"Some call me Lassie"

This week I’ve finally been able to get a routine down - in Spain nonetheless! I am still not an extremely confident bus rider yet, but I am able to get from home to school or to the train station and back. On days that it is warm it has been a nice walk. I’ve changed around my Spanish classes so they’re a little bit harder – we’ll see come testing if I’m going to like that decision. We had our first religion class yesterday with Faustino Lopez who spoke in English for us. He was really interesting and has interesting stories to share with us about the church in Spain. Yesterday I also went running despite the cold weather and found this really cool path that followed along this river and reminded me a lot of Waveny. There weren’t that many people around so I awkwardly ran behind this guy and his dog for a while until he turned around. So I kept running a little bit farther and then turned around too. After our religion class a group of us went to the plaza and found a great churreria for churros y chocolate.
Today Carly and I caught the bus again and sat with Jenny and Lexi, other students who take the same bus. I went to class and the computer lab to do some research on a potential trip to Paris/ Real Madrid tickets. Then, Jenny, Lexi, Ashley and I met at the track close to my house to run and work out. It is so much better working out in a group! Ashley and Jenny are on the track team at school so I’m depending on them to help keep me in shape. Then, Carly and I are always home for almuerzo, the main meal of the day. After, we headed to the train to go to Madrid with a couple others (Nieves made us a little to-go dinner: un bocadillo). We visited the Prado Museum which was absolutely incredible!!! It turns out that from 6pm until close it’s free so we wandered around for 2 hours looking at Goya, Velazquez, El Greco etc etc. It was awesome. My favorite part was when Kip, Ashley and I played “eye spy” in front of one painting for practically 20 minutes – it was so funny. There was one painting (I forget the name of) that they mounted on the ceiling of one room and we were all in awe. We headed back to Alcala and now we’re planning to meet at La Media Pintaaaaa for international night! Should be a blast