lunes: el mejor día de la semana?

my friend jessica caron just wrote a blog post about how she had one of those days where you just feel on top of the world. i can't say that this was one of those days (few and far between for me), but it was pretty close. the funny thing is, i didn't really do anything super special. i think i'm just finding my little niche here and starting to really appreciate the culture and charm of the people here. it's kind of pathetic, because the day started off really badly. i had my alarm set to 9:05am so i could get up, eat breakfast, run, and be back at my house by 11am so i could leave for class by noon. sounds great, right? well, i woke up to the sound of pancho whining at 7:30. this isn't the first time this has happened, but it's usually because i'm the only one in the house and he wants someone to play with. normally he's just sitting outside my door and i just push him into the living room and shut the door. this time was so much worse. it sounded like he was dying. or just trying to annoy me, because as soon as it stopped, he started barking. non stop. by this time, it was around 8, so i figured i would just suck it up (an hour of sleep isn't THAT much), drag my lazy butt out of bed, and see what was going on. turns out he was whining and barking at a dog that was sitting outside my house. really? so i was in a bad mood and ate breakfast and grabbed my ipod to go running. my ipod was about to die but i clipped it on and walked outside. this is when the day changed. my computer had said it was 36 degrees fahrenheit out, but it was beautiful. chilly, yes, but absolutely perfect running weather. normally when i run here, i'm so dehydrated that it's a chore to drag myself to run more than an hour because my muscles are usually screaming for water by the end of it. today, however, was so fun. my ipod didn't die and it was early enough for me to run for almost an hour and a half. it was the kind of day where you just want to run forever. however, this endorphin rush was shortlived as i had to return home by 11 to make my lunch, shower, and get my school things together before noon. my host mom bought a ton of fresh fruits and veggies for me to eat, so today, i made my own lunch of: fresh spinach salad with fresh parmesan, rosemary, olives, and olive oil and an avocado that i bought a few days ago/dinner roll/some sort of pickled vegetable with vinegar and pepper and cheese/apples with jam and cinnamon/mandarin orange. when i unpacked my lunch outside the building where we have spanish, everyone was drooling! it was delicious and i definitely am going to make more creations tomorrow, as i miss being able to make my own food when i'm at home! (here, everything is served, and every meal is like dinner..one or two "big" dishes) i went to spanish which was a down part of the day, but after, i have class from 3-7pm. i don't exactly look forward to this class every week because every class, we have "trabajo práctico" (practice work), which is basically a page-long reading and several analytical questions that we have to complete in the 2nd half of the class. the first half of the class is lecture, to prepare us for the practice work. but today it was rather enjoyable. maybe that's because i wikipedia-ed "history of argentina" yesterday and took notes off of the internet first, but i just had an easier time understanding. the practice work required a lot of background knowledge on the specific part in history we were studying, so another student from my program and two french exchange students went to the library (all of the ~50 students do the practice work in small groups in our classroom and it was so loud!) to look up more information/definitions of the words and people. i had a lot of fun figuring out the different kinds of governments implemented in argentina during the time period and the french exchange students made it so fun....it was crazy to think that us and them were learning the same language from different backgrounds! if something was confusing, we couldn't just lapse into english...we had to figure out a way to say it in spanish! what a cool perspective. but then after we finished, i went home. and here i am! nothing special about this day at all. but i'm in a good mood. maybe it's because i spoke/read/learned/wrote in spanish for a good 4 hours today. maybe it's because i'm definitely going to patagonia in 9 days. or maybe i'll attribute it to reading your blog (jess). it definitely made me a lot more optimistic about life. i'm even (slightly) optimistic about having plain noodles with butter tonight for dinner. and it's only monday. yahootie.