Post Christmas

Happy Sunday, everyone!

I'm very tired today, but with good reason.

Not only is it Post Christmas, the aftermath of an exhausting few days, but I also had a bit of a cold yesterday. Fortunately, it's a lot better today. On top of that, yesterday we went to see El Hobbit: El Desolition de Smaug. I'm not quite sure if I spelled the name exactly right, but you all know what movie I'm talking about. We went to see that movie at 10:30...at night. The movie didn't end until 1:30 a.m. Then I had to get up early this morning because we went snow shoeing in the mountains where there is actually snow. The main reason we went to do that was because another exchange student, Kaylee, is staying at Grace's house. Kaylee is from Hawaii and is on exchange in the Canary Islands. I think my favorite comment by her about the climate here in the mountains was, "Wow! There's ice, and it's not in a freezer!" Even for Grace and me, who weren't as impressed by the snow, it was still a lot of fun, and undeniably beautiful.

Kaylee first came here yesterday. All of us exchange students went ice skating in Jaca and then we all went to see El Hobbit together. It was fun, but anyone familiar with the Lord of the Rings movies know that they are lengthy. Because Spanish is my second language, I don't feel qualified in giving a full review of the movie, but I will say I have one complaint. Benedict Cumberbatch (who voices the dragon, Smaug) wasn't in this version because it was translated into Spanish. Of course, I understood the movie. It just takes more effort than I usually have to make to understand it. Combine this with a three hour long movie and it gets tiring. Grace started to feel the movie's length about two hours in. She spent the rest of the movie resting her head on my shoulder while we went back and forth, commenting on the movie. Most of our comments were simply "I ship it." For those of you who aren't familiar with the term "ship" or "shipping" it's just a slang term for when you like the idea of two characters (in this case, in a movie) as a couple. Some of these pairings grew progressively more ridiculous as the movie lengthened. Surprisingly, our craziest "ship" wasn't Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) and Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch, but not in this version). It was Legolas (Olrando Bloom) and an ork.

However, I think the best part of this weekend is that we still have one more week off!