México o México

¡Hola Todos!
Todavía estoy en México. Tengo 12 días hasta regrese a los Estados Unidos. Estoy muy emocionada para regresar. Mi Español está mejorando pero todavía me falta mucho de hablar y escribir...y todo. Estoy frustrada a veces porque puedo entender mucho más que puedo decir.
Traducción:
I´m still in Mexico. I have 12 more days until I return to the US of A. I´m very excited to return. My Spanish is still getting better but I still have troubles speaking and writing...and everything. I´m frustrated sometimes because I can understand a lot more than I can say.

Ta da!

I´ve had a lot of adventures and I´m excited to tell you all about them. I´ll post again some other time. I apologize the blog hasn´t been very exciting...at all.
Missing you all.

cuernavaca, city of eternal spring

hi everyone!
i made it to cuernavaca, safe and sound. it was a long day of travel, starting at 4:30 a.m. and ending at 7:00 p.m. the city is absolutely beautiful! it´s a little bit dirty and in some places run down, but there are flowers growing in the most run down parts of the city. the weather is great, and by great, i mean, awesome. the sun shines and it´s warm everyday. it´s not so hot or cold(at night) that you don´t want to move, it´s always just right.

i only had one stressful snafu during my trip. after being dropped off at the bus station with all the other iowa staters, i was the only one who didn´t have a roommate to ride to the house with. i took a cab by myself and asked the driver to take me to the address on the sheet iowa state sent to me. it turns out that address doesn´t exist so the driver drove around for a half hour trying to find an imaginary house until he decided that it might be smart to call the family and ask them for their address. the 8 was cut off of the 108 so the driver was looking for house number 10, anyway, i finally made it there and Consuelo greeted me with open arms. i was so nervous and stressed and tired and grouchy through the whole thing i just wanted to tell the man to take me back to iowa where i belong. then i realized i didn´t know how to say that in spanish.

day two of class was ok. it´s hard to understand when you don´t know what they´re talking about. but one day, i´ll be able to speak spanish and i won´t even know what happened.

oh, and i only have 28 days in mexico on my student visa but evidently there´s nothing to worry about...i just have to go change it. no big deal.

¡que tenga un buen dia!

mexico

mexico.
t minus 12 days.
pray.
hard.

Toe Jam

Ten things I love about winter:
10. Rosie cheeks.
9. Seeing your breath.
8. Freshly knit scarves.
7. The realization that mittens can make the most simple tasks challenging, and the later realization that the cozy warmth is worth taking them off every three minutes.
6. The crunch of snow under my feet.
5. Snowball-making snow.
4. Huge piles of frozen water.
3. Are the clouds one big snowball in the winter?
2. Feeling warm when it's 32 degrees. Thank you, Columbia.
1. When you look out the window from inside a toasty warm house and for a split second you swear you just breathed the crisp, cool outside air.

Ten things I love about summer:
10. Sweat.
9. Barbeques and bonfires.
8. Family camping trips.
7. Star-filled night skies.
6. Fireworks.
5.
4.
3.
2. Sunburn turned tan.
1. No socks, no toe jam.

I only shave my armpits...

...because they're a small area. My leg hair is approximately two-and-a-half inches long.

-Maddy the Great

Long time, no blog.

My first semester at ISU was...awesome:) I'm ready for fall to be here, I love Ames and I enjoyed all my classes last semester so hopefully that's the case in 05-06, too. I'm planning to study in Cuernavaca, Mexico during the spring semester. Tune in at the end of January, maybe I'll speak-o a little Espanyole.

Summer has been fairly uneventful. I met a pretty cool kid at ISU and we spend a lot of time together. We've done a lot of boating, we went to Ohio for a weekend with his family, Riceville a couple times, and we're leaving for NYC on August 11th. I'll update you on Jenny & Dereck's NYC Adventure. I've never been anywhere without large amounts of parental guidance. I bet we won't go on any boring tours of the Empire State Building:)

Life is good. Later dudes.

The Observatory

In my first day as a Cyclone, I have observed two differences in the ISU environment vs. the U of I scene.

1. More Carhartt, less North Face.
2. More Cowboy, less Ugg.