Justine is living in Spain!

Welcome all, thanks for visiting me.

While I'm living in Spain I decided I am going to blog. This way I can document my classes, my adventures & my thoughts, and the people who are curious about how I'm doing, or what I'm up to, can read it.

So far I have been here for two weeks, more or less, and to quickly catch up I will post the top 10 things - good & bad - important so far...

1. 6 days after I arrived my dad was put in intensive care because he passed out from internal bleeding (sigh.) But after his surgery, blood transfusion and my devoted mother by his side he's going to live...thankfully. (You better Dad!)

2. My Kings' Day present to myself (Dec. 6th) was a ticket to see the new Joaquin Cortes show in Madrid. It was great! In the middle of the show he picked a fight with a person in the audience...and the dancing was good too! Jajaja!

3. #3 is for my 3 best Spanish friends. Chusman showed me Toledo (his city IS a museum), Teresa celebrated Kings' Day with me & Borja introduced me to Las Grecas. Then they all drove me to Andalucia AGAIN and helped me find a place to live.

4. My new home is a tiny room that I share in an apartment with 3 other people, a dog & a cat. I'm super close to the main train station Santa Justa, 5 minutes from the old central part of the city where La Giralda is, and around the corner from me is a kebab place and Indian food - yeah!

5. Teresa is a journalist/broadcaster. She writes stories about Chernobyl orphans, she has a radio show every friday about bloggers, and she does live news reports from locations. She's super proud of me for starting a blog and said once my spanish is better she will interview me on her show - SHE DEDICATED A SONG TO ME ON FRIDAY! She and her boyfriend Albert are from Badajoz and I hope I get to visit it with them oneday.

6. Elena is Chusman's cousin. She's a student, she doesn't speak any English & she cooks a great pasta!!!

7. Dani is a musician. He's traveled around all over Spain, with his dog in his backpack, recording people. He's mostly a percussionist but he's lead guitar in our band. He and his girlfriend Maria are super cute and there are always musicians over at our place...like today I met someone name Paulo who was playing guitar & singing for us in our living room. Dani would love Show Me Your Hits.

8. My classes: an hour and a half class with Milagros Mengibar, she's old school sensuality. Then an hour and a half with Rafael Campallo, he's the reason I came to this school - modern & strong. And lastly another hour and a half of technique with Luisa Palicio whose specialty is the bata de cola (which I now need to buy.) Youtube all of them!!! My feet haven't stopped hurting & the more I learn the more I realize I need to learn. I'm keeping up well enough but my style is far behind the other students in my class - I missed a lot in the first 3 months. Anyways I love my classes. It's what I've always wanted to do: dance all day long, sleep and start again.

9. Every day after my 4 and a half hours of dancing I go to meet with my spanish tutor. She's a girl from my class and she's been helping me a lot. I thought about writing everything in spanish after english but this is already a lot of work. Pero, estoy practicando cada dia. Todos mis profesores hablan espanol solo asi estoy practicando todo el tiempo.

10. I did my first load of laundry today. I think it's a milestone. It signifies my new lifestyle that is fully in effect...don't you think. I'm staring at my wet clothes, while they hang to dry in my room, feeling very accomplished.

That's it - my first real blog. Hopefully they won't be so long next time and I'll add photos or videos and links and things.