hola! i know it's been a week without an update, but that just means i have got lots to tell! everything has just been so busy! I'm not complaining or anything, because everything has been amazing, but its been difficult to keep up with posting and putting up pics on top of hw and papers and presentations and of course, living it up in spain :)
I have done lots of things since i last posted. For starters, we went to la playa de San Juan last wednesday and learned how to windsurf, body surf, and kayak on the mediterranean! Windsurfing was kind of hard but i actually kind of got the hang of it for the most part. i could get up on the board and pick up the sail and and go, but only in one direction haha. i wasn't so good with the turning and what not. once i got to the bouies i had to just jump off.. but it was so cool! my legs killed for the next like 5 days though from trying to keep my balance and turn the board and stuff. then we did body surfing, which isn't really how it sounds. you have this big board and a paddle and you paddle out on your stomach with you arms, then you get on your knees and use the paddle, and then you try to stand up and use the paddle. I was great at the knees part.. the whole standing up thing took me a minute but i did finally get to where i could keep my balance. we realized as we were trying to do all this that we were surfing over a school of jelly fish.. the objective then became to stay on the board at all costs haha, not so that you wouldn't look dumb when you fell into the water and your board flew away from you, but so that you didnt land on top of these huge stinging "medusas" (thats what they are called in spanish haha). Our last activity was kayaking. i've never actually kayaked before but its not very hard, and it was so cool because i mean, we were on the sea.. needless to say that night i passed out from being so tired, but it was definitely one of the coolest things we've gotten to do here.
this weekend we took an overnight trip to Granada, which is about 5 hours away from Alicante. I was excited for one because i love staying in new hotels, i think its really neat; for two because we got to hang out with the whole group all weekend (which we normally do anyway but this was a little different); and for three because i had heard that Granada was beautiful. well it definitely was. the first day we saw the cathedral and the actual caskets of Isabel and Ferdinand, which was SOO cool. We walked through these streets literally full of vendors, like the walls of the buildings outside were covered with things you could buy and it was so neat, and i bought a purse and this really ornate pillowcase thing. We went to a couple bars there, where they give you free tapas (which are like little appetizer things). THEN we went to watch these gypsies do flamenco dancing in this neat little place. they were so good at it and so intense, and when they were done, they started picking people from the audience to come up and try to dance one at a time, and guess who totally danced with them?? yep. I got to dance with the gypsy flamenco dancers in spain. i feel like thats a pretty cool story. emmy took pictures, so hopefully she will post them soon!
the next day we went to see the Alhambra, which used to be one of the seven wonders of the world. it was the hugest thing i've ever seen. we walked around that thing for 4 hours and i still don't know if we saw everything.. it was so beautful though. The Alhambra is this huge castle/fort thing that the arabs built when they first settled in spain. they had all these different look out spots where you could see the whole city of Granada, and beautiful gardens and fountains, and even a summer palace. overall this weekend i think i took 23o pictures haha.. so i'll have to edit those and post them soon so you can see what i'm talking about.
when we got back to alicante there was a huge parade going on through the center of town. Everyone was dressed out in tons of different costumes. We couldn't quite figure out the theme of it, but it was so neat. It got me really excited for the festival of hogueras, which starts saturday night. Hogueras celebrates the feast of San Juan, and its like a 5 day event where they construct these massive paper statues and put them all over the city (like over 80 of them..) It's basically a party for 5 straight days and at the end they burn all but one statue. i can't wait. they told us we probably won't be able to sleep during the festival very much, which should make class interesting.. I heard that the police set a noise limit to 4:30 in the morning, but i somehow doubt that that is really going to make much of a difference..
WELL. with all that, i think i am going to go get ready because tonight we are going to watch the u.s. v italy game in the barrio, and i have to finish hw beforehand lol. pictures will hopefully be on facebook soon if it doesn't act stupid.. sometimes it won't let me.. probably because i have like a million pictures.
oh yeah.. class is going well lol. in spain, it's becoming kind of an afterthought.. i'm not too worried about it. obviously haha.
hasta pronto!