I'm in bed right now on a Friday night... fairly unusual, but since I'm a little sick and have to wake up early tomorrow morning to hop on a bus to Cuenca (a small, beautiful town outside of Madrid) for a day trip with some friends.
I had a wonderful time with Hal visiting last week. We spent a lot of time with my host family, which was lovely and it was fun to show him around. Then we parted ways sadly at the train station last Friday and I hopped on the AVE to Valencia for my program trip. I got to take the high speed train in the evening (instead of the 5 hour bus ride at 7 AM with everyone else) because I had my first day of my internship that morning (more on that in a moment), which worked out well so I could spend more time with Hal.
Valencia was really cool. I liked the city a lot because of its ambiance... it's fairly modern and we actually spent all of Saturday at the Museum of Sciences and the Aquarium, which are in a huge, impressive complex of modern buildings. Unfortunately I missed paella on Friday, but I also ate pretty good food there, both Spanish and otherwise. Valencia is known for a festival of fireworks called Las Fallas. My host cousin invited me to go with him to it next weekend, but it's when my dad will be visiting. According to my host mom, during the festival, there are streets that you walk down wearing protective gear and people are just throwing fireworks all over the place. It sounds pretty fun and also like the most dangerous weekend-long party I've ever heard of. They have started getting some of the firework floats and parade stuff ready and they also have small firework shows every day now in preparation. We got to see one during the day on Sunday that was kinda cool, but mostly crazy loud. Also in Valencia, my friends and I crashed some rando house party thanks to my ability to speak French to the guy at the front door. All in all a successful weekend.
My internship is going really well too. Every Friday morning now I am going to therapeutic/educational sessions with the a group of 15 men who have committed crimes of domestic violence and are in this program instead of going to jail. During the week, I'll work with 5 other aspiring psychologists to put together activities and materials for each session based on the curriculum prescribed by our boss. In the beginning, the boss told me to just observe because, understandably, she didn't want me interrupting the flow of the program by working for 3 months out of the 9 that they are there for. This week, though, she suggested that I start being more involved in both the preparation process as well as in presenting materials during the session. Little by little it seems like, she wants me to work my way into being fully involved. That's not originally what I signed up for, but I'm thrilled to be able to give something back to the community here, especially in a way that interests me so much. Last week, the theme of the session was just emotions, since the men we are working with really need that very basic knowledge of how to discuss their feelings. This week, though, things got more interesting as we discussed what love means to each of them. Almost all of them said that being jealous is a sign of being in love and that one does not exist without the other in a relationship... thus promising that next week's session about jealousy will be even more fascinating!
After the session today, I had lunch with some friends and spent the afternoon drinking beer with my host cousin and some of his friends. It was a great day for hanging out with young Spanish people and it's even clearer to me now that days like today will be the reason that my Spanish improves.
Unfortunately I cant upload any of my pictures from Valencia because I think Hal might have accidentally taken my camera cord... Hopefully I'll find it though and be able to throw some up ASAP.
Besos,
Anjuli
P.S. Just booked a trip to Lisbon the weekend of April 20th with bff/blat Lea! So excited for her to be here in Madrid with me and to do a fun trip together after being apart for so long!