A rainy day in the neighborhood and some grammar

At 3:45 A!M! I was woken up by the sound of DISHES being washed. Not ok. I have a new bed because the old one sagged in the middle. I miss it though; it was like getting a big hug while I slept. The new one is a bit of a ROCK. Also, my laundry was folded into a pile when I got home yesterday. Oops. Sorry! Slash it's STILL not really dry! I don’t feel entirely comfortable in my apartment here. I still haven’t gotten into the kitchen for real cooking. Also, I like to get out as much as possible. I suppose that’s my nature though. I want to SEE things and DO things much more than I want to sit inside. I forgot to mention that I counted the steps on the way up to my apartment on the 4th(US, 5th) floor. There are SEVENTY of them. It’s a WORKOUT to get to my room.
I walked to Steph and Mikaela’s aparment. Yesterday at the pool place, I really thought I was pretty close to home because I recognized some things and figured it couldn’t be THAT far to get to their house. It’s a long walk on the subway too—getting from my house to the station and the station to theirs AND walking around the stations to transfer. I decided I’d rather do my walking above-ground, thank you!
I was very happy with that decision even when it started to rain (I've gotten smart about packing my umbrella).
On my walk, I found a few more cute squares, including the one with the church from the night before! I found out it's called Sant Joan and that you can see how it's made on the sides. People were going in for a service. I was tempted to follow them but thought better of it. It has bricks and rocks and stuff poking out. It's pretty cool. On the side of it, I noticed that its windows aren't lined up. They're not on different stories either though. I'd be curious to see how they look from the inside but I don't know what the policy is on wandering into churches (I wouldn't do it during an event).
I did have to look at the map a couple of times to be sure I was not passing their street. I came to a square that I recognized from the walk home with Mikaela and Steph once. It has a lot of things that are all over our neighborhood. The giant modern dumpsters for trash and various recycling. It also has lots of shops. However shops here have garage doors that come down in front of their door and their window if they're closed. Most of them are covered in mural-ish graffiti. I wonder who does the graffiti. It also has several sizable trees but the ground all around them is cement. I think if it were in the US, the square would have grass. This square is interesting because it spans across 2 sides of the street.

I found their house and the buzzed me up. We sang a couple rounds of Grammar-time (to the tune of Hammer Time) and started in on our project. We found it was actually pretty easy once we got out our books and stuff. It was nice to have someone to double-check with even though I'm pretty sure of my grammar. We did it in sections and ate chocolate-chip muffins that I'd bought at the store across the street. After a bit, we had a soda break. I got some Cheetos which were made with corn. They were great.
We procrastinated a bit, but we finished our grammar. We decided when/where to meet for dinner and I started the trek home. I wound down random streets and up others.


Lots of the trees have little clementines on them right now. They're almost all tall skinny trees with just a puff of green branches at the top. I wish I was a little bit taller and I could just reach up and pluck them!
One of my favorite things about walking around is the number of apartments that have lush tropical plants on their balconies. It makes me feel like I'm on vacation.

From the distance, I saw a sort of covered balcony/tower hanging off of the side of another church. I walked that way until I was close enough to look at it. It was not very noteworthy from the front or... ANY of the sides. In an alley, there was a cut-out of the wall. It had a statue of a man clasping his hands near his heart in the little alcove. I was very amused by 3 pigeons that were resting on his head and shoulders. It reminded me of the pigeons I occassionally hear from inside my apartment. They have a sweet little cooing sound that I actually like.
Here's an example of some of the graffiti on the garage doors. Lots of it is really mod-artistic. I'm a fan.
Here's another example of the graffiti. This fishy lives on my street.
I went inside my apartment and threw my stuff down. I took as little as possible and headed back out to do some sightseeing. TBC...