Last Day with Miss Paula

Hola Amigos,

Today is my last day staying with Paula and Sonia.  Tomorrow I will move in to my new apartment with my host family.  I am super nervous, but excited too.  And I know I will see Paula and Sonia plenty during my stay in Spain.

This morning we got a late start, not heading out til a bit after noon.  We went to El Rastro (flea market), which was super cool!  So much to see, so many people, very pleasing to the eye, etc.  After walking around for a while, we met up with a couple friends of Sonia's on a terrace to chat.  We decided we weren't up to going to the other park we had planned to visit today...we'll save that for another day.  Instead, we ate lunch and now are relaxing for a while, meaning that it will probably be a lazy evening at home.  I will of course go to Mass - there's a church very close to the metro stop around here (meaning that I've seen it as we were walking) that has a late-evening mass for me to attend.


Here are some photos of our excursion:

 One kiosk/tent/whatever you want to call it...they were everywhere!

 You can see some of the tents in this photo...but there were waaayyyy  more than you can see here and many more people than it looks like too.

 Sonia and her friends

If the dog stood on it's hind legs, it would be bigger than Sonia!

**Addition:  So...Paula drew me a map and I headed alone to mass, my first time out and about alone. But we had walked past the church before, so I had an idea where it was.  When I got there, I realized they were in the middle of a rosary (in Spanish of course).  So I began responding to the prayers.  When the rosary was finished, they began saying other prayers.  It took me a few moments to realize that they were saying "_____, pray for us" over and over.  Again, I began to respond.  All of a sudden, my mouth dropped open and I got chills as I recognized the prayers...they were saying prayers from a prayer card that my grandparents said every Saturday night immediately following the rosary.  I had never heard those exact same prayers said outside of my family!  It was like God's peace washed over me and I immediately felt at home there. *Shout out to my CLC...that was totally a moment closest :)

The rest of Mass was pretty good...but I only recognized the Gospel and could not understand the homily.  It was all in Spanish and they spoke so fast that it was hard to listen.  I kept zoning out and having to remember that I had to make my brain comprehend what was being said.  Other than that, I could follow along pretty well with my little kid Spanish mass book!  Very handy for the responses!  It was comforting to be back in a church.

Then tomorrow morning bright and early I will move into my new apartment and meet my host senora and roommates.  I don't know what I'll do the rest of the day - maybe go buy a few things I need, Paula and I are talking about possibly meeting up in the afternoon...we'll see what happens.

I still cannot believe that this is already my 5th day in Spain!  Time flies when you're having fun with friends! This is better than I could have imagined so far.  And I'm learning a lot!

Peace and Blessings,
Melanie

Spanish Word of the Day: misa = mass :)