiful. Paco also loves Mario on the Wii and has about five Mario games (and was just energetically and enthusiastically telling me about how they spent at least 5 hours one night trying to get a star in the Rainbow World...irony :P) and it's his coffee maker so I have a feeling I'm right where I'm supposed to be. One of my teachers even offered me her car so she came Saturday to get all my crap in one trip and drop it off. In comparison, it's been quite an easy transition and now I'm just trying to get adjusted to being back in Spain and preparing to go back to work. I first need to unpack, though, so I can sleep in my tiny tiny little bed. I think my bed last year was only 4-5 inches wider, but that makes a lot of difference. I'm in cahoots with my dad, though, to figure out a way to fix it without buying a whole new mattress. Anyways I'll update with more exciting things as they occur but as always this is the just beginning-I'm alive post. I'll blog again soon!

...And Then I Unleashed The Minds Of Sixty 12-Year-Olds...And Peed My Pants From The Results

While I would argue forever that I'm a nurturing teacher, sometimes the most entertainment from my stay here in Madrid are the grammatical errors my students make and the hilarious shit they accidentally say in English. This blog-post will highlight the most recent shit-show I accidentally accomplished; a creative writing contest.

My 6^th graders are a little...slow. Well, actually I can't decide. Either my 5^th graders are GENIUSES and my 6^th graders are normal....or my 5^thgraders are normal and my 6^th graders are complete idiots. But they're not stupid....they're just lazy. And that pisses me off. Anyways I tried to find a fun exercise for them because they had just learned how to use the past tense. I assigned a short story writing activity that would be a creative writing competition, to see who could write the most creative story. The winner would receive a 1-day late homework pass (which is unheard of in Spain...I put some in their Easter egg activity and they tried to use them for all of their classes...haha, little jerks. They're quite conniving...one kid who got a homework pass actually auctioned it off during recess and the highest bidder paid 8 euros [which doesn't seem like a lot but it started off with “I'll give you a pencil...I'll give you a pencil and some candy...I'll give you a euro!!”....clearly it escalated quickly]). This seems like a good idea but there were a few snags. For one, creative writing and thinking is rare here. They're lapdog students. You tell them to jump, they ask how high. They do what you tell them to do and if you let them off their leashes, they stay put. It's exasperating and I'm not sure how to break them out of their shells. The second problem was that I told them to write a story, which they read as historia...or history. So I told them to “invent or create a story about a day in the life of a celebrity”...and most of them wrote a vague biography about a celebrity. And didn't invent anything. UGH.

While most of their efforts were repetitive, at best...some turned out to be the most entertaining literature I have ever read, and not due to plot. Grammatical errors, mistranslations, and general confusion are the protagonists of these stories...and it's awesome. Here we go:

From Kyla (who is from the Phillipines and speaks excellent Spanish):

Selena Gomez was a celebrity girl...She had an episode: Wizards of Waverly Place. Her name was Alex...I ed Selena Gomez and her episode. (she really put the heart...exactly like that) One day, she went to New Zealand and someone painted her face with a red paint. She looked like a clown. After that, when she was walking in a town there was a boy didn't stopped looking at her and then the boy came over her and bitted her. I was so sad when I knew that Selena Gomez died. And someone tld me that that's not just the cost of her life, a monster scared her and Selena was shocked or surprised. That's the scary and funny story of how Selena Gomez died.

From Ana Belen (who was confused about the biography/story issue)

Once upon a time in EE.UU (Spanish for USA) had one girl so-called Britney Spears. She had the oppurtunity were singer. She's the princess in the Pop. She's the best singer in the world. (I want to know where she go the “So-called”...that cracks my shit up every time)

From Raul...

One day went for street a Messi (famous Barcelona soccer player) and fell in the sewer. Then he attent up (tried to go up...)but the exit was very up. Then Messi attent to look for other exit. Then beginning to walk, walk, walk during for hour, he found a rats and cat and others thangerous animal. The end. He found and other exit, he up and he are in American. He not believe he are in the American.

From Javier...(who by the way has handwriting that looks like a serial killer...which doesn't help the overall tone and terror of this story)

Crazy story, crazy famous, am I crazy?

In the past Christmas the famous killed and was killed. I start my story:

In the Christmas of the 2011 the famous murdered other famous. They were crazy! Jack killed Messi and Paquito el Chocolatero killed Manolo del Bombo (I have no idea who Paquito is...but apparently Manolo del Bombo is some guy who goes to the soccer draft every year and is famous for his crazy outfit and playing some huge drum...) (Manolo was stupid.) Cristiano killed Iker Casillas (I don't know for what...) But the person didn't was famous laughth this. They were crazy too. I continue. Michael Jackson take her medicine and his doctor killed he. But it isn't the true. The true is Cristiano Ronaldo killed he and he gave the fault to a doctor. I think that for...I...I don't know. I know that's the story and it is the important information. I know. Or...I am crazy? All pepol are crazy.

From Lidia...

Shakira. She met a friends, there are grannies. She was ashamed, the people lagthed of she...the grannies went to a gym. They are very stronger. There was super grannies because they went to a gym. She went to a coffee shop and she had or drank alcohol...The grannies went to her house and took the dog. The dog ate gum or candies and the dog did a ball of gum. It was a bubble in the house. The dog could speak and said to Shakira “help me please”. This was disster!

From Judith...

Shakira was born 10^th April in Mexico. Came Spain and mad famous. Sang and danced alone. She was creacy. (crazy...)She broked her hips white dancing.

From Carla (who is a genius...super smart...speaks amazing English)

Silvestre Stalone did a lot of movies, one of them was “Rocky”. In the movie he played the part of an old boxing fighter. He also made some great training and worked really hard, with some other guy, that was his old trainer. His wife was really beautiful; until she decided to do some surgery on her face. He did some other movies like “Rambo”.This one was kind of dramatic, because his people died in some war, so he wants revenge (well something had to be predictable). Besides that he had a lot of friends like Arnold (I don't know if I spelled right). He was, he is, and he will always be my favorite celebrity!

