What? It's already March 20th?

Apparently so! But it's so hard to believe!

We have now been with our host family for almost three weeks, and we have quickly settled in and come to feel, once again, like we are at home. It was easy to love right away--we have our own bathroom, we are a lot closer to the center of town, and there is internet! But even after our great first impressions, we've come to realize the other great things about living here--the excellent cooking, watching the news during dinner and discussing important topics, and Edita and Julio's wonderful sense of humor and the genuine interest they take in our conversations with them. We decided pretty quickly that we were content staying here for the rest of the semester!

Nicar had his surgery two weeks ago, a week later than originally scheduled, and is now recovering at home. We visited them about a week ago and he was still in a fair amount of pain, but was at least finally out of a hospital bed. They had a doctor's appointment yesterday in order to find out what type of therapy or rehabilitation he will be having. We are very glad that he's finally at home and that the whole ordeal is close to being over with for them! We will be staying here with Edita and Julio for the rest of the semester, as it was a lot of work to move only one time! Plus, we will both be traveling every single weekend between now and the second week of May! We will continue to visit them, of course, and will miss them just as we'll miss this family when we go back to the US.

My spring break started last Friday, and while all of my friends took off right away, I have been in Valladolid all week. I went to some Holy Week processions with my host parents, slept a lot, walked around the city and explored, and really just relaxed and took it easy.

Today is a day of packing and cleaning, as tomorrow morning at 6:30 I will get on a bus and head to Madrid, and from there, to Italy! In Madrid I will be meeting Jody Krieg and a group of students from Wausau East--I am SO excited to see some familiar faces! I will spend the day with them and spend the night in Madrid, and then meet my friend Katie at the airport to catch our flight to Rome early Saturday morning. We will be in Rome until Monday when we will go to Florence, and then to Pisa and Cinque Terre, and then to Milan. From Milan we will fly to Barcelona where we will finish out our trip, returning to Valladolid via a 10 hour bus ride on the 30th. Ay! It will be busy, but hopefully, HOPEFULLY everything goes as planned and we will arrive back in 9 days with awesome pictures and all of our belongings still with us!

I will go to school for three days the week after that, and then on Thursday the 3rd I will be on a plane once more with my friend Ashley, on our way to Ireland! My host mom just laughed and rolled her eyes when I told her how soon I'd be leaving again! ;) But I can't wait.

Well, I have a lot of packing to do, but I thought I'd update after much too long to let everyone know what I'm up to.

Hasta luego! And Happy Easter! ;)