Tulips in bloom - Spring Break!

Sorry, but I am really not keeping up in this blog. Let’s see, my life hasn’t been too interesting, just a lot of hanging out with friends, going out at night and trying to get myself to start writing my papers that are due in 5 days…

I’ve been trying to see Beatrice and Ana more because they are leaving me! Bea’s program ends in April, and Ana leaves to study in Italy while I’m gone on Semana Santa. Emily and I went to the “beach” with Bea, an English girl and another Spanish girl. Basically it was a patch of sand along the Tormes River. We just sat around, eating sunflower seeds (which are super popular here) and playing some card games with the weird Spanish deck of cards. Another day it was just me, a girl from Marruecos (Northern Africa), Bea (Italy) and the previously mentioned Spanish girl. I felt so international! I don’t feel like I completely belong sometimes, but I can understand the conversation and feel more comfortable in my own skin.

I’ve been going out on the weekends too. I know people who go out every night and get crazy drunk and others who don’t go out at all, so I feel like I’m at the right level. Last Thursday, Emily, Bea, Ana and I went to one of my intercambio house to have a party since his roommates were out of town. The funny thing was that no one else showed up, but it didn’t really matter. We played drinking games. I drank sangria, while the others drank calimocho (a popular drink which is a mix of red wine and coke - barf!). I drank way too much and ended up drinking a liter of sangria in addition to a few gin + fantas. It was fun since we all know English (some worse than others) and Spanish. We left to go dancing at Camelot, and I was ciega, or blind, meaning I was gone. Pretty drunk (sorry if Mom is reading this). We danced a while there, and later went to Potemkin, which was dark, dirty with an equally dark, kind of dirty crowd being all moody while 1950s American rock music played! Ahahaha. So I danced crazy since I was not self-conscious at this point. Towards the end of the night, Emily had been dancing with my intercambio and came to ask us if we were ready to leave. She asks Ana who says “Eh, whatever” (she’s Spanish - can stay out forever), asks Bea who says “Yeah I’m pretty tired” and turns to ask me, but she finds that I’m not listening in my own crazy Cousin It dancing trance (my hair is everywhere)! So I get home around 6 am, make more noise than usual and conk out for 4 hours until I have to get up to talk with my Mom on Skype. Then I go back home, sleep an hour and then try to eat comida which consists of a salad of lettuce, pasta, olives, tuna, crab and tomato, basically the worst thing someone could ask you to eat when you are hungover. I tell my host mom I can’t eat any more, and she knows I’m feeling sick, so she says fine. I then go back to bed for a while and get up around 6 pm to dar un paseo with Emily and put our two versions of the previous night together. It was pretty funny! Except for the resaca (hangover).

I’ve also been meeting with a really great intercambio!! I’m in love, but he’s expecting twins with his girlfriend. He really wants to help me improve and corrects me a lot. He buys my coffee always, so I taught him the words for chivalrous and the phrase “going dutch”. He was greatly amused and proceeded to send me an email using these news words in incorrect ways. Language truly is a humbling experience, when a 30 year old Spanish man is perfectly intelligent in Spanish, and then when he goes to speak in English, he can express himself like a child. On Thursday, we “snuck” into a seminary that used to be a military building/school, and we went into the dark basement (reminded me of the vaults in England - creepy) where Napoleon used to talk to his soldiers in the Guerra de Independencia in the early 1800s. It was really cool. I’m thinking this language partner will become a penpal maybe for the future.

Last night I went to party to celebrate an Argentinian new to Salamanca. Andrea and I show up, and it’s only boys (in the beginning)! It was funny/uncomfortable, but we chatted to a few people. At first I was discouraged because they were talking so quickly and with jokes (that fly over my head), but like one-on-one or with a few people, I do pretty well. More people showed up, and we hung out a bit. Weird thing was that this guy kept putting on old or strange music, such as the national anthem for Spain (ok, whatever), the anthem for Franco (whoa), then the anthem for the Spanish Republic (1931-1936) - weirder, and then! He put on, you will not believe this, the anthem for the Confederacy of the South during the US Civil War, and he knew the words! He asked Andrea where she was from (Virginia), and he was like, “Why don’t you know the words?” as he sang along. Andrea felt pretty offended….ahahaha.

Oh, funny story. I was in the Plaza Mayor with Emily and these two boys (like 13 or 14 years old) ride past and one of them hits me in the head on purpose! I was so pissed, and the first thing that I could think of to yell was, "pendejo!". Then 1 minute later the boys come back, and the one who hit me asks what pendejo means. So I tell him it's like hijo de puta and that it's a curse word from Mexico. The other boy is confused and asks us where we're from, and Emily and I both say Mexico. Not sure if they believed us, but the boy left by tapping my shoulder and saying "adios pendeja". I wasn't too mad anymore.

Only a few observations:
1) For those of you that are sports fans, this will probably be my only comment ever on sports here. Many of you may know that Rafa Nadal, the #1 ranked tennis player in the WORLD, is Spanish. And a nice boy from the pueblo. People obviously love him here and are thrilled with his success. Spaniards also like the Lakers since there are a couple of Spaniards on the team. Ok, that’s it.
2) Public bathrooms DO NOT exist here. You have to pay for a coffee if you want to use a bathroom, although McDonalds is an exception. But to prove this point more, I have seen 2 kids peeing in the street probably because there were no bathrooms to use (a boy and a girl). There are no bathrooms in supermarkets too. Thankfully university buildings are open during the week and I can go in there.
3) Speaking of McDonalds, the McFlurries here are amazing. Way more delicious.
4) Since it’s been pretty nice out, students have been sitting out on the lawn, and by lawn, I mean the patches of grass in a stone plaza by some university buildings. There is one juggler, some people with guitars and lots of dogs. But it doesn’t feel like a college campus at all. Weird!

So Semana Santa is next week, and I’m going to be on vacation for 10 days! Budapest, Hungary, then Prague, Czech Republic, then Vienna, Austria (by myself!) and then a night in Madrid. I’m excited and looking forward to the freedom of traveling and staying in hostels and meeting strangers and trying to find people that speak English. Then when I come back, 3 days later I go to Portugal with my program. April is a busy time! So if I don’t email you, you know why!
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