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April 24th – April 30th
So this week was my first week back to work. I began to fall back into the routine of work, had a few dinners with friends, and unfortunately started to get sick.
Sunday my roommates and I made a big dinner to celebrate Easter and watched a ton of the parades that were occurring in Madrid on the television (it was raining). My normal Easter consists of a big meal with the family and Easter egg hunting in grandma´s yard. It was really interesting to see the contrast to what I normally experience for Easter. In Madrid numerous cathedrals hold a large parade in which they have groups of people carry massive crosses down the street. It was a very intense reminder of Christ suffering on the cross. Monday I spent most of the day at my house, going to the park a few times and working out. It was my last day before I started up work so I tried to relax as much as I could.
Although I had a blast over Semana Santa, and got to spend a bunch of time with friends, I was more than ready to get
back into the normal swing of things. Tuesday I began my morning at work jumping right into Trinity preparations with 2nd grade and then spent the afternoon with 5th grade. The afternoon started off bad. Once again Monica was using me as a secretary. She was supposed to turn in the video project on the 15th of April and had yet to do it. So while she left the class to finish it, I had to correct the student’s papers without any explanation of what she was looking for in their assignments. I was very frustrated with her. After school I headed to San Agustin for tutoring. My first lesson with the sisters went surprisingly went. We spent the hour locked in a dark closet telling ghost stories with a flashlight 😉. I only had one more tutoring session for the day so I was back to Madrid early enough to go and work out in the park.
Wednesday and Thursday I had my normal schedule at work. Each day got better and better, (Monica finally started to let me pull out the kids again) and after the long break I was no longer bored with the tediousness of
the preparations for the Trinity exam. I did end up having tutoring both Wednesday and Thursday, because my normal Monday lessons had to be switched around a bit due to the holiday. My tutoring with Marco on Wednesday was a blast. We spent the entire time running around outside his house. It was such a nice day that I had kicked off my shoes and was walking around barefoot. When he got tired of running we played with his tractors in the garden. When I was getting ready to leave I realized I couldn´t find my shoes. Marco had hid them so I couldn´t leave 😊. Once I finally found them he apologized by giving me another kiss on the cheek. He can be so sweet. The rest of my tutoring for the week was normal as always, but most turned out pretty good (no fighting from the sisters).
Thursday night after tutoring I caught the bus back to Madrid and headed to meet Sandy. We went to the supermarket and grabbed some food for Tex Mex potluck night with the gang (Paige, Laura, Katherine, Ria, Jacob, Kyla, Ken, Sandy and Me). We had our dinner at Paige´s house and it was so great. One thing about Spain is there is a real lack of Mexican food here. We all are missing it and I know I will definitely want it as soon as I get home. We made Tacos, guacamole, rice and beans. It was delicious, with a taste of home. We spent most of the evening sharing horror stories about the schools, the kids and tutoring we all have to deal with. It was great to here other stories and see the similarities that we are all dealing with. In the middle of dinner we were surprised to hear a bunch of noise coming from the street. We went to the balcony and looked down and were shocked to find a parade of bikes down below. Apparently, once a month there is a parade to encourage the use of bikes in Madrid. None of us had ever seen that many bikes in Madrid ever (no one really uses them here). It was hilarious because they all stopped in the middle of the street and got off their bikes. They then decided to do ‘the wave’ by raising their bikes when they stood up. The parade went on for a long while. Come midnight we all decided to head home and the parade was still in the process of dispersing.
Friday was another great day. I slept in nice and late before getting up and doing a bit of cleaning around the apartment. Afterwards I decided to head to the supermarket and fruteria for groceries. Once at the market I decided to have a spur of the moment spaghetti dinner with Laura. I bought all the necessary supplies and headed home to start cooking. Laura showed up just in time for dinner and we headed into the living room with our food. Because of the royal wedding we decided to watch Princess Diaries (we wanted to stick with the day´s theme) and had nice dinner visiting. After the movie we had ice cream and sat and continued to chat. It was great because I hadn´t gotten to really visit with her since before Semana Santa. It was a great start to the weekend...or I thought. Unfortunately the rest of the weekend I spent in bed because I got really sick with a fever and cough. I just hope it clears up soon because I have a busy 2 months coming up.
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Mia Ramos
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Mexican Food
Well you can come over to our house when you get back and Juan will cook for you so you can have some authentic Mexican! :-)