Medina del Campo

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Made it through my second full week of classes! All is going well, except I have a E2º class (my youngest group) that is a nightmare. They pay no attention to me & I feel like I spend most of my time babysitting vs. getting them to speak English. This is probably something most teachers have to go through. Other than that, still really enjoying teaching!

I HAD to get out of Valladolid this weekend. I have NO $ to travel, so I went with my Japanese roomate, Kaoru, to Medina del Campo, which is about an hour outside of Valladolid.

We had a great day! It was great to actually speak in Spanish all day! Obviously Kaoru & I have to communicate in Spanish, which is refreshing because when I had out with my American or British friends at some point we also convert to English, as you can imagine.

Medina has little to offer, unfortunately, but we still had fun. There is a castle, 'Castillo de la Mota,' but compared to other castles I've seen, it was one of the less exciting ones. It was free to get in (yeah!) but you can only see like half of it.

The coolest part of the day was sitting on the ancient ruins of the city walls & eating our lunch. Great view of the city!

We have dubbed Medina 'La Ciudad de la Basura y Mierda' or the City of Garbage & *hit. Basically, there is a lot of garbage & dog *hit all over.

The people of Medina, however, are the NICEST people on the face of the planet! Obviously we're foreigners (hmmm....not very often you see a japanese girl & a starkingly pale blonde chic walking through a small pueblo) & everyone stopped to talk to us & ask us if we needed help getting places. We went for café & got engaged in a conversation with the bartender for an hour! A stranger also complimented my spanish!

Other than that, life is good. Well, pretty good. I'm mad at my stupid student loan co. for lying to me about the payment that WAS NOT supposed to be automatically deducted from my account (arggg). It's sooo hard to do business from abroad.

Also, Alberto is becoming a very bad influence. Emma & I went to his bar 'Las Horas Lentas' to work on some of our lesson plans after Step last night.

Alberto closed his bar early & talked us into getting tapas & wine for only 'una hora' he said. Mentiroso (liar). I got to bed at 4 am this am. I got up at 8 to come to school. Joder (*uck).

I love Spain!

Better run! If there are any Cap people out there, tell Laura I've been taking Body Balance which is a sucky substitute for her beautiful Yoga class, but it at least is helping get me back on track.

Take care everyone! Don't forget about me! Let me in on the WI gossip!

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