BABY I LIKE IT!!

It´s a slow day in the colegio today and even tho we are having fun in class watching the grinch and reading a spanglish version of "Twas the night before christmas" I really don´t have that much to report on.  However, don´t fret my pets!!  When have you EVER known me to be at a loss for words?  There is plenty that I can talk about.  The one thing that I´ve been thinking about lately: tall, guapo spanish men with dark hair and their cute little accents when they speak english.  They all remind me of Enrique Inglesias and to quote the very man himself "Baby, I like it!!"  I´m just saying that if there is anything hotter than an attractive, REALLY tall, dark haired man talking to me, it´s an attractive, REALLY tall, dark haired man talking to me with a spanish accent.  Now where Oh where can I find myself one of those???  I feel really bad, but I have a confession to make:  When attractive, REALLY tall, dark haired men speak to me here in spanish I pretend like I don´t understand anything they are saying just so they have to speak to me in english.  I know, it sounds bad and really i feel horrible.  BUT not horrible enough to stop pretending :)  I´ve been here for about 4 months now and although I sound like a 4 year old when I speak in Spanish I really do understand most of everything that people say to me as long as they are speaking clearly and not at NASCAR speed.  There is even a man that I work with that is just the cutest thing ever.  And although I don´t feel the need for anything other than a friendship from him, he still thinks I have no idea what is going on when he speaks in spanish and then he switches over to english so I understand. hahaha sshhhhh, it´ll be our secret.  I feel like it´s gone too far anyway.  He automatically assumes that I don´t speak spanish and speaks to me in the cutest freakin spanish accent I have ever heard.  Even the other day I slipped up and answered him when he said something to me in spanish and he looked excited and said "you understand?!?"  my response: "no, I just guessed, sorry".  I can´t help it, you should hear the way they speak english over here.  Not everyone sounds cute when they speak english tho.  Some of them sounds like they have an orange in their mouth.  It´s just aweful.  But the good ones?  wheeeww.  There is only one thing I can say about them...

"BABY I LIKE IT!!"

it´s beginning to look a lot like Navidad en mi colegio!!

paz en la tierra= peace on earth

hola a todos!!  I arrived back from the long puente we had a couple of weeks ago to visions of beautiful replicas of nativity sets all around our school and it is AWESOME!!  There is one big one (pictured above) that is right in the main entrance of my colegio and it´s just amazing.  And then all through the lobby area there are about 20 replicas made by students from all sorts of material including yarn, lights, and FOOD!  don´t worry, there was a sign next to the food ones that said "Do not eat! Do not touch! TOXIC!!"  and even though it was written in spanish the words look similar enough that I got the idea and kept my mitts to myself.   I have got to say that this semester is flying by sooo fast that it´s a bit hard to hang on.  I feel like I just got to this muy bonita place and I´m already flying home in just a few days.  Time sure goes by quick when you´re having a good time.  My students have all been a bunch of little locos in the classroom for the last week of school before christmas and I can´t help but remember back to when I was their age and in school.  Needless to say I can´t complain about their behavior when my own at that time was at least twice as bad.  I really lucked out and got a solid group of kids this year in the classroom.  And by solid group of kids I really mean the ENTIRE school is filled with good kids.  I teach the entire secondary school and the high school kids and a class in the 6th grade.  Even the kids that act up and are sometimes down right buttheads are even pretty cool once you figure out what they like.  I heard once that a good teacher doesn´t smile until Christmas.  That way the kids know that you are the teacher and are straight down to business from the moment you walk into the classroom until the moment you walk out.  I remember those teachers.  And there are a few of the none smilers over here in Madrid as well.  And if I remember correctly: Those were my least favorite.  Sure I didn´t try any funny stuff in front of them but I can assure you when their backs were turned there was plenty of monkeying around going on.  I slipped up and made the mistake of smiling on the first day.  I feel like it was the right decision tho.  A.)  Seriously, when do you see me not smiling (except for when I don´t get my way)? I´ll never be able to wipe this silly grin off my face. and B.)  The kids like me.  I LIKE BEING LIKED!!  Can´t help it, I´m a smiler.  So far it has been proven as a success.  Doesn´t mean it will work out all year but I think I can ride it out for the last 2 days of the semester.    :)

No thanks, LSAT this one out

LOVE

Yep, that wasn't the most responsible thing I've done.  Instead of studying for my LSAT, for the past 4 months I've been traveling around Europe and exploring my new home of Madrid.  Whoops.  I just finished writing my LSAT yesterday and after 5 hours of reading material as fast as I could and picking the "best" answers, I'm ready for a break.  A long break.  A long winter break at home.  OO wait, I'll be home in about 11 days, but who's counting, right??  Perfect.  Don't get me wrong, all you crazy people out there that know me are well aware that I handle being away from home very well.  I moved out when I was 17 and haven't lived there since.  BUT, that doesn't mean that I don't miss it.  I do.  A lot.  My parents, my amazing siblings, the absolute locos that I claim proudly as my extended family, and of course: My two beautiful dogs and fantastically perfect cat, Belle.  I haven't been thinking about going back but now that I'm on the home stretch (pun intended) I can't wait!!  You know how people say "I've got the best dad in the whole world" or "my family is the greatest family of all time"??  Yeah, they're all liars.  You wanna know how I know this?  Simple.  Because I have the best dad in the whole world and my family IS the greatest family of all time.  Therefore, all the other people that say it are wrong.  With that being said, there is no place in this whole world that I would rather be on December 25 than with those goofy Flynns that I love so much.  It will be nice to have a bit of a break from my crazy schedule that I've got over here but that doesn't mean it will be all play when I get home.  Mostly play, but not completely :)  I have to REALLY get focused and put a nice dent into my thesis for my masters program so I'm not left at the end of the semester with a massive paper to write.  I also have to talk with the fam about my future plans.  I know what you are thinking "But Brenna, you're 23, you should be able to make decisions about your life on your own".  Well, that's where you are wrong, amigos.  Unfortunately I was cursed with an amazing family that is closer than most families I have met before and while the world is my oyster, I still care a great deal about what they think.  On the up side I have quite a few options as to where my life could head over the next few years.  On the down side, all those options are VERY different from each other and it's hard to pick just one!  For example I could stay in Spain for a bit longer, work on my spanish and teach (which i looooooove here).  I could apply to law school and go where ever they accept me for the next few years and get my degree (assuming I do at least average on the LSAT the first time I take it).  I could take a year off and write a book about the crazy tails of my life over the past year and how spontaneously crazy it is (don't even act like you wouldn't read it and rave about it to your friends).  I could teach at a private school in the states with my masters and credentials that I am earning here (it would be waaayy weird to teach American kids who actually speak the same language as me...kinda boring).  Or I could just pull something crazy and move to yet another country on a complete whim (sounds vaguely familiar, no?).  Either way I am happy with all of my options and completely stressed at the same time!! I'm going to take the time for this break to evaluate my options and figure my shit out.  Let's be honest, it NEEDS to be done!!  Either way, it's wicked sweet to have absolutely no idea where I'll be living 7 months from now and what I'll be doing at that point in my life.  The possibilites are endless.  For now I'm going to lesson plan for the LAST full week of classes at school before I go home and probably re-read "Oh! the places you'll go" by the one and only Dr. Suess to muster up a little more optimism in my world :)  Good night for now, I'll be in touch  <3

Made it the whole time in Brussels without seeing a single sprout

pretty as a christmas card :)

