Drinking out of straws

Post about the weekend: it's gonna be a double installment. Class was kind of hard to wake up for on Friday after our sporadic bar night the night before. Still, I am convinced that I managed to take the ideal schedule in Spain. For my art class, we went to visit El Museo de las Bellas Artes, which is 10 minutes from our school. The museum contains all baroque, romantic, and Renaissance art, so it really wasn't entirely applicable to our modern art course (aka not on the final), but it was still really interesting to see a lot of the works. We saw tons of great pieces as our professor walked us around explaining some of the more notable ones. We talked a lot about symbolism, and the thing I found most interesting was the fact that on many Spanish altar pieces it was typical to paint a pelican above the crucifixion panel, since the pelican was considered to be a bird put on earth by God to remind people of Christ's sacrifice. Now granted I don't have a lot of religious knowledge, but this was definitely something I had never heard of before.

I returned to the university for my cinema class. We were just doing some practice oral exercises. The first thing we did was doing consecutive translation: she read a passage in English, we took notes, and then had to translate it to Spanish aloud. Definitely a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. It made being a translator seem extremely daunting. Afterwards, we read a parable about a boiled frog and just discussed the moral. The entire time we passed around these cinnamon cookies and strawberry gummies... I love this class.

After class we FINALLY made it to the beach. But it was worth the wait since the weather was perfect. We went to our usual spot and set up camp (Don Simon tagged along, of course). Chris and I played "ping-pong," which is basically the Spanish equivalent of frisbee in terms of popular things to do on a beach. It's basically two big wooden paddles used to hit a hollow rubber ball back and forth in the air. It doesn't sound too exciting, but its actually quite fun and challenging. Plus, everyone does it here; they are fascinated by it. Still working on evening out the tan; it definitely looks like I have a skin disease, but I'm gonna get it fixed by the time I leave here. The highlight of my afternoon was clearly my bocadillo: Mery made me one with olive oil, tuna, tomatoes, corn, and green olives. One of the most delicious sandwiches I have ever had in my life.

Got home a little later than I expectee:the buses from the beach take forever to get home, plus we got held up talking to this crazy old widower from Toledo who is staying in Valencia. He hangs around the beach all the time, and this is the second time I've chatted with him. He sang for all of us, made some jokes, and then we said adios. My house mom was a little upset I got home late, but we still had a nice dinner: she made some kind of steak with peppers and onions and french fries, preceded by a bowl of lentil soup. Yum.

And thus begins the description of one of the more-excellent nights in Spain. We all met up at the fair of nations on the river. Had a few drinks (one from Mexico and one from Spain) and around 1AM we all headed out; by "all" I am referring to the fact that we were rolling at least 12 people deep. Anyway, the whole group was following me to an area called Canovás, which was close to where we were. There were a good number of places to go, but one of the girls picked out this place called St. Patricks... it wasn't too Spanish, and the majority of the employees were from Britain. We all sat around and chatted before we headed out in search of a discoteca. We found one just down the street, and once again Chris and I got the group in free of charge. The place was called Las Animas: there is a much larger Las Animas on the beach, but this was the smaller version located in the center. Maggie and I went to the bar to get some drinks, and while waiting in line we realized that the major demographic inside the club was male, 30+ years of age. At the time we just thought this was sort of weird, but the next day we all came to the conclusion that we may have been in a gay bar. Whoops. Although there also could have just been a shortage of females. Either way we all had fun.

After we left we all found a park in the middle of La Gran Via and sat around and just chilled for a while. Appropriate end to a great night to say the least. Taxi, home, bed, best 4 hours of sleep I've had in a while.

Pictures are of us on the beach talking to our friend from Toledo, group shot at the Festival of Nations, and the infamous bench in the park.

Hasta.