Tema's Travels

On Thursday, instead of going to the beach, we decided to go out for lunch before classes. First we stopped at the school to use the Internet to book our trip to Granada then we headed out to the cafes near the beach. We looked for a good menu del día then sat down.

Lauren ordered a salad for her appetizer while I ordered gazpacho. They also brought us warm bread and olives. For main dishes I ordered a fish called Rape (hmm… weird name) and Lauren got a hamburger.

Later that night after dinner, we met up with Lauren, Maria, and another one of their roommates named Margarita. Margarita is Russian and speaks only a tiny bit of Spanish and a tiny bit of English. It’s interesting trying to communicate with her, cause she’s always making lots of hand gestures and facial expressions. We met up at Havana and decided to walk towards the beach. Margarita said she knew of a club but we walked to the end of the beach walk and decided that it was too far. Instead, we went to a bar with dancing called Carpe Diem. After that, we headed to another bar/pub called Mulligans. Pubs are actually very trendy here. There are tons of Irish pubs in Spain…

On a side note, a little bit more about Alicante:
It’s a very touristy beach town, well maybe beach city. Most of the tourists come from European countries such as France and Russia so that they can enjoy the sun and beaches of Spain. It’s also a quite dirty city; the streets seem worse than Madrid. There aren’t very many historical or cultural things to do… there’s the castle that’s at the top of a giant mountain, and a few museums here and there, but that’s about it. There’s a lot of shopping (that’s to be expected of a tourist town) and something that I’ve noticed is that there seem to be a million Peluquerías (hair salons). Also, there are a lot of immigrants. There are tons of people from Africa (we’re actually really close to Africa) and there are also lot’s of Russian immigrants. Hmmm… It’s an interesting mix of people.

Tuesday, the holiday of San Fermin (or the running of the bulls in Pamplona) started. Every night on the news we've been watching the people running through the streets with the bulls. They all wear the traditional outfit of white pants and shirt and a little red tie around their neck. On the news it shows all of the people who fall over and get hurt; it's actually pretty gruesome and sometimes I have to look away. Actually, the other day a man died from being stabbed in the chest with one of the horns of a bull! It's ridiculous. According to our host family, usually people only hurt their legs from falling, or have minor injuries and usually it's the tourists who get hurt because they don't take it seriously and think it's a joke. Not this year. The man who died was practically a professional who'd been running every year because it was a family tradition. Crazy.

Also on the news about San Fermin, they show all of the people partying and drinking on the streets. It's hilarious! There were even images of people passed out on benches, outside buildings, wherever. Really funny. The other big story that's always on the news here is Real Madrid's acquisition of Christian Ronaldo, the famous soccer player from Portugal. Everybody's obsessed with him! He is pretty cute... but I mean seriously. The stadium was crowded with people who just came to see him give a little acceptance speech and to shake the hands with the owners of the team! People are crazy about futbol here!

Anyways... before classes, Lauren and I headed out to the beach. It took us about 45 minutes to walk there! At least we're getting some exercise. The worst part is the heat and the humidity. We were definitely ready to cool down in the water by the time we got there!

We headed to class as usual at 2pm and after, we went home to relax a bit. For dinner, we had fried fish and french fries with salad on the side. Yummy. And then, our host mom gave us helado for dessert. We met up with Lauren and Maria at Havana again and we decided to get ice cream... well Lauren and Maria wanted to, but I was super full from dinner. However, when we got to the place, I changed my mind and got the smallest scoop they had of lemon.

Monday morning Lauren and I got up and went into the dining room to have breakfast. On the table were little pieces of toast, strawberry and apricot jam, a thermos with hot milk, chocolate powder, little cookie/cracker things, croissants, and three glasses of orange juice. Oh and our lunches were siting in little plastic bags.

Hernando decided to go with us to the school on the first day so he could show us how to get there. How thoughtful It took us about 20 minutes to walk and we got there at 9am. First thing we talked to the director of the school and she told us that we would be having afternoon classes starting at 2pm.

Hmm, what to do now that we had the morning free? We decided to go check out the beach. We walked out to the port with the boats, then down alongside la playa. It was soooo humid! Thank goodness Lauren and I had bought fans in Madrid! Then, we sat on a bench and watched all of the morning joggers pass by.

Finally, when we couldn't stand the heat any longer, we headed over to the AIR CONDITIONED Corte Ingles. It felt heavenly. We walked around the bookstore part and I picked out a beach read. I bought "Loca por las Compras" which is Confessions of a Shopaholic, only it's in Spanish. I figured it should be pretty easy and enjoyable to bring to the beach.

We then went outside to eat our lunch on a bench. Everyday we get two sandwiches (usually one turkey and one salami), a piece of fruit, an orange juice box, and a water bottle. After, it was time to go to class. When we walked into the room there were two students already seated. There was Martin, who's from Germany although he's Polish and there was Ana who's from Russia. Both of them speak several languages, which makes me very jealous. Martin speaks Polish, German, English and now Spanish. Ana speaks Russian, English, German and Spanish. Yeah...

Our new teacher's name is Laura. She's a cute little dirty blond girl who's from Argentina. (I think a lot of Argentinians move to Alicante for some reason). She has a slight accent, but she still uses the Vosotros. Our class was pretty interesting cause Martin likes to speak a lot; he always makes a silly comment or joke.

During the half an hour break in between classes we went to the common room and met a few of the other students. There is a huge group of girls all from Sweden who all speak perfect English. They told us that they are in beginner Spanish and that they can't really speak at all. We also met a girl from Lichtenstein, a girl from France, a girl from Switzerland, and several from Russia. Where are all the guys? We exchanged numbers with Martin so that he could call us later. We also saw our friend Lauren from Madrid and we made plans to meet up.

