"Está lluviendo gatos y perros" (It's raining cats and dogs)

What a gross week it has been this week!!!  It's been raining off and on all week long, which has made it miserable to go to and from class!  I was sick Monday from the excursion over the weekend.. I think I just needed to catch up on sleep, so I didn't go to school on Monday and slept for 13 hours instead!!!  Tuesday through Thursday it was raining the whole time, and finally today it's gorgeous!!!  My host mom tells me every morning, while I'm eating breakfast, how cold it is outside.. she walks outside onto the little porch off the kitchen and walks back inside and says, "Hace muchiiiiiiisimooooooo friooooo hoy!!! Necesitas llevar la bufanda!" ("It's veryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy cold! You need to wear your scarf!").  This happens everyday, I kid you not.  

On Tuesday, I decided that I would take the bus to and from school because my umbrella was tiny and breaking.  There's a stop very close to our house, so I decided to check it out.  I knew that buses 7, 11, 33 and F stopped at this stop.  So I hopped on bus 7 and got off at another stop to get on bus 23 which takes me right to school.  Coming home I figured bus 33 would be a straight shot home.. BOY WAS I WRONG! I got on bus 33, and it took me an hour and a half to get back to the stop I wanted. I thought I was so lost until I saw La Plaza de Toros and I knew I was finally home.  Once I got in the door Encarna told me about how she didn't know where I was and she was worried, but when I told her about my adventure around the city she just laughed and laughed.

On Wednesday, I took bus 23 to school again, but this time I knew better than to take 33 back home.  So I stood at the bus stop and waited for bus 4.. hoping I would have better luck.  While I was standing there I met a girl name Lauren from New Jersey.  She's also studying in Granada.  Eventually, bus 4 pulled up to our bus stop and we got our bus cards out ready to hop on the extremely crowded bus.  When it was our turn to get on, the bus driver shut the bus doors in our face and said it was too crowded.. which was an understatement of how crowded it was.  Lauren and I were the only 2 people that weren't able to get on the bus!!! hahahah! So we shared a cab home.. Encarna again was wondering where I was since I had waited for that dang bus for so long! Haha.. the buses are just not my friends!

Luckily, yesterday was a much better day for me.  I got on bus 4 (not so crowded because it wasn't raining as hard), and got off at the right stop and everything was great!  I introduced the phrase "It's raining cats and dogs" to Encarna.. she laughed sooo hard!

Tuesday was the last day for 6 of the students in my class.  All the European exchange students have a different schedule that we do, so they were only studying for 2 weeks or so in that level.  Since Federico was going back to Italy, a few of us decided to hang out with him and go out for a little bit.  We started at Burger King (haha), because they have the most amazing brownie sundae there!  It's amazing how the fast food restaurants are so much better here than they are in the USA!

While we were at Burger King some man came up to our table and asked where we were from.  After we told him the United States, he wanted to talk to us in English and wouldn't talk about anything except American sports.. which none of us wanted to talk about at the time.  We eventually got up and left him.. he was probably still talking about the NFL or something.

After Burger King, we went to a Chinese restaurant and ate the most amazing Chinese meal ever.  At all the restaurants there's a Menu of the Day.. which usually consists of 3 or 4 courses and a drink.  The menu of the day is definitely the best and cheapest route when eating out.  We were the only people in the restaurant, so we acted very immature.  

Mike and Holly

Me and Federico

We met up with Vittoria, she's an Italian girl that was in our class, and went to a tapas bar and hung out.

Yesterday, we had an intercambio.  It's a language exchange with Spaniards that also attend the University of Granada.  This is a way that we can meet Spaniards to practice Spanish, and the Spaniards that are invited are studying English, so they get to practice their English!  We had a great time, there were probably 150 people that showed up (both Americans and Spaniards) and we just talked and got to know each other.  I met two girls named Mel and Jenni (very unusual Spanish names), they were very nice and want to hang out sometime!


After the intercambio, a few of us went to Hannigans, the Irish Pub, to play cards.  All the employees of Hannigans speak English, so it's a nice get away every once in a while.

This is a picture of tapas.  When you go to a bar and order a drink, you get tapas for free with it.  This time we got "tortillas" (omelette type thing), some kind of chicken with sauce, potato salad, and of course bread.  The tapas are usually very delicious, and it's not bad to get a drink and tapas for around 2 euros everywhere you go.  I ordered sangría, the best drink in the world! They put real fruit in it, it's a very sweet wine. Sooo good!

This weekend we are planning to hang out with some of our new friends from our intercambio.  We are going to a salsa bar tonight! Should be really fun!  Hopefully this coming week I'll have better luck with the whole bus situation.. grr. Dang Spanish transportation! haha.  Also, if anyone wants to send me anything, I would be more than happy to receive it! And I have Barcelona to look forward too next weekend!!!!!! YAY!