¡Lo flipo!

Sorry it's been a while since my last update, even though not too much has happened. I had two midterms today, so I've been spending the week studying. Lies, I crammed all day yesterday. But seeing as thought I don't really have anything too exciting to say, here is some random things of note from this week.

Monday night I stayed up late working on my art project so I wouldn't have to worry about it for the rest of the week. I went to bed around 2 in the morning. I was laying on my stomach trying to fall asleep, and I heard a noise in the hallway. I figured it was Mery getting up going to the kitchen or something. However, a little while later I heard the noise close to my door; again I figured Mery was making sure I had locked the door when I came in. So there I am trying to fall asleep, when all of the sudden I feel these pulsating motions running up and down both sides of my spine... not too hard but I could definitely feel them. I kinda freaked out, then I told myself I was dreaming. But then, the pulsing continued and I convinced myself that I was awake and was not dreaming. I couldn't see anything since I was laying on my stomach, but I got really freaked out because I definitely felt something touching my back still. I quickly turned around and threw off the covers to see what it was and there was absolutely nothing there. So yeah, needless to say I was pretty creeped out. So I don't know, maybe I was dreaming and just didn't realize it, but it was honestly one of the weirdest things ever.

Tuesday was classes and beach day. Told everyone about my experience with the fantasma from the night before. Then I went on to work on evening out my tan. I was pretty successful since I look a lot less like a leper now. Came home, had dinner with Mery, and did some studying. I met up with some people at a little bar called La Casablanca later on. Kristy's roommate Dana from Miami their first year was in Valencia visiting for her study abroad trip, and I had promised to meet up with her. She and her friends met us at Casablanca; it's pretty crazy how people manage to find each other even when they are thousands of miles from home. But it was definitely a fun night. No ghost encounters during my sleep either.

Wednesday was literally study central. The only bad thing about studying abroad is that midterms still exist. And when both of my classes consist of looking at pictures or watching movies, it's definitely a wake up call when you all of the sudden have a lot to study for. I wasn't too worried about art class since, well... he has repeated the same 3 topics to us non-stop since the first day of school. Conversation however... definitely stressed about that one. We had about 200 vocabulary words that we had to be able to define in Spanish. At least 50-60 were idiomatic expressions aka they don't translate literally at all. In addition to that we had to know details from the two movies we watched along with some funky grammar we had reviewed. Clearly I spent the majority of my time studying for the latter.

And today. Art exam was just plain stupid. It was an essay/short answer test. For two of the questions we were given a picture and had to describe what style it was painted in and why. The professor decided to pick two paintings that were both Impressionistic/Post-Impressionistic, both of which depicted a mother and a child. However, it wasn't to show that there was a difference in the two. No. It was literally the exact same essay twice. But it was easy, just a lot of writing. The Cinema test wasn't as bad as I expected. Unfortunately the section for identifying the idiomatic expressions was hard because... well you kind of had to pull them out of your memory from scratch. There were 5 bonus points, so that should help. Anyway, exams are done with for now. We went out and drank after to celebrate; found a sweet bar that has this deal every day where you get a small sandwich and a large beer for 2euro. By the way: beer + lemon fanta = delicious. We basically spent the afternoon there, stopped in some shops at the center, and headed home. Walking back I got stopped by a woman who was selling subscriptions to this homeless children foundation. I stopped and let her talk to me about it, and then she asked if I would be willing to donate 20euro a month. I told her I really liked the program, but I wouldn't be able to because I was from the States. She looked surprised. Definitely passing as a Spaniard more and more. Yes.

I just got done eating with Mery. She made seafood, which was good, just wasn't feeling seafood too much tonight. Watched the news for a while, talked about this big problem that some of the European countries are facing. Apparently, the Turkish mint recently issued a coin that is IDENTICAL to the 2 euro coin over here (except it only has a value of 1 for whatever currency is used in Turkey). So basically, Mery warned me to check every time I get change, because you could accidentally receive one of the Turkish coins instead of the 2 euro coin, in which case you would be out of luck. Oh well, nice to know Europe deals with dumb stuff just like the States.

I'm exhausted, so I'm gonna nap a little bit and then head out a bit for the night. I only have my art class tomorrow since afternoon classes are cancelled for the Grenada trip. Plus tomorrow for art class we are just going back to finish walking through the museum we visited last week. I'm gonna go ahead and call it a three day weekend.

I'm still trying to upload the flamenco video. Not sure why it won't work. I don't have any other pictures to post, sorry. And the title of the entry (which was also one of the phrases on our test) is a way to say "I don't believe it." It's really popular because everyone remembers it.

Hasta.