We got into Brussels on a fridged evening and set off to find our hostel.  The hostel was surprisingly nice and after a long few days of walking around in the freezing cold weather, we decided to get some food from the local grocery store, have a picnic in our hostel and map out our stay.  Me of course being a total party pooper all the time, decided that our puente would be the perfect time to get sick with a sinus infection and made the executive decision to stay in the first night and catch up on some reading and some much needed sleep!!  Rio and Stanek went out for a few drinks which I am sure they enjoyed the time away from the third wheel for just a bit anyway!! The next day we got up, took cold showers, got dressed, grabbed the complimentary hot drinks from the hostel and set out to see the sights.  We had a whole tour mapped out on our nice little guide of the city and started out in the cold.  We first stopped at a flea market which looked more like a collection of things they have stolen from the tourists after they take them from their hostels and kill them.  As harsh as that sounds, you weren't there to see the locals sort thru used shoes and clothes and all things not wanted by anybody else.  Needless to say we stuck out like sore thumbs and blew that popsicle stand while were still alive.  We then walked past the police station that had about 20 bullet holes pumped into it and were on our way to the next stop on our map.  We saw all the beautiful buildings and cathedrals the city had to offer and of course stopped in a chocolate shop or two...including godiva, obviously!! We walked through a beautiful christmas market and found our way to a cute little place for dinner.  I had a great sandwich and for dessert we clearly got the waffles.  Well, as it turns out, it took me a trip to Belgium to figure out that I in fact am not a fan of waffles.  At all.  Rio and Stanek happily disagreed and enjoyed their waffles and we set out for the Delerium bars that were talked so highly of.  Well, they were magical.  The first one we went to we each got a special Belgium beer with an alcohol content of around 15% and made our merry way upstairs to see what they were packin.  We ordered and met two American men up there.  As it turns out, not only were they from the same area of New York as Rio, they had mutual friends.  Can I get a "small world"??  Well we had quite a few beverages and laughs with them over absolutely everything there was to talk about and it was decided that we needed to pay a trip to the Absynthe bar across the street.  Things got a bit loco after that and we somehow made our way back to the upstairs part of the Delerium bar for more beers.  After a night full of great laughs and great new friends, we parted ways and headed back to our upscale hostel.  I set my alarm for exactly 4 hours after we went to bed and fell fast asleep into a drunken slumber.  My alarm went off about 15 hours before I would have liked and I made my way slowly through the metro, a 1 hour bus ride, and into the airport for my flight back home.  Rio and Stanek were on a later flight and fortunately were able to sleep in.  Over all i would say that I had both a great puente and a kick ass birthday.  I do feel on the old side of things but it was nice to get back and snuggle up in my own (small, uncomfortable, spanish) bed and read some of my book for the rest of the night.

Feliz Compleanos a BRENNA!!!!

gingerbread buildings in Brugges!!

So after a wonderful stay in Amsterdam, we left on my birthday and took a bus ride to Brugges.  Well, it was supposed to be a short bus ride, however due to the blizzard that was raging during our travel, it took quite a bit longer.   We arrived in Brugges just in time to check into our hostel, grab an adult beverage, and get some dinner before the whole city shut down.  So, that is exactly what we did!  We got to this adorable town around 6 in the evening and took the shuttle into the downtown area.  Now, ladies and gentleman, if you have never had the fortunate opportunity to walk around inside of a snow globe, I suggest you try it.  It turns out it's my favorite thing to do during the holidays!!  We got to our hostel and checked in, put our stuff down, and grabbed a drink in the hostel bar while we planned our stay out.  After that we walked around in the snow for a bit and set our sights on grabbing some dinner.  We stumbled in to a wonderfully adorable local place where the food was great and the Belgian beer was even better.  After that we took about a million pictures of the buildings that had an uncanny resemblance to gingerbread houses and made our way to the only bar that was still open after the ripe time of 10PM.  Everyone was staring at us and it didn't take long before a nice man approached us and quickly informed us that hats were not allowed in their fine establishment.  whoops. we took our hats off and stayed a while.  We pounded a few more beers, grabbed a shot or two and went on to yet another bar that surprisingly was hiding from us during our search for a warm place to go for a beer.  We walked inside and sat down in the only seats that were free.  They also just happened to be right next to the only man in Brugges wearing a skirt.  He was dressed in traditional Scottish garb and had a matching accent to boot.  He asked us where from the states we were from and we told him.  I said I was from the great state of Ohio and he promptly informed me that he had family living in Sandusky, OH.  Crazy small world, no?  We talked for a while on why Ohio was the greatest state in all of the US and after an hour or two we were on our way back to the hostel.  The next day we spent walking around the snow globe and checking out EVERYTHING there was to see in Brugges.  I got a brat which was obviously madatory in Belgium and we saw the amazing windmills that were there.  It was a great city and I can't wait to go back...only in the snow.  And with a significant other because it was just toooo freaking beautiful to explore it without one!  We grabbed a paper funnel full of fries (french fries were invented in Belgium, who would have guessed!?!) which were just out of this world, and boarded the train to Brussels.

AmsterDAAAAMMMMMM

Winterland Amsterdam '10

Holy puente, I love Spain!!  Puente is spanish for "bridge" and i have grown to love our wonderful puentes here.  They mean long weekends in terms of working and school which is precisely why they are soooo fantastic.  If there just so happens to be a holiday that falls on a thursday or Tuesday, they go ahead and call that Friday or Monday off of school, hence the word "bridge" used.  It's kind of like having thanksgiving on a thursday every year and just not doing anything that Friday either.  Well we had a wonderful puente this past week and it lasted for 3 whole freakin days.  Marvelous.  Due to the fact that this just so happened to fall on my birthday as well (which I am pretty sure they did on purpose since I am just that important over here...siiiiike!) We decided to take this opportunity and travel.  A lot.  We started our travels in Holland and I am convinced this is where I am destined to live.  Forever.  The men are tall, handsome, and all speak english. HOLLER!  Never in my life have a met a country of happier people.  No seriously, all of them are happy and love speaking in perfect english to all the wide eyed happy tourists.  We started our trip by stepping off the plane at the amsterdam airport and boarding the train to what we thought was going to be the center of the city.  Well this was only supposed to be a short ride and after about 30 minutes we decided we were certainly not in the right place.  We asked where we were and were promptly told that the next stop would be Utricht.  Fantastic city, however NOT where we were supposed to be.  AWESOME.  We get off the train, ask a worker which train we were supposed to be on and were answered with "are you guys high?? wouldn't you like to be?? do you smell the weed in this place? Yeah, the sign on the side of the train said 'Amsterdam central' but it's broke so I'm not surprised you wound up here.  Take that train over there and you'll be in Amsterdam Central soon enough".  Yep, pretty much as nonchallant as they come.  Well, we got on the right train, landed in Amsterdam and walked for about an hour in the fridged cold to our hostel.  When we arrived we were given our room and bed numbers and decided to drop our stuff off and explore for a bit.  It was only about 11 so we figured we had plenty of time before things were shutting down.  We got in the room and were greeted by a man that was very much under the influence of something crazy and his two friends were sound asleep in beds.  That sounds wonderful but the problem is that one of the beds that one of them was in just so happened to be mine and his bed was dirty and had shit on it too so I couldn't even trade them.  No biggy, we went down stairs and asked if there were any other clean beds so that guy could sleep off whatever it was that he needed to sleep off and not cause too much trouble and we were on our way to explore.  We were gone for about 2 hours and arrived back to our hostel to see an ambulence parked outside.  When we got inside we saw the 3 guys that were in our room down stairs and one was hooked up to a machine checking his vitals.  perfect, we come in to amsterdam, cause problems, and have the ambulence called in on our roommates after we kicked them out of bed.  Needless to say we didn't really make friends in that place.  We saw everything the city had to offer and lived as a local for the day we were there.  It snowed like a snow globe on the last day we were there, which just so happened to by my birthday.  Which again, I am partially convinced was a gift from God just for me since I love snow so much :)  You will have to check out facebook to get all the pictures, but we really had a great time.  We ran for about 30 minutes in the blizzard to our bus that eventually got us to Brugges and so ended a wonderful stay in a wonderful city :)

