Hola Amigos!
WOW! I cannot believe that we just finished up week 8!
When trying to figure out what to title this week's blog I went through a lot of different ideas most of which I deemed to be terrible and moved on very quickly from. I honestly look at this blog as one long story about all the things that have happened throughout my time in Spain and had the realization that we are definitely in the downward slope of that long story also known as the falling action. I decided not to title it that though as I did not want anyone thinking that I had actually fallen or anything like that. I also have no clue what would be considered the climax of this story as I think there have been many high points along with low points as life more accurately works. Life is not a 1.5-hour-long movie with all the perfect ups and downs that eventually peak and then fall into happily ever after, there is so much more to it than that. So I guess here is this week's chapter of my life.
Day 50:
I went to class with my mask today feeling a lot better than last week, of course, and honestly just really excited to get out of the house and see some people. I am honestly surprised how few people knew that I had covid though. We started learning the body parts and medical solutions in class which was timed well after I was just sick and all. I took another covid test when I got back from class today, but I still came up positive, so I had to continue eating and hanging out by myself all day. I took a long nap as my body was still pretty tired from being sick and the day went by pretty fast.
Day 51:
I again went to class with a mask on and have to continue to do so until I test negative I believe, though Luis explained that to me in Spanish so I'm not positive that is what he said, but we will go with that. I did not want to test every day because I had only brought 4 self-test with me. It has been so sweet, but before class, we have about 20 minutes to sit and hang out at one of the cafes on campus. If we took the later tram we would be about 5 minutes late for our class, so getting up earlier kind of sucks, but this has given us some time to get to know some of the new people. After class, I spent the day by myself again but I got to talk to Maddie while she was on her lunch break, which was a huge highlight as I had not had a full conversation with her since I left this summer. I guess one major positive of the whole getting sick thing was getting to spend a lot of time talking to my friends back home. I also finally got to submit our receipts to the travel company and found out that we will have to wait somewhere between 3 and 6 months before we get our refund. This is a pain, but I guess it is better than no refund at all.
Day 52:
I was feeling 100% today other than just being tired, but I am pretty sure that tiredness is a constant state for me so it is what it is. I decided not to test again today and my host mom talked to the pharmacist and found out that I could test again the next day as that would be 7 days since I came down with symptoms. My host mom let me eat with her today so that was really nice! I had a chill afternoon by myself and then after dinner went over to Charlotte's place to figure out where we are going to go for our three-day weekend. I was a bit stressed about this because I could tell it was not going to be a cheap trip, but mom comforted me in that and encouraged me to go for it because when else in my life am I going to have this opportunity to just go to another country for the weekend. We threw around a few ideas including but not limited to somewhere in Germany, Prague, Vienna, and Paris. We spent the night looking for flight and talking about what the weekend could look like but did not book anything yet, because we were trying to get our friend Lily to join us and she had to clear it with her parents first.
Day 53:
Today was a good day! I went to class and then went with Charlotte and Simmy (who is in a master's program at Fresno State) to The Good Burger and worked on my homework while they ate lunch and then went home to find a huge bowl of pasta with broccoli, bacon, mushrooms, and cheese waiting for me. I also tested negative and my host mom was so excited that we cheers-ed our negative tests lol. I took about an hour-long nap after lunch and then needed to study!! A bunch of us went and met up at our favorite coffee shop and studied for midterms there for hours. It was really fun because there was a pretty consistent rotation of people from our program that came through and stayed for varying amounts of time. We got the news this afternoon that Lily would not be joining us on our trip so we booked our flight to...Vienna, Austria right there in the coffee shop. It is not the original flight that we had picked out, but it was slightly cheaper and still gave us a long enough layover on the way back to grab lunch and some souvenirs in Milan! On our way back to our places after studying, Charlotte and I grabbed some snacks for a movie night that night and I went home for dinner. I headed back to Charlotte's place and we watched The Hustle which was pretty decent, I don't think you can really go wrong with anything that has Rebel Wilson and Anne Hathaway.
