Success

So packing yesterday was not particularly successful, in the sense that I packed one tiny box full of clothing to offer my sister. My room is currently a big fat freaking mess. I did three loads of laundry yesterday, and one clean load is currently chillin on my bedroom floor right now. I'll have to take care of that soon. I did succeed in going through a bunch of my t-shirts and being pretty selective in the shirts I actually kept. Anything that could even be considered slightly too small or slightly too worn got tossed quickly into the salvation army/garbage piles respectively.

My closet is looking okay. I threw out two big bags of garbage yesterday, so slowly but surely I think I'm making my way to a cleaned up apartment. The hard part will prove to be the little things. The knick-knacks the pictures, the stupid shit I never really needed but have now.

Last night, unlike the daytime, was a complete success. I went with Ximena (a coworker at the ELI) to a party at a student's apartment. It was mostly a Spanish-speaking crowd and as they and I proceeded to drink, I was heckled increasingly to speak Spanish. By the end of the night, I was speaking pretty much freely, and it was received really well. I hate speaking Spanish to big groups of native speakers because I'm concerned that they are going to judge me and then correct every little thing and I won't be able to communicate because I'll just shut down. I think I'm so used to being in school where mistakes are bad, and they grade your spanish in a very real way, with As and Bs, and I'm really used to being pretty good in the classroom setting, that the prospect of having other native speakers listening terrifies me in a lot of ways. I ended up having a conversation about Spanish speakers and American mentalities and prejudices IN SPANISH. Victory.

Anyways, today I will be going to the mall. Gap is having a sale (30% off everything!!!) and I have a giftcard I'd like to use.

Also, I will hopefully start to put some things in boxes and shit.

Goodbye Gainesville. 5 days.