This is how we do it. our hands are in the air, wavin' from here to there

OOOO hey girl hey.  Yet another international Thanksgiving in my life.  Still nothing close to the amazing times I have with my family and friends back home, but it was as close as it could get.  My first thanksgiving celebrated abroad was 2 years ago in Ireland.  We had a bitchin good time on the emrald isle where we rented out the local party house and got rowdy with about 100 of closest and not so close international friends.  Good food, good people, great black out.  I will be the first to tell you that during that irish thanksgiving I started drinking around 8 AM, puked on the way to my 9AM class, and then rallied afterwards with more booze.  God, how great it would be to be young again...  Anyway, I had some really great friends over there and I blacked out with them around 2 in the afternoon and somehow managed to party until about midnight that night without remembering a single thing.  Those were the wild days, I'm tellin ya!  So things were different for this international thanksgiving although the company was argueably just as amazing.  Although there were not as many amigos to celebrate with, the quality was outrageous.  It amazes me every single time I think about how incredible my friends are over here in Espanya.  I have somehow been gifted the right to have the most genuine, loyal, and all around greatest people in the world as my very spontaneous yet wonderful friends.  You don't fully understand how it happens until you are in the situation, but somehow one day you are living in a country minding your own business and the next you move to a different country without friends or family and are suddenly closest to complete strangers.  You share amazing life experiences and live extraordinary lives abroad with complete strangers that somehow over night turn into your closest friends and confidants.  Theresa, Lisa, Callie, Rio, and Stanek were present during our wonderful thanksgiving abroad and I need to confess that I am so thankful for them being in my life here.  Without them I am not sure just how functional I would be (Also mad props to James for setting me up with such amazing people in spain!!!).  They were strangers to me as of August and now I can't see my life without them.  They mean the world to me and I can't wait to see how much closer our friendships grow over time :)  My spanish family was also in attendance.  And by that I mean my absolutely fabulous co-worker, Belen.  I work at a school that I am completely in love with (pretty sure I've said that before...about a million times) and the teachers there are just perfect.  Almost none of them speak english but all of them are making incredible efforts to communicate with me.  It's an incredible blessing to absolutely love what you are doing with your life every single day.  Well anyway, Belen is one of those amazing teachers at my school that I have been growing closer to as the school year progresses.  She has let me into her home and I finally had the chance to pay the favor back to her.  I don't know if it's lame on my part to say that my closest spanish friend that I have made is another teacher at my school who is just a bit my senior or if it just means she is wicked cool (no seriously, she is)  but she's great.  She brought her niece with her (slowly I'm planning on working my way into her family, meeting each member one by one!) and they celebrated their first american thanksgiving with us.  We had the usual spread: green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, stuffing, mashed potatoes, etc.  HOWEVER, due to the lacking demand of huge turkeys at the end of November, we couldn't find one good enough in time and settled on chickens.  Surprisingly, I didn't really notice the difference.  Could have been all the wine, but they tasted just as good as turkey tastes every year :)  After quite a few bottles of wine, a bunch of photos taken, an uncountable number of laughs, and of course the cha cha slide, the night came to a close.  We also had some British guests over as well and I am hoping they enjoyed their first american thanksgiving as well.  All in all it was a spectacular evening and I can't believe how great my friends are over here.  Not exactly the same as spending with my family, but it was a nice and very much appreciated substitution :)  Needless to say I am a little girl with A LOT to be thankful for :) :) :)
<3

you´re not supposed to draw a huge penis on the blackboard?? ooops...

No, ladies and gentlemen; I did not take a picture of it.  Sorry.  I figured it was weird enough to be standing in front of a class full of 16 year olds and their raging hormones with a great big knob on the board and opted to not draw more attention to the fact that their teacher had just drawn a HUGE DONG in class.  Let me paint you the picture.  Sit back.  Relax.  Just take this in...

Twas the week of exams and all through the school
all the students were buzzing about the tests being uncool.
The teachers were frazzled with what to ask
In hopes their students would all pass.
The students were struggling with the information in their heads
with visions of past lectures and of what their teachers have said.
And Javi and Paco were running about
while Paula and Maria were talking at a shout.
When out in the hall there arose such a clatter
and the students ran to the door to see what was the matter.
Down the hall they saw what was coming
it was their favorite teacher, Brenna, who was late and running.
Finally she entered, loud and out of breath
while the students filed back to their orderly desks.
All the other teachers made them be quiet to prepare
so Brenna made it a point to bring the fun there.
Down the class sat, eager to play
listening closely to what Brenna would say.
Would it be important or fun or interesting or boring?
Brenna made sure the lesson was fun to keep them from snoring.
It was the week of Thanksgiving and the students were to learn the story
About pilgrims and the new world and all of its glory.
Brenna drew a map of the U.S. although not the best drawer in the world,
It had a vague resemblance of America except Maine looked a bit curled.
As she was drawing a student asked her a question
she turned to asnwer while drawing as to not disturb the session.
When out of nowhere there was a big uproar with laughter
Brenna turned back to the board to see what was the matter.
She had a sneaking suspicion that it would be something quite heinous.
But when she looked she discovered Florida looked like a huge penis.

Yep.  Pulled straight out of an SNL plot.  Not only did it look like a giant penis, it was drawn so well that I couldn´t have done it better if I had been looking while I was drawing it.  My job consists of either acting things out or drawing things on the board at all times so the students keep their attention at me and understand what I am saying but I think I´m going to try to stay away from drawing things on the boad for the next few days.  Possibly weeks.  I think I am going to have to start paying closer attention to what I am drawing as well.  i.e.: Look at the flipping board when I´m drawing something.  Now, with all that aside I will tell you that not only do 16 year olds find a large wang on the board absolutely hilarious, it turns out that 23 year olds do as well. The class was laughing almost as hard as the teacher was.  That´s right, snorting and all.  I was a mess.  You know when you see something inappropriate and you know you shouldn´t laugh, making it that much funnier?  You know, like seeing someone trip at a funeral or accidentally farting when they were sneezing.  Well it was one of those.  The kids were laughing, the other teacher in the back of the room was laughing and there I was: immobalized by hysterical laughter.  It was pitiful, really.  THANK GOD the other teacher was one of the cool ones or I might have found myself in a bit of trouble.

feelin good, feelin great, feelin good...how are you?!?

I saw HARRY POTTER this weekend!!!  :D

GGAAAAAHHHHHH holy moly yet another week has gone flying by without so much as a breath, blink, or new blog.  I'm telling you, I don't know how or why it is happening, but time is just FLYING by so quickly I don't know what to do with myself!  I have been enjoying every single second of it but it turns out when you pack your day busy with teaching, school work, learning a new language, and trying to hold a healthy social life together, you find it difficult to take a step back, take a deep breathe in and enjoy the moment you are in.  I'm so busy that I think I am constantly thinking about what is next, not how much fun I'm actually having in that moment.  I know you guys are absolutely sick of me saying this; but life here is sooo perfect :)  Teaching english to my kids every day is getting more and more rewarding.  I've been teaching them for 2 months now and I'm actually already starting to see the fruits of my labor.  Kids that have failed english classes in the past are not only picking up a stronger vocabulary bank, they are forming whole sentences and are really trying to express their ideas to me COMPLETELY in english!! You have no idea how good that feeling is unless you are in this field, but it's kind of like when you take the training wheels off of your child's bike and spend weeks with your child teaching them how to ride that bike and holding it while running behind them so they don't fall and then all of the sudden one day you let go of their bike and they ride it all on their own.  It's amazing.  Perfect.  Love it.  I am also learning a whole lot about my culture by having to teach it to them.  Hey Americans: can you tell me the history of thanksgiving?? yeah, up until last week I couldn't tell it either.  BUT I did some major research, picked out the important/interesting things and now not only can I tell it to you, but my kids can too.  Pretty cool, huh?  You know what else is pretty cool?? Having me as a teacher :)  Last week I taught some of my classes American slang.  They now can say things like "Yo, bro, SUP?!?" and "Hey, chick.  Did you catch that flick last week?" "rock on, brah.  it was so cool".  I even showed them how to hit the rock and high five.  All I'm saying is: if there was a cool contest going on between all the schools that are included in our masters program, it wouldn't even be fair.  My ninos would DESTROY the chumps from the other colegios.  Needless to say my week rocked out last week and I spent the weekend at the Mexican festival around Plaza de Espanya, saw the newest Harry Potter flick (and finally had my fix of movie theater popcorn), and planning out this week's classes.  I teach from 6th grade to high schoolers so we have some major skills and ability differences along the way but it's cool to see all of them progress.  AND, to my surprise, the little kids are picking up english just as fast as the older ones.  Makes my life just that much easier, right?!?!  HOLLER!!  Living the good life over here, y'all.  If I were you I would seriously consider quitting all of your jobs, schools, and whatever else you are doing and come join me in paradise...ASAP    :)

Eat, Pray, Love? More like Complain, Whine, Talk about yourself.

Fans of the book Eat. Pray. Love.  beware: you're not going to take kindly to this blog.  AT ALL.  Where to begin, where to begin...