Day 54:
I had my midterm this morning and honestly, I think it went pretty well. We spent the first hour of class going over our study guide and some other small things that were going to be on the test and then spread out and got our tests. I was the first one to finish in under an hour and then I spent the next 20-30 minutes pretending to be going back over my test time and time again trying to not be the first one to turn it in. I eventually gave up on that and just went up to hand her my test and the girl in front of me followed suit. I left the classroom and decided that instead of taking the tram back by myself I would find somewhere to hang out on campus until everyone else got out of class. I ended up just sitting in the shade on the grass in one of the gardens. I sat and watched an episode of The Office and enjoyed the beauty around me. I tried to take a nap after lunch that day and failed miserably which was rough, but that's how it goes sometimes. I needed to film an interview with my friend Lily for one of my projects for my USAC job and so we met up right before we were planning to go out to dinner and ended up at Luceros Cafe, then after feeling really awkward about sitting in there I ended up ordering a cafe bombon which is just sweet and condensed milk with a shot of espresso on top. I had been wanting to try one, but just hadn't yet so I went for it lol. We went out to dinner at a place called Thai Corner and I got drunken noodles which were really good, but we could tell that the waitstaff here really wanted us to give up our table because this was the first time in Spain that we had ever been given the check without asking for it first. That was definitely odd. We went back to Skylar and Charlotte's place and started watching a show called Below Deck, which is about the people that work on luxury yachts. It's very dramatic, thus quite entertaining. On a sad, but random note, I was notified that my tennis class for next semester got canceled, so wish me luck as I search for something to fill my 12th unit.
Day 55:
We had our field trip to Guadalest and Calpe today. Guadalest is a small town in the mountains of Alicante with a beautiful green river down below. We walked up to the top of the castle and took a lot of pictures and then spent some time in town shopping and hanging out. We got these drinks that are pretty much just frozen lemonade which was really yummy on a hot day. Then we drove down to Calpe which was a gorgeous beach in Costa Blanca and had box lunches and time in the refreshing water. We were back to Alicante by 5 pm. I went home and took a shower and then walked over to watch more of our show with Charlotte and Skylar for the afternoon. I already knew that I did not want to go out that night and I am so glad I made that decision early on. Here is some back story for ya, I messed up my ankle when we were in Amsterdam a few weeks ago as I had a blister on the bottom of my foot and had walked a ton that weekend but had to walk kind of funny so that I wouldn't irritate the blister too much. This has since backfired as my ankle is still in pain and actually getting worse. Charlotte helped me wrap my ankle with a wet and chilled towel since we did not have a way to ice it, and this helped a little bit I think. Prayers would be much appreciated though as I still have a lot of walking to come in the next few weeks! Charlotte and I watched some cheesy Netflix original and headed to bed around the time that everyone else was going out. I think I am learning more and more that being a night owl back home is nothing here in Spain and my body cannot take it anymore.
Day 56:
I slept in this morning and was honestly surprised that I woke up around 10am. I got up and we had toat with tomato and ham and sweet croissants for breakfast. Then I spent some time with the Lord. I am currently reading through the book of Isaiah, and though I have read it technically before, I've never really dug into it before. There is a lot going on in it so some of the chapters are a bit confusing and hard to read, but today was about the Lord's vengeance in Babylon, kind of interesting really. One of the commentaries I read with it discussed how it shows what is meant other books of the bible discuss how the lord "resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble" I definitely had never thought about it in this way before. I've been working on this since then and took a break for lunch which surprisingly was not paella today, but rather some sort of burger and green beans with eggs that I ate alone. My host mom's daughter moved a bunch of her stuff back into the apartment this weekend because she and her boyfriend live in some sort of student housing I believe so they have to move out and then back in August. This is relevant because they both are moving her stuff around so they did not want me to have to wait to eat with them later I guess. I will probably finish this up, watch a movie, attend online service, talk to the fam and then head to bed early to get ready for a long week!
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