At around 10:30pm we met up outside this bar/club called Havana. Most of the Swedish girls came and there were about 20 of us! First, we followed them into this little bar with a tiny door. It boasted that it served some of the best mojitos.

After a bit, Lauren, other Lauren, her roommate Maria from Hungary, and I split from the giant group and we started walking to find a Salsa place. We walked all the way over by the port and boats and found one place, but it was pretty empty. We sat for a bit and chatted, then we went home to sleep.

Sunday morning we got up, ate breakfast and said goodbye to our host mom. Before we left we made sure to take a picture with her in her living room ☺

We hopped on a cab and headed to the train station called Chamartín. The train ride to Alicante took about 4 hours.

There wasn't very much to see besides dry desertous terrain.

However, I did see some windmills. Yay for green energy!

Alicante is a city on the southeastern coast of the country; it’s in the autonomy of Valencia. Valencia is one of the autonomies of Spain that has two languages: Castellano and Valenciano (or Catalan). However, since Alicante is a really touristy city, most of the people speak Castellano and we haven’t had any trouble getting around. The only things that are a little different are the signs; often they are in both of the languages. It’s actually pretty cool, and I’ll have to get used to it when I head to Barcelona anyway cause they speak Catalan there too.

When we stepped off the train we were greeted with a blast of hot, humid air. We carried our suitcases through the (un air-conditioned) train station and decided that it would be worth taking a taxi even though our homestay is only a few streets over. When we found the building, we buzzed in and went to the third floor. A man, who looked like he was in his 60s with a grey beard, opened the door. He was surprised to see us and asked how we had arrived. Apparently there had been a miscommunication and our new host mom had gone to the train station to pick us up. He phoned her to tell her that we had already arrived.

We came into the apartment and put our things in our room. The man, Hermando, offered us some cold water, which we gladly accepted. We spent the rest of the afternoon getting situated and talking with our host family. The woman is named Dolores and they are both from Asturias (a northern region of Spain) but they lived in Argentina for many years. They have three grown children, two daughters and a son, and they have two very adorable kitties, which they brought with them from Argentina. One of them is named Nahual (I think) and he is a very friendly, Siamese looking cat who Lauren and I call my new boyfriend cause he likes to lay on my bed with me ☺. The other cat is grey, and his name is Pepe. Pepe follows Dolores wherever she goes. She told us that in the winter, he even likes to rest on her neck while she cooks.

Then, at 8:30pm it was time for dinner. The other girl who is staying in the house with us came back from visiting a friend. Her name is Karen and she’s still in high school from Arizona. At first she seemed pretty shy, but recently we’ve gotten to know her better. For dinner, we had chicken that was fried in a batter with cilantro and an “ensalada russia” wich is like a potato salad, and a regular salad, which had apples in it. Everything was delicious. (There’s nothing like home-cooked meals). After, she gave us an ice cream bar for dessert. Then, Lauren and I went to bed so that we could get to our school at 9am the next day.

On Saturday we decided to catch up a bit on our sleep. Oslidia, our host mom, knocked on our door around 1pm. “¿Chicas, van a comer desayuno?” (are you going to eat breakfast?) she asked us. So we got up, ate our breakfast, and took showers. It was the afternoon of our last day in Madrid and we couldn’t decide what to do. Maybe go back to el prado museum? We sat in our room listening to music trying to decide how we wanted to spend our last day when we received a text from Cristian asking us if we wanted to go out for Cuban food. We told him yes and that we’d meet up around 8:30pm.

Cristian, Guillermo, Lauren and I met at Tio Pepe. Crisitan had read a flyer advertising a Cuban restaurant, so we followed him down the street.

We passed by several restaurants including an all you can eat buffet, but no Cuban restaurants. Eventually we reached a dead end. Cristian decided that we must have gone the wrong way down the street so we turned around and went the other way. We had no luck.

We asked a man outside of a Corte Ingles for directions and we still couldn’t find it. Eventually Cristian said that we should just go to the buffet. Oh well. We went into this funky little place that had soup, salad, paella, pizza, pasta and other random items. “Well it has lots of food, so it’s kind of like a Cuban restaurant, Cubans eat a lot of food,” said Cristian. Hahaha.

We sat in the downstairs seating area next to the freezers. We were a bit creeped out and wondered if they hid bodies in the freezer like in the movie Volver. We checked and only found frozen meats. Thank goodness. The food wasn’t good, it was okay, but I couldn’t really eat much of it. When it came time to try dessert, Lauren and I picked this weird burnt flan while Cristian picked a mystery dish. He took a giant bite and his face contorted into a look of disgust. We all started laughing. Guess we won’t be returning there.

After, we still had some time to kill before we had to meet up with the rest of our group. We decided to walk over to Gran Vía where the gay pride parade was taking place. The streets were filled with very interesting people. We saw lots of rainbow flags and costumes. My favorite was a group of men dressed as angels with wings and all. They wore no shirt, a tiny cloth around their waste, and tons of glitter.

The floats in the parade were fun to look at too. They were mostly giant vehicles filled with dancing people, mostly with guys without shirts.

There was one float that had a single man who wore a wig, shiny silver go-go boots and half a thong. That’s right, he wasn’t wearing a full thong, it only had string on one side. Yeah… hahaha.

We met up with our group at Tio Pepe and decided to go back to the bar from Friday. We sat at a big table upstairs and ordered a few jars of sangría. I had totally forgotten that it was the 4th of July until someone mentioned it and we started singing traditional American songs. I miss my 4th of July fireworks… I guess being in Spain makes up for it.