to italy we go!

I keep staring down the road...

Monday there was RAIN in Spain!! Poor little Abril had to walk from UPV to our apartment in the rain, but she had an umbrella, so she was ok! She only got three hours the night before due to homework (Apparently people who have real classes here get real homework. Ew!), but she wanted to come to our little piso to help us with our internet situation. Isn't that sweet?? I love our little Mexican friend! We didn't get everything solved, but it's in the works. We are so lucky to have her!! We are planning trips to Paris and Germany with her; how fun will that be?? :)

After she left, we sort of lounged around the apartment for a while because it was POURING outside (Yes, we had clothes out on the line. Here's to another three days of drying time!). All of the locals say that it never rains here, but it seems to have rained a lot since we've been here! Lucky for us, the drainage system at UPV is just a tad better than that of MSU, so even though we don't have our rain boots, we're not drowning! I took a shower while we were hanging out (miraculous!), but for some reason the hot water in our shower would NOT turn on, although it would turn on in the kitchen. We eventually got it worked out but not until Emily got to see me running around completely naked and COLD from the lack of hot water!

Eventually, we decided to venture out into the rain; after all, we're only going to be living here once, right?? Plus, we're all about the "free" public transportation that we happened to come across Sunday! With umbrellas in hand, we walked a few meters to the metro stop and studied the map carefully. Basically, we had no idea where any of the stops really led, so we decided to just pick one at random that appeared to be near the center.

We picked a good stop! When we got off the metro, we were greeted by the "Chinos" stores and a supermarket! After a bit of browsing in the stores, we headed in the direction of the "centro", which is really the old part of Valencia. Surprisingly, we realized that we knew where we were at... sorta! :) We found a beautiful park that kind of resembles Central Park but, of course, on a much smaller scale! There were beautiful fountains in it that we plan to return to and play in when it's warmer and not raining! As we were walking, we said, "Man, it'd sure be nice if we could find a Cortes Ingles!" That's the Wal-Mart of Spain that I mentioned earlier. Well, we kept walking, and Emily spotted one randomly! It just appeared out of nowhere! This was a different one than we had been in before; this one is part of Valencia's mall. We decided to escape the rain and head for shelter within the mall. Surprisingly, there are very few American stores in it. I think the only one I recognized was Gamestop, and as much as I love nerdy boys, Gamestop's not really my kinda place! :) Inside the mall, we witnessed the most awkward thing ever: this girl was groping this guy inappropriately on a public bench. . . It was not a fun site.

We also went to Corte Ingles' grocery store within the mall. Here are a few things I've noticed: the seafood section smells disgusting, ice cream comes in styrofoam boxes, there is no cranapple juice to be found anywhere, and people in Spain must not eat mac & cheese. Oh, there is also alcohol mixed in with gatorade and other every day, non-alcoholic drinks. So weird.

Emily and I were feeling spontaneous Monday night, so we logged on to ryanair.com and looked up cheap flights for the weekend. We finally found a pleasing destination: Italy! We then found hostels and train tickets, and so this weekend we're off to PISA and FLORENCE! Yes, I will lean with it. Thanks for asking! :)

We were back to school on Tuesday. We may have woken up slightly late for our first class, but we were there for over half the class. We're planning our first group project with Henrietta, this girl from Denmark. Besides the similar names, Henrietta reminds me of our friend Henry (H!!) from MSU. They're both tall, thin, and blonde-haired. I'm sure Henrietta loves the Denmark Bears (I just made that up) almost as much as Henry loves the Lady Bears.. almost. Anyway, Spanish Regional Economy really isn't bad. It's still a lot of history, and our teacher looks exactly like Krissy Lewis. However, she's a bit more intimidating than Krissy! :)

We hung out on campus in between classes on Tuesday. The dining halls on campus are surprisingly cheap, and they have our favorite: tortilla espanola! I laugh every time we go into the cafeteria because there is a little old lady who takes your money, just like Martha in Garst. However, the little old lady at UPV is MUCH, MUCH faster than Martha; she seriously has your change ready for you before you even hand over the money! Unlike Martha, she doesn't stop, examine your name, and say, "So how are you today, Allison", though. That's unfortunate, but even if she did say it, I may not understand it. :) We hit the computer lab after lunch in order to print plane tickets. There are tons of Alex Hutchins in Spain. That's basically our favorite activity to do on campus: sit back and watch people who walk by and try to see who they look like from the states. There are a ton of Eric Sentells. J-polk would love it!

The funniest thing happened as we were heading to our next class, English. Em and I decided to stop in at the bano (bathroom!) before heading into the classroom. Well, Emily got locked in the stall!! I swear; something strange ALWAYS happens to us! I tried to push the door open from the outside, but it would not budge. Meanwhile, a small herd of women congregated within the small bathroom and stared as Emily and I called back and forth to each other. You know, I'm pretty sure it was embarrassing for Em to be stuck in there, but it was embarrassing for me to be standing there trying to break into a stall! She got out eventually. Apparently the doors have some crazy little locks on them. The Europeans think we're crazy, but I kind of enjoy being the "dumb American". It's fun to not have to care about anything.

English class was amazing as always. We turned in a proposal for what we want to teach the class. I think we're going to concentrate on public speaking and writing speeches. My favorite thing about this class is that the teacher is going to be gone for the entire month of March, so we're not going to have to go. It's a rough life over here, isn't it?