From Josue (who never listens to me and refuses to follow directions...basically wrote one sentence about a rapper than named most of the songs he could think of)

Once upon a time one boy called Porta is sicer the rap and Hip-hop. (from what I can tell, Porta is a Spanish rapper) Born in Spain, year 1994, some the music is: Dragon Ball Rap, Aprecia lo que tienes(Appreciate what you have), Hay un sentimiento muerto (There's a dead feeling), Nueva generacion (New generation), Mi Frikimundo (My FreakyWorld), Tetris Rap, Transforme Bipolar, Querida alma gemela (Dear Soulmate), Sin Ti (Without you), En boca de tantos (In the mouth of many), Mi cuento de hadas (My fairy tale)...*

* Side note- I'm going to look up Porta on Spotify tonight because I am so curious what is music is like with such varying titles...

From Victoria...

Harper Seven Beckham...when she was four months, took tongue the paparazzi.

And finally, the best of the best...my personal favorite....Alberto. A quick note about Alberto: He is very smart. He is hard-working. He goes to the British Council for English lessons and I would unofficially name him #2 or #3 in the class. This was just a wonderful, innocent, amazing accident. Enjoy.

From Alberto...

Pepe hasn't got hair and is very good player but this week end no play and he was going to the bitch. In the bitch he had a girlfriend and very friends. He played witch his girlfriend football, bitch and witch his girlfriend to volleyball. When he was in his house he ate for breakfast an egg, bacon, milk and cereal, one apple and banana. Then he have a shower witch his rubber duchie. Then he went to the bitch and then he have a milkshake witch his girlfriend.

For those of you who are curious...bitch = beach, witch = which, and duchie = duckie. The end.

Cinco de mayo: When historical knowledge gets you free margarita refills and chicken

Hiiiiiii world...I know it's been awhile but I don't think anything too interesting has been going on in my life to report or discuss. Unfortunately. And then when things do happen I think “ooh, that's funny I'll blog about it”...then I get lazy, put it off until the next day, sleep 8 hours, and wake up not remembering what the hell I was going to blog about. I used to be good at writing it down but now...not so much. I'm going to try and be better at it, though. I promise.

This past week was awesome. Tuesday and Wednesday were holidays of some sort, so the schools gave us Monday off as well and made it a long weekend. I have Fridays off, though, so it turned into a 6-day weekend followed by a 1-day work week. I can DEFINITELY get used to that. Unfortunately it rained the ENTIRE time, practically, so it was hard to do the things I wanted to do like start running (read: jogging) and see more of the city (I know the city pretty well but I could stand to explore more...take more pictures...I forget how bad-ass it is living in Madrid since I've been here for so long).

The next fun even was Saturday, which if course was Cinco de Mayo. For all of you who don't know, Cinco de Mayo is (obviously) a Mexican holiday, celebrating the Mexican triumph at the Battle of Puebla. None of my friends were doing anything, and Spaniards couldn't care less about Mexican history...so I went with Rebecca and some of the other assistants from her school to a Mexican restaurant named Montezuma. It was a pretty classy place. Rebecca & I got there first and the first thing I noticed was that there wasn't any music playing. COME ON! If it's Cinco de Mayo, I need some mariachi music in my face...or something. Eventually they turned on some elevator Spanish music...but it wasn't meant for a Mexican restaurant (and by that I mean the American Mexican restaurants, haha...I was hoping for El Rodeo to magically appear in Spain.) We ordered margaritas and I think I confused the shit out of the waiter because I asked for sugar instead of salt. He told me he'd try...and in the end came through! We ended up waiting for the other girls a little bit (because Montezuma is located in a back alley on a hill far away from landmarks) but I didn't care. I'm always a happy little camper if I have a delicious margarita in front of my face. During the summer I swear 1/2 of the money I spent is with friends at Rodeo drinking margaritas on the patio and eavesdropping on the workers (I think I'm the only one who does that, though...haha) Therefore, the taste of margaritas=home. The waiter kept checking on us to make sure we didn't want to order and Rebecca was a little brat and told the waiter I wanted to hear some Juanes (the most cliché Mexican singer ever...Juanes is the go-to singer in every Spanish class across America...right before Shakira). In her defense I DID say I wanted to hear Juanes but I didn't feel like sharing that with the waiter. I felt the need to explain my rudeness in judging their music so I reminded him it was Cinco de Mayo and we're Americans, so we tend to celebrate the holiday more than Mexicans do...and we were there for that purpose and I just wanted the ambiance to feel more...Cinco-y. He tried to test me and asked if I even knew why we celebrate Cinco de Mayo and I quickly retorted with the Battle of Puebla. (Look Mom & Dad! That summer in Mexico served for something :) He was impressed, mainly because he had asked not because he was testing me, but because he forgot. And for this I was rewarded with a free refill of my delicious sugar-rimmed margarita. Mmmmm... Sadly the restaurant got busy and our waiter left us and was substituted by a middle-aged Asian woman. I was thoroughly amazed and confused for a little bit. Have you ever seen an Asian working at a Mexican restaurant? It's funny. Anyways by the end of the meal my intelligence and delightful personality (I like to think) scored me free margarita and free chicken...it was the best meal I've had yet in Spain! I was so stuffed though...so stuffed. Cinco is the new Thanksgiving.

Afterwards we walked to Sol, the center of Madrid, to grab some ice cream and enjoy the sun. Guess what we found....not one, but TWO mariachi bands!! I don't think anybody knew about the holiday but I was thoroughly touched. One band had an older Mexican couple watching, who started dancing (Video #1) and the other group had this old man, who I will refer to as the Energizer Bunny, who was dancing to the music on his own free will for at least 30 minutes. Then this little baby Asian girl came and started dancing with him. It was ADORABLE. (Video #2)

http://youtu.be/K7LttsOZLt8

http://youtu.be/jh44ltVpZH4

This post was supposed to be more about the hilarious things my students write, though, and not so much about my life. Prepare to pee your pants in the next post!

....And Then There Was Blood

....this blog post can also be known as the funniest thing that has happened to me since I got here.

