chicos chicos chicos

Oh my goodness. Can I just say that yesterday, Saturday, was probably the longest and craziest day of my entire life. It was insanity! So here goes my play by play of what went down in this awesome country.

Ok, so Amanda and I had breakfast around 9ish, and then started walking towards the soccer stadium to catch the bus with our friends from the program to the beach! The bus ride was about an hour long, and our first stop was at el Real Monasterio de Santa Maria de la Valldigna. We took a tour of the monastery and learned a little bit about its history. The inside was breath-taking and we all got some awesome photos. After the tour, we got back on the bus and arrived at la Gandia, which is another huge beach in Spain. It ended up being a gorgeous day to go the beach and we had a blast. I took a picture with Gina in one of the pedal boats that they had for people to rent. And while me and three other girls were out swimming, we said hola to some guys on a pedal boat nearby, and they took off in our direction! Haha, it was crazy. They were from Spain and they introduced themselves to us, then one of them, named Musta (I think?) proceeded to pick me up in the water and carry me to their boat! So we all ended up sitting on their boat and trying to communicate for a little while. There were four girls and 5 or 6 guys, so it was definitely cramped. It was so crazy. There names were Miguel, Andres, Jonathan, Musta, and I can't remember the others, but Andres kept splashing us and telling us to hang out with them later. We told him (in spanish, por supuesto) that we had to catch a bus back to valencia and he was like, I have a car, I can drive you! hahah, ohhh experiencias en las playas de Espana.

We left the beach around 5 and finally made it back to our apartment around 6. I was already pretty tired, because the sun at the beach can wear you out, but we showered, asked Mari Carmen if we could have la cena early, and then headed out to watch the soccer game of Spain vs. Paraguay in the streets! It was complete and utter insanity! We found one restaurant that had a fairly large TV set up outside outside. There were a ton of people just standing in the street wearing Espana shirts and waving flags and banderas grandes y pequenas and food and beer in everyone's hands or at their feet. They had these really loud noisemakers that almost never stopped. And when Spain got a goal, it was just crazy and awesome to watch. During half time Amanda and I headed over to the grocery store nearby (along with half of the other people watching the game where we were) and we talked with some random Spanish guys there. I think one of them was named Pablo, ha. And then we finished watching the game, with la policia circling everyone and making sure nothing got too out of hand. Psshhh, yeah right. It ended around 10:20ish and after that we started walking towards La Corona, un club, en El Carrer de Corona (a street name) because the Valencia Program invited us there at 11 for drinks and hanging out. We got so lost on the way there, I'm pretty sure we had been walking for at least an hour before we found it, but it was actually really fun! I tried Agua de Valencia, which apparently had slightly more alcohol in it than we all anticipated, but it was really good. That was my only drink for the night, but I think everyone else went crazy. They were playing a lot of American songs at this bar, like Lady Gaga and Rihanna, but I had a blast. There was a lot of dancing and I met some other random spanish guys there and let me tell you...it is very interesting and difficult trying to communicate in spanish when there is very loud music playing and people everywhere, ha. But we did manage to get some pictures with some of those guys. I'll definitely have to put them on here, I think one of them was named Vicente. I still haven't met an Alejandro, ha. Darn.

So again, the real night life doesn't begin until about 2ish, so around 1:45 or so a huge group of us headed out to look for una discoteca. There was one called Umbracle that we wanted to go to, but we got very lost (as usual) and ended up at Las Animas, after taking a taxi there. We had to pay about 15 euro just to get in, but it was so worth it. I don't think we left until about 4:30ish. I have NEVER stayed out that late partying in my life. And I do not think I'm going to make a habit of it. La discoteca was huge and packed with people. Seriously, there were sooo many people! It was partly indoor and partly outdoor, everything looked really cool, though I didn't get to take any pictures. I danced with a few guys from the program, and didn't get to talk to many natives there, but it was cool just looking around and seeing again what the night life is like here. Woahh, so at 4:30 I walked outside with Amanda and we were looking for a taxi, but most of them were full, so we had to walk a little ways before we could flag one down. We shared one with a friend, and then crashed. Luckily we got to sleep in some, but yeah. Crazy long day. I don't know how los valencianos do this almost every night. It's just crazy.

Oh and yeah, I'm starting a list of all the cool Spanish names of the guys we talk to, ha. There were a lot in this entry, but we'll see how many more interesting ones I can learn in the next few weeks.