a little piece of Oklahoma in Spain!

We're singing a new song...

EDIT!!!! Okay, important update that deserves to be mentioned.. Nancy and Ken Barnes, parents of the lovely Ashley Barnes, figured out how to work our oven all the way from Maryville, MO! Apparently you have to hold in the button on the oven while lighting the match. They are brilliant, and now we have an oven to make frozen pizza in!! Thanks, Barnes family!! Love from Spain!!!!!!! :)

On our first day of class here at UPV, Missouri State got out due to ice. How ironic! We may have woken up slightly late, but we still made it to class on time. Well, I should restate that. We made it to a class on time. We were actually around 5-10 minutes early! However, as we sat down and pulled out notebooks, we noticed that no one around us was speaking English, and this was supposed to be one of our classes that was in English. We sat there for a few minutes and waited for the teacher, but as time went on and the language became more and more foreign, I decided to ask the girl next to me if this class was in English. She shook her head and replied that it was in Castellano. Oops! It turns out we were in a Spanish Regional Economy class, which was correct, but it was not the English section, which is not good considering I do not speak Castellano! We ended up making it to our class, and we were only a few minutes late. This may be a problem in the United States, but no one cares whether or not you're on time here. In fact, the teacher told us that it's not really required for students to come to theory classes; all of the information is online, and no attendance is taken. They're definitely a lot more laid back here than at MSU. They don't even make you finalize your schedules until a few weeks into the semester so you can sort of try out classes and see how they go. Crazy! Considering I am the type of person who organizes her closet according to ROYGBIV, I'm not sure I like this disorganization, but I'll just try not to think about it... :)

Anyway, the class itself was something that I really enjoyed. Don't let the "economy" title fool you! It's basically a history class about Spain and its trends. Hopefully my enthusiasm for this class continues. If not, there's still another neat aspect about this class... it's FULL of people from Oklahoma State! There are 2-3 girls and 1 boy. The guy, Kyle, is from Bartlesville. You're probably thinking, "Wow, what a small world! Random Oklahoma people in the same class in Spain on a campus full of 35,000 people." That's not what makes the world seem small, though! Kyle told me he knew someone from P-Creek, and when I asked who, he informed me that Kristen Carrick had been his lab partner in a biology class. Talk about small world!! The other girl we talked to who goes to OK State was really nice, too. It's nice to have some fellow Okies around. :-) Plus, they told us about a Protestant church here that even has services in English. Not that I don't love mass when we go, but this is exciting! We also made friends with a girl named Henrietta from Denmark. She sort of befriended us by asking us to work with her on a group project. I love the diversity of everyone. I love to ponder why we are all here together. God brought us together from all over the world to meet at this place and at this time for some reason.

We had a fairly long break between our first class and our second class, English. Okay, I will admit that this class is NOT designed for native English speakers, and I may have originally signed up for it because I thought it'd be easy. However, after today I have realized that this class is actually going to be really beneficial for me! If I take the ESL (English as a second language) minor route, this'll give me some good ideas as to how to present a new language to foreign speakers. The teacher, who is from Louisiana, is also going to let Emily and I do a bit of teaching and critiquing, which, of course, relates to my major of English education. I'm excited about this class! This is the kinda stuff I love, which is good considering I'll probably be doing it the rest of my life! :)

It actually started to rain on us when we left campus today. It came out of nowhere! We were not prepared, and I was not happy... thank goodness I woke up so late for class today! I would have hated to have spent time making myself look somewhat cute and then gotten rained on! :)

Tonight Emily and I explored the neighborhood around our apartment. You have to be very careful when walking on sidewalks. There is seriously a fresh pile of dog poop every ten feet; it's gross! We found a grocery store (mercadona! It's the Dillon's of Spain.) very close to our little home, which lead us to grocery buying. We had cheese and bread for dinner. We eat like poor people, but it's good. And we drink Coke with it, so it's like we're on the upper end of poor! We still need to figure out the oven situation... Think about how amazing our apartment next year will be in comparison to this! I am not saying I am not happy with the current situation, but I am saying that it'll make me appreciate next year's clothes dryer, microwave, etc, even more! :) Plus, we'll have Rach and Ash with us, and Henry and Jered will be next door, so it'll be like a happy little family! I can't wait for the boys to make us cook for them.. can't wait! :)

I'll leave you with a picture. This is what UPV looked like today. It appears to be a little warmer than Springfield right now, huh? :)


P.S. Thanks for my V-Day card, Mom and Dad! Yay, mail! It's even better here than in Missouri!

...and everything starts today.