Yay for a new baby group!

Just a few pictures from my walk last night :)

The new group is here! Which is causing me to have massive heart attack amounts of excitement. I made a dashing first impression on the bus yesterday, saying something along the lines of "HI! I AM MICHELLE! I have been here since September so I can like, show you are, ish or something."

The whole introducing myself thing never was my strong point in life. But on the bright side, I feel like a totally in the know kind of person... for example, today, I showed them where the beach and grocery is. Obviously I am very tuned into the most important things in life.

I was thinking about when I started my blog, and how I missed writing about the first few weeks. The whole point of my blog was to record my entire study abroad experience, but I got started a little late. There is something totally embarrassing about writing a blog... mostly cause all the things I think are important really are pretty trivial. So it took a bit to get the nerve to actually write one. But anyways, today, watching them all freak out and be terrified about how disorganized everything is put me right back at that "I hate this place what the HELL am I doing here" moments that I went through the first week. I spent so many hours wondering how anything could possibly run as poorly as it did, and stressing about every little uncontrolled detail. From the eating hours to the rain, and not to mention the classes... I was furious. Luckily this time around, I am the one who can tell them "Look, I know that right now it sucks. I know that you are pissed and hate it. But in two weeks, none of these things will matter. You aren't here for school; this is all the experience." If someone had said that to me, in October, I would have punched them in the face and been pretty sure I hated them. However, I think that combined with my knowledge of the basics like bars, patatas bravas and beaches, I was out of punching range.

The last group here was so out of my expectations; we had (in my opinion) two groups; granted this is bound to happen with a group that was bigger than this semester and I'll rephrase and say that I really enjoyed spending time with everyone, regardless of what I feel went on grouping wise. My main hobbies in life involve hiking, reading and eating as opposed to shopping and going out. This was, for further clarification, my main reason for choosing to come to Santander. Regardless of my personal ups and downs of last semester, it was sad to see the first group go. But seeing this new group is so exciting; they will have a new dynamic and I am so excited to see what changes this semester holds. I am hoping that because there are only 12 of them that we will all end up just as one friend group/precious little family that cuddles and eats together.

In traditional ISA style, I found out today that I will actually be coming home on April second, instead of the 11th. Leave it to Spain to forget to tell you things like that. My Spanish mom was so adorable though and told me that if I can't change my dates, I can just stay here with her. So we'll see :)

Anyway, I am going to spend some quality time stalking on Facebook now, and trying to email Julie Rabbitt about getting my ticket home changed. If you ever need a travel guru, she's a goddess. Just so you know.

Also, did you know that somewhere in Kansas 5,000 birds died and fell on the town on New Years after the fireworks? That's the kind of great knowledge you get reading whenparentstext.com.... proving, therefore, that it is educational and justifiable reading/a great way to spend hours of your time.

AND one more thing: to take up my siesta hours, I want to learn about one new topic each week. Things like how a hen can lay so many eggs so fast, all about whales, about politics and stuff. So if you have any suggestions about things that are interesting to you, I promise to research them and learn about them if you comment and tell me what I should learn about! Help curb my excessive Facebooking, please!