Just to catch up on the past weeks of my life, I celebrated St. Patrick's day by having my wee-ones make hats to catch leprechauns and my older kids made toilet-paper roll piggy-banks. My school website is creating a page to show the parents what all we did, so I will share that once it's up and going. I did the same activities with my private classes. This was hilarious because those kids are 4 and 6, so they were SUPER into looking for leprechauns. I found it ironic because their family is loaded and pay me 30 euros an hour to essentially play with their kids in English for an hour. And their children are incredibly hell-bent on finding a small Irish man to kidnap and become rich with his gold. Then again, playing with these little assholes for an hour in English is more difficult than it sounds (and some days I deserve triple what I earn). I won't start on this quite yet (I will save it for another blog) but the little boy has some serious issues. I don't know if he watches too much television or his parents are certified porn stars or something, but he's seriously misguided in life. If I didn't know any better I'd think that Ren and Stimpy were his parents. Nicolas is 6. He's in first grade, can barely write his own name, can barely read, and is obsessed with sex and bodily functions. At first I wondered if it was normal but then I realized that I have over 420 students and none of them are that disgusting. The only time they laughed at something "naughty" was when my 5th graders learned the word "underwear". Meanwhile Nicolas two weeks ago pulled down his pants to show me what a "weiner" was when I refused to acknowledge that I understood him in Spanish. Later that week he bit me in my ass. Imbalanced. The only reason I don't quit is because a.) I get paid 60 euros a week from them for (usually) easy work and b.) the little girl, Marta, is only 4 but has really grown to like me and talks to me in the little English that she knows. She usually doesn't talk at all, even in Spanish...she just makes noises and hums to herself...so I feel like we've come such a long way to quit on her. Anyways, I taught Marta and Nicolas about the leprechauns and they asked if we could go outside to hunt for leprechauns. I told them yes, I drew them magnifying glasses that we cut out and colored, and headed downstairs. Please close your eyes and imagine this: An American girl with two small Spanish children who are yelling in broken English, looking for clues through their shitty paper magnifying glasses, picking up every piece of trash they find and calling it evidence, while wearing a ridiculous paper hat and looking for a small Irish man. Among the things we picked up and took upstairs were a phone number, a bottle of prescription eye drops, and a rusty paintbrush. Meanwhile, there is a group of Spanish children playing soccer who immediately stop to stare at us, perplexed, and a group of mothers who started yelling at that children that maybe if they listened, "to the pretty, nice, blonde girl that they could learn some English as well." I have no shame here.

Anyways, back to today. So I'm planning for Easter this upcoming week. It's the week before our Spring Break, so I'm in survival mode trying to make it to next Friday. I think I have a death wish, because with my younger kids I told them to bring in a hard boiled egg or two for painting. Then the week after Spring Break (when I'm lazier than hell) we'll do an Easter Egg Hunt. I can only imagine what all is going to go wrong with this plan but I'll be sure to properly document and report back.

Currently, because I'm preparing for Easter, my bedroom (and specifically my bed) looks like the Easter Bunny's secret lair. It's covered with plastic eggs, candy, gummy bears, stickers, and more candy. It's really hard to find big bags of candy here that don't cost my first born child. And it's pretty lame to put one piece of shitty candy in an Easter egg. So two pieces of candy per kid, times 420ish students...I've started looking at EVERYTHING to figure out what I could buy in bulk to give to the kids that isn't so expensive. Gummy bears and dental floss were my cheapest options....and clearly I'm not that big of an asshole to give them dental flossers (although some of them could stand to learn about some dental hygiene...). I want to maintain my celebrity status at school.

So I'm sitting on my bed, door shut, watching Parks and Recreations (not that funny but I feel special it takes place in Indiana haha) when my roommate (the lovely male roommate) starts yelling my name. I yell "what" and continue stuffing eggs....with so much shit on the bed it's impossible to get up and open the door. He keeps yelling my name like a lunatic and tells me he's hit himself on the head with something. I roll my eyes and collect my stuff, trying to explain that I'm busy and can't run out of the room quickly. I open the door and he's nowhere to be found. He's talking to himself, howling in the bathroom and rambling on about how he's dizzy and hit his head and he should have showered before, son of a bitch, he should have showered before, goddamned window, someone's whore mother (that's like the go-to insult here..."your whore mother" (it's the equivalent of "damnit" in America)...if you are suuuuper pissed then the mother of all insults or swearing is "I shit in your whore mother" or "I shit in the milk". I really don't get it but it cracks my shit up when I translate it in my head in English). I walk in and ask what's wrong when he looks at me, blood dripping down his face as he's rolling toilet paper around his hand, explaining that he hit his head.

Here are the questions I wanted to say, but couldn't think quickly enough in Spanish to ask;

• Are you sure you just hit your head and weren't stabbed in the face?
• Why is there so much blood?
• Why are you using toilet paper to clot the cut instead of paper towel or an actual towel? Clearly the toilet paper is just clinging to your spikey hair and making your entire head look like a toilet bowl scrub brush.
• Why are you asking me what to do?? You're a 26 year old man who cut your forehead...why are you crying and panicking and freaking out like you just sliced off your arm?

He keeps mumbling, whining, and panicking in general, asking me, "Chelsea, what do I do???!" as more blood runs down his face. In his defense he did tell me he was bleeding before I opened the door, but I turned around and didn't realize when I walked through the hall I had walked through the movie Carrie during the prom scene. Genius had bled all over the floor every time he came to bang on my door for help. I handed him a towel and told him, "here, just...hold this up to your head to stop the bleeding first." He looks at me, panic-stricken, and asks "shouldn't it be wet?!?"......................I don't know. Last time I checked I'm not your mother, nor your wife....why is this my problem? I told him to hold on and I ran through the blood-soaked hallway to get my first aid kit. It's a $1 first aid kit from Walmart but it has gauze and alcohol wipes. Meanwhile I can still hear him "oh God, what do I do? CHELSEA WHAT DO I DO?? Oh my God, I should have showered before, oh God I'm so dizzy...I'm getting dizzy, oh shit, CHELSEA WHAT DO I DO???" I tell him to hold on as I bring him the gauze and wipes. I'd like to add at this point that he hit his head on the window in the shower, so he jumped out of the shower and was running around with a towel on. And you all know how much I appreciate that. What I appreciated even less was when I got to the bathroom and he had managed to put on his tight-fitting boxer-briefs. I was slightly less than helpful, I guess, because I just shoved the supplies at him and said, "here." I really wanted to get back to my bedroom and continue my Easter business. I was in a groove and this was not my place.

