Happy March!

I am SO glad that it's finally March!! January and February are always tough months and it's so exciting to be getting closer and closer to spring. I always LOVE when it turns to March every year, and have no shame in admitting that I flipped open my phone at midnight on the dot to watch my phone calendar change from February to March (the future teacher in me is going to explain that I'm a very visual person. I understand concepts best when they're written down or drawn out methodically... hence my love for calendars!) Understanding my visual comprehension will also explain that I am SO excited to be able to see Matt's visit and Lauren's visit without having to change pages on my iCal (Mac calendar application). Very exciting!

I also have to admit that March totally snuck up on me. All of a sudden I'm realizing that I'm almost halfway done with study abroad and that I'll be coming home in a little over two months. In some ways it feels like just yesterday I was wandering the streets of Granada trying to grasp the concept of four months. I got to skype with one of my best friends, Libby, yesterday, and she was telling me that when she studied in Seville last year, the first half seemed to go by really slow and the second half flew by. I'm thinking that's probably what will happen to me too. The analogy I keep using is that when you're driving to a new place in the car, it always seems to take longer to get there than it does to get back. When it's unchartered territory, it feels like it takes forever, but when you know what you're doing, it starts to go by a little faster.

Today was a pretty good day-- I woke up late, worked out, got a coffee at Dunkin' Coffee (we're on day four with no Diet Coke... this is HUGE, guys!), then came back to the piso and watched When Harry Met Sally (so good!), caught up with a lot of people online, and all that good stuff. The kids' dad usually comes over for lunch on Sundays, but he didn't come over this afternoon. Instead, he got here at about 8:00pm and came for dinner. 

At dinner, we were all sitting around the table, eating our vegetable soup and tortilla española and having a good time. All of a sudden, the kids' dad got up to get some more soup from the kitchen and Maria yelled, "¡Siéntate! ¿Por qué estás levantándote?" ("Sit down! Why are you standing up?") and burst into tears. Apparently she was upset that her dad felt like he had to go get his own food. She started yelling at Rosario and telling her that she needed to take care of the dad and get him whatever he needed and that the dad shouldn't have to stand up. She said that was the woman's job.

Now, I'm not a feminist. I'm pretty far from it. I wrote an eleven-page thesis my senior year of high school on the importance of the role of a mother and how the ultra-feminist stigmatization of the stay-at-home mom was detrimental to our society. But that scene at dinner was pretty shocking. It really made me realize how progressive America is and how I do take the equality of opportunity for women in the US for granted. For an eleven-year-old to scream at her mother for making her father get off his butt and get his own second helping of soup? Wow. I do think that having your eyes opened to other cultures is one of the huge benefits of study abroad, and living with a host family is definitely a way to have the culture put right in front of you.

Okay, well I'm procrastinating on writing my two page essay on the Basque country. I should get writing...