THE TEST (one busy week).

I have to be honest and preface this entry with a boring warning. Hah. It has been a busy week, but not a very exciting one.

Last Thursday, some of the students in my program and I went a large police station (kind of downtown) to apply for our residency cards! The station sat just behind this ancient prison, which was surprisingly pretty. The police station itself was an eery reminder of the California DMV, a.k.a. my hell. Thankfully, one of our directors, María Jose met us there to walk us through it. Everyone was super rude and grumpy, as most of the goings-on there were traffic-related, or had to do with citizenship, etc.

The worst part of it? All we needed to bring was our passports, and some simple documents María Jose brought for us. I did not, i repeat, DID NOT need that stupid Apostille of Hague I drove all over Southern California to get! Yes, the Spanish Consulate in the U.S. stamped it and kept a copy, but the big deal was that I would need it IN Spain for residency. Also, I didn't need my Medical Certificate! LIES LIES LIES. Whatever. I'm almost at the point of residency. We all just need to sign something and turn in our fingerprints and we are temporary residents! :)

I brought some of dad's CHP patches, but I didn't end up giving any away as the station was chaotic and annoying. Hah. I'm saving those bad boys for the streets. But I did give one to one of my roommates, Miguel. Is training to be a National Policeman in Spain. He has his motor test this Friday, so I figured he could use some luck. Thanks, Dad for the patches! They will be given to the noblest folk only.

Friday, we all went out to a discotequa we like called Mae West. We're becoming more and more Spanish. Last time we were out until 4:30 a.m., this time we were out until 5:30 a.m. Improvement! But the rest of my weekend was dull.

I studied for the majority of it (took a movie break here and there). And crammed more on Monday for the final exam I had on Tuesday. Stack of vocabulary cards (I added about 75 more after this photo was taken).

I am in the advanced Preparatory Class so I cam automatically enrolled in the advanced CLM (Centro de Lenguas Modernas) classes, but I wanted to improved for my own sake. I just found out I got an 87% B+ on one half the test, but I do not yet know what I got on the other half of the test, or my class grade. I am content thus far.

So now I have a 4 day weekend! There is a National Strike today (called La Huelga General) and the transportation systems have slowed significantly because of it and many forms of transportation are now being over-used tomorrow. So we might not get to travel as far as we'd like. However, we are going to the bus station today or tomorrow to get tickets to go to Portugal for 5 days in October when we have a long weekend. :)

It's about time for some food! I love you all. As they say in Spain:

¡Un Beso!