June 13-14 – Jaime’s Birthday Party & Art Museum

Sun. June 13th

Today, I got to sleep in late (by my standards)! I slept till 11:30 AM and it was wonderful. At 1 PM, I went in the car with Loli, Jaime, and Paca and we travelled to an ancient castle in Palma. The name of the castle is Castillo de Bellver. It was really pretty and the architecture was pretty awesome. The inside reminded me a little bit of the Collosseum. I took a lot of pictures and Loli climbed all of the steps to reach the top with me.

Afterwards, we headed to Mame and Virginia’s house for the birthday party of their son, Jaime. He turned 6 years old on Wednesday and had a party with his friends and today was the party with his family. Since Mame is the son of Loli and Jaime, I got to meet Virginia’s family. Her parents’ names are Louisa and Javier, she has a brother named Carlos, and a grandmother named Carmen. They were all very nice and I was excited to meet them. There were 15 of us (counting the grandkids) at the party. The kids are their lunch first and then the adults ate. The first course was a type of cold soup that had tomatoes and some other stuff in it. Everyone was teasing me that there was merluza and gamba (hake fish and shrimp) inside of the soup because they knew I had recently tried both of them and didn’t know what they were at first. But I have a good sense of humor and just replied with “Haha, very funny.” The main course was lasagna, which I’m definitely a fan of. Loli also brought the bottle of wine that I got at the bodega (winery) and told everyone that it was from me. It was very good and everyone enjoyed it. For dessert, we had chocolate birthday cake (deliciosa!), vanilla ice cream, and another type of crumb cake.

After lunch, Jaime opened his birthday presents and everyone played with some of them. He got a horseshoes game, a water balloon game, lots of books, a puzzle game, and a game that helps you learn English. I was very excited since I knew all the words in the English game and helped to translate some of them. I played soccer, tennis, and horseshoes with Jaime, Miguel, and Sira. It was a very fun birthday party!


Mon. June 14th

In my literature class, we watched the ancient version of the movie: Don Quijote de La Mancha. Unfortunately for us students, there are no subtitles in either English or Spanish so it was pretty difficult to understand. After class, I wandered around the city and found this free art museum named Museu Fundación Juan March. It was free to the public and had a lot of different styles of art. There were some paintings by Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, and other Mallorcan and Spanish painters. We were allowed to take pictures without the flash so I took pictures of some of the paintings and sculptures.

Last night I found out from my padre Jaime that the big España soccer game is on Wednesday at 4 PM. Unfortunately, I have my Spanish language class from 4:30-6:30 PM. We asked our professor if there was any way we could reschedule class or watch the game in class as a “learning experience” since fútbol is so important here, and our prof replied back that we have our first grammar test on Wednesday. Great.

Sira was over the house when I returned back from class and I got to give her another bath, which was really fun. I learned some additional vocab for the parts of the body in class today and showed my new knowledge of the words elbow, ankle, heel, and waist. Sira hung out with me in my bedroom for a little while and I showed her the pictures I have taken of her so far that are on my computer. I’d ask her ¿Quién es? which means “Who’s that?” and she’s look at the picture and say “Sira y Lauren” or “Sira y Mama.” She’s always so cute .:)

The rest of the night was pretty uneventful: watched some TV shows on my laptop, ate dinner, and then did my copious amounts of homework. And soon bed. ¡Buenas noches!