We were supposed to meet someone at our piso soon after class, so we decided to ride the metro home. We hopped on like always and made it through a stop. And then we were on to the other stop. There was still one more stop to go before getting to our apartment, so Emily and I were just standing around waiting for the metro to start again when all of the sudden I see this girl jump out of her seat and frantically start hitting the button to make the door open. I found this to be very unusual because we had been sitting at the stop for a while, so she had had plenty of time to get off. Then, I turned and looked the other way and notice these men dressed in very official uniforms heading towards us shouting "PAGARLO!!" (Pay it!). I turned to Em and said, "EMILY, THIS IS OUR STOP!", and since she had not noticed the guards yet, she said, "No, it's not!". I repeated, and then she realized what was going on, and we jumped off the metro as soon as possible and ran down the sidewalk away from the guards. It was crazy!! I felt like we were being attacked! Don't worry; we're going to go buy a metro pass tomorrow. No more illegal riding for us. We don't want those fines! Oh, there's never a dull day with us!

We went to our "job" last night. We're getting better and better at using the bus system, although we're now so familiar with the streets that I don't think we need to use it to get to the lady's house. Still, we were able to make it there and back in no time! We sat around and talked in English for an hour and then got paid. How sweet is that? It's quite possibly even easier than working the Scholars House front desk... :)

The excitement died down for a few hours, but it eventually picked back up. We decided to make frozen pizza, and we sat down to eat. All was fine and well... The pizza was splendid! However, as I was chewing, I noticed this hard little piece within my food. Then, my tongue hit the front of my mouth and I realized that my titanium bolt was exposed. Yeah, that little hard piece was my tooth floating around inside the pizza! I spit it out as soon as possible (It looked like cat barf. Yippee.) and just stared at it. There was no freaking out this time. Just staring. I decided the best option would be to get online and tell my momma, who told me to call the dentist and see if the answering machine listed his hours (it was 8:45pm) when this happened. Surprise! He picked up! He said he'd be there until 9:30 if I could make it. Well, we flew down the stairs, ran to the taxi pool, caught the first taxi available, and sped across town. The cab driver dropped us off at the appropriate building, and I realized I didn't have my passport to get into the fancy building, but I showed them my driver's license, and they mistakenly thought my license number was the same as my passport number, and I did not correct them! Up the elevator we went, and Dr. Gomez and his wife greeted us! He had been out of town all of last week, so he was dealing with patients late last night. He fixed my tooth in no time, and this time he used some really permanent glue, so hopefully it's there to stay! Emily took the hottest picture of me ever while I was in the chair. I'm sure I'll share it sometime soon. :)

We're getting to be experts at catching those cabs. It only took us a minute or two to get one back to the apartment. You know, I hate it every time my tooth falls out. It's inconvenient and bothersome. Good things come out of it, though! We've really gotten to know all of Valencia thanks to the numerous cab trips. Seriously, we're familiarizing ourself with the city more and more thanks to my tooth implant. :) See, good things come from bad things! And as you can tell, God is taking wonderful care of us in every bad little situation. No doubt!

As you can tell, last night was pretty fun-filled, but the excitement didn't stop there. When we returned to our apartment around 10:00, it was raining AGAIN. No big deal. We hung out for a while and contemplated going to bed, but before we got that far the power went out!! There we were - in the cold, dark apartment! Fortunately, I have the world's best mom who prepares for everything, and she had packed a wind-up flashlight for me (It's not the kind you shake, although she's really good at doing that. You should ask her to demonstrate.). I used the light of my computer screen to dig it out from a drawer, and we wound it up! It worked perfectly during our little outage. It was getting cold, though, so Emily and I spooned in my bed together for warmth. We created a video for your enjoyment that will becoming within the next few days. We waited and waited in hopes for the power to return, but it wasn't looking very promising, so Em decided to take a shower. I held the light for her while she did so; that'll be something I always remember! I guess having gas can be kind of nice; it means you still have hot water even when there's no power! Amazingly, when she got out of the shower the power returned!! We still have no idea what caused the outage, but we can now say we lived through our first Spanish power outage. Yeah!

We pretty much made it on time to class today. We had a lab session for a class. The lab is taught in Spanish, but we work in groups, and our group all speaks English. Billy's in our group! There's another guy too, but we don't remember where he's from. Our teacher's a nice little guy who insists that we call him by his first name and not "sir". We had to watch a movie in this class, and I may have fallen asleep through parts of it, but apparently it didn't matter too much because once again, there's no homework!

Our following class is the one we have for four entire hours, but he gave us a nice lunch break in between! It actually went by really fast, but we talked about the simplest things that make me wonder how we spent so much time devoted to those topics. Whatever! Naps were in order after class. We had to go back to campus this evening, though, for another lab. This lab was also in Spanish, and Henrietta's in it with us. I kind of like the Spanish labs. Our teacher's really nice, too! I can't get over how they schedule you time to do your homework here, but I'm not complaining!

Tonight we finalized our plans for Italy. We're hitting the Leaning Tower, hoping to see Michelangelo's David, going to some famous plazas and squares, etc. We're leaving Thursday evening and coming back Monday! I'm not going to take my laptop with me, so unless we find an internet cafe (lighter backpack and more room -- yeah!), I may not have a new post until Monday night or so. Hope you all enjoy your weekends! If you're hanging out in the Midwest, be safe with the ice/snow mixture! Love you all!

...just looking for my one chance to run.