Zombies and Sororities...Spanish style

Sunday, October 11, 2009 and Monday, October 12, 2009

Over these two days I did some homework, rested up a bit, went back to the festival. Overall it was a good weekend. I may not have gone anywhere exotic like a lot of the AIFS kids, but it was nice and relaxing! There wasn’t school on Monday because it was a holiday…another saint of some sort. No creepy processions this time though!

I made a trip to Hipercor later in the day to get some more school supplies, birthday cards for Liz, Shannon and Sarah, etc. And then I also went by the Mac store here to see if they had any cheap laptops…haha. They didn’t. It’s crazy expensive here because they have IVA, which is a tax of 16% (!). It’s included usually in all restaurant bills and everything else, but apparently not on computers. This makes them look a lot cheaper than they actually end up being!

On our way to Hipercor, we saw hundreds of high school-aged kids walking around dressed like zombies…or some sort of dead things. Lots of the guys had on shredded turquoise hospital scrubs with fake blood and dirt on them. They all had white faces with dark eye shadow and were ALL buying alcohol. It was really creepy (so I guess this makes up for the lack of creepy processions), but more so because I had no idea why they were dressed like that. Initially I thought it might be another weird thing they do to celebrate the saints, since it was a holiday, but I guess not. We asked Florian at dinner that night and he said that it was in celebration of the release of Rec 2…a scary movie that just came out here. So I guess it’s the equivalent of me dressing up like Hermione for the Harry Potter movie. Just a tad more creepy.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Classes again…boo. I still was stuck in Susana’s Grammar class so I had to get up at 7:20 again to make sure I had enough time to get down to breakfast and then make the trek to the CLM. I’m lucky that all of my classes are in the CLM. NONE IN THE KENIA BUILDING! That saves me about 15 minutes every day, so that’s nice. However, I can feel the flab returning in my thighs from the lack of walking. On the way home from class today we were stopped in the street by this group of girls. They were all in pajamas and were chanting together, sorta like the last time we heard the group of girls go by Jardines at night. This time, they were all standing in a big clump under the windows of the apartments in the street. People were out on their balconies with buckets and buckets of water and were throwing them down on the girls. We figured this was some sort of sorority-type hazing because there were other, older, well dressed girls who were following them around, making sure they were getting soaked. We asked Paula about this and she said that it WAS hazing, and that this time of year we’ll probably see some weird things like that. She said we could probably find them sometime this week in the fountains by the AIFS office too, haha.

The rest of the day was less exciting than that. We mainly did homework and wandered around. I missed having the Renaissance festival right there to run over to…that always had such quality people-watching!

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

I found out in the afternoon that I FINALLY got out of Susana’s Grammar class. Which was too bad, because I still had to go to it Wednesday. They had changed the room number on me without me knowing somehow, so I spent the first 10 minutes running from each room on the 2^nd floor asking kids if it was Susana’s Grammar class. One girl goes “no, sorry…but really…I’m sorry. Susana’s crazy.” Haha…I’m not alone! I finally saw Susana actually walking out of the teacher’s room, so I ran to catch up to her. I hadn’t planned what I was going to say, so I kinda just blurted out, “Tiene clase ahorra?”(Do you have class now?) Basically the most basic thing ever. She just looks at me and goes “Yo? Si…tengo.” (Me? Yes, I do.) And then I was trying to say I didn’t know where the class was since it had moved, but that seemed too difficult to put together. After an awkward pause I decided on “donde?” (Where?) Creative. I know. But she scares me! She put it together that I was lost, so she brought me with her. We managed to have a decent conversation on our way, so that made me feel a little better. BUT I still hated the class, so I’m glad I got switched! Plus a lot of AIFS kids are in the class I got switched into! All of my other classes were wonderful, even though the 6 hours of class right in a row were a little rough. I now have 2 classes on Monday/Wednesday and 2 classes on Tuesday/Thursday...a good balance. No classes on Fridays!!! It was really funny because there was a new guy in my Literatura class who looked really familiar. I was sitting there trying to figure out who he was when all of a sudden it hit me. HE’S THE GUY FROM THE KEBAB PLACE! He was the one who was helping translate for the guy who couldn’t really speak English! I’m assuming he’s Moroccan because he sorta looks like it…and sounds a bit like Mostapha! Will is in that class, and I mentioned it to him. He thought that was pretty funny…and kinda weird since he speaks pretty fluent Spanish! The guy definitely recognized us. Maybe we can have study sessions at the Kebab King!

Thursday, October 15, 2009

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DARYL! Daryl turned 19! We had class as normal today, but then we kicked it into high gear once we got out. After lunch we rested for a bit and then went out for tapas around 6:30 for Daryl’s birthday. Whoa. Early. But they were super good! We went to this Chinese place right at Plaza Nueva. Most of us got lo mein noodles as our tapas, but Will got chicken wings (mistake!) and Matt got these tiny spring rolls. I’d definitely go back there! At dinner, Will and Florian got everyone to sing her “Cumpleanos Feliz”. Speaking of dinner, because of some miracle, we ended up with chicken nuggets for dinner. Daryl was pretty pumped about that. Will and Florian had an eating contest. It started out as them eating 19 in honor of Daryl, but then Florian made it up to 20, so Will of COURSE had to show him up and make it to 21. Elena didn’t mind, she just thought it was hilarious that she had to bring out 4 trays of them just for our table.

That evening to celebrate Daryl’s birthday we went out to Café Piaf again for triva. Of course we lost again, but it was still fuuuuuun! I can definitely tell that my Spanish is getting better! At least my ability to understand the questions! Then we headed out to the chupeteria. We hit a few other bars to dance at before we headed home to get some sleep for the AIFS hike the next morning!

Friday, October 16, 2009

This morning some AIFS people went on a small hike into the Sacromonte area up to the old Abbey that’s at the top of the hill. When Merete and I got to the front of the AIFS office, we were surprised to see only a few other people there! We thought we were going to be late for meeting everyone else, but nope! I guess a lot of people are traveling (Mirella’s in Dublin, Jilian’s in Morocco, other people are in Portugal, etc.) and some people were still…recovering from the night before. However, one girl’s parents are in town, so she brought them along. That was fun to have some new people there, even though they were pretty quiet! They did take a nice group picture of all of us who went! The hike was a lot of fun because we got to spend a lot of time talking to Paula about really random things. She told us all about the Spanish education system, told us she too knows who Florian is (apparently everyone does these days), suggested places to buy pumpkins for Halloween, and pointed out where our wine tour is going to be held (and why she’s no longer allowed to go with us, haha just kidding)! The hike was a little steep, but it was still fun and a good way to get some morning exercise! On that healthy note, I have to mention the wonderful gelato we got on the way back to Jardines. The lady at the gelato place literally knows me now. She grabbed the small cone and reached toward the hazelnut without me asking today. It was awesome, yet horrible.

I went along to the soccer fields again today. Florian and Adam had organized a giant game…but I felt weird being the only girl, so I opted out. There was such a random group of people there: CLM kids from some of my classes, AIFS kids, people from Florian’s UGR classes and some random Granadians. At one point people were talking about how no one was really ‘talking’ much on the field…er…cement. We decided it was because no one really knew what language to speak since there was Dutch, Japanese, Spanish, English and French being thrown around. I almost threw in some Chinese just for the heck of it. Anyway, it was fun to see everyone together. Florian made sure to invite everyone to his apartment (yeah, apparently Jardines has apartments a few streets over) for a botellon later. Crazy kid…but it should be an interesting night with another large group of an interesting mix of people! I hope it’s as fun as he promised!