And hey dad, I am not the worst blogger ever. Thanks for that wonderful email. Oh yeah, and happy birthday again! Hope it was a good one!
So anyways, my week in Spain has been super awesome! Yeah, I'm supposed to be taking classes here and studying, but we've only had to go to class on two different days. SUPER awesome. I actually haven't even been to my literature class yet only my civilization/history class. Definitely not complaining.
The culture here isn't too different I don't think. Meals I think are the weirdest part. Breakfast is normal, but lunch and dinner are kind of switched. Lunch is at 2:00ish and it's like the biggest meal of the day. After lunch is the best part: La siesta(: AKA nap time. Dude, why can't we do this in the states? Best thing ever! So then, dinner is at like 9:00ish and it's not very big, well, it's not supposed to be. Every meal I eat here at the house is huge. Luisa thinks that we need lots of food. For instance, dinner tonight: two ham sandwiches, corn, bread, 2 strawberries, and a piece of cheese. After that, she was still offering us more. I think I might just puke. I definitely would not be surprised if I came back to the states 100lbs heavier. And for the most part, I can deal with eating some pretty weird stuff that she has given us, but not the paella. That's been the only thing that I have refused to eat. The smell of sea food kinda makes me sick, and the little crayfish lookin' thing had eyes! I can't eat anything with eyes that I can see on my plate! Thank goodness for the Burger King Luisa bought us also haha.
So since there hasn't been much class, there's been a lot of free time. Lots of sightseeing, shopping of course, messing around, etc. Normally we meet up as a group somewhere and try to do something fun. One day we went sightseeing around Alcalá de Henares, went to Madrid for the day, ate churros and chocolate(pretty dang delicious), and today I went to Alcalá Magna(mall) with some friends. Sometimes it seems like I'm on vacation a lot here(:
So far we've traveled legitly(hope some of my friends appreciate the vocab use there) as a group twice. Once to Madrid and once to Toledo. Pretty fun. We mainly went to Madrid to go to El Prado (super ridiculously huge art museum) because it was free at a certain time. We spent like two hours there and Bethany and I still didn't see everything. Now in Toledo, we traveled there in a big bus, and there we met our tour guide. She took us pretty much to every church there it seemed like. My favorite part was definitely when we got to take pictures of the awesome view (in my facebook album(: ) Seeing it in person is like a million times better than the picture. It was truly incredible. Then after our tour guide left, we had about 2 hours of free time which = shopping time(: It was definitely a fun way to spend a Saturday.
Okay, so major highlight of my week was my experiences with the tuna bands. Definitely experiences of a lifetime. So the adventures began Friday night. The group just finished eating churros and chocolate and half of us went to a dance while the other half of us went to the parade thing (it definitely just took me a minute to think of the word because we only called it the desfile). But anyways, earlier that week we meet a member of the local tuna band (Ignacio/Taxi) who told us that we could participate in the desfile. So when the group split, the desfile group met up with Ignacio, he took a bunch of us up to the balcony of a shop on Calle Mayor where the 6 tuna bands would come "serenade" us. Man, the view of the place was fantastic. I have pictures on my phone that i will be able to put on facebook when I return(: So when the desfile began, tuna bands started playing songs all down Calle Mayor. They each had to make stops at certain places and they would play a few songs and then continue. Their music was pretty awesome and their voices were incredible. There was a song that they all played because it was about the town that I'm living in, and it pretty much gets stuck in my head at least once a day. No lie. Eventually, the parade ended and we met up with the people that were sitting below. Bethany and I decided to leave because we had to wake up early the next day to go to Toledo, but that didn't happen for quite some time. First, we ran into the tuna band from Linares (kinda by Andalucía). They sang a song for us, danced with us, and of course flirted with us. Ohhhh Spanish men. I'm sure a bunch of them were more than 10 years older than us. Creepy, but hilarious and fun. Then, we were like "Oh we've gotta go, we've got to wake up early tomorrow" (en español claro). But then we ran into another group from Portugal. Immediately they began to speak English to us and it was hard to keep the conversation in Spanish. Oh well. Well then, they too began to sing us a song and let us wear their little cape things with the patches. This group was a lot younger than the previous and a lot less creepy haha. So same conversation again, "we gotta go" etc. That was Friday night. Saturday after Toledo, we found the same group from Linares as we were walking back from the train station. We began to talk and they were like "hey! we're going to perform at this theater place, come!" So we did. At first, we couldn't get in because we didn't have tickets, but then we found Ignacio who gave us tickets for some pretty decent seats without paying any money. Score. The group we were with was the first or second one to go, so we left after the third or fourth band. We saw the group again and they were quite drunk which meant that there was some pretty interesting conversation going on. Most of it I couldn't even understand. People around where they are from speak ridiculous, impossible Spanish. Some of them definitely laughed when I couldn't understand them sometimes. But anyways, that was our adventures with the tuna bands. I'm definitely never going to forget it.
Really, Spain is great, especially Alcalá de Henares. It's like a small town but not. There's lots to do, great weather (ha to those is utah right now :P), and super friendly people. At times, I'm kinda like: "I never want to leave," "This place is incredible," and "Muchachos guapos(:" but other times: "I think I might die if I eat ham or take in some good ole cigarette smoke again," "I have to walk to the train station again?" "Where's that dang Target when I need it most?" or "I want to use my American dollars again!" I've concluded that it's best to stay in the U.S. at least for now, but I'm glad that I can have this experience. It's definitely been a blessing! (¡gracias a mis padres por supuesto!) I'll try to be a better blogger this time. Hope you've enjoyed(: hasta luego mis amigos.
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