Well, let's just first say that it doesn't always take horrible tragedy like not being satisfied with your marriage to decide to enlighten oneself.  I would just like to point out that she had money, a nice house, great job, and a wonderful husband and she still wasn't happy.  Fine, but was it REALLY necessary for her to flip the hell out and make a mountain out of a mole hill???  Yeah, I didn't think so either.  Next, I get it, you're good looking.  Fantastic, but do you really need to remind the reader about it every 15 pages?  With your hot and steamy affairs with men half your age, which just for the record, doesn't speak very highly of you, just that the younger men liked that you either had more money and power than they did or that you were the exotic tourist that was only going to be in town for a limited time.  Therefore: no long term commitment needed.  I know what all of you are thinking, leave it to me to be the one to tear apart a nice chick-flick type book, but I'm being serious here, read it again!  This time look at it from the correct point of view: she's going on an adventure to better herself, then she's writing a book to brag about it, and in between she's building herself up by her "amazing" romances, great food, and epic journey along the way.  Holy crap, I'm so over it...  I know, I sound bitter, and to be honest with you: it's only because I am.  She was getting paid to make a life changing journey around the world.  And why do I find myself thinking that sounds familiar??  OOOhhhh yeaaaahhhh...because I'm doing the same thing right now.  Where's my book deal? Where is my movie offer? Why isn't Julia Roberts chomping at the bit to play me?  I write my blogs so that my family and friends can keep up with my year abroad, not to brag about all the great times I'm having or the important life lessons I learn along the way.  However, after reading this God awful book I'm thinking that I should start.  The book got amazing reviews; I'm thinking that my book would have to get just as many.  And probably a lot more not so great ones as well :)  BUT, I'm totally okay with that.  My life includes self realization, epic journeys around the world, and exotic eperiences.  I, however, have a lot more drinking, wild times, and nudity along the way.  I'm no longer in a long term or long distance relationship and I think I have a clear enough head to write about my shennanigans in a far away country.  Don't get me wrong, I realize that my blogs aren't the funniest things you will ever read.  But I can assure you with my rediculous and true tales and the help of a creative genius (my sister, obviously) I am fairly confident that we can turn my one perfect year abroad into the book that Eat. Pray. Love. was supposed to be.


On a completely different note, My life is amazing.  I am the exotic blonde in Madrid looking for a good time.  Handsome men and good food are in my day to day life and on top of everything else...I found out a little bit more about the life I would like to have and exactly how to reach it.  LIFE IS AMAZING.  Eat your heart out, Elizabeth Gilbert <3

Im your biggest fan I'll follow you until you love me...

James and I at GAGA!!

The only other people dressed up at the concert.  They were from Germany and were wearing liederhosen...really.

The weekend came and I caught a plane to Frankfurt and then on to Budapest to meet up with my amazing friend, James.  When I first got there we immediately head out for food and sightseeing.  First stop: Langos.  Langos is BY FAR the greatest thing that I have ever put in my mouth.  Its like a solid elephant ear with sour cream and cheese on top.  Don't worry Ohio, I wrote down a bomb recipe for it and will be bringing it home for the Christmas :)  Seriously, its like a fried up cloud with presents on top.  A masterpiece, really.  So after a little taste of heaven, we walked to the center of the city where almost every shop in the city was closed (at 6pm , BIIIG difference from Madrid) and saw basically all that the city center had to offer.  Of course we took some crazy pics along the way (direct your attention to facebook for those!) and had a really great time.  James is one of those friends that I can go a while without seeing and when we finally get around to a play date we pick up right where we left off.  And that is exactly what we did.  That night we went back to his house and started drinking.  Heavily.  We somehow made it out, had some great craic, and then caught the bus back to his house.  The next day we went out in the DAYLIGHT to get some great pictures and see more of the city.  After all the fun to be had in one morning was up, we came home, showered, and dressed for GAGA.  Now for those that know me, are aware that Lady gaga isn't very high on my music play list....BUT GAGA was AMAZING!!!  Us, being two of the very few Americans in the crowd were two of about 5 people that dressed up for the concert.  We're Americans, it's in our DNA to dress up at any chance we can :)  After the concert we went to what I can only imagine to be the ONLY gay club in commie Hungary and met the most amazing tranny I have ever seen in my whole life.  She was about 6'6" and was wearing 5 inch heels, a home made GAGA outfit with mask and all and was absolutely glorious in all of her wonder.  Obviously we quickly made friends with her, grabbed a drink, and started getting down on the dance floor.  When we showed up to the bar we were no joke the only two people on the dance floor.  When we left, we had our very own groupies, people buying us drinks, and a dance floor packed wall to wall.  You're welcome Budapest :)  James and I were discussing the idea of me moving to Budapest with him next year but I have to say, if we created that much chaos in one night I'm not sure if Budapest could handle the 2 of us tehre together for a whole year.  It could either be epic or fatal...or both.  All in all we had SUCH an amazing time together in a pretty kick ass city but I'd be lying if I didn't say that I wasn't ready to come back to the sunshine and smiling faces of Madrid.  I love it here, have I mentioned that yet? Oh, I did?? Okay, just making sure :)  I'm wicked impressed with ourselves tho, not many people can say they went and saw a Lady GaGa concert...in Budapest.  Random? yes.  Glorious??  HELL YES!!  Life win.

ali took Madrid like a tornado made of teeth, fingernails, and booze

Ali and I at Retiro :)

Ohhhh man this life is going by faster than I can describe to you.  I thought I was doing okay keeping up with this but it turns out I was sadly mistaken!  Ali came into town like I've been waiting for and it was sooo fun!  She made me miss college, and lax, and our parties every weekend in Cori.  Man I miss that place, is that sad?!?  Yeah, a little, BUT I'm in Madrid having a wicked fun time so I guess things have a way of evening themselves out, right??  Well, Ali got here on a cold and rainy Friday night (literally the first bad weathered night since I've been in Madrid) and we cleaned her up and took her out dancing in Sol with some friends.  Needless to say we were on the verge of dying that night with the crazy good time we had and found ourselves stumbling into my door around 5AM, BUZZ going and all.  We slept in a bit the next day and took her and Kendall sight seeing around the city.  This is by far my favorite thing to do with guests because I get to see parts of the city I otherwise wouldn't see and it gives me the chance to fully appreciate all the beauty of this city :)  It's serisously amazing; I'm waiting for all you North Americaners to get out here!!!  That night we got dressed up and Ali and her friend went to a dinner with some of their friends and were going to meet us at my friends place later in the night.  When I say "dressed up" I mean it was halloween weekend and we wore our costumes out.  For all you people in the states, this doesn't seem odd at all.  To all the Madrilenyos out there, this is a very mind blowing thing for people over the age of 12.  We were the only people in the metro, streets, and apartments of Madrid dressed up and needless to say, the main event that evening.  We had a crazy good time at our friends house and before I knew it, it was 2 AM and there was no signs of Ali or her friend.  AWESOME.  My first official guests and I've lost them.  We came home and waited.  Nothing.  I must have fallen asleep and at 8AM the next morning our door bell was ringing.  Half expecting to see the policia to inform me of some horrific news about 2 crazy americans being obducted, I opened the door to find my two little girls (Ali and Kendall) dressed in their halloween costumes from the night before and ready for bed.  I guess they ended up getting a little more loco than anticipated and stayed at their friends' house.  That day was spent very lazily and we went out again that evening.  The next day was their last day here and we decided to do a picnic in Retiro (the picture above is from the picnic over looking the pond) with some of my Spanish friends.  After that we were feeling pretty good and recovered so we decided to meet some of my other friends out.  We found ourselves at a few bars, kept it low key and got home around 1AM.  Normally I'd say that was a pretty early night, except they had to leave my house by 6AM to catch their plane and I had to leave my house by 7AM to get to school on time for classes.  MAN I miss them soo much already!  I love my life here but it stinks to get a taste of what you're missing with your friends from home.  I'll survive but for the time being it still stings a little to not see them everyday!!  So the week flew by, like always, and we had some great fun in my classes learning the cha-cha slide (ooo yes, ladies and gents.  My spanish kids know the cha cha slide.  one of the more important aspects of American culture, in my opinion!) and writing short halloween stories.  It was also the last week of my first semester of grad school.  1/4 of my Masters is down, 3/4 to go, BABYYY!!!

Everyday is a start of something beautiful.

