When Justin came to visit

Random stuff since the last time I wrote

-I started teaching my first high school class. Since it was the first one it was all getting to know the students and whatnot. There were 7 of them and they were really quiet. But I really like them. I think they’ll be fun; I just have to get them to talk more. I have a feeling I’m going to enjoy these classes more than with the little ones. However, now my schedule is even more ridiculously busy.

On Thursday the 3rd my cousin Justin came to visit. I got to get up nice and early and take the 5 am bus to pick him up at the airport. We couchsurfed in Madrid for the weekend, meaning we slept on a strangers couch. Haha. It’s this network I heard about and had always wanted to try it and figured the best time to try it would be with Justin around and it’s totally legit. Our host Luis and his girlfriend were awesome. Super sweet people. I toured Justin around to all the main sights. We walked around everywhere. Literally. I discovered I know my way around the city a lot more than I had thought. And I finally got to take advantage of Rebajas (Spain’s sale season) and do some shopping.

On Saturday we went on a day trip to Segovia, which was one of the cities on my list of places I didn’t want to leave Spain without seeing. And it was beautiful and charming and even a little bit more so than I had hoped. I absolutely fell in love with the city. It has Roman aqueducts from like the 1st or 2nd century, for goodness sake! I think we covered that whole city by foot too. For dinner, back in Madrid, I took Justin to Casa Mingo, the place with the best chicken I’ve ever consumed. I like it so much so that I ate a whole chicken by myself. Yes, that’s right folks. A whole chicken.


On Sunday I woke up not feeling so great. I blame it on the chicken. Not the fact that I ate a whole one (I swear I’ve eaten more than that in one sitting before) but on the meat or something. But I sucked it up, not wanting Justin to miss out on the experience of Retiro, the huge outdoor market. I ended up throwing up in the metro station on our way home. Luckily I was prepared. But because of that, our plans to go to Toledo were changed and Monday was spent with me on the couch all day except for a short tour around Quintanar.

Tuesday- I felt completely better. After school, Esther took us to Campo de Criptana, a town close by that has the windmills that are famously linked with Don Quixote. On the way back we stopped in Toboso so see the house museum of Dulcinea. It was all pretty cool. And in the evening, I even convinced Justin to go on a 5 mile run.

Wednesday- Justin got to come to school with me for a bit and see part of my hectic schedule, although I did cancel one thing. My 4th graders loved him- like all the girls thought he was cute and all the boys thought he was great because he could dunk a basketball. My kids in the afternoon loved him as well and they behaved super well so he didn’t get to see the bad side of them. Haha. He also got to meet Manuel and Ana- we went over for dinner and he loved them as well because they all made a point to use as much English as possible.

Thursday- we squeezed in our trip to Toledo, we just had to leave on the 6.30am bus. But I like Toledo a lot and figured it was one city he shouldn’t miss out on since it’s so close and so pretty. I got to explore a few things I’ve never seen before either so that was cool. In the evening after my classes, we had dinner with the whole crew- Miguel Angel, Celia, Pilar, Lourdes, Bea and others. It was a lot of fun and they made sure to have a lot of typical Spanish food for Justin to try.

Friday- we caught another early bus to Madrid and I dropped Justin off at the airport. I had a lot of fun with him and was glad he got to come visit and see part of my life over here. Finally someone took me up on my offer! After dropping him off I went back to the bus station and met up with Alisa, an Australian girl from my program that’s teaching in Madrid. We met on Facebook and had talked about traveling together so it finally worked out for us to do just that. So we caught a bus to Salamanca together. And luckily, we got along great. She’s a super sweet girl and I had a lot of fun traveling with her.

Salamanca is quite beautiful. Smaller than I had thought cuz I think we saw like everything from the outside on the first day, but saved touring some things for Saturday. And I ran into Tomas and Alex (Eddie’s friends that had visited us the other week) so that was funny. Later we ran into 3 other auxiliares that Alisa knew and so we went out for dinner with them and that was fun. It was refreshing hanging out with a group of girls again. It was actually a really relaxing weekend. Since neither of us were feeling fabulous, we rested and slept as much as we could, while still being able to see things. And eat ice cream every day. I think Alisa and I will try to travel together again, one of us just has to become a little more decisive so we don’t struggle to decide on a place to eat. Speaking of eating, she took me to a Japanese restaurant and I learned to kinda use chopsticks. I even managed to eat rice with them. but yeah, it was a really nice weekend. And now I have another city to check off my list :)