woah where has the time gone!

Time just flies by so quickly here! I didn't even realize it has been so long since my last post. Since then I have had a full week of classes! I had my two nursing labs this week. It was four hours on Tuesday of lab, but it was really easy stuff! In the first lab we learned how to wash our hands and put on and remove gloves. You would never imagine how thorough hand washing can be! The next lab we practiced taking a patient's health history. Doing a full history takes a long time, but I guess it's better to be thorough than leave something out! So far I am really enjoying my classes. THey are all really interesting topics, I just wish some of them were a little shorter. By the second half of class I'm on the verge of sleep and can't pay attention well. If only there was a 5 minute break or shorter class period or something to keep me awake the entire time. Despite being long, the classes are good! It's finally practical nursing skills, not just pre requisite stuff. We found out that we will be starting clinicals in the hospitals in March!! They said we will get to do as much as we possibly can in the hospitals depending on our language level. This means I really need to learn my Spanish so I can do more things at clinicals. They obviously don't want a nursing student helping a patient if they can't understand the patient or the doctor... I really don't want to just observe the whole time, I'm anxious to actually take vital signs and all on a real patient so I'm definitely studying my Spanish medical terms!  I really enjoy my Spanish class though! We just do exercises to practice the vocab in class, and so far it's pretty easy vocab! I'm practicing a lot thought!

I really love our campus. It consists of three buildings all in a row.  I have all, but my spanish class and labs in the same room of one building. Then there's a library/cafeteria building, and then the final building is our spanish and labs. The view from the top of the first building is absolutely incredible!! You can see so much of the city and snow-capped mountains in the background. I promise I'll take pictures soon! I keep forgetting to bring my camera to school!! There's a nice patio area to eat or hang out between classes, and I love it especially when the sun is shining and I can find a nice sun spot to soak in!

I LOVE the metro here in Spain. It's so nice and clean and easy to figure out!! There are so many escalators and I really love escalators! The 30 minute metro ride on the way to and from school is just so nice to sit and relax (or people watch:)).  I've gotten into the habit of reading while I'm on the metro. Usually I read the morning/evening prayers in my Magnificat, but there's always extra time, so I'm going to start bringing my kindle and reading for a little bit every day.  I get kind of sick of the commute sometimes, just because I've never had to travel so much just to get to class, but I really do like it!!

Last night some friends and I decided to go to Lisbon, Portugal the first weekend in February!! It was kind of spur of the moment, but some other friends told us they were going and invited us to go. So we booked flights and a hostel for two nights!! It was all a really good price for a three day trip, so I'm extremely excited about it! We also decided this afternoon to go to Toledo, SPain tomorrow! We're taking a high speed train and staying in Toledo for the entire day! Then on Saturday we're going to Salamanca, Spain with SLU for the day! We also discussed other trips for the entire semester that might include Rome, Barcelona, Majorca Island, and Austria!! I really want to go to London... but my friends might be going over spring break, which I'm already going to Grenada and Sevilla with my parents!! So London might not happen:( but oh well, I've already been there! My friends also might go to Paris for our winter break (we get Thurs and Fri off at the end of February), but I can't go that weekend because of nursing exams the next week, so I might go to Barcelona then for a couple days with some other nurses! That way we can spend 2 days traveling and 2 days studying on our winter break weekend! I'll of course keep you updated on my travel plans and adventures though!

Anyways, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY SISTER!!! She's getting so old, graduated, married, a baby on the way, but yet only 23 years old today!! She's accomplished so much and I couldn't be more thankful to have her to look up to! I really miss her and the rest of my family, but I'm there with her in spirit today celebrating!!