No biscuits

I really don't ever want to leave Ubeda. I love my family and my friends and just life in general.

Today Amanda and I cooked lunch for my family. We made chicken and dumplings, baked beans, baked apples, and spinach dip. They loved all of it. I must say, for my first solo attempt at actually making the dumplings, they turned out really well! They kept telling us that it was so good, and I was glad because I was a little nervous that they wouldn't like it. I also found out that they don't have biscuits here. What's a life without biscuits in it? I may have to attempt to make those as well, for breakfast or something. They also don't have birthday cake here (or my brother is stupid and didn't know what I was talking about) and apparently madre's birthday is Friday. So "tomorrow we go to the store and get ingredient so you can teach how to make a cake." Fabulous. I may have to make the icing too. This is gonna be fun. Anyone with simple cake/icing recipes with the most common ingredients possible, send them my way!

Yesterday, after we went grocery shopping for lunch today, my brother thought it would be a good idea to teach us how to drive a manual car. So. Much. Thinking. It's one of those things that I'm not good at because you need coordination. I actually wasn't that bad, but it was hard, and had there been other cars close to us, it may have been a wreck. Literally! Imagine learning how to drive a stick shift in another language. I love the daily challenges here. Then right when we were finished with our little driving lesson it started to downpour again. I love when it rains here. It's so much prettier than when it rains at home. The sky stays a pretty dark blue color and the lightning illuminates the mountains in the distance.

On Wednesdays and Thursday we have an "intercambio" with the class of Spanish students. Today was wonderful. We all finished our assignment early so we had time to just hang out and talk (in Spanglish, of course). They're such amazing people. I've never been surrounded by so many just genuine people everywhere I go. Yes, the town does have a few creepers that honk their horns when they drive by and shout "guapa" or "rubia" (if you're blond) but atleast they're harrassing you by telling you you're beautiful? They're obsessed with staring at Americans here. EVERYONE STARES. I'm not really one to talk because I can get a good stare in, but these people are so obvious about it. And I know it's because I'm American, and I look different. Oh well, let them marvel in my beauty. I'm okay with that.

And now, it's siesta time. I spent too much time goofing off with Amanda and Dani after lunch and now I'm like 2 hours late on my siesta time. After siesta, it's time to work on my paper again and then hang out some. Speaking of my paper, last night my brother stayed up to look at it after I finished. I thanked him and told him he didn't need to stay up. To which he replied: "No pasa nada (it's nothing/ don't worry about it). You are my sister (sees-ter). My little sister. I do anything for you" So sweet, right? I've known this kid like 3 weeks and literally he would do about anything for me. Probably the number one person I'll miss when I leave Spain. Okay, all this talk about leaving is seriously making me depressed. Someone slow down the time until Monday morning. I don't want to go!