Wednesday, September 29, 2010

I'm a bit of a mess at the moment.

Let me explain. I was gathering my stuff to head to the gym yesterday afternoon, only to realise that my iPod was missing. It had been more or less twenty-four hours since I'd last used it, and because I was in such a rush on Monday evening, I hadn't noticed that it wasn't with me. I remember pulling it out of my pocket at the gym to turn it off and wind the headphones around so they wouldn't get tangled, but that's it. I'd dropped my locker key on the floor as well, and had to go back upstairs to the gym room to get it but don't recall seeing my fat, rather noticeable iPod on the ground with it.

I'm sounding rather rational at the moment, but I was in tears all yesterday evening and I honestly could not feel worse - yes, it is replaceable, and while all the music and videos I had on it aren't on my iTunes (new computer before I left), they are too...but it is pretty much all my fault and there is nothing I can do about it. I'm still feeling pretty crap.

My host sister, when I mentioned it to her, was pretty negative about it - she says that if people have the opportunity to take something, they will. I don't know what's worse: seeing someone drop something valuable and taking it on purpose or stealing it out of their bag (I don't know which happened and suspect it to be the former, but it really could have been either).

It's a lot of money. And important to me, because it motivated me in the gym and the reason I was there in the first place was so that I could start losing weight.

It's a lose-lose situation.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

just before i go to bed...

I love my new church. It made my day. (Except the five days of the week are pretty bad.)

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

School started up again today, and while I guess I'm glad I have something to do with my time (other than cook and get fat and then complain about it to whoever is around), it's just tiring and not all that fun.

I had hoped that we would be finishing at 12.30pm this year, but I'm afraid I was misinformed, or probably misheard (more likely). This would have meant that I would get home by 1pm and still be able to Skype home. It turns out that we do have fewer classes but they go until 2.30pm, Monday-Wednesday. On Thursdays, we go home to have lunch at 1.30 and come back for two more periods in the afternoon (but hopefully I will wiggle my way out of that), and Friday we finish at 1.30. So at least I can see mum once or twice during the week. It was nice to be able to kind of hang out and talk about recipes and other useless stuff, though. JYC (the exchange company here in Spain) discourage us from talking to people back home, but I've found that keeping in touch gives me more comfort than not knowing what's going on. I feel less lonely, even if it means I'm not getting into the whole being Spanish thing.

I guess Spain isn't really for me. I think this has impeded my ability and willingness to learn Spanish (but I would still nominate laziness as the main culprit), which is of course a huge disappointment. I probably won't get over that for awhile and will be complaining about it (at least to myself) for months to come. I still think that the country is a great holiday destination and that there are wonderful things to see and do here. But, as Simon (side note: I joined a church, and Simon is from Northern Ireland and is very nice, as is everyone else at church and I am really enjoying going despite having taken so long to get off my butt and find one) said, if you're a foreigner here, it's so hard to integrate properly. I think it's part of the culture, and perhaps they are unwilling to be completely open because they are so proud of who they are. This is only a hypothesis and I'm unsure what I'm trying to get at here, but this aspect of Spain is one I find both interesting and sad.

So yeah! I joined a church. It's called Oasis Madrid, and is an international English-speaking community. Six of us went for a hike on Saturday, and while I feared a bit for my knees on the mostly-way-down, I really enjoyed getting out and doing something I don't usually get to. They do a sandwich route for homeless people on Saturdays too, so this week I might go do that.

Counting down the weeks until I get on that plane (December the 2nd). There is so much I want to do when I get home.