Thurs, Sept 29

I got in my first Valenbisi accident this morning! It was raining and the roads were slick, when I was making a turn on a granite corner the bike slid out from under me and I landed hard on my leg.  Luckily there weren't too many people around and I hopped back on the bike and rode the remaining 20 mins to school.  No real damage was done, just a gash below my knee and a bruise is sure to form soon.  [I was just relieved I didn't run into another bike, which is something I've seen plenty of times at Michigan State, where bikes are everywhere!]  The valenbisi bikes are a great form of transportation but they literally weigh at least 50lbs, so when they go down, they go down hard!  Let's just say next time it rains I'll take the metro or bus to school.

Yesterday I went with a group of 6 other students from my university to meet with 2 professors at the University of Valencia for our internship in translation.  It was a pretty brief meeting but went very well.  We can either perform investigations and/or translate important articles to and from Spanish [mostly from Spanish to English since it will be easier for us to translate into our first language].  I'm very excited, as this was something I constantly do on my own, translating songs and poems, so I'm already comfortable with translation.  The internship only requires 3 hours of my time a week, so will be great experience that I can fit into my already crammed schedule.  I'm very excited to start this coming week.

Another extracurricular activity that I will fit into my horario [schedule] will be tutoring children in English.  Apparently mothers here are desperate to have US citizens tutor their children, play with them, and read books to them-- so that the children can learn to pronounce and listen to proper English.  One of the mothers contacted me yesterday and I'll be meeting up with her around 4pm [16.00 hours as they refer to it here] for an interview and hopefully I'll manage to get this (paid!!) job!  It would be really great to get paid for something that would be so simple for me.  I'm also attempting to make as many connections as I can while in Spain, because these will definitely be helpful in the future.

My intercambio, Carlota, invited me to join her and her friends for a night out on the town.  Since I don't have school tomorrow this is an offer I can't refuse and am excited to spend the night conversing in Spanish and meeting new spaniards.  I haven't gone out with many spaniards so far because everyone in my school group has mainly stuck together, so it will be nice to actually speak Spanish instead of English for the entire night.

The rest of my weekend plans are more low-key than my last couple of weekends.  After traveling to Sevilla last weekend and cramming every tourist attraction into 3 days I need to tone it down a bit and catch up on some sleep.  Además, I have 2 projects and 2 papers due in the coming week and plan to knock those out on Friday and Saturday during the days so I can enjoy my nights.  Most of my friends that live on my side of the city have the same general plan, so we'll probably all meet up at a Starbuck's or library here to work together and motivate each other.  [One thing that is VERY different from the US though is that no one really studies in Starbuck's here.  One more give away that we're Americans].

My madre whipped up some Valencian paella for our lunch [which we don't eat until 2:30pm!]

 ñam ñam! = nom nom

Besos, xo!