no puedo dormir.

i can't sleep.

.... So I thought I'd write a bit!

Well, it's finals time. Yes, they happened again... every year around this time they pop up.. it's inevitable. Dang. However, this year it's a tad different because they're all in spanish.. wooh spain! I have one paper and one presentation out of the way, but i still have 1 paper, 2 presentations, and 3 exams left. Eeeek! But, it's alright, I'm truckin' along.

This past weekend had a great turn for the better.
You see, I was supposed to go to Ibiza (a beautiful island in the Mediterranean Sea) for 3 days, but because of that awesome volcano and its mounds and mounds of smokey ashes floating around above Europe, the university of my friends (whom I was supposed to be traveling with) prohibited anyone from their school to travel by plane. It was rather silly because if you have seen ANY of the news or have internet and can google "CRAZY EUROPEAN VOLCANO 2010" you would see that the ashey smoke stuff hasn't come this far south... and we would've been totally fine (as in.. the airport wouldn't shut down while we were still on the island.. because the smoke would never actually reach Ibiza unless it was like thooper dooper thpeedy thmoke.. super dooper speedy smoke.). Howeverrrrrr, rules are rules and we follow them. So since they weren't allowed to go, and it was unsafe for me to go alone, the trip was cancelled altogether. Pooooop!
Buuuuuuuuuuut, instead of going to Ibiza, I had a wonderful weekend here in Alcala/Madrid. Thursday night I went into Madrid with a couple of my friends from Mexico and saw an opera in Teatro Real (royal theatrrrrrre). It was so cool! I'd never seen an opera before.. much less in Spain! It was all in Italian, but they had a screen above the stage that had the Spanish translation of what they were singing in Italian. It was pretty tight cuz about halfway through I realized.. 'HEY I understand what's going on... and I understand what they're singing... because I understand what I'm reading... and it's all in Spanish...... TIGHT.' And that's exactly what I said in my mind. Another cool thing about the night was that usuallllllllly tickets for the opera are REALLY expensive, but we got there an hour early and bought the left over tickets that had never sold and they were about 90% off the original price. So my ticket was 14Euros... and all the people that sat in my same section paid more or less 130euros for the exact same ticket.... DAG YO! what a steal!



Then Friday morning was "El Dia de Libros" ("Book Day") in Spain... it's like a national holiday and everything. And since Miguel de Cervantes (the spanish equivalent to Shakespeare) was born in Alcala de Henares (where I live), it's a big deal here. For the last 2 weeks there have been lil book stands set up in the plaza selling books and promoting new authors and stuff.

I bought a novel (which I've read like 15 pages of so far.. it's pretty good!), a children's book, and a cookbook (all in spanish might I add. woop. practice.)! Yahoo for reading!!! But the best part of this day was that the King... yes... The King... The King of Spain..... came to Alcala to present an award for the best author of the year. And there was a big procession of him coming into the plaza.. the soldiers were all lined up and they were playing the national anthem on their lil trumpets, and there were soooooo many people there! The Queen and Prime Minister were there too! So... that was a good time.

Then afterward I went and got a limonado slush in Plaza de Cervantes and chilled with my friends for a bit.

and then watched these guys sing... and then watched them sing to US. hahaha

Later on Friday I went to Madrid with Ale and Brenda and met up with some spaniard friends that I met in my hostel in Rome (small world!). We went to dinner and then later went and drank some wine in the park (it's a normal spanish thing to do... they love drinking in the outdoors... and I love the outdoors... so naturally I love this tradition), and then went to a discoteca and boomshackalacka dance dance danced the whole night! It was a lot of fun!!
The rest of the weekend was pretty chill. I worked on homework and presentations, started studying for my finals. On Sunday morning I went to Mass at Santa Maria... the children's mass to be specific.. I love it because the kids do all the readings, the homily is always somewhat simple to understand and he talks slow so I usually understand it! Also, during the Lord's Prayer, all the get to go up to the altar and form a big circle around it and say the prayer with the priest. It's so cute! And you just hear their lil voices and it makes me wish I was a spanish child so I could be that cute when I speak Spanish... but alas.. I often sound like a robot. During Mass I got really sad though because I was just thinking how normal it is to hear things in Spanish all the time, and how I'm so into my normal routine here in Spain and how I love it so much, and how this semester is coming to a close SO quickly and how I've loved the past 4 months SO much... and I just got quite sad.
Going home will be rather bitter sweet. It'll be great to see everyone, especially my family (and dogs!), but it's just going to be so weird switching back into American mode so quickly. I've always heard that when u return home you experience a similar "culture shock" as when you arrived in the foreign country. When I got here in January it was SO hard to adjust to Spain at first, everything is just so different than how I was used to living! But, eventually I adjusted and now I love it here! However, I feel like going home is going to be quite the same. So, with that said.. I'm reallly excited to go home, but I'm also really going to miss it here. agridulce. (bittersweet.)
So anyways, after Mass I went and sat in the grass under this really pretty tree in the plaza near our school and read my new book for a while. It was quite enjoyable. Then on Monday I decided to go back because I just enjoyed it that much, but my tree had been claimed by 3 teenage couples who were enjoying their make-out time under it... ewwwwwwwww P.D.A. ewww! gross. I'm kinda used to it now actually, kissing in public really is not a big deal at all here. Oh those spaniards..

One more exciting thing! Today we had our "Graduation" from our university! It was a lil ceremony at 1pm today with everyone from America, and we all got called up to the stage one by one and received our lil diploma. Then we had a picnic behind the college with finger foods and chips and peanuts, etc etc etc.. yummmmm. But after that we were still hungry so some of us went and got tapas... oh how i'm going to miss tapas.

mis amigas y yo after graduation


one of my professors


high school musical graduation jump! wooh!

My last Flamenco class was today :( So sad! Our teacher was so awesome..we learned so much! Primi has already given me all her Flamenco C.D.s to upload to my iTunes, so I can totally keep practicing! haha!

my teacher and me

Here's a link to a video of me and my class dancing! hahaha (just copy and paste it into the search bar thing)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rydqn2Ez0IE

Here's a link to watch professional Flamenco dancers.. they're a bit better than us.. hehehee
http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=LIG0r0CCBBw&feature=related

Well..... I think that's all for now..... I should probably go to bed, I have class in the morning and it's kinda late.
Over-n-out,
Katrina/Katalina/Kahtee/Kathy?/Katie :)