He runs back into my bedroom and, looking absolutely confused out of his mind, asks what the hell these things are? Don't I have alcohol?? Or anything to clean the cut?? What do I do Chelsea?!?! (Side note: I'm NEVER going on even a single date with a Spaniard. If this is what I have to look forward to, this complete lack of self-sufficiency, I'd rather die alone). I told him to clean the cut with the wipe, put the gauze on it...and probably even better if he had tape to tape the gauze. "BUT WHAT IS THIS...it's in ENGLISH! I can't even read it!!" Just because it's in English doesn't mean that it's poisonous or bad for you...it's not like American medicine is voodoo or similar to a witch-doctor. It's a damned alcohol wipe, you fool. I explained, simply, that the wipe was to clean, and the gauze was to use to help it clot. He asks, one more time, if I don't have any alcohol or anything. THIS HAS ALCOHOL. READ IT. ALCOHOL is spelled the exact same way in English as in Spanish.

I tried to sneak away again but eventually guilt got to me and I decided I should continue meandering in the hallway just in case he has another freakout. I mopped up the hallway blood, listened to him continue to mumble (I swear the window stabbed his forehead and knocked all sense out of his body...like Freaky Friday, except he didn't change bodies, he just became really stupid. And practically naked.) I cleaned up all his nasty bloody toilet paper make-shift tourniquets (dumbest idea ever) and walked back into the hallway. I'm not that vein but usually when I walk to the kitchen I can see myself in the mirror in the hallway. The mirror is gone. It's a long stand mirror. I look around, hella confused, until I look into the living room and there is Genius, sitting in a chair, propping up the mirror on the convection oven, so he can look at his head. He wasn't doctoring his wound or doing anything productive, he's literally just sitting there looking at himself with pity. I go and get my Lucky Tiger (it's technically an anti-hemmorhoid ointment but is amazing on cuts and cleaning wounds. I've used it since I was in daycare.) and hand it to him. He gives me his fantastic speech again, "What the f*** is this?? It's in English! I'm just supposed to put this on my head?!? What is it??" It's ointment...to help the cut heal. It won't shrink your head or make you any more idiotic than you already are so what do you possibly have to lose? I don't know how to say ointment so I told him it would help it get better. That's when I noticed that a.) his back was really hairy and b.) he had stolen my vodka out of the cabinet because he didn't believe that the alcohol wipes (clearly labelled) had alcohol in them. So he used more toilet paper to wipe down the cut with vodka. (This explains all of his cursing I had heard ealier, before I came out of the bedroom for the second time. I'm sure that hurt like a bitch but to his credit it was a $4 bottle of the cheapest bottle of vodka I could find...so...it was probably close to pure ethanol.) He's still weeping and asks what he should do because he needs to shower. I told him if I were him I'd wait to shower until it had stopped bleeding or he felt less dizzy (psyched out). He told me that wasn't an option because he REALLY needed to shower (which is why his back was hairy...he had just shaved his head and luckily for my retinas it was clinging to his half wet back...so attractive. I feel like I should have been paying him for the show [sarcasm]) I rolled my eyes (don't ask for my advice if you aren't going to listen) and told him that he should probably put some paper towel or something on it if he was going to shower because we all know he's a baby and the water wouldn't feel wonderful for him.

 He asks if I think he should go to the hospital and I told him it looked pretty split open, but he assured me it was just the knot on his head from hitting it. Once again, if you don't want to hear what I have to say.....don't freakin ask. I grabbed my hand mirror and told him to look in the bathroom to see what he thought. He freaks out and decides he needs stitches. I told him I bet it would heal on its own but stitches might not hurt (news flash: I speak Spanish, not Medicine. If this were my problem, I'd have shut the window in the shower in the first place, and if I had hit my head I'd wait til it stopped bleeding, put a bandaid on it, and move on with my Easter egg stuffing. Or called Jeri and she'd tell me exactly what to do, after I sent her numerous pictures of the wound. The internet is a beautiful thing. This is how I solved my electricity problem when we blew a fuse.) He then asks how he gets to the hospital, where he should go, what should he do?? ...............................did he miss the past 4 months where I'm an American??? I avoid the hospital and clinics at all costs. I have NO clue. You're asking a bald person where the best person is to get your hair cut. You're asking a girl for the best doctor to get a prostate exam. You're asking a homeless person about the housing market. You're asking a priest for sex tips. I felt bad but...I can't help you. I told him to call the other roommate and maybe she could tell him what to do. The only thing I could help him with was offering that he probably shouldn't take the metro, and should call a cab. That's good advice right?

He left shortly. I asked if he was heading off and he tells me (in the tone that could best be described as a moody 16 year old girl who doesn't get what she wants and tells her parents, "Don't worry about it...I'll just die alone with no friends. It's not a big deal.") that I shouldn't worry about it, he's going to the hospital and will take care of it. I don't think anything I did could have satisfied him unless I would have stitched up his head myself with my travel sewing kit. So I don't feel bad. But he did come back to the house (reasonably quickly) with like 6 mini-staples in his head. I have learned many lessons from this experience (that wasn't even really mine to be had) but most importantly I'm going to shut the bathroom window before I get in the shower.

And probably try to mildly wound any significant other I might have before getting serious to make sure he's somewhat self-sufficient and not a completely incompetent man-baby. (These are also times when I realize I'm soooooo not ready to have children.)

The Boys In Spain Annoy Mainly Because They're A Pain

Hello, hello! And most importantly Happy Friday, I've been waiting for this day since Tuesday (I didn't go to school on Monday, I took a personal day...see below) but that's quite normal, I do that every week. I'm excited for a quiet weekend in after the craziness of Carnival last week. I have to survive my private class today at 5, and then it's officially the weekend!

I have yet to update about the new apartment but I'm in love with its location more than anything. It's a very, very, very small apartment. I just realized a couple of days ago that I literally cannot outstretch my arms all the way in the kitchen, it's that narrow. I have the medium sized bedroom that has lots of drawers to keep my stuff in, but it's quaint. I like it. If I keep it clean, there's plenty of space to do what I need to do. To live. That's if I keep it clean......which is a different story. I have two roommates, a boy and a girl who are both about 24/25ish. To be honest, I feel like I live with a girl and a 16-year-old girl. The actual girl is amazing, she's hilarious and fun. She's from the south of Spain and unfortunately goes home every other weekend to visit her family & boyfriend, but she's awesome. The boy...such a piece of work. He's from the south of Spain too. He's a sports journalist, basically, who gets paid to write about different sporting events. In America this type of person would be similar to a jock or someone more...athletic. My roommate is the biggest nerd I've ever met. Maybe geek is a better word. He's tall, t-shirt & jeans kind of guy but plays computer games 95% of his free time. If we don't hear him screaming from his bedroom at some stranger in another country via his gaming headset...then he's probably not home. I don't even mind that. I can live with the complete nerdiness. I do have a hard time dealing with his "around the house" apparel. He has these matching dull green sweatpants and sweatshirt with a wolf on it that he wears all the time. They smell funny. And the sweatpants are hideous. They're substantially tight and have elastic around the ankles. He doesn't own slippers, so he likes to pair them with some of those ugly strappy male sandals and socks.

