Special Note: Today is my 113th post and it is January 13th...Not sure what that means, but I like it either way. 

Extra Special Note: I just realized that yesterday was January 11th which coincided with my 111th post, the day before January 10th coinciding with my 110th post, and as long as I write daily it will continue this way all through the month. So yesterday was not as special as I thought, but the entire month of January has the potential to be ever cooler than I imagined...

I got practically no sleep last night, probably a result of drinking all that mate with natural caffeine right before bed...However, I had a pleasant day today. Classes are going well, I am getting to the point where I sit with the same crowd of people and the teachers are both very nice and helpful. We learned some expressions today, for example "Estar de tomate" (To be of the tomato) means "to be out of one's mind", so I'll be sure to fit that into daily conversation next time I see someone acting a little wacky. I also followed my teacher's advice and bought a Spanish dictionary today, as in not an English-Spanish dictionary because there is not one speck of English in the whole thing. The idea is to stop straddling between two languages and think in terms of the one I'm trying to learn. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this is the most exciting dictionary purchase I've made to date. Today I also met up with the friend of a friend in the US and we went for a bilingual walk to help each other with English and Spanish. She was very friendly, and really good about correcting me a lot. We are going to try and meet once or twice a week. The only bad thing about today is that there is a single mosquito flying around somewhere in my room, and I know if I do not locate and destroy it before I go to bed I'm going to wake up with about 20 huge red allergy-induced bumps bites as I am the filet minion of any kind of bug that bites. An Australian in my class told me that I should direct a fan at my body when I sleep because the mosquitos will be blown away before they can descend on me. I figure it must work since Australians are experts with practically all forms of pesky animals. I prefer to see it's body smashed in between my hands to have a sense of closure to the whole situation, but we shall see...

Update on that: Last evening I attacked the insect with a cloud of bug repellent as it flew dangerously close to my face at one point in the night. Not exactly sure what happened to it but I woke up the next day with absolutely zero new bites :)