Positive Mindset

Okay so I know that I have been very negative lately via my blog and I have been kind of lashing out at a lot of people (sorry you know i love you!)  so I decided that I need to express myself in a more positive manner because I actually am really have a great time and studying abroad is probably the best thing that ever happened to me and hands down the greatest experience of my life thus far.  It's just the little things that are starting to really bother me because lets face it it's friggin HARD to be away from a life you've been used to for 19 years. It's like I got on a plane with two suitcases, a backpack and a pillow and landed in a different country where NOTHING is like what I am used to.  But it's okay I really needed this. Being here has made me realize so much about myself and about life. I now know what is important to me.

Literally the one thing that is putting a damper on my experience abroad is my living situation, as you all know I live in a 2 by 4 box and sleep toe to toe with Andria, get treated like shit by the lunch/cleaning ladies and barely take a warm shower. Instead of being negative I am going to make a list of positive things I have gotten out of this experience.

1. Meeting Kristen- Kristen is our next door neighbor, she is from Miami and is studying abroad here as well but at a different school. If we didn't live here we would have never met her. I literally love this girl so much. She's helped me get through a lot here, she's a great friend and she's fun. Since all the girls at Suffolk Madrid suck I am so thankful I met her.
2. I can say that I have lived in a building with people from ALL around the world. There are kids who live here from all around spain and different parts of europe as well as other study abroad students from the US. I think that's pretty cool. All of the other kids who go to Suffolk Madrid and other kids I know from home who are studying abroad live mostly with kids from their program who are from the US.
3. Tommy- So we met all the boys we usually hang out with in Sevilla and hang out with them all the time bla bla bla. but Tommy is the only one of the three who lives with us. If we didn't live together we definitely wouldn't be as close to him as we are. Although he makes fun of me and we bicker a lot I'm glad we got to be such good friends. He is one of the only people we won't see all the time when we go back to Suffolk Boston( He is from california). It makes me upset that he won't be around but we can always visit.
4. Okay so Andria & I have lived together for 2 years now, but we always had a big enough room where we really weren't in eachothers face 24/7 and we always did our own thing. Being here we literally have done EVERYTHING together and have been together basically 24/7. If you can survive in a room that small and be with someone so much and not kill eachother, that's true friendship right there. I know that we both get on eachothers nerves sometimes because we literally have no alone time (from anyone that is) but I know that at the end of the day our friendship is so much stronger because of this. We've basically been through hell and back together at this point with all the shit we've had to deal with the past 3 months.
(PS forgot to mention that last week on the way to Ibiza I left my passport at Baradas and Kristen had to bring it to the airport (which is 40 minutes away) so that I could get on my flight, see true friendship)
5. We can barely get on the internet but it forces us to all hang out and do stuff together.
6.Getting to know Pete, Joe, Nery, Edvina, Bree and Joe Talluto. These are kids from Suffolk Boston who we either met here or have gotten to know better since being here. It's nice because we're all very differently and probably wouldn't even have crossed paths if we were back in Boston.
7. Appreciation. Overall Baradas just makes me appreciate my living situation at home and makes me realize that I can literally live in a box and survive.


I'm going to try really hard for the next month to just relax and enjoy Madrid. This weekend we are going to Santander, which is in the northern part of Spain. It's a school trip so everything is paid for which is  a fantastic feeling because I have been going through money like water. After this weekend I have no more trips planned so I will be spending 3 weekends in Madrid then I am coming home. It's crazy how fast this semester flew by. I literally feel like I just got here. I also think it's funny how I was totally fine for 2 and a half months then all of a sudden I started getting severe culture shock. Today, Andria & I were reading the sheet of paper that SUMC gave us at the beginning of the semester about the stages of culture shock... we're both in  the "agressive" stage right now...hahhaa oh well.