He looks like the one in the middle. With these shoes:

I'd take a real live picture if it didn't make me nauseous and give me unnaturally strong urges to cut up the sandals and take a pair of sharp fabric scissors to the elastic ankles of the sweatpants.

Like I said, I deal with it all. What is hard to handle is him being a Spanish male who is out of the house for the first time. In Spain, people usually tend to live at home until they get married, and then finally move out when they are 30ish (they marry later here). That causes certain...well, problems. Spanish guys seem to be a LOT more immature. They aren't quite as self-sufficient. They think they are the hottest shit on the planet (because they live with personal cheerleaders, their mothers, until they get married...to another personal cheerleader.) Take that male out of his mother's household, put him in a new city...eventually (you hope) he might learn how to be more self-dependent and less demanding.

Well, not yet.

Of course all of that is just a generalization for many of the boys I have met. It's not true for all of them. And most of that information I got from my teachers at school, haha. My roommate doesn't understand cohabitation. On paper he gets it but in real life it just doesn't seem to be settling into his brain. For example, we all three have to share the bathroom and the living room. He's a nosey little bitch. So if one of those three areas is occupied, wait 30 seconds and he'll come poking his nose in to see what's going on. Maybe it's a territory issue....like dogs when they have to pee all over everything that's already been peed on. If I'm "peeing" in the living room, he's gotta come see what I'm doing, and "pee" there too. If I'm in the kitchen, he will walk back and forth in the hallway just poking his nose in because all of a sudden, now that I'm using the kitchen, he wants to do use it too. The girl & I cook together in the kitchen all the time with no problems...but he has to have it all to himself. And the bathroom.....good God, the bathroom. I feel like the bathroom is a sacred place. I don't care what you do in there but it's private time. Unless I'm about to piss my pants, I'm not going to knock on the door and ask you to get out. I expect the same courtesy. I lived with 50 girls in a sorority house and we NEVER had any issues. The bathroom is not different than the kitchen or the living room. I was in there for about a minute one night, washing my face and getting ready for bed, and I hear him come storming out of the bedroom and knocks on the door "CHELSEA...how much longer are you going to be in there?? A long time??" ....no, don't worry, I'm just washing my face. When I'm finished you can come proverbially piss all over the place. It's also his tone of voice that he uses. I feel like there is a certain commeradery among roommates...a politeness if you will. If someone's somewhere you need to be, you ask politely "when you're finished could you let me know?" Or if someone accidentally turns on water while you're in the shower, "Would you mind waiting until I'm out of the shower? The water just got cold!" All of these instances have happened between the girl and I and we have no problems. We're friends. The princess, however, who I might start calling Your Royal Highness, doesn't have that tact. Here's how Your Royal Highness deals with these situations. "HURRY UP, I NEED TO SHOWER BEFORE I GO TO BED!!!!" or my favorite...while banging on the door to the kitchen as I was washing dishes (I started washing dishes before he went into the bathroom) "CHELSEA!!! SHUT OFF THE WATER, I'M IN THE SHOWER AND IT'S COLD AS F***"

Assface. He couldn't be a bigger, more inconsiderate asshole if he intentionally tried. And I honestly don't care, it's just annoying. I avoid him and do what I need to do without giving a crap. He gets annoyed/jealous when I talk to the girl and we have bonding moments. One night I came home and they were in his room because he was showing her some video game about zombies and farms. She asked me how my day was, and I started telling them some funny stories...and all of a sudden he gets up, throws on his jacket, and runs out the door. We asked where he was going and he said "SHOPPING" then slammed the door in our faces. We had no idea what the hell had just happened. When he got home he was pouting because he was trying to show her this video game and then she started talking to me and clearly didn't care about it anymore....what a freaking lunatic.

He also has this weird obsession, being such a geek, of showing his body. I swear to God every time I'm trying to have a conversation with him he lifts up his shirt and starts stroking his hairy stomach. It's as horribly awkward as it sounds. Then one day I came home and he was shaving his head...and maybe his body....ugh who knows. I walk in the door and I'm staring at a very well lit, half naked roommate, with the bathroom door wide open and him shaving himself. Hair all over the floor. Hair all in the sink. (For this exact reason, plus he doesn't know how to cover his mouth when he coughs, I moved all of my personal things [i.e. toothbrush] out of the bathroom a month ago) I couldn't hide my horrified expression (he's not bad looking but personal grooming doesn't really get my motor running, it actually turns my stomach) and he looks at me, scratching his stomach again, and says, "What?? What's wrong with you??" ....clearly he couldn't possibly fathom why this moment was not the highlight of my 24 years of existance. Not to mention that there is ALWAYS hair all over the bathroom. And here's the thing....girl hair is not that gross. It's long. It's shiny. You know it came from a girl's head. Boy hair...............disgusting. It's short, dark, curly, and you have no idea what follicle on the body it came from. To me, it all looks like pubic hair. And that makes me want to gag. There's boy hair in the sink. Boy hair all over the bathroom. Boy hair in the shower. Living with one boy is 100 times worse than living with 50 girls. That's all I'm saying. And if he was more pleasant and polite, I'd care less about his bear hair all over the apartment.

