Feliz cumpleaños a papá

Today is our host dad's 64th birthday, and tomorrow is their daughter Sandra's 34th, so we had a huuuuuuuge, and I mean huge dinner. Let me try to remember what we ate... There was a salad with avocado, feta, and tomatoes, fried crab, fried shrimp, these little cheese things wrapped in phyllo, 2 kinds of bread, a quiche with ham and mushrooms, pizza, olives, potato chips, and sparkling wine. Oh, and 2 freaking cakes, a brownie cake with nuts and an apple cake. I have the biggest food baby ever right now.  I wanted to know the names of things in Spanish so I pointed at the little cheese things in phyllo and asked... I couldn't understand what Fina said, I thought she said "paquetitos" so I repeated it as a question and everyone cracked up. I thought I said something inappropriate or embarrassing...turns out what I said was "little packets" which is exactly what they looked like anyway, so go me. So I feel really bad because we never have a celebration for my poor real dad in the states. I think next year I will bake him a cake and put sparklers in it like they did for Antonio. We definitely bonded over dinner-- It was Fina, Antonio, me, Becca, the daughters Sandra and Cristina, and Cristina's boyfriend Conrad (the one who picked us up when we arrived). We talked about how expensive colleges are in the U.S., and we tried to explain the difference between private college and public. Sandra mentioned that Fina wants grandchildren and I said my mom too but I am too young. They laughed. Either they think I am funny or they think my Spanish is sad. Either way I had fun. We talked about the cat Lolo and they said his birthday is in July so we will have another party and another cake. Then obviously it will be my birthday...at first we thought it would be fun to go out to a nice dinner for my b-day, but after tonight I'm thinking we'll stay in for it...it's free after all!
After school today, I took a nap (per usual) and then we went to try to find our program office so we could print our boarding passes for Paris. Unfortunately by the time we actually found it it was 7:20, and the office closes at 7:30, so we will go again tomorrow. At this point it started raining and we called some people from class and met up at a nearby Irish bar called George Payne. They have 1 euro sangria and beer every afternoon. We met a guy around my dad's age that went to UF like Dad did, and he said they just arrived and asked for some good places to check out. Today was really really fun. Our friend Erin from school just got back from Paris last night and showed us all these great pictures--makes me even more excited to go!! Just 2 more days of boring school then we're off to see the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre and Versailles and all kinds of other French things!

Miss/love you all!
Leah Kay