more news + weekend fun

It actually rained hard on Friday! Just look! I'm positively dripping water!! But then of course on Saturday morning the sun was out and the sky cloudless for the first time in a week. Ah well. Let them have their sun; I got my rain.

When Shannon and I got home on Jan. 3, Shannon informed me that she might be leaving Madrid in March to go pursue a Teach America program in Chicago. Of course my heart sank; she has been my lifeline here, my best friend and good buddy. But on Friday I got the good news that she's decided to stay...and then she dropped another bomb: TtMadrid offered her a job! This is an incredibly fantastic opportunity for her and she definitely deserves it, but I'm still a little sad because the job is directing the school's intensive language program in Valladolid, and Shannon will be gone Monday through Friday for weeks at a time, so it is almost like she is leaving anyway. HOWEVER, am trying to look on the bright side: she will still be here on the weekends, we will still look for rooms together for March, and she has one week a month off which she'll spend here in Madrid.

Speaking of new opportunities, TtMadrid approached me on Friday with a proposition. They've been doing a lot of work on their website and they want a lot more content, so they offered to pay me to write articles and/or contribute blog posts. Cool! They want articles & posts about living in Madrid, teaching English and/or traveling around Europe. Am obviously very excited about the prospect of actually being paid for some of my writing. I'll be spending some time today writing and revising so I can send a couple articles to Tem for consideration.

I've also managed to procure more teaching hours for myself after having quit one of my agencies in December. One of my new classes is with a new company that, so far, is really fantastic. Then I also will be picking up some of Shannon's teaching hours since she will have to drop all her classes in order to start this new job.

And now for the weekend update. This weekend has been amazingly fun. On Friday night Shannon and Martín and I met some peeps at the Plaza de España and we went to this Mexican bar that we like. They made a mean margarita and played some great music. After a little while Martín started chatting with the couple of young guys that happened to be standing next to us, and then suddenly one of our TtMadrid coursemates, whom I had not seen for months and months, walks in. I asked Shannon who invited him, and it turned out it had been the random young guys Martín was talking to. Strange coincidence, small world. More people arrived, drinks were had, dancing was done, and then someone had the idea to go to a nearby salsa club. So we did. And I danced salsa and merengue in a club for the first time in my life, and I had great fun. Love love love to dance.

Last night we went to the surprise birthday dinner of our Kiwi friend, Craig. It was at a Mexican restaurant in Tribunal, the same one Shannon and I had had our TtMadrid graduation dinner at. Fabulous nachos! Good margaritas! Fun people! It really doesn't get much better. But I was tired fairly early and came home and then decided to watch some Firefly and ended up staying up until 4:30am doing that and I was up long after Shannon and Martín went to bed even though I had come home a couple hours before they did.

Martín reflected that he has spent his first few days in Madrid eating Mexican food and dancing salsa, which is a bit funny considering he just came from New Mexico. But he has been having a good time and we're both really enjoying his company...he fits right in at the apartment and we all get along super well. Our mornings have been spent all hanging out in the living room together on our computers, doing our separate business but chatting and joking and sharing companionship. And now that I think of it, Martín has managed to get the phone numbers of more Spaniards and other native Spanish speakers in the last three or four days than I have in five months.

Today will be lazy, as Sundays should be in my opinion. We are again lazing around the living room and working on our computers. I will work on some writing, and I also need to do some lesson planning. If I leave the house today it will only be to get some food or to take a leisurely stroll around the 'hood.