This weekend I was planning on going on my trip to Valencia for Las Fallas. I got up on Friday morning, feeling not so great but alive, so I headed off to the train station to meet my friends. Upon arriving to the train station at about 7 in the morning, I started to feel super sick. But I figured it would pass. Took the train into Madrid and then the metro to the bus stop and was seriously questioning whether I would be in good enough form to spend all night out without sleep. Needless to say, 15 minutes before my bus left, I looked at my friend Nina and informed her that I would not be able to make the journey. I was super sad. I have a bag of candy and a bunch of train tickets as souvenirs of my trip to Valencia (the bag of candy is because I needed something smaller than 20€ to give the machine to get home, and I was feeling a little sorry for myself). Yes I am a fat kid at heart.So I returned home, crawled back into bed, and started figuring out how I was going to tell my host parents that I didn't feel good. They had plans to go to Salamanca and I didn't want to mess up their plans, so I stayed in my room pretty much all day and slept. I woke up feeling fine, actually better than fine, so I guess it was just a 8 hour thing? Weird.
So I finally ventured out of my room, and my host parents had already left. Phew. I know they probably wouldn't have stayed home, but I didn't want to be an inconvenience and risk the chance of ruining their weekend plans. I talked with my host sister Laura because we were home alone this weekend, my other sister went to Granada, and she said that she was having friends over if I wanted to join her tonight. Guess that it's the same in Spain as in the U.S.: "Parents go away, children invite their friends over for a house party" (cough Tom cough). So I got to meet some of Laura's friends and it was great to actually meet people my age. We ate dinner together, pizza and tortillas, so a little mixture of American food as well as Spanish food. They talked a lot of politics and it got pretty heated at times, and luckily they didn't ask me for my opinion. Some of the hot topics were child support, banning bull fighting, and a few other Spain-related topics. Needless to say, it was a good night of practicing my listening because they spoke super fast but I enjoyed myself.
I slept in on Saturday, and I had already planned this so as to avoid the morning. I have had too many morning mishaps, and I was determined to finally break the spell. So I avoided the morning all together. Good solution. Maybe not. But I ensured myself no morning mishap, so hopefully it will be smooth sailing from here on out. I hung out at home all day and successfully wrote about 24 postcards. Ok lies. I had some of them written from before but I found most of the addresses that I needed and put the stamps on them and wrote probably 15 of them. They will be sent tomorrow and I hope they all reach their destinations safely. I really wanted to go to the mall on Saturday, but decided that that probably wasn't the best idea seeing as I'm going on vacation in a few days which will be costly. So post card writing it was.
Then last night, Laura had friends over once again only this time there were more people. This time they just came over for drinks though. The guys made a huge pot of mojitos, and another first, I tried my first mojito and I actually enjoyed it. It makes me think of Tom because I know you drank those on the cruise whenever we went. Don't lie, you did. We also played Trivial Pursuit, of course in Spanish, and it was rather difficult and I didn't know any of the answer but I was in charge of rolling the dice and making sure the guys didn't cheat. It was a pretty agreeable job. Even though I didn't know the answers, it was still fun to be a part of it.
After Trivial Pursuit, we headed out. Given this was at about 1:30/2:00 A.M.ish. We went to a small bar in a little neighborhood that I have not been to. Luckily my friend Claire came with her sister so I had someone familiar with me all night. The first bar was a little small and crowded but it was fun because it was mainly local Spaniards, not all the drunk American students that I usually see. The picture to the left is of us at the first club. Pilar, Claire, me obviously, Sarah (Claire's sister), and then my sister Laura. Around 3:00ish we headed off to "La Garena" which is near where my hotel was the first night, and is the huge party zone. It has a plaza of a bunch of clubs and I can't remember the name of the clubs that we went to, maybe Glass Café and Kabboi but I'm not sure. After finally deciding to head home, Laura's friends said they wanted "hamburgesas" (hamburgers in case that one threw you for a loop), and we drove to the McDonald's near our house. Too bad it was a super long line and we decided to forego the fast food and just eat at home. So at 6:30ish Laura, myself, and her two guy friends were eating sandwiches and cereal around the kitchen table, looking extremely tired. Successful end to a great evening. I have to say that I was nervous to go out with Laura and her friends but it was so much more fun than I thought it would be, and I would definitely go again if she invited me. Her friends were very understanding of the fact that my Spanish wasn't great, and they were very helpful. Overall a very fun weekend, probably one of the funniest that I've had since I've been abroad. Today I spent a lot of my day sleeping and doing homework. I have to read a book for my grammar class and decided against the book that my professor recommended me, mainly because it was super long (335 pages). My host sister Cristina gave me a different book, much shorter, only 135 pages and I think that's more realistic for me. So today was pretty relaxing, ate dinner at Claire's house again, and hung around the house. Very good weekend. So even though I thought my plans had fallen through, this was probably an even better alternative than going to Fallas.
A little bit of this week's schedule. I leave on Wednesday for England, specifically London first and then on Friday I leave from London to go to Scotland to finally be reunited with my loves, Mary Cantor and Kelsey Hawkins. I can't wait! From Scotland, it's back to London and then off to Barcelona for a few days and then back to Madrid. It's weird but flights are always cheaper to go to Barcelona first and then to Madrid. But I'm excited beyond words to finally see some familiar Hope faces, and there is a possibility of running into another friend in Barcelona because she's staying at the same hostel as my friends and I. I guess, "It's a Small World After All" (for you Norm since you're in Disney). This week will be super busy, but I'll try to write another post on Tuesday once I have a few more details to my week. Hope everyone enjoyed the good weather at home, I hear it's snowing now, but Spring is right around the corner, and it is definitely here to stay in Spain. Hooray!
FRIDAY!
ReplyDelete