February in Spain: Springtime, BBQ's, Badminton, and Friends.

Hey Everybody!
Maddy here, reporting from Madrid. Today is February 15th (aka the winter in the Northwest) and the weather report here, in good ol' Villafranca del Castillo, is 60 degrees clear skies and sun shining. Yes, the birds have began to sing, the badminton net is set up, and the clouds have disappeared from Madrid...some people say for the rest of the time I'm here =D In these past weeks many time changing events have happened.
-My dear friend Vin left for the US>> this is just trippy for me because I didn't picture Spain without this friend, and while he was packing up, going souvenirs shopping, and saying his goodbyes to Madrid, Me Kelly and Emily were by his side. It almost felt like i was preparing to leave too. but wait, i still have 5 months here!
-I passed my halfway mark. This means I have been in Spain more days than I have left here. Whoa. For me this makes me realize how much progress I've really made with the language. I feel like fluency is closer than ever, I'm finally content with my ability to understand. And the speaking is easier. I have no worries i will be fluent when I leave now (for awhile that was one of my goofy fears). But if I have already been here 5 months and went from understanding NOTHING and speaking practically NOTHING and now I'm feeling this confident about the language....that was only half of my time here, I still have another 5 months of learning. how exciting.
-Okay, and the last thing that is making me think about time a ton, is the weather. Let me give you the low down. My host parents left on Friday for the US for 10 days. So here I am with my brothers at the house. And on that friday morning the ground was frosty and it was quite cold. I went to school, and when I returned it felt like I'd stepped into paradise. Seriously. The birds were chirping, the sky was completely spotless and it was sunny. Like warm warm. I told my brother this was a summers day in Anacortes, he laughed at me and said just wait for the summer in Madrid. Spring has begun in Madrid and it is mid-February. Seriously, this is messing with my mind. The thing is, we live in a desert. yupp madrid is a desert. This means the climate is crazy. 60 degrees in the afternoon, dropping down to 30 something in the dead of night. Yet the dead of night is not really the time to sleep in Spain, so I'm out and about in temperatures all over the board every 24 hours. And yes, I learned that temperature difference the hard way. Going out to the University (outside all night) in a thin sweatshirt. I'm now planning to bring a coat EVERYWHERE until they start making fun of me for it. Better that than mistaking the Anacortes summer climate for the Madrid spring climate.

The daytime though, is priceless. On saturday my brothers had a bunch of friends over, they fired up the BBQ and started cooking all kinds of meats. The sun was beating down on us, we set up the Badminton net and found the ping pong paddles. We played games, drank kool aid, ate 7 different types of bbq'd meat and sausage, french fries, salad. Kel Em and I laid in the sun, contemplating how crazy my family would think we were if we suggested we open the pool up in April or March instead of May. It was such a picture perfect day and we realized how much we loved the sun when we had a surge of energy that night after being outside all day. Anyways the weather is supposed to keep up like this the rest of the year, just increasing in perfection every week. It makes me feel weird knowing I'll have 5 months of an Anacortes (and hotter) summer.. temperature wise. and then go back to Anacortes for another 2 months of summer. Well to say the least, its hard not to be in a good mood now.

More stories and some pictures later.
Un besito,
Maddy