The Beginning of the End

Sad. Excited. Anxious. Overwhelmed. Emotional. I could go on for a quite a while about the different emotions I´m feeling during my last week in Spain. It´s awfully bittersweet. I am so excited to go home and spend time with my family and friends again and get back to SNC life, but I have learned so much about myself here. I have made new friends (many of which I´ll probably never see again) and I have made a bond with a family that now feels like my own. Ok, I need to stop writing about this or I am for sure going to cry and I´m trying to put that off for as long as possible.

So this past weekend brought a lot of food, good wine, laughs and some wonderful memories. Friday morning I had my final service learning presentation about Gitanos. We presented to some people from the community, our principal from our school, our class, and some of the other Fundación staff. It was a great experience. I was so nervous and afraid to offend the principal because what I said was a bit critical, but I got through it. Afterwards I spent some time walking around Toledo with some girls, did some last minute shopping and stopped at Döner Kebop for one last lunch. After an extensive siesta back at home, I got ready and headed back into town for a final dinner with some wonderful ladies from Notre Dame and SNC. We went to a little vegetarian restaurant called Madre Tierra (Mother Earth) and we sat for 2 hours eating pasta, drinking wine, and savoring a wonderful brownie and ice cream dessert. After that we headed out to O´Briens..the American student hangout...because the bartender speaks English. We met up with a ton of people there and just enjoyed some of our last moments together. It´s amazing how close we´ve all grown. No one will ever understand what we´ve been through except each other. Then we made our way to Círculo, which is an old church turned discoteca. We couldn´t leave Toledo without doing some dancing! So we danced until about 3 am. I took a taxi home with some other girls and called it a night at about 4.

Saturday..I slept for a long time! Spent the afternoon laying around, doing some homework and making a house for Celastro (a fish webkin) with Paula. At about 8:30 my family took me out to dinner at La Mia Pasta and I had some wonderful stuff spinach raviolis with bolognesa vegetal sauce. Divine! And my host parents and I managed to drink a whole bottle of wine. We walked home from the restaurant because it was right by our house and just hung out some more. I didn´t want the night to end, because I was having such a great time!!!

Sunday we went to Rodolfo´s sisters house to celebrate some family birthdays in Talavera. If you remember from a much earlier post, I have been to his sister´s house once already, the week I arrived. It was great to be able to go back, see some familiar faces, and show them that I really did know how to speak Spanish! We ate a bunch of food, which included these cooked bread crumbs with ham and bacon and eggs. It was actually very good! We got back to Toledo at about 6:30 and then Paula and I made funfetti cookies (Thanks Matt for sending the mix!!) After one burnt batch, we managed to perfect the rest of the cookies and are going to have a hard time not eating them all in 2 days! Then I did a bunch of homework, skyped with my family and Matt and got mentally prepared for my last week in Toledo. How sad :[

My family left this morning for 4 days in Granada, so I will be spending a few days at home by myself, packing up, cleaning my room and studying for finals. It all feels so strange...like I just got here.

Abrazos,
Amy