June 9-10 – Beaches and Beer Taps

Before I begin, I wanted to give the website links to the 2 photo albums I have on Facebook so far, just in case any of my blog readers aren’t Facebook users, they can use these links to look at my photos.

Here’s album #1: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=178996&id=658871528&l=0bba85ccb1
Here’s album #2 (so far): http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=180711&id=658871528&l=f794ed17ed

Wed. June 9th

During my long break between classes today, my friend Ashley and I decided to go to the beach. We made our plans before we realized that it was going to be a cloudy and overcast day, but we decided to go anyway. This was the very first non-sunny day since I got here! We took a bus and went to a beach called Playa de Illetas. It was a medium size beach and there weren’t too many people there (since it was a Wednesday and was cloudy). I took a siesta on the beach, read my book, and put only my toes in the water since it was pretty cold. We spent about 2 hours there and then decided to head back home.

After my language class, I headed back home and Sira was over. She had just come back from her cousin’s birthday party and had a bag of small balloons with her. Loli starting blowing them up for her and make it look so easy but when I tried, I failed miserably. She showed me a trick of how to stretch the very tiny balloon and they were all very proud of me once I finally blew one up! Sira had fun popping them outside with a pen, but after the 5th or 6th one, she got scared and stopped. My padre Jaime taught me a pretty cool trick with a pen that I was able to master and I’m sworn to secrecy to never reveal how it’s done to my “Americano” friends and family. ;)


Thurs. June 10th

We had our second overcast day in a row. I guess the beautiful, sunny weather couldn’t last forever. In my literature class, we began watching Don Quijote de La Mancha (after our professor had many technical difficulties). Only additional problem is that there’s no subtitles in either Spanish or English so it’s lucky that I watched the movie and read the book in 11th grade and retained the key points of the story.

During my break, I explored some different parts of the city. My friend and I ended up at Burger King for lunch because we were both craving hamburgers. The hamburgers are pretty much the same as in the U.S. One thing that’s different though is that BK has an item on the menu called a “Sandy.” Since this is my mother’s name, I was definitely interested in what it was and learned from the picture and description that it’s a type of ice cream with fudge topping (a.k.a. a Sundae). No clue why they call it a Sandy but I ordered one, ate it, and loved it!

That night, I made plans with my friends to go this bar where you can tap your own beer right at the table. We met up around 11 PM and there were 8 of us. I had my very first non-Natty Ice beer and it was pretty good (though I still prefer wine over beer). We played a fun drinking game called “Never Have I Ever” where one person says something they’ve never done (PG example: Never have I ever been to Barcelona) and if the others have been to Barcelona, they drink. The bar closed at midnight (for some strange reason), and the others wanted to go to another bar across town but my friend Erica and I decided to walk back to our houses instead. It was a pretty fun night and I’m glad I went out.