Parades, Pollo and Poker

Today was a very relaxing day. I got to sleep in until 11 and then went out for churros con chocolate. The chocolate here is SOOOOOO good. It tastes like hot chocolate from the states (not Swissmiss…think Ghirardelli ), except just a tiny bit more bitter. It’s super thick, so it sticks well to the churros. Each plate of churros that you order comes with five 9 or 10 inch tubes of churro. The first day we got churros, we made the mistake of ordering two plates of churros. Even though we finished both plates that day, we have now limited ourselves to sharing one plate.

I spent most of the afternoon studying for my exam which is on Tuesday. We have gone over so many things in my class, so it’s difficult to figure out what to study. I decided to go along with my normal way of studying—making a huge hand-written study guide for myself. As of right now, it’s 10 pages…and I’m not even close to being done. We have imperative negative, imperative affirmative, preterit indefinite, preterit imperfect, preterit indefinite, pronombres, and much, much more. I don’t even know what most of these things mean in Enlgish! Haha. I really hope I do well, because I’ve really been trying! I just know that I don’t test very well, so I have to over-prepare. We have the test on Tuesday, and then I guess we’re watching a Spanish move on Wednesday (we’ll see if anyone shows up…), and then the AIFS crew leaves for Madrid on Thursday.

Will and I decided not to go to Barcelona after Madrid because it was getting too expensive just for a day and a half. Instead, we’re planning on doing a day-trip, or stay over at Cabo de Gata…one of the most beautiful places in Spain (at least that’s what both of my professors have said on separate occasions). There are salt marshes, beaches and a huge national park.

This evening Will and I went on a long walk to get away from studying for a bit. We went down to Parque de Garcia Lorca and sat there for a bit. On our way home we went to grab some gelato but ran into this HUGE parade. We had heard marching band-type music earlier, but didn’t think anything of it. It turns out that today is a holiday (I believe they’re celebrating San Maria…ME!). There were literally hundreds, maybe even thousands of people out in the streets. Starting near the cathedral there was a huge band, some priest-looking people and lots of important official type people walking VERY slow. Then behind them there were two lines on either side of the street of people with big, long candles. Some had multiple candles. There were vendors on the street selling roasted corn, potatoes and chestnuts among other toys, balloons and such. The lines of people went alllllllll the way down the main street that we walk on to school…and must’ve kept going for almost a mile from what I could see. There were multiple bands that would walk in between the two lines. When we were right next to one, they started playing this creepy slow song that reminded me of something from Angels and Demons or The Davinci Code or something. Their march wasn’t the typical marching band march…it was very slow and they just sorta rocked back and forth. There were also rounds of very loud Black Cat-esque fireworks. Regardless, it was very interesting. I was basically so impressed with it that I couldn’t even force myself to take pictures of it. I felt like it would be rude or something…in addition to distracting my attention from it!

Then we met up with some other people and went to this Mexican restaurant (!) near the CLM. It was pretty weird to be eating Mexican food in Spain, but it was good! The place reminded me a lot of Little Angie’s Cantina in Duluth, MN. I ordered a Quesadilla de Pollo…as did Will and Merete. Chryssi and Daryl both ordered Burritos de Pollo. I think everyone enjoyed their meals! On our way back to Jardines, we got caught in the middle of the parade that was STILL going on. I guess since they were walking so slow, that makes sense!

Now the boys (Florian, Lewis, Will and Adam) are playing poker in the basement and I plan on studying a bit more. Wish me luck!
M