Centro Wellness Neptuna

Hola,

It has been a busy couple of days. On Sunday, my roommate and I went to our wonderful gym, Centro Wellness Neptuna, for the very first time. Like I previously said, our gym has just about everything! One thing it does not have, however, are the weights measured in pounds. This minute detail took me about 20 minutes into my lift to figure out. Twenty minutes of wonder why the Spaniards used such light weights (the highest weight said 20, whereas, we have 45s in the states) and if they really lifted at all here. There I was totally thinking I was putting on 25 lbs. to each side of the bar, when in reality I was loading 25 kilograms to each side, which is over twice that amount (1 kg=2.2lbs). Having no idea of this fact at the time, I kind of had to guess my way through the lift. After working out, my roommate and I wanted to try to find this flee market up in the Albaicin, which is in the Arabic, gypsy part of town, that we had heard about. We ended up just wandering around in the steep winding streets of the Albaicin for awhile, to no avail. After a long morning of walking and working out, we retired to our apartment for lunch and a very long and relaxing afternoon. That evening we partook in Spain´s version of McDonalds, schwarmas, which are sandwich-like wraps of shaved lamb, goat, chicken, turkey, beef, or a mixture thereof. They are delicious. Afterwards we had some amazing tea and then headed home.

Yesterday (Monday), was much busier. It was the first day of real classes, of which I had five. My day went something like this. Wake up at 7:15, eat breakfast, walk to school (a 30 minute walk when we are speed walking, easily a 40-45 wake at a regular pace), class, class, go to the gym to work out, lunch, walk back to school, class, class, class, tapas dinner, and then it was midnight and exhaustion ensued. Mondays are going to be quite busy but I like it that way. I really enjoy all my classes, particularly my Arab World and the West class, which, already on the first day, charged into a heated debate about the building of the Mosque in New York near Ground Zero and the intentions of the Islamic community. I loved it. Also, my last class of the day, Flamenco, was amazing. For Flamenco, we have dance class on Mondays and Wednesdays and lecture on Thursdays. So last night we had dance class at a tiny little dance studio off the beaten path and it was so much fun! We all were horrible but I already know I am going to love it. The teacher is this tiny Spanish woman with a lot of energy that is great to work with. It´s going to be great.

Off to more classes today. Only two though, which wil be nice. Hasta luego!

Ashley