last weekend, my first full weekend in madrid since january, started out busy and ended with a day spent mostly in bed.

friday night and most of saturday were spent at the church retreat, which, it turns out, was for all high school and university students, not just the girls. we met at a mall (who knew spain had malls?) and hung out for a while, waiting for other people to arrive. we were supposed to be there at 7, i was 20 minutes late because i went to my usual metro stop instead of the one north of me, and we didn't even start bowling until i'd been there for about an hour. good ol' spain :)
it was a really fun group - liz, kathryn, and april, the americans, julia from london, quini (real name: joaquin) and jd (jose david) from madrid, marcio from brazil, mathias from sweden, plus a bunch of new people... the diversity here is really entertaining

as was trying to explain to julia what a biscuit is in the US... in england/most of europe, biscuit=cookie. they don't have any of those fantastic southern biscuits like what we know. oh, and that night i tried to explain about a&M and all our traditions... they now think we're crazy. oh, the joys of sharing cultures

but i digress. anyway, we bowled... i was terrible, as usual, but i kind of like it. it would suck to be good at that and have to worry about how well i was doing. at about 1030 when we were done bowling, we headed down to the food court for dinner. yes, at 1030. pm. most people opted for mcdonalds, i took the cien montaditos route for bocadillos (baby sandwiches). mmm almonds, cheese, and chicken.
then the 7 of us college-age girls headed off to the house where we were to spend the night... which turned out to belong to jan, the missionary who had pointed me to immanuel baptist in the first place! small world, though i guess it's pretty easy to have that happen when you go to a tiny church. we had Bible study, snacked, stayed up until 4 am talking... the usual. then woke up at 9 am to a fantastic breakfast prepared by jan (i had banana nut bread!!!!!! yes, it warrants that many exclamation points), more Bible study, and headed off to the church an hour late to do some cleaning. alessandra (originally from guatemala, lived in madrid for 5 years, goes to uc3 too!) and i wound up cleaning kids' toys... a fantastically tedious job, but we got it done thanks to help from kathryn, april, and the boys before they got distracted by coloring. ate lunch (no-bake cookies! no, that wasn't all we ate, but it was definitely the best part), sat around talking/goofing off/giving massages, and went home.

saturday night i headed over to marcio's apartment because that's where they were all headed for the evening... liz, julia, quini, jd, and marcio were there when i arrived, april showed up later. we sat around, ate the spaghetti and hot dogs that marcio so lovingly prepared, tried to decide on a movie to watch, and ended up just sitting around, talking and watching youtube. i love youtube.

also saturday night, i was introduced to frenadol - the most disgusting thing i have ever ingested. ever. ever ever ever. it's the popular cold medicine here... a citrus-y smelling POWDER that you dissolve in water and drink. awful awful awful horrible. jd made me take some because i was feeling sick (more on that in a second) and it did make me feel better, but good gracious, how have these people not figured out pills yet? i mean, really? pills, people! i've learned that it's best to take it in just 1/3 of a glass of water, though... it's more concentrated, but it doesn't take as long to drink it all

but yeah, the sickie thing. friday night at jan's house, i started getting a sore throat, and when i woke up on saturday, i barely had a voice. i was a bit headache-y and icky feeling, but pretty much just ignored it. that continued through saturday night, and when i woke up sunday, i felt so gross i skipped church. considering that was 1 of about 5 times i'll be able to go to church while i'm here, that's saying something. finally dragged myself out of bed at about noon, achey all over, feverish, sore throat... bought some frenadol, and spent the day at home. the stuff is disgusting but it works, i'm almost all better... though i'm way more congested than i can ever remember being in my life. guess that's just the last step in the frenadol process, or something.

everyone has seemed to get sick at the same time, too, it's weird... my school friends, other church friends, friends of random people i've met. i think it has a lot to do with the weather, which has been super crappy this week. last week it was allllllmost warm enough to discard my peacoat, but this week has been cold and rainy. today it was ridiculously windy, too, so the little courtyard outside my window keeps catching gusts and making howling noises. this weekend is supposed to warm up by like 15 degrees and get sunny, though, so here's hoping.

school here has actually proven to be more stressful than school at home. believe it or not, i'm as anxious/unsure about all my classes here as i was about taking finance 341 honors last fall - though for different reasons. this stuff isn't necessarily difficult (except that math in economics - geez), it's more that even my profs that 'speak english' really don't speak english, the deadlines for things are either not mentioned until the last minute or completely disregarded (might seem like a good thing, but it's not. i like structure in my courses... how else will i know how i'm being evaluated?), assignments pop up out of nowhere when we were only supposed to have a paper and a final in the whole class. case in point: economics of european integration. we're told at the beginning that we will have 1 paper and a final as our grades in the class. in the last week they've added in another paper, a quiz, and a debate, all due in the next couple of weeks. i'm scared to miss class because who knows what new assignment might strike their fancy that day, and i'll never know about it until it's too late. i'm reallllly looking forward to being back in class in texas, that's for sure

well, i've wasted quite a lot of time today as i'm avoiding writing my surprise econ paper, but i should probably get to that. meh.