Time sure is flying by! My head is spinning a bit from all the Spanish intake that it has had over the past 3 days. I just finished my homework and began trying to memorize some irregular verbs-April made up some flashcards, so I figured I might as well use them! It seems as though I can't fit everything that I want to do into a single day-time just evaporates! Three days into our schooling, I can really understand why it is strongly recommended that students hire an "empleada" (housekeeper). We have no time for much of anything outside of going to class, studying, and involving our kids in activities. Our empleada started on Tuesday and has been a huge blessing so far. She is from Nicaragua, has four children and is a single mom, so the work we are giving her helps to provide for her family. She will be working for us 4 days a week, 7 hours each day. She arrives at 8:30 and basically takes care of just about everything. She makes an enormous amount of food for lunch (around 1:15) which we will then heat up again for dinner (around 6). She leaves us at 3:30, with the laundry done, the floors clean, the dishes done, and the groceries bought. I really don't know how working moms get anything done around the house. Those of you in that situation must be amazing! Language learning is very stressful and emloying an empleada helps with much of the household stress. We are very fortunate to have an empleada! We felt a little strange about having a maid because we've never even considered it at any other time in our lives. When we got here we were given a piece of paper with some questions to answer about whether or not we needed one. The resulting answer was "you absolutely need to hire an empleada." Still not quite sure, we thought we would consider getting a little help. After consulting with Grettel, she encouraged us to hire one for a variety of reasons including helping out a single mom who needs an income (the institute sets the rates- about $300 per month!). So, we did and we now understand why. Well, I must get back to my irregular verbs. I must do better than April. Until next time...