Here goes nothing!

Hola todos! I know this is a day early, but I am leaving for a week-long vacation this afternoon, so I figured I would get this up before I left! While this past week has seemed to go on forever, in anticipation of break, it has also been a really enjoyable week (not that I've had an unenjoyable one!)

This past Monday, after my Flamenco class, we were able to pick out our dresses for our "recital", which is at the end of November. I was so excited to try on all the dresses, but also worried that I wouldn't be able to find one long enough (6ft Spanish women aren't exactly common!). We were all trying the dresses on and it felt like prom/wedding dress shopping, with everyone drooling over everyone else's dresses... so pretty much we were like little girls playing dress up! After much searching I was able to find a skirt that was long enough, which I could hardly believe! I'm so excited to wear it!!!

On Wednesday after Encuentro a group of us decided to go out for tapas. I absolutely love getting tapas because I always want to try a lot of things on a menu, and sharing tapas lets you do that! Between the four of us we bought 8 things...and then decided on 2 desserts, and they were all delicious! Afterwords we walked around and were able to listen to my favorite spanish guitarist again. When he was done we even talked to him a little, which was really interesting!

***Side note about Spanish (or any other language) in general: you need to learn to laugh at yourself! There are a lot of words that can be made into something completely different by simply changing one or two letters, which can lead to a lot of laughs or confusion. I find this to be one of the most amusing things of learning a new language! For example, masaje (massage) can be easily confused with mensaje (message), which explains why my friend looked at me so weird when she thought I said I was getting a back message. Along the same lines, I don't know how many times I have mistakenly mixed up espalda (back) with espada (sword), which always leads to an interesting conversation. One of the worst/funniest mistakes though is mixing up the word mora (blackberry) with a somewhat old and derogatory term that refers to Muslims... Lets just say I have witnessed two people try to ask for blackberry jam and accidentally end up asking for something else...

Anyways.... since we don't have class over Halloween, our school had a Halloween party on Thursday. This party included a costume contest, so of course I had to dress up! It was difficult coming up with an idea since I don't have near as many costume options here (unless I went out and bought something, but who wants to do that?!), so in the end my roommate Chelsea and I decided to be old women (which turned into abuelitas, or little grandmas!) We dressed all frumpy-like, powered our hair, drew wrinkles (all that practice from high school theater finally came to good use), walked with canes, and talked like old women for the majority of the day. I would talk to my professors as if I was old, and they totally went along with it, which was a lot of fun! We had a break between the end of classes and the Halloween party, so Chelsea and I decided to go take a walk outside down the main road and act like old women. We received a lot of strange looks, and it was absolutely hilarious! When we got back it was time for the party, and we found out the winners of the costume contest (which there were three winners) and we were one of them! Needless to say, there were a lot of laughs that day!

All this past week I have also been finalizing all my plans for our week-long break! I will be leaving this afternoon with 5 friends on a trip to London, Amsterdam, and Paris!!!!! I can hardly believe it! I am so excited to travel around Europe for a week (and to visit the motherland!), but also kind of nervous because I have no idea what to expect! But I know it will be awesome! That being said, prayers for safety and an enjoyable trip would be much appreciated! We will be doing a lot of traveling, so prayers that everything will go smoothly with transportation would be great as well! We will be coming back on November 3, so I'm letting you all know in advance that the next blog is going to be late, if I have time to write that week at all (sorry!).
Love and miss you all!
Hasta luego!
Rachel :)

Mmmmm tapas!

Las Abuelitas...

Glamour shot....