Back to work

I find it so difficult to get back into my normal routine after a long break. Getting out of bed this morning was a struggle but thankfully I was able to resist the urge to sleep in until the last possible minute, which allowed me to get a few things done around the house before heading out to work.

The past four days have been pretty intense and jam-packed (hence my lack of posting). Not too much of a restful vacation but a needed break from the office nonetheless. As of lately I haven't been too motivated to take pictures, and unfortunately this weekend was no exception. :P Anway, here's what I was up to:

Thursday: Chechu and I left out that morning to drive down to Almuñécar, a beach town located along the coast of the province of Granada. The drive down was quite pleasant, although halfway there it started pouring down raining, bringing traffic to a screeching hault. Aah!! We did stop in Torre Nueva for churros, but only bought a small order to go with our coffee (no chocolate this time around). We finally got to Almuñécar around noon to visit with Mª Angeles and Curro. We had lunch with them and then later that afternoon we went to another couple's house for coffee and pastries. After much prodding I did have a small slice of some kind of chocolate croissant that was absolutely amazing. Well worth the indulgence I have to say! After watching a little bit of The Color Purple we headed back to Almería since we both had group meetings at the church that we had to attend. We finally got home after 11pm and crashed.

Friday: We left out before 9am to pick up some of the girls from the church who asked if they could drive up to Granada with us. We ended up leaving Almería almost an hour late due to a few unforeseen circumstances but not to worry- since nothing ever starts on time here in Spain, the fact that we got to the church nearly a half hour late went completely unnoticed. Finally around noon we all began to organize ourselves in groups for the evangelism activities that afternoon. All the groups were assigned to different sections of the city to pass out leaflets and invite people to attend Easter Sunday service. I actually had a really good time walking around and talking with different people. Usually I get extremely nervous when approaching people spontaneously, but this time around I was able to come out of my shell and initiate very pleasant conversations with several people.
We reconvened at the church at 3pm for lunch, and afterward Chechu and I had to head back to Almería since he had to lead the teen Bible study which started at 7:30. Since we didn't have time to stop back at the house we immediately went to the church. While Chechu was leading the Bible study I went with Alejandra to Burger King of all places to have a diet soda with her before she began her shift there. She convinced me to nibble on some fries with her (BK has the best fries ever!) and before I left to head back to the church to meet Chechu she hooked us up with two #1 value meals.
However, what was initially going to be an evening at home with BK and movies ended all-together differently, as we both got home and went straight to bed.

Saturday: BK for breakfast! That held us over until 4pm that afternoon when we finally sat down to lunch after running some errands. I made pork chops at Chechu's request along with baked potatoes and salad. I had two small pork chops, one small baked potato and a pretty decent-sized serving of salad. I also cut up some strawberries and bananas for dessert.
After lunch Chechu went to the church since he had to lead worship for that evening's service while I stayed at home to clean and catch up on some laundry.
That night we were supposed to attend a birthday party for a friend of ours, but she ended up postponing it due to the fact that she wasn't feeling well. In light of that, we decided to go out anyway and have a date night of our own. The original idea was to go to the movies to see Horton Hears a Who, which looks adorable. We planned to catch the 11:45pm show, giving us time to have dinner first. We went to MacPapa's, splitting a chicken campero (huge sandwich) and a hot dog. Not the best choices, I know.. After dinner however we ended up coming back home instead of going to the movies. It was really late and we were both still pretty tired from the previous days' activities.

Sunday: Stayed home all morning to finally relax a bit. I finished some laundry and permed my hair while Chechu did his lesson planning for the week. At around 3pm we met up with Charo, Javi and Mariel to have lunch at this Chinese restaurant before heading out to Granada for church. At the restaurant I had a spring roll, fried rice and chicken with almonds. Flan for dessert.
After lunch, Chechu, Charo and I drove up to Granada for Sunday evening service. It was very nice, and there were several new people who came, presumably from the evangelism activies on Friday. I did miss celebrating Easter at home though, because here it really isn't the same. We ended up leaving Granada after 10pm, and on the way back we stopped for tapas. By that time I had a pretty bad headache, so I didn't eat very much. We finally got back home at around 12:30am.

I feel exhausted just having written about all of that!

I'm hoping that today will end up being low-key. I decided to cancel my weigh-in this morning since a) I have my period and b) I really didn't want to know. This past week, while my portions were okay, I really over-indulged in sweets and red meat. As I'm prone to high cholesterol, neither of those are good options. Now that things have returned back to normal I've jumped back on the weight-loss wagon again. This week I plan to keep my meat intake to a minimum, having only tuna or skinless chicken if I do decide to eat meat, and filling up on vegetables, salads and fruits. The back pain that I complained about last week has finally dissipated thank God, so I'll be getting back into my exercise routine as well.