So today was just another day in paradise and my kids were great today.  Even the kids that have a hard time paying attention: GREAT.  I have decided that holidays aren't just around to give people an excuse to eat in excess and have parties, they are here to give teachers a reason to be excited for lesson planning.  My kids are eating up halloween classes like little american kids eat up nasty candy corn.  We have been singing and dancing and watching movies all week and they actually like it.  The kids that act too cool for school STILL were dancing the cha cha slide and singing the addams family theme song with me. HOLLA!!  It's a bit exhausting for me to always be a flaming ball of energy at school but I have come to the overwhelming conclusion that if I stay busy, the kids stay busy.  If I'm having fun, the kids are having fun.  If I am willing to act like a complete idiot, the kids are willing to act like complete idiots as well.  fan-freakin-tastic.  I have also just talked to an old roommate from Ireland and we have decided to have a reunion in Barcelona in a few weeks and i am soooooooo excited to see him!  I feel like it's been forever!  So, looking at my schedule, I am going to be a VERY busy bee all the way thru the new year.  Every day I leave my house around 7 or 8 depending on the day and come home around 10.  The weekends are the only times I really don't have things scheduled...until now.  This weekend crazy Ali Gibbs is coming for halloween so clearly I wont be getting any sleep for the next 3 days.  Next weekend I'll be visiting the dashing James Harrell III in Budapest, the following week I'm going to Barcelona with Brian, the following weekend is Thanksgiving.  That concludes November and starts crazy December.  The first weekend we'll be going ot Amsterdam and then heading down to Germany to celebrate my birthday, the following weekend I am taking the LSAT and the weekend after tha tis my last weekend in Madrid because the following Wednesday I'll be getting on a plane back to the good ol' USof A.  Holy crap, I'm a bit tugged out just thinking about it but I serisously can't wait for all the crazy escapades to come!  Not to mention all the amazing people I'll be meeting along the way.  After meeting people at random around the world I'm starting to realize that things aren't really random at all.  I think you meet everyone in your life to serve a purpose.  Maybe you don't know exactly what it is at first, but all things come back around.  So, like I said before, everyday is a start of something beautiful and I'm coming to the point now where I literally can't wait to wake up to start a new day.  gaaaahhhhhh I LOVE MY LIFE!!!

It finally happened. CRAZY metro ride

So, remember when I said I had a great weekend and on Monday, after a great day I predicted that this week was going to be nothing short of the bees' knees?? lies.  all poppycock nonsense.  I woke up yesterday with a MASSIVE cold and felt under the weather all day teaching.  I felt sooo bad for the kids, how are they supposed to be excited to learn when their teacher is being a huge crabby patty??  my bad.  So this morning is my waayyy early morning and I woke up feeling less than par and headed for the metro ride to school.  Everything was business as usual on the yellow line for exactly 2 stops.  And then it happened.  I felt a HUGE tug of my hair, whiplash, and then I was on my ass.  What. The. Heck.  After I realized I wasn't dreaming I looked over to see a man with a fist full of my hair siezing on the ground next to me.  I guess on the way down he reached out to try to catch himself and got a monster grip on my blonde locks.  He had an episode for about 3 minutes which seemed like about 4 lifetimes with my hair in a horrible death grip and NOBODY would help.  They all stepped about 2 steps back and watched as this man literally looked like he was dying and all i could do was hold his head so it wouldn't hit the ground and try to keep from freaking the F out.  He finally came to and sat up clearly not knowing where he was.  Someone eventually pulled the E-brake and we were able to get him off the metro and my hair was given back to the proper owner.  I was about 5 minutes late to class and told the teacher I work with all about it.  her response?? "yeah, it was the first time but it wont be the last, the metro is very unpredictable".  2 things with that statement caught my attention.  1-SHE WASN'T SURPRISED BY MY STORY!! like that shit happens every day or something. 2-her first sentence implied that someone will have an episode on the metro and pull me down by my hair again but her second sentence told me that the metro was unpredictable.  A bit of a contradiction, dontcha think???  Either way this morning was mad crazy.  HOWEVER, since it's the week of halloween I shared a bunch of pictures with them as well as songs and movie clips from halloween in the US.  I then taught them the monster mash and "casper" cha cha slide.  For today, I was more popular than the tooth fairy with these kids.  The bad thing?? they REALLY liked the cha cha slide, i have a feeling that today isn't the last time we'll be doing that one.  Clearly shot myself in the foot there.

it's a BEAUTIFUL day in the Barrio :D:D:D

Drink. It. Up, y'all!  It's officially fall and it feels soooo good!!  The leaves are turning, the buckeyes are falling and the temperature is finally bearable and I am loving every minute of it!  Not like I haven't been completely in love with my time here yet, but I do believe it just got a bit better.  Also, as a complete side note: when you look on my facebook and it says "my life couldn't get any better, i'm completely in love"  I am clearly talking about Spain, people!!  You all know me, and my incapability of actually being in love with someone outside the Flynn clan.  DOOIIIII!!  so sick of explaining to people that one to y'all... AAANNNYYYYwho...it's Halloween week at school and it's FANTASTIC!! i love halloween and I am soo lucky that my kids love it just as much.  We worked all day today on all things halloween and it really makes me want to go back to costume parties in Mrs. DiGrossi's 4th grade class.  I, however, am in charge and I will say, it's not as good but it's pretty flippin close :)  There really isn't a whole lot to talk about today, I surprising didn't get into too many shennanigans.  Woke up, went to work, had a fab day at school (like always!!) went to my private lesson I teach at Dunkin Donuts (YEESSS, i picked the location...jealous??) and then learned just a bit more in my spanish class this evening.  It is now 11pm, I still have a bit of planning to do and it looks like i'll be  hitting the sheets before Midnight. GAAHHH what a great Monday, people!  This is going to be a great week, I can already feel it. :)

Just livin. L-I-V-I-N.

6 bottles of wine, bottle of vodka, 40 of beer, and mixers.

So, this picture represents exactly what happens when Michael and I are in charge of going to the grocery store :)  What can I say??  I finally found someone who appreciates a good time just as much as I do and I couldn't be more pleased with my roomies.  I feel soo spoiled here and I must say: I am so fine with that.  I have amazing roommates, I'm meeting amazing people and everything just keeps falling into place.  Perrrrrrfect.  I think everyone that reads this can agree that I am happiest when I get what I want and lately I've been getting basically everything that I want.  Just a recap of the past week:  Started off great with a solid tumble down the metro stair at 7 AM monday morning.  AWESOME.  I saw the train there and started to step off the first step, completely stepped out of my shoe and BOOM BOOM BOOM.  Down I went.  I lost both my shoes BUT I didn't drop my computer so i'm going to call it a success.  After I collected, my shoes, dignity, and other belongings I caught the next train and had a great day at school.  Spanish class was great and we got drinks after again which has become a great little addition to the week.  It forces me to speak spanish and I get a little bit of relaxation after a crazy day.  Tuesday's classes were awesome and I presented my final project in one of the classes.  This is the official mark that I am one class down in my masters program, 7 to go!!  aaahhh time is flying.  it's soo insane to realize that I am already almost 2 months deep.  I feel like i just got here! way weird.  Wednesday is my longest day of the week, however it is also the fasted day of the week and classes were great, running very smooth.  I am seriously soo lucky that my students like me and the things I was doing with them.  I think all you people out there reading this that knew me in my high school days can verify that I wasn't the most desireable student and I am so lucky that my students don't try to pull half the shit I did when I was their age :)  Friday was great and I think after some talk, I may be doing this again for another year??  After classes I went back to another teacher's house and she helped me decide on a master's thesis project and cooked me dinner. yuuummmm I love spanish food.  love.  LOVE.  After that I rushed home, threw my soccer clothes on and met my team for a friday night game in our league.  You know I don't like tooting my own horn but...TOOT TOOT baby, I'm the only girl on my team and I was the only person that scored, helping us win 1-0. hooolllleeerrrrrrr!!!  Saturday was a little crazy and my roommate has a friend that is in the Army and is stationed in Germany and was here for the weekend so we met him and another guy from the Army out at another friends house.  We all went out together, things escalated quickly and we stumbled drunkenly into our door at about 5 AM.  Not a bad night out amigos, not a bad night at all.  I slept in/stayed in bed until about 4 this afternoon and then met a few people in Retiro for a quickly Sunday Funday beer in the park.  I know I keep telling everyone at home, but I really can't believe how great my life is with my work, friends, and crazy adventures.  I wish all of you could be here experiencing everything with me but I guess updating this as often as possible is as close as I can get to sharing everything with you.  i PROMISE to try to get with the program and blog more often!  promise :)  Love all you guys sooo much, can't wait to see everyone in December!  it'll be here well before you know it...

