Fast Forward

I'm going to quicken the pace so I can catch y'all up!

Tuesday

I blogged until Spanish class. Without my siesta, Spanish seemed really long. We got a break half-way through and I splurged on some Cheetos and Nestea. Hooray for Americana. I also had been appointed by our coordinator to get the information necessary for Catholic to credit our Spanish class on our transcript. This made for an interesting encounter with English to Spanish translations of what a syllabus was and why I would need an agenda. After that was all resolved we just wanted to eat and sleep because of the late night before.

Before Spanish, Jessie had put chili on to simmer so it'd be ready when we got home so we could make Frito pie (yummm). It's a southern thing. You put Chili over Frito's and sprinkle with cheese. Its also delicious. All of Grande Via joined us for dinner and it was fun...even if it was a little cramped :) We're having over 20 people over for my birthday (less than a month!!!) so we have to figure it all out anyway.

Wednesday

Stacey and I worked on our studio work in the kitchen. The repairman came by to replace some dead bulbs, fix the shower, tighten the chair legs, and some other miscellaneous things that had come up since our arrival. He was very friendly and our brief Spanish conversation consisted of hello and goodbye. My Spanish is really improving....

We went sketching in studio and wandered around the city a bit. We went to this cool graveyard that has been built around with aerial pathways. It's an interesting approach to the plaza design.
We also did some dumpster diving from a store that had gone out of business. We salvaged some shelves for studio and some clothes hangers for our closets. Successful. After returning to studio we pinned up our first and second attempts at urban planning. Its going pretty good I suppose.

They made a cool pattern when they were all hung up.

Dinner was stirfry. Food is very important to us :)

Thursday

We went shopping because some of the girls wanted cute new outfits to wear out to the club in the evening. I got a ridiculous long shirt that I thought had a cool Spanish phrase on it. After trying it on again at home we discovered that it was English words broken for graphic presentation. Its still a fun shirt....I'm just a little slow sometimes. We also went to H&M, which is 4 stories tall and magnificent. I bought a fun scarf, a new wallet, and an electric blue purse. Right now everything is on super sale, so for all the ladies out there who'd appreciate it, the shopping is pretty damn good.

I got to studio 15 minutes before it begins and quick whipped together my materials for the day. We had desk crits about our work and I spent most of that time fiddling with my blog settings and uploading photos. We also cleaned the studio because we had guest teachers coming to socialize. A few other architecture programs from the states are also studying abroad, so interaction is cool. Plus we got to eat some food and drink Sangria. Can't complain about that. We all left pretty early because we had Stacey's friend Brendan, along with 3 of his friends, coming for dinner.

My classmate and some of the professors mingling.

Josh and I took over the kitchen and diced, simmered and garnished to our hearts content. We made a lemon facile, but with broccoli, asparagus, chicken, and tomatoes. I also made these little h'orderves of toasted baguette topped with spicy ham, sliced tomato, mozzarella, and oregano.

The cooks after a good meal!

After prepping most of the food, I took a break to dye Lindsey's hair. She wanted a very natural black. All the girls were getting ready and we had too many things going on at once. I had gone back to cooking the chicken, when all the lights went out. A few screams and then "My hairs going to burn off my scalp," from Lindsey because she had yet to rinse out the dye. A few days before, Grande Via was without electricity due to construction. While everyone fished out their cellphones to use as lighting, I stuck my head out the window to report that we were the only ones without electricity. We found the circuit breaker and got the power back on. We shut off unnecessary lights and stopped the dishwasher. Luckily this was all resolved quickly, so no major harm was inflicted.

The guys came over and everything was wonderful, except for our selection in wine. And we didn't convert Fahrenheit to Celsius correctly, resulting in a sunken in banana bread that was still the hit of the dinner. After dinner, the girls finished getting ready, Grande Via came over, and we piled into some taxi's to go down to the Port to do some clubbing. I love to dance so I had a fabulous night. I also befriended some Russian's who shared a love for vodka and 90's music. Again I was taken from the dance floor prematurely by my classmates and returned home.Our large "family"

Friday

Was an amazing adventure and I will update shortly!