First week- Success!

Well it’s been officially a little over a week. I survived navigating, classes, and adjusting to being in Spain! I have made some friends (amazingly enough- I know) and life is good!

Anna and I live on Camino de Ronda which is on the southern side of the city. It’s a solid 25-30 minute walk to where classes are which is really hard for me as I have class at 8:30 in the morning... I have never had a class before 9:00. This morning was especially tough to wake up as we had a crazy busy weekend.

Here’s the weekend’s activities:

Friday- We went to this thing called Botellon which literally translates to “big bottle” in Spanish. It's an empty parking lot with thousands of young adults (18-24 years old) that come out for the night.

These are all the kids out for the night. You can't get more Spanish than a Botellon.

The girls are ready!

Everyone brings a bottle of something to drink and heads out to hang with friends. It’s totally legal outdoor public drinking. I was a little scared of the idea because I know it would be messy if this happened in the states but it was so relaxed! Here’s the difference- in the states there would be girls puking, guys fighting, and everyone drinking way too much; here, the atmosphere was totally under control. It was just a social thing- no fighting, no puking, no crazies. I had tons of kids come up to me wanting to practice their english and let me practice spanish with them. (That is called an “intercambio”.) It was so cool! The only problem was that we didn’t get home until 5 am which normally wouldn’t be a problem, but that leads me to Saturday..

Saturday- We went to Salobreña for a day at the beach. (See feature photo at the top of the page) I have officially put my feet in the Mediterranean Sea!! The weather was absolutely perfect. I was in the sun for 6 hours and I loved every minute! The hardest (yet rewarding) part of the day was just getting to the beach. Here’s the deal- we had to take a bus from our street to the bus station and then to Salobreña. So everyone met Anna and I a couple blocks from our apartment to take bus 10 to the station. It was chilly that morning and all of us had sweatshirts on over our suits and were loaded with bags, towels, and stuff for the beach. Add to that the fact that all of us had gone to Botellon the night before and had gotten all of 3 hours of sleep.. well it was a brutal combination. Roughly a dozen kids arrive bright and early and are all ready for our excursion to the beach. The bus comes.. and.. DOESN’T STOP. Seriously, we’re sitting at the bus stop and the driver points up ahead to where his real stop is. Apparently we had the wrong bus stop! So all 12 of us literally CHASE the bus down the street. Thank goodness for the red lights along the way because we had a ways to go. 3 blocks later we got to the next bus stop.. which is still not the one for our bus. We ran another 3 blocks and then tried to act natural as we trooped onto the bus full of morning commuters. Every single person on that bus had watched a dozen American kids chasing this bus and laughing while doing it. I honestly don’t know how we made it, I was laughing so hard at watching everyone I almost just opted to wait for the next one.

The Mediterranean Sea- what a view.

We made it and it was a perfect day. I forgot sunscreen (sorry mom) and fried. Ok, actually after I realized how burned I was I borrowed some sunscreen from a girl in our group so I salvaged a little of my second layer of skin. Anna came home a slight shade of lobster- good thing Aloe is a universal necessity.

Sunday- We slept in (thank goodness) and had a Flamenco show that night. I was expecting a show- like a stage and lights and stuff. It was a cave. Well, ok it was an actual building but it looked like an igloo from the outside. There was a restaurant on one side and then there was this like tube thing that led to the other. We headed for the tube thing and sat on the chairs all along the side of it. It was probably 8 feet wide by 40 feet long and 7 feet high. I’m not exaggerating. In the middle was this wooden board built into the floor with a dome ceiling which was maybe a foot higher than the rest of the ceiling. I was sitting right in front of the board floor. As you can see, I was so front row I couldn’t even fit all of the dancers in my photos. Let’s put it this way- I was so front row that I got sweat flung on me from the male Flamenco dancer.

This is the only picture that turned out- I was too close for photos!

Flamenco is like tap dancing with some interp thrown in. It really wasn’t a rehearsed “show”, it was like a family who comes out to play music and dance and clap and sing with it. They just looked like they were having fun, but there was an intensity that I can’t describe.

After the Flamenco show getting tapas. At least we got some color from the beach!

Afterwards, we got tapas and headed to bed. Busy weekend, but so fun!