Made it through the first week of the new year and things aren’t looking so good (so far…but hey, it can only go up from here right? RIGHT??). I’ve been on “winter break” which means I’ve just had less classes than normal. It’s a good thing to still have work over the holidays though since I only teach private English classes and no work = no money. I didn’t go anywhere this year for the holidays since in March/April I will be meeting my parents in Japan which means I’ll be out of work for 2 weeks but super duper excited to eat lots and lots of Japanese food and see the sakuras!
I was lucky enough to spend Christmas with Victoria’s family. They are the closest thing I have to family here in Madrid and I love seeing all the kids. They had ordered some food for dinner but I prepared a traditional Christmas salad (endives, watercress, arugula and pomegranate), an apple, goat cheese and walnut salad, and a nutella dessert for us to enjoy. A few days later, I went over and prepared roasted pork shoulder for dinner. The shoulder was so large that I had to cut it in half (ovens here are smaller)!
Since I’ve had so much free time, I’ve also started working on my knitting some more. Up top you can see part of a scarf that I knitted using the stockinette stitch. It took me forever to finish it because the yarn I used was a bit thinner. I’m excited to gift it to my friend later this week. I also finished crocheting a scarf for another friend using the herringbone stitch, but to be honest all the crochet stitches look so similar to me that I’m not sure I like it. It’s much faster though. This week I started knitting a scarf for my mommy to wear in Japan. I chose a chunkier pink and cream colored yarn (to match the sakuras) and decided to try out the seed stitch. It took me a few hours to figure out how to do this stitch because you have to move the yarn around after every stitch and most tutorials are not so clear on that! I’ve gotten into the rhythm though and I’ve been able to go through 2 rolls of yarn already so I hope to finish that this week and start on my next project.
Today marked the first day of sales here in Spain so I took the opportunity to do some shopping. My sisters had given me some Zara gift cards for Christmas so I bought and ordered a few things for Japan. I’m going to have a crazy week because I have a few extra classes and I am starting to get sick since it’s been so cold and rainy the last few days. I am not looking forward to the cold the next few days and they will start to take down all the Christmas lights in the city which is sad. Only 3.5 more months until my vacation though!
