Teaching groove, optimistic glory, and blocks

1. When someone asks me how my day teaching was, I can honestly say that it´s been alright, uneventful, or even a bit amusing.

2. As I listen to other people vent about every little detail that´s pissing them off, I feel relieved that I´m more often than not, an optimist.

3. While teaching my adult students last night, I learn that ¨blocks¨ as in a reference to how far away something is (i.e. she lives 4 blocks away)...means ¨manzana¨ or ¨apple¨ in Spanish. I savor a ¨student moment¨ in a class where I´m supposed to be teaching.

Moon, window hippo, and Halloween candy

1. As I walk home, the moon is surrounded by that glowing halo of light and from where I´m standing, it´s evenly centered between two lines of trees that run along the street. There are no cars coming, but I pause briefly to gaze at the dark wisps of cloud that pass over the moon making it bright white one second and mottled the next.

2. There is a stuffed hippo wearing a red sweater in the window of a stationery shop and he´s sitting directly beneath a display light so that it looks as though the spotlight is on and he´s about to perform.

3. David brings in a package of candy corn that his mother sent him way back in October. Because his roommate didn´t know David´s last name and told the postman that there was no David by that name, the package got sent back to the U.S. Better late than never.

Pink, playing along, and hot wine

1. Spanish men are not afraid to wear pink shirts or pink ties for that matter. It´s actually a pretty common occurence.

2. An older gentleman starts talking to me at the bus stop while we´re waiting and I can only pick out two or three words he´s saying. Instead of surrending and throwing out my, ¨lo siento, no hablo...¨, I decide that I´m just too tired and play along as if I understand the conversation. I make a guess that he wants to know about bus number 8. And as it pulls up, I point to it and he smiles and never appeared to have a clue that I was an idiot or foreigner or both for that matter.

3. With the help of cinnamon sticks, cloves, oranges, lemon, brown sugar, and some 75 cent table wine, we´ve created some amazing mulled wine for our Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday.

Smiles, carousel, and a curious cat

1. I´m happy and I don´t know why, but I feel like smiling as I walk down the street.

2. There is a quite large, yet very old-fashioned carousel being set up in Plaza Mayor. I assume it´s for Christmas, like so many other decorations that are draping the city in festivity.

3. There is a white cat venturing out of an apartment window and climbing through the attached flower box. He looks unsure, so decides to hop back inside where it´s warm.

Scuba Kat, sibling helper, and perfect pesto

1. Today it´s raining and instead of avoiding puddles, I´ve been stomping into them gleefully having come prepared with boots instead of regular shoes.

2. I see two young children waiting at a bus stop and I assume they are brother and sister, when the sister holds her arm in front of the little boy before he gets on the wrong bus.

3. A spaghetti dinner with the most delicious tasting pesto. If Spain can do one thing right, it´s anything to do with olives, olive oil, and olive related products.

Vanilla sky, new threads, cozy

1. While walking home from work, I smell a heavy scent of vanilla in the air and whether it was born from factories or someone´s kitchen, I´ll never know, but decide just to savor it.

2. I´m wearing a new cream colored sweater today that I bought in Salamanca and it´s keeping me warm as the temperatures start to drop even lower.

3. This morning, my blanket is wrapped around me perfectly and the temperature in my room is not too hot or not too cold. I also realize this with one more hour to stay in bed.

Thanks givings, have a seat, and past cities

1. Even though it´ll never beat Thanksgiving 2005 abroad in Hungary, planning the contents of Thanksgiving 2007 abroad in Spain make me look forward to the weekend.

2. Getting on the normally packed number 8 bus to my afternoon/evening classes and having to blink because there´s nobody on the bus. Every single last seat is available and I can sit down.

3. Having a dream about going back to Budapest and realizing how much I love that city and how I really do want to go back.