¡Otoño está aquí! Autumn is here!

Well, today it seemed official - eventhough it happened almost a month ago - Fall is here! Today it was warm out, nice enough just for a light sweater but the air had a tint of wind in it that blew the leaves all over. I spent a good amount of the day outside, doing homework - fun fun! It really wasn't bad, and I can't complain too much since I assigned it to myself haha. I took the newspaper and picked a few articles that looked interesting and then read them. Sounds easy enough, but it seems like there are so many words that I didn't know, so I made sure to write down all the words I didn't know and then took the time to look them up in my dicionario and define them! After doing that I made myself write a little synopsis of the article to practice my writing. It was a nice day to be outside so I picked long articles so I could stay out in the sun. Exciting stuff - I picked 3 articles - one about a new exhibit at the Museo del Bellas Artes in Bilbao, one about the financial crisis and Europe's response and such (that was rather difficult since it was all about economical terms and sorts) and the last one was a travel peice on Air France's 75th aniversary (aniversario). I learned quite a lot of new words, some of which I might try and slide into conversation from time to time! I think it was a good exercise and probably helped quite a lot. I read the paper all the time but I don't ever write down all the words I don't know, so this was good.

I started off here on a bench in front of the river. It is a long walkway that I usually jog, so it was nice to sit down and relax there. The leaves were blowing all over in the wind and people were out in droves enjoying the weather. I kept getting distracted people-watching, but no big deal. One leaf, a kind of sad one, blew up onto my newspaper. It was like Fall saying: "Amanda, here is Fall, stop doing your homework and enjoy it." Kind of made me laugh, so I took a picture, finished my article and did just what Fall said - I got up, walked around took some scenery shots, enjoyed the new season and then decided on a new place for the second article. You can see in the shot the article I read - the one in big, bold headline letters. Pretty boring. The article above it is the art exhibit one - much more interesting.

My second location was further down the river. With the sun setting, it was nice to find a place in the rays. I worked on the second article about art, and suprisingly knew some Spanish art terms - who would have thought?! After I read this one, the sun escaped and I was chilly in the shade and decided to move one more time for a last homework location. I snapped some more shots on the way. You would think I had never seen a Fall with the way I was so excited about the leaves changing! The last article was pretty entertaining compared to the last two. It showed some of the outfits that the air hostesses (azafatas - yep just learned that one today!) wore in the 1950's and other decades. Pretty comical!

I finished the day off with a movie in Spanish. I was going to rent Volver, but figured I would be cool and try and buy it online and download it. That didn't work out too well, so then I tried to find a place to rent movies. I finally found it and then there were about 30 people in the small store, so I figured it was probably not a good idea to try and set up an account and check out a movie for the first time when a huge amount of people were in line behind me. I decided I would watch a movie I took from my work and just watch it in Spanish. It was Little Women, which I have never seen, suprisingly. It was good, but pretty difficult to understand in Spanish. Maybe someday I will watch it in English - probably will understand a bunch more!

Now the day is almost over and I am preparing for bed. I have Spanish class tomorrow - yay! I hope you had a good weekend!

Besos,
Amanda