Anyways. Like I said, I'm not affected that much by him. I know that rant makes it seem like I hate him but I really don't. It seemed like an entertaining rant and I haven't let it out to anybody yet. I still love the apartment. Monday, though, we had a tiff and he pissed me off so much that I stayed home from school to take a personal day. Every weekend I like to bake, and there's always a pile of dishes that aren't mine. I like to have a clean kitchen, though, so I always wash all the dishes. Numerous times. This past weekend I was so annoyed with it that I left all the dishes in the sink and didn't wash them. Then, randomly, Monday morning I hear my roommates screaming at each other at 7 a.m. I come stumbling out and asked the girl what's wrong. She said that it was just the apartment and how it's so dirty. I started to tell her how I was going to clean the living room later that day (we rotate the common rooms for cleaning each week) and he barges into the kitchen and yells that he wants all of the dishes cleaned by the time he gets home. To me. And I can't really snap back in Spanish at 7 a.m. when I have just been woken up and am getting screamed at for something I didn't do. And I told him I have been washing my dishes all week and leaving the rest and I wasn't going to clean HIS dishes. Plus the fact that he keeps dumping his old food and soup down the drain, on top of all of the dirty dishes....so that dishes that only had a couple of crumbs are now covered in an oily, tomatoe-y mess. He flipped the hell out, started cussing me out for 5 minutes, and then went to his bedroom to continue. I went to my room, started crying because I hate confrontation and was so annoyed with him (maybe some of the dishes were mine, but why the hell wouldn't you just have an adult conversation on Sunday night calmly, instead of blowing a gasket at 7 a.m. on a work day?? How stupid are you??) I knew a couple of the dishes were mine from making pancakes so I figured I was in such a bad mood I shouldn't be dealing with small children, so I texted my teachers, stayed home, and started cleaning the dishes. He came in and was like "are you gonna clean them or do I have to do them after I get home? Just leave them and I'll do them when I get home". No, douchebag. I'm already doing them. I just kept crying and cleaning. It ended up being a good thing because I cleaned the whole house. Dishes, the living room, my bedroom...and took out all the trash. I haven't talked to him since but the way I see it I owe him nothing so he can keep playing with his imaginary friends online and I'll live my life normally (but a little bit more organized as to avoid his crazy bipolar meltdowns).

So those are the roommates. Our neighbors are fun too. One of our neighbors has heard me on the phone with Jeri before and has been trying to catch me because she's Swedish or something and doesn't speak much Spanish. She keeps asking the girl if she's the one who's been speaking English. In the mean time I wonder what else she's heard because the walls are made of paper and I say a lot of stuff I wouldn't with English-speaking roomates because they don't understand me....haha. I met another neighbor one day at the front door and she's hilarious. I'm guessing she's 95 years old, has an amazing fashion sense, and has like fifteen names. I was telling her I'm from the States and this weather seems cold, even for me. She told me her name was Maria Teresa, or Maite, or Maria, or just Teresa....and she lives in 3A if I ever need anything. I love neighbors like that.

The apartment is located ten minutes away from my school (walking) so I get to walk to school every morning. This comes with a lot of pro's and con's. The pro's are being able to walk to school and the fact that it's so centrally located. I can walk to the center of Madrid in 20 minutes. It's also in between two main Metro lines. I also live next door to the Madrid Harley Davidson. European bikers are much different than American bikers. In America they wear lots of leather, long curly hair, bandanas, and look like they could kill you with one look. Europeans also wear lots of leather, but they are very very well groomed. This causes all European bikers to look like they belong in a gay bar or club. It cracks me up. And makes me feel quite at home.

The con's.....there are many. For one, I live next to my school and so do many of my students. I can no longer leave my apartment without makeup and doing my hair because 85% of the time I run into my students. This might sound conceited (and if you were to come to school with me one day you'd understand) but I'm kind of famous at my school. I have more than 420 students and all of them adore me (because I have the fun class of the week usually). Now that I've been speaking Spanish more with them, all of the shy ones feel more comfortable talking to me when they don't know what to say in English and we're all a lot closer. Basically, when we're not in school (or even if it's just lunch break) and they see me on the street, they act like they've just seen Brad Pitt walking half naked down the street. Jumping. Shouting. Waving like a crazy person. Screaming in English. And because they're screaming in English, everyone turns and looks with a look like, "what the hell?? Why is this small child screaming in English?" Most of the time I see them and say hi and ask how they're doing (it's a ritual...."How are you? I'm fine thanks, and you?" If you don't ask how they are, and just say hello, most of my students look confused, wait 15 seconds, then say "............I'm fine, thanks, and you??" without even being prompted). Also, one of my least favorite students lives in the next apartment down. She's annoying and has the worst behavior of any female student I have. Her mother is also annoying because she likes to brag about how amazing her daughter's English is, to ME, her English teacher. At first I didn't know her well (she's a new student) but after getting to know her through punishing her almost every class, I have a lot more that I don't say to her mother now. Every morning her mother tries to wait for me outside the building so I can walk to school with her, practice English, and the mother doesn't have to leave the house. Of COURSE it's my luck to live next to the one student I practically loathe. And of course she has the biggest mouth of anybody at school and tells everyone we're neighbors.

I also have a "bad" habit of listening to my iPhone on the way to school, to avoid gypsies begging for money and men hitting on me or calling me "rubia"...blonde. If even one man under the age of 40 and under 300 lbs. hit on me, I'd reconsider my walking habits. Until then...headphone ignorance. This causes problems because I cannot count how many times my students run up to me at school and tell me "I saw you yesterday!! I said hi, but you didn't hear me because you had your headphones in...." *insert sad puppy face*. I feel so awful but my headphones cancel out all noises. I've begun taking out my headphones when I reach the street of the school, but sometimes that's not good enough. One of my teachers told me yesterday that she was with a group of students, about 8, who were all screaming at me at the top of their lungs trying to get my attention, and thought I was ignoring them. She said her daughter (who isn't my student, she's only 5 and in preschool...but she sees me during lunch & on the way to school sometimes and really likes me) was in the front of the pact screaming and waving like a maniac. Luckily the teacher saw me take out my headphones and was able to explain that's why I was "ignoring" them, I had no idea they were there.

All in all, I'm happier here. Being close to my life is very important for my work life and my social life. I'll try to update soon with the other catch-up news...but it felt really good getting all this off my chest :) Until next time!

All Catastrophes Must Come To An End (Thank God)

...back again, to tell the rest of this heinous airport story. Just for the record, in the week after I updated again with more details about the airport, I kept waking up at like 3:00 a.m. or 4:00 a.m. nervous and paranoid that I was stuck in the airport and not going to make it back here to Spain to work on time. When I wake up under these circumstances I'm positive it's before Christmas and before my birthday. It blows my mind when I finally realize it's half way through February and both holidays have passed. It's slightly sad to realize but that's just how traumatizing this was. Here's to wishful thinking that this conclusive post won't effect my sleep patterns.

