¿marzo?

How is it March already?  February sure flew by.

Gregorio's mother got here Wednesday night while I was teaching English.  (She's actually still here... not sure how long she's staying with us)  Didn't meet here until Thursday afternoon.  She's a sweet, old lady - it's kind of like having grandma here all over again!  Friday morning when I left for class, she was in the living room ironing, and Gregorio's clothes were all over.  I think the washing machine was running nonstop all day Friday and Saturday, and she kept herself busy ironing, folding, and cleaning up around the apartment.  On Friday she and Gregorio worked on his bedroom... made a bit of a dent I suppose.  [Our deal is that if he finishes cleaning/organizing the shelves in the living room, AND cleans his bedroom (and I mean really clean it... it'd be at least a week-long project of taking things out, getting rid of things, etc), then I'll go for a ride with him on one of his motorcycles -- which he's been bugging me to do since day 1).

On Friday, his mother made lunch (paella!) for Alex (Grego's friend and co-owner of his side business, who is here nearly every day working out in the living room), Alex's sister Natalia, Gregorio, and I.

Let me preface this next story with a reminder that Gregorio has three motorcycles, but his mother has no idea.  He had to hide his helmets and stuff in my room before she got here. Now story:
So while we were eating a little appetizer out in the living room before lunch on Friday, Gregorio was showing Alex, Natalia, and I some pictures on his camera.  Gregorio's mom came in the room and started looking for her glasses so she could see the pictures too, when all of a sudden Gregorio hit a huge batch of photos with him and 2 others on their motorcycles...  it was hilarious!  He made a face "oh shoot..." and started scrolling really fast to get through all of them before his mom got over by us.  Meanwhile Alex, his sister, and I are all cracking smiles trying not to laugh... then his mom wondered what was going on -- hah, the moment was too perfect.

Also on Friday, post-lunch, it some how came out that Gregorio has thousands of electronic books (pdfs, word) on his external harddrive.  My ears perked up, and he let me look through them all that afternoon and take whatever I wanted.  It was like Christmas in February!  He has everything!  Any classic or well-known American author in Spanish, and all of the well-known Spanish authors.  It was difficult to not take everything, but I only took 74 (which is a fraction, fraction of all the books he has).  The 74 include: Dan Brown, Dale Carnegie, Cervantes, Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Harry Potter, Orson Scott Card, Lewis Carrol, Einstein, Darwin, Descartes, Carl Sagan... and more!  Clearly, I'll have lots of books in Spanish readily available to me for the next couple of years...

This weekend I'm heading to Portugal - six months here and this will be my first time out of Spain! (It's about time...).  I should really get to bed now, but I'll write-up a class update later this week.

h'luego!