So. It's saturday morning for me here in Sevilla espana. Lakshmi and I just spent the last 12 hrs traveling, by bus! From 1130pm to 845 am we were on it. Shoot me. My neck is killing me. Thank goodnessn for Spanish drammamine, at least i slept.
So yes lets see where was I last. I believe I had just mentioned the farewell dinner/noche de San Juan festival but hadn't actually experienced either one. So I will begin there.
The farewell dinner was intense. We joined up with a group from Pennsylvania that we had our classes with, so there was about 50 students altogether. Um not many people have been to Spain but for those of you who have or have been to Europe in general, things are smaller here. Much smaller! There isn't a banquet hall we can just rent out, so needless to say things were cramped. And let's not leave out the detail that in Spain the alcohol is cheap. They make these giant juice boxes (like 1 liter) of wine for the fine price of 55 cents! I cant tell you how many people had poked straws in the top and were drinking them out of their purses before dinner (the four boys were less subtle, they had 2 liters bottles of "coke") but any who you get the picture. Combine the recipe of 50 twenty somethings (more than half from the east coast), free wine on the table with cheap wine in their bags in a tiny little room. It equals loud, very loud. But fun, and the food was great.
The noche de San Juan was literally the biggest beach party i have ever seen. There were like 2000 people on the beach that night. There was one huge main bonfire, but then other kids just sat down and made their own little ones. There was a whole lot of intoxication going on too. Drunk people surrouded by flames. Sounds like I recipe for disaster right? Kinda. It was good tho. I actually used my Spanish a lot cause we fused groups with some people that I knew from a pizza place in valladolid. They randomly saw us and remembered us. It's always good when you can break out of the American crowd.
The next morning was our graduation. Our group struggled hehe. But we all made it thro and it was really nice that they recognized us like that. They really seemed to appreciate us for coming here and attempting to experience their culture. I had never really realized that before. Like when I am struggling to think of a word or pronounce something horribly wrong I would get embarrassed. But in reality, i am the one speaking the other language. They only speak one and many of the people i meet haven't been to Portugal let alone the us. It's good to hear that people like it when we come here and learn and try to understand their culture.
After graduation we had lunch with our family. I couldn't nap for some reason so afterwards lakshmi and I wanted to get out of the house and just hang out in Valladolid until we had to leave our little home :(... We went to a plaza and people watched for a bit, then when 5pm hit and the stores reopened, we went to the shopping area to recharge our cell phones for the last week. My friend ally has been really down lately because she broke her foot (hopefully I mentioned that but if not here is the abridged version, ally was dancing on a marble floor and stomped to hard and broke a bone in her foot. Osteopenia anyone?) she can't do much walking and stuff with her Spanish style crutches, so i called her to hang out. Convenient for us, so lives across the street from the beach so we decided just to sit and people watch there. It was really nice, and some of our Spanish friends came and we said goodbye to them. At 9 we went home for dinner, and that's the last I saw of Valladolid.
I'm so sad I'm never going back there. I love the city. I want to live there! Minus the fact that i would need to bring a small population of iowans/Illinoians/coloradans with me hehe. (ok I'm lying only one coloradan)
P.s. I'm not sure why I was infatuated with recipes today...maybe I'm hungry.
Oh and is it Illinoians or illini? Estoy confundida.....
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