Becoming a chef and assorted other successes

So I just wanted to share with all of you who know how terrible I (usually) am at cooking all the wonderful food I've made this week. I found a new love for recipezaar.com because there's a filter where you can search for recipes that have 5 ingredients or less. So far I've made Spicy Mustard Chicken, Honey Lime Chicken, and Chicken Parmesan. I was very proud of myself to say the least. They all came out really tasty (surprisingly) and I even brought my second batch of Chik Parm to school to eat while I studied and everyone was saying "ooooh, did you make that?!"

I've also been pretty excited about the grades I've been getting so far. I came here knowing I wouldn't be putting in as much effort but I got an A- on my Cinema midterm, an A on my first Prado quiz, and an A- on the midterm. I got a B+ on my Cuban Revolution paper that I thought I did horribly on (which I did grammar-wise but he really liked the content). I have yet to see how I did on my Islam and Spain midterm but I think I could possibly get an A. So this makes me a lot less worried about how I'm doing in class and I know the effort I've been putting in is sufficient.
UPDATE: I got a 97 on my Islam and Spain Midterm... went from knowing nothing to an expert!

Also I've been going to the gym a lot lately and it really feels great to get back into working out. I take a class called Cardio Tonic with Adrian and I'm always dripping in sweat and every muscle in my body gets worked. I went from once a week to two and this week I went to all three classes Monday, Tuesday, Thursday. After all that hard work I treated myself to a massage today which I desperately needed and my gym has a great hour long massage for 30 euro (which is less than $40!).

I also thought I'd fill everyone in on the upcoming weeks ahead because I'm going to be doing a lot of traveling. Next weekend I'm going to London to visit Briana. Then the following weekend our two week Spring Break begins. I'm spending the first weekend in the Canary Islands (May 28-April 1), then I'm going to have one day back in Madrid to get reorganized and then I head to London to spend the night with Briana before we head to Amsterdam (April 3-6) and Paris (April 6-9). Then I have Easter Weekend to relax before I have to go back to the reality of school. The weekend after we return to classes (April 17-19) I am going to Lisbon, Portugal with 7 of my friends here. All of the transportation and hostels for all the trips above is costing me less than $800.

It's going to be a lot of traveling but it's really one of the things I was most excited for in coming here. I'm definitely going to need another massage after all of it. I'm a bit disappointed I won't be going to Morocco and a few other places in Spain but I know I'll be coming back to Spain for a year to teach English after I graduate which will give me plenty of time to see the spots I missed.