Tengo el mundo en mi clase de espanyol

Getting settled back into the fast pace of Madrid living is way easier than I thought and I still can’t believe how great things are here.  The only problem is that everything is going by so quickly!! I feel like I am just living someone else’s crazy dream and I’m just waiting for them to wake up and burst my spanish bubble.  But, in the mean time, I plan on enjoying this crazy time I call life.  I went for it and finally bought my ticket to Budapest and will be there for the first long weekend in November.  Seriously, I can’t wait to get some QT with my James :)  I’m seriously so excited for this weekend that I can barely stand it!  The only thing getting me by is knowing that time is flying and it will get here before I know it!!  I also was just informed that my crazy DFW (down for whatever) lax friend from college will be in Madrid with me for the weekend of Halloween.  AAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!  Before I know it we’ll be celebrating American Thanksgiving and then I’ll be sailing thru the skies on a plane home to be reconnected with my heart <3 in Ohio.  I feel like I should be writing a book on how amazing things are going right now but I wouldn’t be doing life justice because I wouldn’t be able to squeeze all my amazing memories into just one book!  Life is good ladies and fellas, life is reeeaaaallll good.  I’m slowly learning my way thru the spanish language and my classes are going pretty well.  I am the only girl in the class but it’s great because I have 5 guys in there with me from all over the world.  There guys are from Poland, England, South Korea, Italy, and a crazy Dutch guy from the Netherlands.  I say crazy because I mean he is soo freaking funny.  He has a house in Holland that he drives to every once in a while and we have already decided that I’ll be in attendance for the next road trip!  hahaha, he seriously has no idea what he is getting himself into but I’m sure we’ll have a good time.  On top of that our teacher is a Spanish guy (obviously!) so we represent 7 countries and you should hear our conversations we have with each other during our after class beers that we all get together in Sol.  If I could just work and go to Spanish classes I would have it so made over here.  I am not a huge fan of my masters classes only because they are about 1.5 hours away and they are 4.5 hours long so it’s about a 7.5 hour ordeal every Tuesday and Thursday after work that I have to go thru.  Such a long day!! But, who knows...maybe next year I’ll be over here just teaching and taking more spanish :)  Spanish is such a beautiful language and I’m getting to the point where I can understand most of it when I read it and when others talk to me but it is soooo frustrating that I can’t carry on conversations yet!  I’ve been here for about 5 weeks now, that should be enough time to become fluent, right?!?!  Clearly I got my dad’s patience...

Buckle up readers, this is going to be a long one...

Click to make it bigger :)

Ladies and gentlemen, i am sooo sorry to have dropped the ball so badly.  It turns out when you are teaching all day, taking spanish classes every Monday and Wednesday night, taking masters classes every Tuesday and Thursday night and planning for everything in between...you get a little busy!  BUT I am back from being MIA and I have some stories to share with you all :)  So teaching has been every bit as exhausting as I have mentioned in the past and fortunately just as enjoyable as well.  My kids are soo amazing and I love every minute with them.  They are such fast learners and I seriously can't believe how well they are adapting to classes in english with me.  Some kids are making huge efforts to be able to talk to me in english and I feel completely blessed to have the opportunity to work with them.  There have been some awkward situations along the way but I guess that is just how I roll, know what I'm sayin??  Like about a week ago I called a woman that I am friends with here and when she picked up I guess she thought it was her boyfriend (she is about 70) and picked up and greeted me with a very erotic "Hello sex kitten, prrr prrrr".  Well I went ahead and laughed about this with my father for quite a while and he left me a voicemail on my computer making fun of the situation.  When you leave a voicemail on my computer it goes directly to my itunes so I can play it later.  Well not thinking any thing of it I was teaching a lesson and was showing my kids a clip of a lacrosse game off my itunes so we could talk about it and after the clip was over my dad's voice mail comes on and thru the surround sound speakers in the class of my private catholic school was my dad's voice saying "hello sex kitten, prrrr prrrrrr".  Awesome.  Laughter ensued and they were all trying to figure out why I had lied to them about not having a boyfriend.  To try to fix the problem I said "no no guys, that wasn't my boyfriend...that was my dad."  Whoops, hello awkward, nice to see you again.  Or in my class with my 12 and 13 year olds they are learning how to describe people and the teacher for them told me how excited they were to share an activity with me.  I stood in front of the class and one boy raised his hand, stood up, and said to me "Brenna, you have very big breasts."  "Thanks, Javi" I said, "Sit down please."  The next boy raised his hand, stood up, and said "Brenna, you have nice shapely legs." "Wow, Nacho, thanks for noticing.  Um, I feel uncomfortable, I'm going to sit down now.  I suggest you do the same." was all I could manage to say.  After about 20 minutes of the kids describing me I realized that they were given the sheet from above and were told to describe me.  After I sat down the teacher that gave this to the students and told them it was a little innappropriate his response was "But Brenna, the kids love you.  You are very sexy, they were very excited to describe you."  Let me be the first to tell you that the spanish have no idea what is and what isn't appropriate and clearly I am in no position to tell them otherwise.  After a complete day of feeling judged and slightly violated I spent the next few hours in class, came home, made dinner and worked out a lesson plan for the rest of the week that didn't involve words like "breasts" and "shapely legs" and I have to tell you, I am pretty sure they can describe most people without embarassing them now.  A job well done, Flynn.  After another long and crazy week, this past weekend Christina and I ventured to the Netherlands for a quick vacation.  When I say quick I mean it flew by.  We met some nice people on the plane and a guy from Madrid that was going to the same place we were so we took the train from Eindhoven to Amsterdam with him and parted ways, making sure we had plans to meet back up and fly home together since we were on the sam flight back.  We met up with a friend of mine and his teammate in Amsterdam and took a quick tour of the city.  Of course this included the red light district.  I must confess that I was a little uncomfortable with all the gadgets and women on display.  Call me old fashioned, but not only did those contraptions on display make me uncomfortable, but I was unaware that sex included so many objects that needed to be plugged in and woman that stand in front of a window for everyone to see when they walked by.  V to the omit.  I didn't mind leaving that place.  After a huge dinner of dutch pancakes my friend took us back to his place in Leeuwarden and we stayed with him for the next two nights.  It was so amazing and we didn't even accomplish that much.  It's weird that I had to travel to another country just to relax a bit and get some quiet time in but it worked and I loved every minute of it.  Obviously there was some craziness and we didn't leave Holland without a few crazy times full of booze, preverted comments, and nudity but I can assure you that none of this nonesense involved me and I was actually a very responsible, law abiding citizen during our stay.  After a whirlwind of a visit, my friend drove us back into Amsterdam, we took the train to Eindhoven where we met up with our buddy from the plane and waited with him for our flight.  We arrived in Madrid in one peice and ready for a good nap so we followed our friend to the metro where we found out he lived about 5 minutes from us, parted ways with dos besos (2 kisses) and called it a day.  When we came home we climbed into bed and napped the rest of the day.  Since it is a national Holiday here in Spain we had off school and classes on Monday and today so I am finally back to the grind of making lesson plans for the week, finishing up my homework and hopefully going to bed early so I can start the chump world of working yet again early tomorrow morning.

Now I know why all my former teachers were bitter alcoholics...

AAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!  Sometimes you just need to scream, know what i’m sayin?!?  This week has been completely exhausting and yet I’m still as happy as a fat kid with chocolate.  A lot of chocolate.  Good chocolate, with caramel on the inside.  I love my job more and more every single day and even tho I have some students that are a bit difficult (you know, difficult like climbing mount everest in flip flops difficult) I still love them.  For example, I walked into class on Wednesday to be greeted with all of the students cheering that I was going to be teaching them that day.  On the blackboard they each wrote a personal note to me about loving me and wishing I was with them everyday and other nice welcoming words.  Perfect, right??  Then, five minutes into my lesson there was so much chaos and touching and kicking and screaming that I was wishing I had earmuffs and a BIIIIGGGGG bottle of wine.  These students are soo eager to learn and so likable and yet so frustrating and annoying that my head is on the verge of exploding every time I have them.  I remember back in the day that I was a less than desirable student (didn’t rise to my full potential, a complete handful, and an all around asshole at times to my teachers) and now all I want to do is go back in time and kick my own ass for all the hell I raised for my teachers.  Looking back at all of the side comments from my teachers like “oohh, I can’t wait for the weekend” or “I work to hard to get paid so little” and the other annoying comments they said that never made sense at the time, I must say that now is the time that I have never realized how true those statements are for the life of a school teacher.  By “ooh, I can’t wait for the weekend” I now realize they meant “I am counting down the seconds to the moment when I can quit being in charge of the lives of all these bundles of exhaustion and let down my hair, put on a hot dress and drown my stress with a cheap bottle of vodka and loud raunchy music in the discoteca”...you know, in so words.  I spend hours and hours trying to make power point presentations fun and exciting and in the first 2 minutes of showing the class I have to completely change it because they are not interested or don’t understand.  All that time lost.  I would say that it makes me want to pull my hair out.  BUT, to be honest with you, I am too fond of my hair to ever think of pulling it out and I actually liiiiikkkeeee thinking on my feet, being creative, and interacting with my students.  I feel like the more stressed I am the better I am at my job.  It makes me realize how much I care about them and what I am teaching them.  I makes me feel like I am really getting my hands dirty and changing lives out here.  And, maybe the most important, it makes me feel like they know how much I want to help them.  I actually feel like I have finally found my purpose for living at the moment.  I feel like I should be writing a letter to all my old teachers and thanking them for all the hours they spent to make me a better, more well rounded person.  In that letter I feel like maybe I should also write a little apology for sucking a few years off their lives from all the stress I caused them.  wwhhhoooooopppssss.  My bad, guys.  If I could do it over I would have been a better student but to be honest with you I am glad I acted the way I did because it has made me the person I am today.  And, I have decided that I like where I am and what I am doing.  It’s weird how all things come back around to you but I am really enjoying the ride and can’t imagine doing anything else with my life right now :)  If I could convince my family to move over here with me I would say that I would never go back to the states but, baby steps, maybe I’ll just convince them to visit first...

laxin it up

This weekend was GREAT and very well deserved.  I was soo busy all week with teaching class and being a student in class and all the commuting so it was soo nice to just relax this weekend.  Friday after classes I met all the roommates out for drinks at a wine bar near Christina's school.  Great wine and great tapas.  We then came back home and napped for an hour or so and decided we were going to trivia night :) We showered up, got dressed, had a few adult beverages here and set out for trivia at an english bar in the center of Madrid.  We playes really great and ended up beating about 10 teams to come in a solid third.  Although I ama  big fan of being the best, for a first outting i'll take top three.  After that we walked around downtown for a while and finally made it back home somewhere in the early AM.  Saturday I caught up on Dexter.  All day, DEXTER.  Holy moley I'm officially obesessed and I spent all day Saturday in bed watching TV.  It was so fantastic and we made a great lunch and great dinner to go with it.  Great success. Sunday I woke up late, worked on some lesson plans and then headed out to my first actually training session and practice with Team Madrid.  Lacrosse here isn't big so it wasn't a great shocker to see there were quite a few different levels of skill on this team.  We half the field with the men's team and the first hour was just conditioning.  The mean started to run and the ladies were just kind of goofing off.  I asked if I could join the men's team in training and I guess they thought I was joking so they said "yeah, go for it".  To their amazement I ran over to the guys and started their workouts.  Much more effective.  I have decided that I am going to train with them from now on.  I like the girls but it's a great challenge to keep up with these guys and I figure if I'm taking the effort to come out to these practices, I want to get the most out of it :)  Tomorrow when I have to walk to class and I'm tight as can be I might not be so proud of myself, but right now I feel pretty good about it.  there are a few americans on both the guys and girls' teams and I really like the players.  Our next tournament is looking like it's going to be in Munich, Germany so I'm SUPER freaking excited about that one!!  This eveing I'll be working on lesson plans for the week and hopefully hitting the sheets around 12.  Great weekend but I'm actually excite to get back to work and rock out some sick classes :)

Earned that white coat, son

I'm officially a TEACHER at Collegio Patricino de San Jose :)

I know, it looks rediculous.  However....all the teachers at my school wear these white lab coats all day long to class.  Today, they gave me mine.  I think it makes me look smart, I'll rock it for a couple weeks or so.  Today in class I showed all my students a power point I made about ohio and my life back home. Not gonna lie, it was hard to cram everything into just a 1 hour lecture, but I managed.  I showed them all these pictures of THE Ohio State University, the 'shoe, brutus, american football, and of course a few pictures of people spelling O-H-I-O.  This was a real crowd pleaser.  Now not only do I hear O-H!!  all day long, I now see the arm motions to go with it.  You're welcome, columbus...you're welcome.  My goal is to somehow convince the head master at my school to let me stream the OSU- M*ch*g@n (dirty word, I know) game for the kids to watch.  I think with a few more weeks of laying on that american charm I somehow have my kids will be front and center for the big day.  Now, to convince Gordon Gee to send over about 1000 OSU t-shirts.....  Anyway today's classes and my masters classes this evening went very well and I'm starting to finally get in the groove of having absolutely no down time until 10:45 every evening.  Somehow living in Madrid makes it all okay :)  Im telling you, I am run into the ground all day it was a bit crappy outside and even sprinkled this evening and I'm still all smiles.  There really is something magical about this city.

Oh, you're single???

So I was under the impression that, for the most part, the Spanish like to be very private about their personal life.  Apparently that doesn't mean they don't want to know everything about yours.  At the end of each first class with my students, I let them ask me any questions they wanted about myself or the US. They were very innocent questions about ever being to California or New York.  And they asked about my family and why I moved to Spain.  Finally, one of my 16 year old boys asked me if I had a boyfriend.  Before I could say that this was a personal kind of thing, another teacher looked at me and asked "yes! do you have a boyfriend??!!".  Awesome.  No, I said, no boyfriend here.  This lit the room on fire.  They went from shy kids who barely understood english to a bunch of rabid reporters.  "why don't you have a boyfriend?" "but you are so pretty" "how old are you? aren't you going to be married soon?"  "you should have a boyfriend, I know some older boys if you want help."  Now my class has turned into my very own dating service.  If this wasn't enough, they went ahead and told every single other teacher they have during the day as well as all of their friends.  By the end of the school day today I recieved at least 20 marriage proposals from my students, an offer to get "coffee" with a male teacher, AND one student even informed me that the leagal age of consent in Spain is 13.  I know, shocking.  He knew how to say "the legal age of consent in spain is 13" all in english.  I wasn't even mad.  As I left the building today, the girls students were screaming at me to meet their older brothers and the boys were shouting that they loved me and asking me to never leave them.  Spain just went from the greatest place ever to the most awkward place ever in about T-minus 2 seconds flat.

So much time and so little to do...

SSSIIIIIIIKKKKKKKEEEEEEEE!!!  Holy mayhem, Batman.  My Tuesdays are absolutely nuts!  I woke up at about 6:30 AM and finished getting my things ready for school.  I scarfed down a bowl of cereal and was out the door and ready to go.  I taught 5 back to back lectures.  I know, you are thinking "okay, 5.  That's not that bad."  Well, when you have to speak VERY slowly and clearly and repeat yourself about 100 times over and over and over and wlak around the class and be energetic and fun and smiling and helping the students for 5 consecutive hours, you get a bit exhausted.  Trust me!  I was finished at 2 and had to speed walk to the metro, switch trains, speed walk from the metro and walked into my apartment at 3:10.  I threw another bowl of cereal down the hatch and grabbed my things for masters classes.  We were out the door by 3:20 and back on the metro.  We arrived to class at 4:14 (class starts at 4) and didn't get out of classes until 9:00.  We then got BACK on the metro and headed home.  We finally got home near 10 and I started lesson planning for the next day.  I was going to show them a little more about myself so I made a powerpoint about ohio and about my family and luckily my mom was willing to take some pictures of the house for me and email them so I could use them in the power point.  Another crazy day down...

MAGNUM. I broke down and got one...