Okay. So when we last left off I was at the airport, Rashidanaan had dropped me off and waited to make sure I was at the right place. I asked curbside check-in and they said I was. I asked a woman where I was supposed to check in with my boarding pass and she pointed me in the direction of the ticket kiosks. She told me I could put anything in the kiosk with my name on it and it would scan and print the ticket (based on name recognition). I did so and after scanning it said it could not locate me in the system. Panicking a little bit on the inside, I swiped all articles of I.D. I had....still no luck. Trying not to worry, I asked the woman what to do and she said not to worry, I would just have to have one of the attendants print out my ticket for me. It was totally fine. Nothing to worry about. Yet.

Got in line in "Special Customer Services", and by this point I was musing about how truly special I am now to have wasted hours of my life in these "special situation" lines. And they still kept dicking up. But I wasn't panicking yet. This was totally fine. The cheery kiosk lady told me so. She wouldn't lie. This was a normal situation.



Of course it wasn't a normal situation and if you believed that then you're as dumb as I am/was.

I handed the woman my ticket (it was really a receipt that my Latina friend had printed out to show the transaction...not an actual ticket. If it were I wouldn't be that special right now) and told her the machine did not recognize me in the system. She takes my passport, enters all my information, and after ten minutes tells me that there is no ticket with my name on it in the system. My heart literally dropped like a dead body to the floor. I heard a thud. And I'm pretty sure it stopped beating for the next two hours. After typing and diddling on the computer for another 10 minutes, the woman tells me that she can see something really weird happening with my name in the system, that she can see a bunch of transactions that were made and then cancelled, but that none of those ticket numbers worked in the system (they'd all been cancelled) and now there was no ticket number to hold on to, to put me on a flight back to Indianapolis (or anywhere for that matter)...I was stuck in computer hell, essentially. Cosmo trick was working, I kept staring into the bright hallogens above and wasn't crying. It was 6:50 and I still had an hour and forty minutes before my flight left. Totally fine. This was normal. Kiosk woman said so. Although that hope was slowly slipping down the shitter.

New woman (I feel awful I forget her name because I stared at her left breast for atleast two hours by the time this was over and vowed half way through I was going to write Delta a letter telling them how helpful she was, assuming she was able to figure out how to get my carcass, dead or alive, to Indy...and I forgot it) kept typing in codes, looking in books, and doing everything she could think of to figure the situation out. I told her that Latina had put me on a flight to Minneapolis, and then to Washington, before she finally got her manager and asked him to finish the transaction correctly to Indianapolis. She told me she could see all that, but I was never reinstated onto another flight. My ticket was just cancelled and that was the last of it. The bad part was that the ticket number from the Washington flight was not working. Four other Delta members tried their best to crack the code but all of their codes came back saying, "Call American Airlines for assistance." Eventually she ended up using two phones at the same time, one on the phone with Delta headquarters and the other on the phone with American Airlines at the airport. She switched back and forth on the phones (literally a phone on each ear stretched from two different desks) and eventually, after realizing she'd been helping me for, literally, and hour and ten minutes and on hold for half of that....she wasn't going to get anywhere. That's when the Cosmo trick wore off and I started ugly crying with no hope of stopping. Gasping for air. Trembling. Pretty ugly in general. She said she didn't want to send me to American, because American would just send me back to Delta...and I'd be running back and forth. The time was 7:25 a.m. and my flight was going to leave me. Again. Technically it wasn't even my flight. I didn't have a flight. My name was floating in the computer, belonging to nobody. Poetically, that's how I had felt for the past 32 hours.

I didn't know what to do. By this point the woman at the desk was hella livid with American Airlines, I was bawling, and every five minutes somebody would come up to the desk and check in to the exact flight to Indiana I was supposed to be on. Which made me wail even harder. It was a nightmare...or a bad sitcom montage. Finally the woman just told me, "Look. I wish I could get inside of your head for twenty minutes, or just long enough to chew the shit out of those bastards at American. You need to get angry. You need to tell them, point blank, you have screwed me over and I need to get home. Period. And that they are GOING to fix it. No questions asked. All they need to do is issue you a new ticket number...the last one I can see does not work."

She told me once I knew anything to come find her immediately, because she wanted to know what ended up happening. I called American, which ended up being even more annoying in this situation than you can even imagine. First of all, they have a machine-automated system. It asks you for your first and last name. "Did you say 'Selsie Ice-lear?" Why the hell would I say that. "I'm sorry about that...where is your destination?" Indianapolis. "Did you say Indianapolis?" Duh. "When is your flight?"? 8:40. "When?" 8:40. "Did you say 8:30?" No. What the hell. I said 8:40. "I'm sorry I don't recognize that flight time. We have a flight to Indianapolis at 6:30 a.m., 8:30 a.m., 1:30 p.m., and 4:45 p.m. Are one of those options your flight?" NO I SAID THE FLIGHT WAS AT 8 EFFING 40 A.M. YOU DUMB AUTOMATED STEAMING PILE OF USELESS CRAP.

So now I was annoyed. Not really angry. And still crying. I finally get ahold of someone and tell her the story (just of this morning). She spends 10 minutes looking, while I'm on hold, and comes back telling me the ticket number. I look and of course it's the same ticket number that wasn't working in the Delta system. I told her that Delta can't help me. Period. And that I wasn't going to accept that their worthless company couldn't either. I trusted Delta and the woman who spent over an hour on the phone for me more than American Airlines at this point. She put me on hold again and said she would see what she could do. Ten more minutes on hold and she comes back to tell me that she couldn't reinstate me on that flight because it would cost more. I told her that all of this was a computer glitch. All she had to do was give me a new ticket number. That's ALL. I was not paying more money. I was not at fault here. I DID NOTHING WRONG TO DESERVE THIS (except maybe kill innocent puppies in a past life or something). I tried to maintain my annoyed voice but it was painfully obvious I was trying not to break down crying (because that would do me no good, I wouldn't be able to breathe or say anything...and softly sobbing on the other end would not move people to action...it might move them to euthanize me, but not help me). She decides to call Delta headquarters herself to work it out and finally after another ten minutes comes back and tells me she has a new ticket number. I run to the lady at the desk and throw her my phone telling her to talk to her. My fingers are so wadded up crossed every which way possible that my hands looked like nubbins. I was pleased because the lady at the desk was talking to the American Airlines person like she was the most worthless human being on the planet....I'm glad she could convey the emotions I couldn't. Finally I hear her say "thank God, that one worked. Thank you so much. Yeah, bye." IT WORKED.

