How to make friends

Claudia and Paula :)

February.

Just some parenting videos in the club. Normal.

Of course by the time we all looked at the camera and the same time, they weren't smiling.

The original printing press at the Santander newspaper.

Gecko!!!

Last night Tete's granddaughters were over. Claudia is three ish and Paula is four ish, and thanks to my abundant supply of toys for Maria, I am the new popular girl in the house. I spent last night playing a card memory game with them while waiting to go out. The issue with going out in Spain is that if you arrive before 11:30 it is obvious that you are not Spanish. And by the time we go out, I am ready to be asleep. Okay lie: by the time it is nine pm I am ready to go to bed. But I make a valiant effort to be Spanish.

When we did go out, we went to an "erasmus" party, which is the international student organization that we aren't actually a part of but crashed their party anyway. The only issue is that everyone already knew each other and there were like 32 American students all from the same school in the States. So we ended up sitting in a corner wondering how to make friends. Unfortunately, I hadn't brought my Belle doll or plastic animals so that option was out. In the other corner were two friendless boys with a friendless girl. This resulted in our watching the parenting show that was for some reason being played in the club. You never know when you will need some tips on how to show your kid how to crack an egg or what veggies to eat. Or maybe it was a reminder of what you don't want to happen: show parenting shows as a subtle reminder of why you don't actually want to go home with that beer-goggle cute boy. After about thirty minutes of feeling like the coolest kids around, one of the friendless boys came over and asked if we were speaking English, and our little circle gained three which therefore means we have three friends now. Win.

Other than meeting a kid from Britain and obsessing over his accent, and aside from the daffodil that I picked at three in the morning when I walked home in true Theresa Cutter and Brittany Long late night flower robbery form, playing with the girls was the best part of my night. I now have a stellar collection of drawings in my school notebook of flowers and trees from Paula and was woken up at eight this morning by Claudia coming in my room and poking me, asking if I was awake. All the times that we jumped on Kristian when we were at his house in Denver telling him to wake up are coming back to haunt me, but in a good way. Today Tete is going to teach me to make paella, and I am going to limp around the house in an attempt to make my foot stop being a jerk and hurting. Which means that maybe a few things on my to-do list will get done.

But maybe I shall adventure outside in an attempt to find a hilarious story to tell you, although being groped by old women isn't exactly how I was planning on spending my year here. I mean, Spanish boys are one thing and heaven knows they don't know the "keep your hands to your self" phrase, but yesterday, it was taken to a whooole new level. Rawrrrrrr.

I am also going to add some pictures from the newspaper visiting field trip we went on yesterday. I don't have a super awesome story about the newspaper, aside from that when the huge fire happened for three days way back when, the paper continued to be published even though they were in the middle of the fire. Since beginning back in the time of the dinosaurs a hundred years ago, they have never missed a day of publishing. Which either means that they had a death wish involving burning to death or they are just very dedicated to publishing the striking news of Santander. Which on a good day will beat that of Steamboat, although the Record is yet to find a comically equal match. And I am going to include a picture of a gecko that I almost stepped on, because there was a GECKO outside in February. And a daffodil. Is this real life?