"Why must there be thieves?"

I love Sundays here. Even though I understand about 40% of what is being said in church it’s so interesting to listen and try to figure out what they are expressing. After the first hour there is a man who always goes around to everyone and hands out cough drops! I love it. Then our teacher for the second hour has no patience for our group – despite the fact that she’s an American as well. We have our theories about her… Other than church, there is nothing planned for the day, which makes for long siestas and skyping with the family. Glad to know they’re doing well and that they have to “rearrange they’re schedules” in order to find time to talk to me (as told by Chloe) – thanks guys, you must really miss me.

Mondays we have one class in the morning and then have time until photography that’s at 4:30. We found out that Alcala has a “market” every Monday. Of course with our talent of wandering we were able to find it – it turned out to be massive. There was stall after stall of super cheap and random things. If you’re looking for underwear, the Mercado is where it’s at – quality is questionable. They have lots of jewelry, make up (?), coats, jeans, shoes, sheets, cloth etc. Something that is definitely worthwhile are the scarves. If you dedicate some time to looking, you can find quite a steal. Ashley and I then walked into the food portion of the market; it was an entirely different world. People were crowding around tables, bargaining, trying to get the vendors attention, yelling lots and lots of Spanish words. Ashley and I bought our favorites: manzanas, platanos y alemandras tostados que estan muy, muy baratos. I bought 8 apples, 4 bananas and a fourth of a kilo of almonds for under 5 euros. We were still in the shopping mood and decided it would be fun to check out the local mall – Alcala Magna. We had no idea how to get there but after wandering some more, we hopped on a bus that seemed to go in the right direction and what do you know – we found it. The first store we saw as soon as we walked in was Haribo (shout out to Hared). But we’ve gotten good at resisting the temptations/ not even feeling temptation for the sweets, which is a great thing. We went to Sephora, this other store filled with cheap shoes (definitely going back), Blanco (in which my purchase from Sephora was STOLEN), Zara and back to Sephora to re-purchase my stolen lipstick. Unbelievable. But the rebajas are amazing and a dream come true. My first shopping experience here. A lot of the things are very trendy – almost too crazy so as long as we stay on the conservative side of things we find cute things that may be acceptable to wear in the States.

Someone asked if Ashley and I were German today. That was a new one and add that onto the list: Swedish, Italian and British. Apparently we can pull all of those off.