It's not my fault, today was really good but when you teach 5 lectures on a Monday running on 3.5 hours of sleep a double chocolate magnum is more than deserved for dessert :)  Today was really great, all my planning into the wee hours of the night last night paid off and my kids were (for the most part) all participating and even SMILING during my class.  We had some great discussions and aside from the few pain in the butt students, I was pleased with their attitudes.  It has to be hard for students to come into my class once a week when they are forced to speak spanish so I give them tons of credit and am so happy that they are accepting me and lsitening to what I have to say...even if they don't understand it all. I think they just like me because I don't give them homework or tests and all they have to do in my class is talk.  Either way, I like it!!  Got done and went to Dunkin (could be one of my greatest discoveries thus far in Spain)  and grabbed a coffee, chocolate donut, and went to work on lesson plans for tomorrow.  So far my greatest accomplishment here is getting all of the students to be Buckeyes.  The first day I told them that where I come from, it is custom to greet your friends with a loud and proud O-H!!! to which they must respond I-O!!!  Now, every time my students see me in the halls I'll hear a much appreciated O-H!! my response, as I smile in euphoria?? I-O!! as loud as I can!  Our next lesson will start with "We don't give a damn about the whole state of Michigan..."  Appropriate??  Does it matter??  haha just kidding, but seriously, we will be watching that game in class.

the life and times of an english teacher in spain...

Yes folks, that there is a slice of heaven in that picture.  I found it...what do i win?? free wifi and chocolate donuts paradise :)  Dunkin is in Madrid and it's fantastic.  This weekend went by so fast i literally didn't have time to keep you all posted.  Sorry for the delay, I know how you all live and breath for the blog.  ssiiiikkkee, but it's a nice thought! Friday was great, I only have to teach 2 1hour classes and one of the classes has a pretty good grasp on english.  The other one?  We'll call that my "special project" for the year.  After class I came home and slept for about 3 hours.  After waking from my slumber I hopped in the shower and started on the booze.  Cut me a little slack here guys, I had a VERY busy week.  I earned this, okay?  I went out with Michael and Kristina to their friends place, wine bottles in tote, and promptly arrived at 11 pm in the prostitute district.  Don't get me wrong, their friends' place was really great, but it was seriously in prostitute alley and the ladies of the night were out and ready for a friend.  After a few adult beverages we headed out to the bars in sol.  The walk was great, especially due to the fact that there are no open container laws in this great country.  We ended up getting lost and went into a few great places and ended at a wicked good walk thru pizza place. Fan-tas-tic.  The three of us (stanek, michael, and myself) walked home to our apartment, made some more food.  had another beverage and hit the sack :)  Saturday Michael peer pressured all of us to day drink all day and we played drinking games from the time we got up (1pm) to the time we went to bed (12am).  Michael had his first big boy soccer game sunday morning so stanek was whipped enough to go to that while i slept in.  When they got back I was informed that they won, Michael got a goal...and a black eye.  What a nerd, huh?!?  First game of the season and the silly american get's the black eye.  Sunday was super lazy until about 9pm when I finally was willed into doing lesson plans for the week to come.  Serisously, up to my eyeballs in colored paper, glue sticks, and markers.  Finally made enough name tags and activities for the first few days of the week for my lectures and called it a night at about 2AM.  Starting the week off with a bang...

Soy Unbelievable

Second day of teaching...already in love with it :)  I took a shower last night and discovered that if I take a shower the night before, I can sleep in an extra 20 minutes.  A-MAZ-ING.  Grabbed a bowl of cereal and was out the door by 7:55 this morning.  I normally have stomach aches in the morning if I grab a bowl of cereal on the go (refer to the melonera 10K fiasco for details) but I switched to Soy milk in my cereal and it’s fantastic.  It’s sweeter than skim milk and tastes a bit like vanilla.  Perfect for cereal.  So I got to my school today 20 minutes early (SURPRISE, I WAS EARLY!!!) and started saying hello and making spanish small talk with basically every single worker in the school.  I would just say all the other teachers but that would be a lie.  Having an American in such a big school causes quite a stir and they ALL want to know what I’m about.  The janitors, the cafeteria workers, the mail man, secretaries, EVERYBODY.  The fact that my spanish isn’t that great is just fantastic to them.  I think they all have a challenge going to see who can teach me the most Spanish.  I went into the break room to get a cup of coffee and I had 3 people jump to get my cup and say  “copa” and another 2 ran over to get the pot of coffee and show me how to put the leche (milk) and azucar (sugar) into the coffee like the spanish do.  People jumping to do things for me...I could reeeaaaallllyyyy get used to this : ).  I finally met with another teacher named Fatima, who showed me my schedule for the day.   5 1-hour classes with 35 to 45 students per class.  Okay, I think I can handle that.  Then I find out that I will be teaching these classes by myself.  Ridin solo, I’m feeling good about that so far.  Then I asked her what my curriculum looked like and I was hit with a bombshell: there is NO curriculum!  I waited for air to finally fill back in my lungs before I asked her what I was supposed to teach these students for the next 9 months and she replied: “Well, whatever you would like.  You are the new English conversation teacher so we don’t have any material for you.  Do whatever you would like with them.”  I’m sorry, come again?  Como?!?  I have groups of 45 13-18 year old students for one hour each with absolutely no curriculum.  After my legs regained the strength to hold me up I stood up, walked to my first class, and introduced myself.  By the end of the day--5 lectures later--- I decided I officially have the best job in the entire world.  Literally, WORLD.  I can play games with the students.  I can joke with the students.  You guys all know me, I can talk about anything to anybody in any situation for hours.  And now I found a job where I get paid to live in Spain to do just that.  I get to organize and lead group discussions or group games or group insanity for an hour each.  It’s going to be a lot of prep work and I am going to have to be EXTREMELY organized but I have decided that this is going to be the most exhausting, outstanding, frustrating, creative, irritating, rewarding, trying and absolutely wonder year of my life.  LET THE CHAOS BEGIIIINNNNNNNN!!!!

starting class and teaching...

first day of teaching. right outside my school's gates

Christina and I tried to get up early Tuesday to get some things accomplished before real life living in Spain started.  By 10:45 we were out the door and on our way to the bank to see what was up with our accounts.  We sorted everything out, got my ATM card activated, and everything is good to go, yo!  Seriously, if you saw my bank card, you would be jealous.  This is my first bank account that is ONLY mine.  no cosigning with a parent, no joint account with the rents.  all mine! weird, i feel like this has concreted the fact that I am on my own out here.  Feels nice...for now :)  After that we went to visit my boyfriend, the most beautiful man named Javier (Javi), to put some credit on our phones.  Javi is breath taking; don't worry, i'll be sure to take a picture of him at some point and share.  After I picked my chin up off the floor and wiped the drool from my chin we left the phone company and went to Sol so I could sign up for some Spanish classes.  I enrolled in a 12 week course so starting Sept 27th I'll be teaching everyday, going to master's classes Tuesday and Thursday nights, and going to spanish classes Monday and Wednesday nights.  Don't panic ladies and gents, I still have Friday and Saturday to get crunk!  After Sol we grabbed some quick grub and were off to classes.  Classes, other than being a bit looooooooooooong, were pretty good and I think this semester is going to go pretty well.  I'm excited to start things up and get the ball rollin, know what i'm sayin?! After a long day and realizing we need to be up early to teach in the morning, we decided to meet Nova Scotia out for drinks.  Not bad.  Got home around 2 AM, set my alarm for 6 AM and called it a night.  

I woke up this morning feeling fantastic (siiiiiiikkkeeee) and showered, grabbed some breakfast, and was off to the metro to get to my school. I arrived on time with the other American girl teaching at my school and started the morning in a closed door meeting with all the higher-ups for our school go over all of the important things we needed to know for our teaching positions (in spanish, of course).  Surprisingly I think I got all of it and went thru the day without being told that I was doind something wrong.  Either I understood my duties or they just let it all slide the first day, updates to come!  I actually taught a few lessons today which was a bit odd since I wasn't informed I would be doing this and had nothing prepared.  Luckily for me (and my class)  I always have SOMETHING to say and I got thru 4 lessons with out any down time or awkward pauses.  I'm like a local celeb at the school along with the other American because we are very different and all the kids want to know EVERYTHING about the U.S., aka California and New York City.  The fact that I have blonde hair is really just icing on the cake :)  I was really hoping that I would be teaching the younger kids but was informed today that I will be working with the older kids: 12-18 year olds.  Fantastic.  They are all taller than me and in most cases, much more developed.  However, I will say that I really enjoyed teaching them today and am excited to see how much English they know.  It was a really great day and it ended with me literally running into every single person I know in Madrid.  I felt like such a rockstar while I was walking home and making small talk with somebody on every corner of every block on the walk home.  Not gonna lie, today went out with a bbbbbaaaaaaaannnnnnngggggg.