But it was 8:00. And my flight LEAVES in 40 minutes (there was no boarding time labelled). I asked the woman if I even had enough time to get all the way there and she told me there was no way in hell I was missing that flight. She shoved me through the entire line herself at security and then with a puff of smoke and some glitter she was gone (in my mind). I was so gittery and excited and nervous about missing the flight that I was ready to run through the airport (which goes against all of my values, I hate running, especially in public). I kick off my boots, throw everything I can into the little plastic bins, and run through the metal detector. No beeps. I grab my boots, my bag, and my computer and prepared to jet miles through the airport to get to my gate; 5-A. I didn't waste time putting on my shoes or putting my computer in my bag...I would carry them whilst running. I did make sure to ask the security guard if 5-A was close though. He told me simply "yeah, all the gates are right there" and pointed. Yeah right, douchebag, like ALL of the gates in this forsaken airport are just around the corner. Dumbass. "Okay but how much time will it take to get to gate 5-A?" "I said, all of the gates are that way." FINE, be rude. I was still gonna run for it.

Annoyed that he was so worthless, but not effected because I had too much running to do, I got a good grip on my boots and on my computer and start scuffling in my socks down the hallway. I wasn't going to work up to a full-fledged run until I knew exactly how far away my gate was....were we talking five minutes? Ten minutes? I needed one of those signs that tells you exactly how many minutes you should expect to wait. Plus I could probably take a breather from all the running in those stupid trams between the terminals. It'd be fine. Get my heart pumping.

I shuffle around the corner, amidst getting stared at like I had just grown a third arm out of my forehead for running around without my shoes on (it's an airport for Christ's sake, if you can't run frantically barefoot through an AIRPORT, where can you??). I look at the signs for a chart of wait times and gates....and all I see is Gate 1, Gate 3, Gate 5, Gate 7 on the left...and Gate 2, Gate 4, Gate 5-A on the right. I'll be damned if the gate was not literally right around the corner, just like security man said.

I should mention that it's been a long time (if ever) since I have flown through a domestic airport. They are all international and I always end up walking on 15 moving sidewalks before I get to my gate. And by then I'm exhausted from dragging my stupid carry on 200 miles and trying to keep up with the power walkers.

Speaking of, even with my boots and my laptop in my arms, it felt like I was missing something. That's when I realized I was. I was so jumpy and spastic at the checkpoint that I had left my rolling carry on bag that weighed 20 lbs and had all of my clothes. Not to mention that's the second time in my Spain travels that I've gotten so panicked that I forget to grab it from security.

So, relieved that the gate was within eyesight, I hustled back to security and noticed that aforementioned security "dumbass douchebag" (accidentally inappropriately named...although I truly believe he could have been more verbal and explained "We only have one terminal and all gates are 3o seconds away") had taken my carry on over to the bomb squad area and was testing it for explosives. Peachy. I sheepishly got closer and flashed as innocent of a smile as possible and said "heh, that's my bag...I was in such a rush I forgot" and offered my boots and bare feet as visual proof of said-hurry (in case he didn't remember me from less than a minute ago). He brushed me off and said, "yeah yeah, I still have to finish with this, it'll be just a second." I tried to act ditzy, thanked douchebag, and then ran all 10 feet to gate 5-A, where they weren't even boarding. Once they called for our flight, though, we did have to take a little bus from the area to the actual plane. Apparently the overhead storage in our plane was not excellent, so they took our larger carry-on items and checked them for free. The plane was SO luxurious. There was massive legroom, the seats were wide & cushioned, and there drinks were amazing. I was so overwhelmed with relief that I thought I was going to throw up, or that this was all too much good to come to me so quickly, so the plane was clearly bound to crash. Seriously. I also had forgotten to use my $12 breakfast voucher (read: didn't have time to use it) so I was practically starving.

I landed in Indianapolis on time and called Jeri immediately. They could see me landing. I rushed through the gate expecting them to be there (like the movies) but I was pretty let down when I realized I was at the gates where normal people weren't allowed. I would have to trek a little bit to find them. I power-walked past all the schmucks in front of me (clearly NOT appreciating Indiana as much as I was) and bound through the walkway into the food court with nothing on me but my jacket and my purse. Luckily, without all the luggage, I was able to scream at full volume and flail my arms like a mental patient while attacking my mother. The thought crossed my mind for a few seconds that maybe she was just a hologram. Luckily she wasn't. We grabbed McDonalds (and Tim strong-armed Starbucks into issuing us free crap for the $12 JFK voucher) and then went downstairs to find my suitcases. It wasn't there (surprise!) The man at the office told me that it would be in at 5:30 that day but that the offices were open until 9 or 10 and he would be there so I could come whenever. Perfect! I told the man that he was the most helpful American Airlines employee, which means a lot coming from me and the shit I put up with in the past two days.

Hours later my brother and I go to the airport. I hustle to the office....pitch black. With a sign that says "Be back in two hours." I completely jinxed myself. That man was worthless. Luckily there was an older couple and their best friend who also needed their bags so they had called security to come and open the door. We only waited ten minutes when the guard showed up and opened the door. I asked her if she wanted to see my ID or my luggage tags when she looked at me like I was the world's dumbest living human being and said "uh, NO." .........................how comforting. In that case all four of those bags are mine too.

In the end I made it home by 2 p.m. on Christmas Eve. I was only home for 2 weeks-ish, and the second week I ate some Arby's on the way home from a funeral and got the most intense bout of food poisoning I think I've ever had. I ended up getting a shot in the ass to stop me from getting sick.....but I was able to rest a lot and catch up on American television and pop culture. I also lost 8 lbs. since September, and am attributing 7 of those to the food poisoning. Thank you, and eff you Arby's.

Welp, I think that's it. Starting next blog I can update about my crazy ass private classes I suffer through, the new cute student teachers at our school, Carnaval, and most importantly my birthday. If you're lucky I will update Sunday. I'm trying to catch up so I write these in real-time and not via my slowly-fading memory. I retain more deets that way. Love you all! Happy Valentine's Day, and Carnaval.