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| Zach, Ali, Amanda and I with our palm tree creations! |
Tuesday was pretty sucky. I
went to class 10-12, and then went to get coffee with Amanda and that part was
good. I love the coffee here; it’s very different but delicious. From there we
had class 1-3, and I’m starting to catch on a lot more to my professors.
During lab on Tuesday
we had to focus on these old English phrases that were super challenging to
translate. However, one of them I totally rocked and he voted mine the best in
the class. I was pretty pleased with myself that I beat out even the Spanish
students for the best sentence
Wednesday
I woke up early and went to the bank with my host mom. We set up an account for
me at bankinter, and it was pretty easy. I went to class at 1, and then
Amanda and I had to pick up some things that were for our translation class. We
had to go to the copisteria and tell them that we needed the stuff for the
class, and they make the copies there and you pay for the printouts. It kind of
sucks that you have to pay, but whatever.
Thursday I woke up
at 10:30 and then got ready for a run. It was on the forecast to be a beautiful
day, so I was really excited to get to the beach. I ran to the beach and then
lay on the sand for almost an hour. It was 75 degrees and it was the greatest
hour ever. There were people everywhere on the sand and in the water and wow,
it was just beautiful and perfect.
I got to campus and
met with my advisor Ramon because he wanted to talk to us about going to Elche
Friday, which is where he is from. We had to be at the train station at 8:40 in
the morning to arrive at 9:30.
After class, I went to the
beach to meet up with Ali and 6 other people I didn’t know but it was pretty
cool meeting new people. We sat there for a while, and then I walked home
around 7.
Friday was an
amazing day. I took the tram at 8:00 to Luceros, and I met Amanda there and we
walked to the train station. We met up with everybody and went into the station
and bought our train tickets for Elche. Ramon paid for all of our tickets which
was really nice of him, and then we took the train.
When
we arrived in Elche, we walked around a lot, and walked through these awesome
parks with birds and millions of palm trees. I learned a ton about palm trees
today, so that was pretty interesting. One of Ramon’s students came along, and
he is a photographer so he was taking hundreds of pictures throughout the day.
I’m excited to see how they all turned out!
We
walked through these parks, and there were all sorts of different fruit trees.
Lemon trees, banana trees, orange trees, almond trees, date palm trees,
kumquats, Japanese fruits, just a ton of different types of trees. It would
have been pretty cool if they were all in season so we could try some of the
fruit.
We
stopped at the local market and Ramon bought a whole bunch of churros. Then we
went to a café and got hot chocolate, which was really different from hot
chocolate in the states. It was almost like drinking hot syrup but not quite as
thick. Anyway, it was delicious and we got to dip the churros in it. Yeah I
know, amazing.
In
one of the parks there was this little building and we got to go inside and see
the ladies making these amazing things out of the leaves from the palm trees.
They were making them for la semana santa, which isn’t until April. I can’t
even imagine how much work goes into making those. They explained that they use
the palms that haven’t gone through photosynthesis yet because they are white
from the lack of chlorophyll and they are a lot softer. The lady made a few
example little things like a camel, fish, rose and snail. I got to keep the
camel so it is a pretty sweet souvenir!
From
there we met up with Ramon’s other friend who is like a professional palm tree
climber. Yeah I know, pretty cool. He showed us his 2 methods of climbing up,
and we could try if we wanted. A few of us tried, but we ran out of time before
I got a chance so I was pretty bummed.
After
that, we went to a restaurant for lunch. I ate squid! Well Ali ordered the
squid, but I tasted it. It wasn’t too bad but it was a little bit chewy. I got
this plate with a few types of meats on it, the second plate was a paella type
thing which I didn’t really like, and then we got dessert. I got flan and I
didn’t like it at all. THEN we got coffee. All of this was only 1o euro, and it
was a pretty sweet deal.
After
lunch we walked back to the train station and headed back to Alicante. Amanda
and I decided to go see a movie and I am really glad we did! We saw this movie
called 3 bodas de más, and it was really funny. I was happy with how much of it
I actually understood.
My madre
didn’t get home until like 10:00, and she came home with her niece Carmen. We
all had dinner and watched TV together, and laughed a lot. I really like
Carmen, she is super nice!
Saturday
was another pretty good day. I woke up around 10, and my host family had
breakfast together. We usually don’t have breakfast together, so that was nice.
Then I got dressed and ready for the castle.
I
met Zach, Amanda and Ali and we went to the castle. It was a pain to climb all
the way up, but it was kind of fun and exciting at the same time. The castle
had a lot of really pretty views, and it was really cool to finally see.
I
ended up falling asleep on the beach for a while on Saturday. Then Amanda and I
found this shell, which ended up being a hermit crab, and we were really
excited about it haha. Then we went and got ice cream from that place that’s
like yogurt yeti. It’s really good but really expensive.
