Why is my life so great? You tell me :)

**So I realized after I wrote this whole post that a lot of it is in Spanish. Sorry about that! Google Translate is helpful most of the time.**

Today was such a great day! Here's why:

• I left on time for class so I didn't have to book it to the school.
• Our presentation about all the helado we've tried was great; followed by other fantastic themes like The Legend of Zelda, Powwow dances, How to Find a Novio on Study Abroad, and Milka Chocolate (complete with regalitos! I <3 Milka).

• Rastro (flea market) after class where I tasted the best melón (honeydew?) in my life. 
• I worked on the blog for the first time in over a week and published two whole posts. This makes 3 in one day!
• I woke myself up from a 10 minute siesta - with no alarm! This is kind of a big deal - momentous, if you will.
• I went into Madrid (surprise, surprise…we typically meet at the train station at 3:30pm to catch the 15:46 train to the Atocha station. It's been our routine for the past week and a half and I love it.) and finally got the zapatillas!!! I even had to talk to the man and ask him to go downstairs and get the sizes in the colors I wanted - I did it all by myself, very proficient-like. I love them so much! I've been geeking out about them all day. Now I can't wait to give Sam and Daddy theirs :)

• I had the best frozen yogurt of my life! It's a little shop called llaollao and let me just tell you, I will never be able to eat Yogurtland or Spoon It Up! the same ever again. Oh, and I want to buy honey when I get back to Utah and just drizzle it over every dessert I eat. Just sayin'. 

• I got on my first Madrid city bus and discovered the Biblioteca Nacional de España (kind of like the Library of Congress, I thnik) is closed on Mondays. But it is a beautifully majestic building just off Plaza de Colón  (as in Cristobal Colón or Christopher Columbus). I can't wait to go back and walk around inside.
• With the 30ish minutes we had before we needed to head back to Alcalá for la cena, we decided to drop by the stores across the street from the Prado where you can find lots of Toledo-made recuerdos and  Lladró (the other souvie I premeditated getting here after my parents brought home their Elena - a beautiful piece of porcelain from Valencia). Here is where I met my new best friend :) I've been looking at Lladró…well, since I got here…but more seriously on the past few trips into Madrid. I was oohing and ahhing at a few of the pieces when the store owner, a nice Spanish man in his 70s, greeted me and asked if I knew what I was looking for. I wasn't in a hurry to buy anything, but I figured I'd let him give me some schpiels and practice my Spanish. So I told him what I like (pastel colors, flowing hair and skirts, and flowers - it must have flowers) and that I want to buy something small because I am a student and don't have a lot of space. He recommended a few pieces and I liked his suggestions; they were ones I had been looking at. One of them was a young toredor that is only sold in Spain - he is precious :) From there, the conversation progressed to stories about the toredor and how the way he tips his hat means different things, more things I didn’t know about  La Corrida de Toros, dirty jokes about the costume, how they actually make the figurines, and how he has learned a significant amount of English simply by talking to tourist customers. I think he liked me because he ended up giving me a book about the behind-the-scenes process of making Lladró. Since I wasn't ready to buy today, I told him I'd like to come back later. He offered me his card and said he would also give me a 'good price', whatever that means. I'm still going to shop around before I make my final decision of which piece I want, but I will definitely be going back to that store. I loved that guy! Honestly, that may have been my favorite shopping experience so far.

All in all, a marvelous day filled with great company, fantastic weather, and lots of success. Vale.

Success!

Yesterday, another great day in Spain. For starters, we did some group presentations in grammar class. One pair gave us 10 Uses for a Pañelo (scarf) including a toy for your cat (complete with demonstration!), a 'smacker' for when you're mad at your roommate, a sling for when you've 'smacked' your roommate's arm into a crippled mess, and more :) The other was a biography of Justin Bieber. Thanks to Brittney and Priscilla, I had Boyfriend in my head ALL DAY LONG. It got really old really fast, but I couldn't make it go away! Swaggy.

We finished a Madrid highlights walk - a great accomplishment. It's taken us all over the city for the past three days (some major sites and some others that I never would have thought to go see - some cool and some cooler) and taught us a bunch about cools puertas (ancient gates to the city), places like the old train station, cathedrals with crypts, the royal palace, gardens, plazas, a rope-swing jungle gym where I got a sick from flipping upside-down so many times (I think the fluid in my inner ear is thickening with my progressing age, oh no!), and more.

I found the shoes!!! Daddy got slippers here while on his mission. Wait, back story. My father always, ALWAYS wears shoes. All through my childhood he would get home from work and swap his dress shoes for sneakers. Then his curious children would ask where he was going. He was never actually going anywhere, just putting shoes on. This happened every day. But we never seemed to remember from one day to the next. Crazy kids. The only exception to this ritual was Saturdays or cozy evenings when he would wear his red plaid slippers, his Spanish work boots. I love the huge impression those shoes have made in my mind! He loved them so much he wore them out - a dark day for my childhood memories. Years later, his mission companion went back to Spain and got a new pair to send to my dad - yay! So fast forward to 3 years ago, I'm in Spain for Spring Break and I am looking everywhere for those shoes I love so much - so I can be just like my Daddy. Finally, we found a whole huge window display of them, but guess what? It's stinkin' Father's Day and everything is closed! Nnnnnnnnooooooooooo..... So basically, I have been waiting years and years for these famous slippers. Since I've been in Spain, I've peeked in the window of every single zapatería I've seen (honestly, there's literally one on every corner of every street of every city we have visited in this whole danged country!) to the point of driving my friends crazy. But the search is over! In Madrid yesterday, I passed the zapatería that is going to end years of waiting. It was closed when we walked past but I'm going back ASAP. I am so happy!!

To top it all off, after a 1,5€ dinner of bread and fruit from the mercado (I love baguettes!!) and some girl bonding in the park, I spend the evening in the basement of a bar listening to a group of flamenco artists. (If I ever figure out how to upload my videos, I'll post what I recorded there.) It was the coolest little intimate setting! Picture the coffee shop from the TV show Friends, shrink it to fit typical Spanish quaintness, and fill it with 6 or 7 buddies sitting around, jamming on guitars and a cajón (the box with a hole in it that you sit on) and their hands (to clap). I was dying! My life is so picturesque I can't even believe this is for real. Vale?