This week has flown by! On Monday we reviewed a little for our test. We didn’t do too much after class. Tuesday we had the reading comprehension and the listening parts of our exam. After class we went to the pool at the University for a bit. It’s getting so hot here! I can deal without air conditioning, but we don’t have fans and our sheets and comforter are thick fleece. I have no idea why Maria even owns those. At night we had the goodbye dinner with our program. We went to San Nicolas up in the Albaycin. We got so much food! We had a fried calamari dish to start and bread with olive oil. Every 3 people got a jar of sangria to share. Then we had salad. After that the brought out French fries while we waited for our meal. I got sormorillo de ternera which was a sirloin steak. It was humungous. Then they brought out ice cream and cheesecake for dessert. After, we all got a shot of this liquor that they make at the restaurant. It was citrus and herbs, but I forget what it was called.
Wednesday I had the grammar portion of the exam. I got a 9.3 out of 10 on the first 2/3rd, but I won’t find out the last part until Monday. After the exam, Ethan, Amy, Allison, Melissa and I went to get a drink before we made our way to the parade for Corpus Christi. (I forgot my camera). Nothing in the parade was motorized. There were 15 foot tall figures that were carried by men underneath. The first two represented the Catholic kings and queens and the second two represented the Moorish kings and queens. There were also these people that had huge heads on. The walked around the a Chinese tea lantern filled with beans or something and would smash people in the crowd off the head. There were also a couple marching bands, but it was relatively small.
Michelle and I then took a bus from our house to the soccer field to get a Granada CF jersey. It closed at 1:30, we got there at 1:32… hijo de puta. Some crazy lady was muttering Spanish at us asking us where the soccer field was. Mind you, we were standing right in front of the giant stadium. We took a bus back home and ate lunch (pork loin and mixed vegetables) and went to the CLM to get wifi. We get there and it’s closed for the holiday. Figures. I used my laptop outside, but Michelle didn’t have hers so she went to the internet place near our house. (The CLM is a 20 minute walk if you’re speed walking, so this was a pain in the ass).
As I’m about two minutes from our house, I get a call from Michelle. “Um, I just map quest how long it takes from the bus station to our hotel. It’s 57 minutes!” I assumed she meant walking so I was like oh we can take a bus. No, that was the time driving, and there are no buses to get there. We had the bull fight in about 2 hours, so we ran home, took 20 minutes between the two of us showering and getting ready and ran back out. We had to cancel our first hotel and paid a $50 fee. We ended up booking the same hotel that our friends Carina and Elyse are staying in, so that works out better, but cost a bit more. We had about 20 minutes to cancel the old one and book a new one in order to get to the bullfight on time. We also had no idea where this was. We ran down the street and jumped in a taxi to get us there on time. It was quite the stressful situation. (So here’s what happened with the hotel. There are two river things on either side of Faro, Portugal. We thought we were on opposite sides of the same river as Carina and Elyse (and our bus). Nope, we were on the opposite side of the other river. Whoops!)
The bullfight was an interesting experience to say the least. It was great to have experienced such a huge part of the Spanish culture, but I never want to see one of those again. I now understand why they have outlawed it in Barcelona. One of the matadors was so good that he did everything. Usually they have a team of three helpers that does different things to prepare the bull and tire it out for the matador, but he did it himself. After Michelle and I went home to pack for Portugal!
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