June 17-18 – Sa Dragonera Excursion

Thurs. June 17th

My classmates and I have discovered a new awesome game in our Lit class: start talking about something random, get our professor on a tangent, and then speak about this topic for as long as possible. Not that we don’t love discussing Spanish poetry or learning about different eras, but it’s more fun to talk about a topic we’re interested in. For example, our professor was talking about the concept of eternal love so I asked her if she had ever read the book or seen the movie of “The Notebook” or “El Cuaderno” in Spanish. She said no so I gave her a quick summary of it and told her the ending and how it was similar to the poem we just read. Then we started discussing Nicholas Sparks’ other books. Our teacher was really intrigued by them so I opted to go to the front of the classroom and write as many book titles as we could remember on the whiteboard. My prof said that I could teach the class now and sat down in one of the seats and asked, “Do you want to be a professor some day?” And I answered “No, I’m going to be an accountant. But I don’t mind speaking/writing in front of a class.” :) It was a pretty fun class.

During my break today, I came home and chilled out. I also decided it would be a good time to upload pictures to Facebook from the previous weekend. Facebook has a new photo uploader tool that makes it so much easier and I was able to upload, caption, and tag 244 new pictures. (Go check them out if you haven’t already!)

That night, I ate dinner with my padres in the family room because the Mexico vs. France fútbol game was on. I asked Jaime if he preferred France because it was closer or Mexico because they speak the same language (lol). He answered Mexico. We watched them win 2-0 which was pretty exciting. That night I went out to a dance club with my friends and had a really good time. :)


Friday June 18th

Today, I went on an excursion to Sa Dragonera with our whole group and our program director Jaume, who had recently returned from Barcelona. We met up at the university at 9:45 AM. We were instructed to bring 1.5 liters of water and pack a lunch because there weren’t any stores/restaurants on the island and it was going to be very hot. We took a coach bus to where we needed to go. The first thing we noticed after we got off the bus was the *gorgeous* blue water everywhere. I took many photos but the pictures can’t do it justice. Just trust me that it was completely gorgeous.

We then took a ferry boat to get to the island. The island is called Dragonera because “dragonera” means lizard in Spanish. And the island has thousands and thousands of lizards. It’s a natural park so we were told that we were simply visitors in the lizards’ home. There were a couple of girls in my group who weren’t a fan of the lizards being on the trails and everywhere and a couple of guys enjoyed tormenting one girl by making her believe that lizards were on her. (Boys will be boys…) Also, the only thing we were really told about the excursion is that they would be lizards and it’s a beach. So naturally we wore a bathing suit under our clothes, packed a towel, and about half of us wore flip flops. Well, it turned out that the island doesn’t have what I consider a beach (ex. sand and water) and it’s really a hiking place filled with trails. And the real kicker? The trails are all rocky terrain with big pointy sharp rocks. I now have 2 red blisters thanks to my flip flop straps on my feet (but I did survive).

There was a map showing all of the trails in different colors and it said about how long it’d take to walk it one way. We started out on a 30 minute trail to see a lighthouse. The walk was pretty flat and the view of the water, mountains, and cliffs was breathtaking. We then walked 30 minutes back to where we started and went down to a little cove of water. We put our feet in but we had to leave our shoes on because there were jellyfish, sea urchins, and glass in the water. Luckily, the water was very transparent so you could see everything. Suddenly someone from our group called out that they saw an octopus in the water! We all gathered around and saw this pink octopus swimming on its back with its 8 tentacles. It was so cool! Our program director Jaume told us that they’re attracted to the color white, so one of the guys in our group took off his white t-shirt and dangled it in front of the octopus’s eyes. He actually started to follow the shirt, and we were table to take better pictures once the octopus got closer.

We then set out on a trail that was supposed to take 3 hours but we needed to be back at the dock in 3 hours so we only hiked halfway. This trail also had rocky terrain but it was walking uphill the side of a mountain. I was hot, tired, and my feet were killing me…but I trekked on. We walked an hour up and then an hour back down. (So if you’re keeping track, that’s 4 hours of hiking).

We took the last ferry boat of the day back to the mainland. Then we finally got to go to the beach nearby. We literally put our stuff down, stripped off our clothes, and waded into the water. The water was freezing but it felt sooo good. Then the majority of the group, including myself, took a siesta on the beach for about an hour since we were so wiped out. We took the bus back and went our separate ways.

When I got back to my house, Eva, Sira, and Fany were there and had also just returned from the beach. We had a random dance party and I got to see Fany and Sira’s awesome dance moves! ;) Then I ate dinner, Skyped, and went to bed.