Has it been so long

Man...I knew that I'd lost my desire to write combined with my new facination with facebook but it has been awhile since I have blogged here. Too much has gone on to attempt to go back in my tracks to fill in the blanks so I am going to do a quick recap:

March

Started taking spanish classes at a school called speak easy. The class was crap or maybe I was a crappy student. Probably a little of both. However I spent most of my two weeks time and nearly 200 euro not understanding anything that was being said to me. My goal in taking the class was comprehension and sad to say I comprehended almost nothing. One bright side of the class are the people I met. Latvian girl name Lleva. Incredibly beautiful and could speak spanish the at the best level of anyone in the class. She could speak English, Polish and Russian with equal fluency. The kicker is that she did not speak spanish before the class. You almost wanted to hate her for the ease that she seemed to pick up languages or because she was so pretty. I finally find a flaw in her that stopped me from hating her completely...she wore fake eyelashes! Hahaha. She has the bluest eyes, super fair skin and jet black hair. Her eyes were so compelling. I kept saying to myself no one has eyelashes that long. Finally one day I noticed that she applied them a little off kilter...ahhh finally a flaw...now she was totally likeable despite her uncanny language abilities. We did not remain in contact with eachother directly after I stopped going to class but I think we both thought of eachother kindly. The other surprise friendship from the class was a young man from the UK. Gary.

What a surprise. I have to admit that I ignored Gary for a bit. He is really young and also in my opinion had pretty good spanish skills. However I ignored most everyone because of my discomfort level in the class. Lleva was a little harder to ignore because of her looks and really superb languages skills. One could not help but hating and liking her all at the same time. She was nice and helpful along with the other issues...lol Anyway Gary... One of the instructors seem to focus in on Gary a lot. I could not tell if it was because she was attracted to him or just liked to hear his very british accent. Because of her focus I also began to focus on him. The more and more I observed him the funnier and likable he became. One day I kind of walked in on a conversation he was having with these two Dutch girls in class about a walking tour that he had information about. He looked over at me and extended the invitation for the walk. With that opening I told him that I noticed his profile on one of my meetup groups and he agreed to send me the information via that format. When I got home I had an email from him and the information for the walk for Sunday. I told him to count me in for the walk. It seemed that along with me and him, Lleva would also being going on the walk. Sunday morning rolled around and I went to the bus station where we were going to catch the bus to the country to begin the walk. I was the first to arrive and was a litle nervous that no one else would show. I stood for about 5 minutes before I saw Gary walking toward me. He was as relieved to see me as I was to see him. Apparently Lleva had cancelled due to an emergency and he was afraid that he would be stuck with a group of strangers. He and I did not know eachother that well but at least we had the bond from class. Anyway we found the coordinator and as luck would have it Gary ended up being the only guy in the group with three other women. Of course the women gravitated to me and so on the bus ride he was kind of excluded. Once we arrived to the town where we would begin the walk we all kind of became more intergrated. The intent of the walk was for language exchange. As we began to walk Gary and I naturally drifted toward eachother and began to tallk more but in English! As it turned out I had more in common with this 20 something Brit than I would have dreamed. I found him extremely humorous and with deep thoughts. I found out that he had just graduated from law school and because of the financial crisis his firm had no work for him and suggested a year sabbatical. He had a two year commitment with them because they paid for school and needed to return to the UK in the fall. The more and more we talked and walked the more and more I found myself just liking him as a person. We were so absorbed with eachother that we were reminded by the other ladies in the group that one this was an intercambio walk and secondly there were other people present!!!

By the end of the four five walked Gary and I had forged a solid friendship! Out of the friendship I have formed more friendships. There are the Venezualans and Dutch people that played a role in April being an amazing month of fun and laughter. So although March was a bit patchy it did bring to me a friend that I think I will have for the rest of my life.

April

April was my half way mark. Highlights for April were meeting Maureen and the Venezulan constituency through Gary. I saw my first futbol game at a real Irish Pub and now understand the magic. Real Madrid versus Barcelona. AMAZING! Went to another house party. Went to my first european disco! Started a new tradition with Gary with more intercambios. Got introduced to the Dutch duo...Symon and Danny. Got robbed for the second time:-). Meet the most intertesting women through Irene and Danny. Manuela! Found my favorite place to eat in Barcelona! And had one of the best weekends of my life with Gary and his cousin Tom from the UK. Went to Lord Byrons for the first time being back in BCN! Discovered "The Black Sheep". Also April was the month the hunt for a new job began in earnest. I got to thinking about what I really wanted to do. Staying indefinately in Spain was looking more and more doubtful. Job opportunities and economy were making the timin of my permanant transition more unlikely. And I was also bitten by the bug to explore the world a bit more before settling down to job and routine. So I started posting for teaching jobs ALL over. I got my response for a post in South Korea and then a second. In April I particiapted in two interveiws for teaching jobs and things were starting to look promising.

May

May was awesome! Beautiful weather, more fun with friends and I registered for the CELTA and I shopped for the first time! Money concerns were resolved and I felt a bit more comfortable indulging in a little retail therapy. Gary had another friend visit from the UK and we had an awesome time.

Now it is June....