So Friday was the first official day of classes, and mine luckily didn't start until 10:45AM. I headed over to the school sorta early to pay for my side trips and activities. And 265 euro later I had signed up for a weekend trip to Barcelona, a trip to the Valencia Aquarium, and a Spanish Cooking class. I opted out of visiting Granada to save some cash; plus I figure I will want to return to Spain as soon as possible after this trip and I figure I can visit it then.
My classes were both pretty sweet. I'm taking Modern Spanish Art, which is going to be a really cool class. Plus it's all about learning the different movements and styles, meaning no title/artist/date memorizing for Tony in this class. I am, of course, the only guy in the class of 25ish. Which is fine, minus the fact that 80% of the subjects of modern art are naked women and that the professor (who is male, at least) picked me to answer every sexually based question he asked during the class. Awkward, but should be interesting and not too difficult.
Second class is Advanced Conversation/Cinema, and the professora is really cool. She is young, really talkative and energetic, and rumor has it that she goes out with students at night. I feel like this is the perfect class to take in Spain because it basically is oriented toward perfecting spoken Spanish (and watching movies). A big focus of the first day was learning how to pronounce the difference between S and C/Z in Spanish. (So that means I'm probably going to convert into un lenguiseco). Granted I never learned this in high school since it was all Latin American based, but seeing as I'm in Spain I might as well perfect the language that they use here. When in Valencia, you know?
Yesterday I also had to get the director to change my schedule conflict. I went to his office, and after he signed the papers I started chatting with him a bit. Turns out he and the professor I had for class last semester are like hermanos (they graduated from the same university over here) and he was really excited to hear that I knew him. He was kind of busy, but he told me some day when I had some free time to drop in his office and we'd grab some coffee somewhere. I'm definitely going to take him up on the offer; he seems like an awesome person to get to know.
After class, me and Kara walked to the river to see the gardens. On a side note, it's not really a river. It is a dried up, extremely fertile river bed that cuts the city in half. The river that originally ran through was diverted north of the city because it flooded all the time. Anyway, we were walking around and found this little festival that was set up called the Festival of All Nations. There were vendor tents and food tents set up from all countries imaginable, some of which I have never even heard. We walked around, got some Portuguese Beer (which was really quite good; it was called Super Bock), and then headed back for home. Said hello to mi madre, took my siesta, then ate la cena. Sra. Lopez made me penne pasta with homemade meat sauce since I had told her yesterday that I was Italian. It was pretty good, but they honestly try and feed you to death here so I couldn't finish it all. And once again, after dinner it was time to go out.
My friends Andrea, Kara, and I went out around 11 headed toward the river area. We walked since we didn't know if the buses were still running, and we ended up passing through some really cool parts of the city, including Valencia Underground (which is just a bit of the road that goes under the train station). We returned to the All Nations Festival, which was really lively at this hour. We walked around getting some drinks from the various countries (such as the Caipirinhamaja which is aguardiente, sugar, and a (very) little fruit juice) and met up with the people we had hung out with the night before. Actually, a lot of the UVa program students were there, so it was pretty cool to mingle while watching some traditional Spanish dancing on stage.
We left the festival around 1AM, headed to one of the parks by the Ciudad de las Ciencias and hung out for a bit. Some of the people we were with had brought bottles of this stuff called Don Simon, which is a low-alcohol-content drink that taste exactly like Pepsi with lemon. After a while we went in search of a discoteca. We asked a woman for directions and she told me (more or less) "go down the street, find a tunnel that goes under that building, and there is an awesome discoteca inside." So as you might have guessed, we did not find said discoteca last night, but we had fun looking for it. One of the best things about last night was that everyone in our group was speaking mostly Spanish as we walked around. We still stood out like no other, but it was good practice and made the experience much more authentic.
Having failed at finding a discoteca, we took a cab to the Plaza de la Reina and met some more UVa-ers at this pub. The closed down around 3:30 (which is kind of early) and then we headed form home. It is important to note, however, that one of my friends decided to give the discoteca thing one more try, so she asked some locals if there was one nearby. Unfortunately (and understandably given the circumstances) she accidentally said "biblioteca," at which point the locals lost all interest in treating us seriously and told us it was kind of late to want to go read some books. Good times though, good times.
That's all for today, even though it is about yesterday. I'm only going to fall further behind, but whatever. The pictures are some random shots around Valencia, including some pics of the gardens. Also I promise I will start writing about some more cultural stuff instead of mostly nightlife and the Valencia booze menu. But in my defense, Valencians of all ages are big on going out and staying out late. They have a different daily rhythm, but it suits the lifestyle here very well.
Hasta.
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