I’m starting to settle into my routine.

Here are some pics from the last week.

Last Sunday night, I joined Daniel and Ivan at a street fair and art market in the Ruzafa neighborhood. Later, our friends Saba and Julian joined us. we had some great pork sandwiches in pita bread.

We had beautiful weather this week. So on Monday, Spanish class took a field trip and we walked to city hall, Plaza Ayuntamiento. Here are my teacher, Laura and fellow student, Peyli, from Malaysia on the balcony overlooking the plaza. I’m embracing the confusion of studying past perfect, past imperfect, future simple, and future imperfect tenses, all at the same time. I think I’m one of the few students taking two classes, each for two hours, every day. Laura laughs with me as I confuse the tenses and keep plugging away at all of this new information. The information is getting dumped into my brain. It’s all in the wrong filing cabinet. But little by little, I’m getting it sorted.

I’m enjoying my time teaching Dima, my Ukrainian English student. Wednesday, I walked home from his apartment, past the opera house. Simply beautiful. Valencia is such a lovely, walkable city.

Today, we met at his new apartment and I finally met his wife, Liza. This week, Dima and I are meeting three hours every day. And to be honest, we have a blast. We talk about psychotherapy theories, from Gestsalt to Freud. We talk about making money on social media. We talk about our life stories. Knowing this war refugee who is so smart, curious, and full of life is inspiring and humbling. And watching as he learns English words and idioms and then spontaneously uses them correctly and accurately the next time we meet, is thrilling.

Tonight choir surprised me by not meeting at our usual place and time. Apparently this was announced but I didn’t understand it. So, after getting there at 8:00 p.m. and learning this, I grabbed some dinner and then walked to the location where we met from 10:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. (only in Spain!) with the three other choirs and the orchestra to rehearse for Saturday’s concert at the Cathedral. It’s going to be a thrilling evening. To sing in Spanish, with these high caliber singers is an honor and a privilege, despite the frustrations of communication hiccups.

I’ll try to snap some pics from our dress rehearsal tomorrow and concert on Saturday.

Have a great weekend!