Tae Kwon Do on the Beach

Well since I have a 6 hour layover in the Dulles airport this afternoon, I figured I’d at least write another blog entry. Of course, I actually am writing it in a Word Document and copying it and pasting it later since the Dulles airport doesn’t have free WiFi… yeah, stay tuned for the final blog entry about leaving Spain and how much Dulles airport sucks.

Anyway, Monday was a weird day because we were all coming off the super-busy Barcelona weekend and the realization that we had finally reached our last week in Spain was setting in. Classes were pretty simple. Talked about Dali and Surrealism in art class, and then my group had to give an oral presentation over Camino, which we nailed. After the presentation, we started watching La Lengua de las Mariposas, a film about the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. After class I met with my group for Cinema to write an essay, and then headed over with a group of people from the program around 5:30PM to go to our Spanish cooking class. This was literally one of the coolest things I did the entire time in Spain. The 18 person class split up into groups and each group made one of four dishes: Paella Valenciana, Arroz Negro, Paella de Calabaza y Chorizo, and Flan. My group made a huge dish of Arroz Negro, which is a rice dish with chiporrones (little squids) and a squid-ink sauce (hence the Negro part). It was pretty tedious at first because you had to remove the fins and mouths from the little squid by hand. The chef that helped us out was really nice, and the whole room smelled amazing. When it was all done, we all grabbed plates and were served huge portions of all the dishes. Oh and I forgot to mention the gigantic vat of Sangria we all made as well. So we proceeded to dine; the food was all really good, and I definitely plan on trying to recreate some of the dishes.
After the class, me and a couple friends stopped in a bar on our way home to watch the rest of the Spain world cup game. Afterwards we made our way home, I finished up the essay, and headed to bed.

Tuesday’s classes were ordinary. We finished La Lengua de las Mariposas in Cinema class… I really like this class a lot, not only because the professora is amazing, but also because by watching the movies I actually remember the history and events; all the movies we watch really help to visualize the political or social situation in Spain at various times in its history. Unfortunately, I never realized how brutally awful the Spanish Civil War was, and how much Franco’s dictatorship set Spain back as a country on the whole. The movie was really good, and I would recommend it. It’s another downer kind of movie, but then again Spain doesn’t have the most happy-go-lucky history either. I went home after class and ate with Mery. I wish I got to eat lunch at home more often because it is always so good. Because it was a really nice day, I rallied and went to meet some people at the beach. After all, this would be the last time I could sit under the Valenican sun. No Don Simon at the beach this time; actually, me and Samantha went over flash cards for our Cinema final haha. And on top of it all, there was a crazy Spanish man practicing some kind of karate on the beach. He kept shouting at people and just being a mangui in general. Oh Valencia. I’m not too sure what I did after dinner on Tuesday, if I did anything at all. I want to say I just stayed in and studied and chilled. It’s kind of hard to remember since this whole last week was a blur.

Pictures are from the cooking class, as I’m sure you can tell. I’m really gonna miss eating food like that!

Hasta.