Celebrity endorsements in Spain

LET'S PLAY!

Can you name all the celebrities I've found advertising here?

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Por fin yo empezaba

Today was my 1st day of classes. Javier's dance is crazy fast which makes it crazy complicated - AND IT'S A SOLEA! They're suppose to be the slower dance...ay yay yay. Well, after my 1st day my knee hurts, my ankle hurts and my head even feels a little stressed - but great 1st day! It's just my everything is tired : ) I'm pooped.

Not happening

I missed my bus...arg.

So I guess tomorrow will be the day. Meantime, I'll go enjoy a class with Ramón Martínez.

I will meet Javier Barón today

I'm off to my 1st class of the new trimester and I will meet my new teacher Javier Barón. I had to miss two weeks and a day; for different reasons - my knee/my ankle, my sister and then two overnight guests from Granada I enjoyed too much. So today is the day! I spent both Saturday and Sunday learning the choreographies that I've missed. So hopefully I won't be very far behind the rest of the class. I think I'll be good - other than whatever they learned yesterday - wish me luck!

My Mathilde!

My best friend from the last school year

is visiting from her homeland of Holland

and I'm thrilled to see her!

I think Chel (her boyfriend) is happy about it too (heehee).

I wish we could keep her.

Verity's Visit

Verity with pan con tomate

Me with a flamenco dancer sculpture...I forget who

Jos, VT, Me & Roser

We kicked around the fútbol & Verity did her running

Then the rain poured down & we got caught!

My new Naranjito jacket - WORLD CUP 82 in Spain!

Still stuck in the rain...

Verity fell in love with the orange dress

So she modeled it

I found one I liked too

We picked these for Dylan & Charlie - look at the shoes!

The must-take photo with La Giralda

Verity in my street

Verity with my photo at La Carboneria

Ms. Grover with Mr. Hudson at the Kitchy-ist bar in Sevilla.

We made friends with a musician I've always liked, Ben Hudson.

A GREAT GUY & SUPER TALENTED.

Here's the video for a song he did with Jay Z: JayZandMrHudsonVideo

And lastly, Verity gets to see the Eiffel Bridge & the Eiffel Tower in one week.

Thanks for my new camera Dad!

Our precious time

Oh how I valued my time with Verity.

She left today and she's left me feeling renewed.

I heart my sister.

ARG!

I meant "Hogar Dulce Hogar" - oops.

Verity is with me!

Dulce hogar dulce

My new apartment finally feels like a home.

I even have an american-style coffee maker!

My front door is a little crazy but there is a heart on it.

I painted more lunares de los colores del rainbow today at my new house!

Lunares

Polka dots are everywhere in Sevilla, and every flamenco dancer has some polka dots in a costume. Polka dots are just circles, which represent the womb, which represent the woman - which represents ME! Maybe it's a stretch but I don't care - I love them. And polka dots in spanish are called 'lunares', which literally could mean 'moons' - which I think is so cute.

Well, these days, I love painting lunares!

(And I have always loved rainbow colors.)

And ORANGES have become a theme of mine.

Of course my oranges look like lunares.

Here's my California orange tree...

and my Spanish orange tree.

Superstars in the streets

Yesterday, on my way home from dinner with a friend, I saw Isabel Bayón in the street, so I stopped her and said "hola profesora". She gave me kisses and I introduced my friend, we talked about my knee and how her show went. It was like we were friends! I'd had a conversation with her once before in the street, outside of our class. She had a Trader Joe's bag so I of course was curious if there could be one in Sevilla. There isn't but we had a nice chat about where she got it. She's super cool and so nice. When my friend and I walked away my friend said to me, "You just introduced me to Isabel Bayón!" Hahaha! Once I ran into Ruben Olmo walking his dogs - that was great too! Oh, also Ramon Martinez got off his bike to say hello and give kisses to Emily & I when I yelled "hola profesor" to him as he was riding by. Sevillan streets can be so fun. It's one of the best ways for me to practice my spanish too. I hope I run into someone cool when Verity is with me IN ONLY 3 MORE DAYS!

Oct. 4th

School at Cristina Heeren started today but I didn't go. My knee hurts too much. Since my surgery in 1992 my knee has never hurt. So for there to be this amount of pain in it really scares me. Verity says to stay off of it or it will never heal, Suzanne has given me stuff to do to take care of it, and Josh's mom has given me a creme to rub on it regularly. I'm hoping by next week it will be good as new. I'll probably go to class tomorrow but just to sit and watch. Ay carumba. I was off of it too long during the summer and then, when I started classes up again in September, I pushed too hard...oops.

Photos from California in September

Mi familia, incluido mi pero, y amigas!

Mis hermanitas

Aurora, Bj, VT & Neys

Un foto bonito de Roland

La nueva novia de Roland y VT & Sarah, en la cocina de mi pasado

Un foto de mi padre

Tia Renata a la exposición de Gerome - un favorito de mi familia

Niña segunda - las niñas tienen muchas carteles en su cuarto ahora

Niña primera - muy bonita

Dylan's 1st day of school!

Mi madre y mi primo de mi padre

Mi padre es un artisto

Yo se porque mi padre le gusta este

La primer cumpleaños de Jace

Trabajo duro
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Las memorias

Mi perro y mi nieta

Reflections

The end of September closes my 9th month here in Spain. Now that the majority of my time here has passed I've been doing some reflecting.

Coming to Spain and studying here has been fun but harder than I expected. I always try to be positive like thinking that progress is inevitable as long as I keep making an effort, and I have and I'll continue to keep on trying, but the truth is it has been difficult...and progress, I feel, has been really slow for me.

I thought I was a strong dancer when I left California but I've sort of had to start learning everything all over again. And now I feel like my dancing is really sloppy. I realized this in my 1st three months here that my technique and my style needed a lot of cleaning up - and changing old bad habits can be a struggle. Sometimes I'm not sure if I'm doing things the new way or the old way. I'm not sure my improvement is even noticeable yet. I'm not down-in-the-dumps or anything, I've definitely fixed some things - like my turns/my footwork technique - but I feel like I'm at the beginning stages of learning again and the road ahead seems so long.

As for learning a new language, this has been even harder. I also came up against something in the process I hadn't expected; the fact that my identity is so attached to my ability to communicate. I'm a people-person and without my ability to talk freely, like my jokes and my tidbits of information, I didn't feel like me. My identity, what I like about myself and what I want to share with others, doesn't come across without being able to speak the same language. I like making connections with people, I like exchanging ideas, but without being able to speak spanish here, those things got sort of lost. Which is how I felt most of the time here. So I would always default back to English, the language I was most comfortable with. And now I'm left with only 3 months left and I still feel my ability to speak spanish is not as good as I had hoped it would be.

My self confidence and my ability to push myself in uncomfortable situations has really been tested while I've been here. For some reason, when I thought of myself living in Spain before I left, I didn't imagine it would be like this. I didn't expect that it would shake me up inside so much. I imagined that I would grow and leave Spain after a year feeling really confident. But instead I think I've been humbled. But that's growing too - it's just different than what I expected a year ago when I started my planning.

Officially only 3 months left until I return home, and I have a lot of work to do.