So this past weekend was extra long because Tuesday was Día de Andalusia a holiday and therefore Monday was off too. We had a bunch of plans, but the weather was terrible, it was rainy and cold so some of our plans got changed. We ended up going to the carnival in Cádiz on Saturday morning. This carnival lasts two weeks and celebrates the end of winter as Lent begins. The entire city dresses up like its Halloween and it’s supposed to be one of
Europe’s largest carnivals. Dhruti, I, and Chris went to the Chinese store nearby to pick up some stuff for our costumes the night before. I ended up dressing like a baby with my pacifier, my baby bottle, teddy bear, and a set of pajamas. I was really excited, but to tell you the truth, it got pretty miserable especially thanks to the weather. It was really cold and it was seriously like a hurricane there. At night, we all went over to the center in front of this cathedral where there were thousands of people. Kind of odd right in front of the cathedral, but nevertheless it was a much bigger scale Franklin Street and I guess the weather didn’t stop people from coming out. It was probably all foreigners, but yeah it’s crazy because you can just bring your drinks outside so everyone is just drinking in the streets. I’m not too big on standing in the middle of big crowds, so I eventually got a headache and by 1 am we were all ready to head back to Sevilla. The earliest bus was at 7 AM so we headed to the train station because I think someone mentioned that they ran all night. WAJ! The first train was actually at 5:55. Yeah, so it was raining outside so everyone sat down to take a nap on the train station floor while I randomly walked around looking for toast, which I was unsuccessful in doing. I don’t know, I just had some weird craving for that and coffee. Yeah and then at like 2:15 they kicked us out of the station because they had to clean it or something. Whatever….We went back out and a couple people were hungry so we stopped by the Burger King, which was quite possibly the most disgusting place ever. The floor was covered with trash, French fries, half eaten hamburgers, beer cans, wine bottles, everything you can think of mixed in with the rain and dirt from outside. Anyways, we finally got on the train around 4 AM. I fell asleep and right before the train left, I woke up and noticed that the entire floor of the train was covered with drunk people. Awesome night eh? I think the highlight of my night was seeing Maria and Chandni put makeup on Chris multiple times through the night. Haha...
My Costume
Not a great picture, but shows you how crazy it was there
We were supposed to go to the beach later during the weekend, but we canceled it because of the nasty weather. So I kind of just bummed around a little bit until Tuesday, when Dhruti, Maria, Chris, and I went to Gibraltar, a British colony on the southern tip of Spain. This was really fun and the weather held up. I was really excited especially about seeing the monkeys there. Legend says if that the monkeys disappear then so will the British. Yeah, so anyways, we roamed around a bit for a couple hours and I tried to go get some roti or samosas at an Indian restaurant, but they said they didn’t have take out right now, only the buffet. I’ve had this craving for my mom’s fold lately and also for Indian food. Anyways, we visited St. Michael’s Cave, which used to be a hospital during World War II. It’s really pretty and is full of the stalagmites. We also went to this view where we could see the Spanish coast and Africa at the same time. Lastly, we saw the monkeys. The monkeys roam around basically wherever they want and the tour bus stopped randomly on this road and we all jumped out and there were three monkeys. The first monkey I saw was sitting on this ledge urinating, which was kind of strange, but yeah so these monkeys are incredibly smart. (Dhruti had a nightmare before because monkeys are supposed to be less than 5% different than us) So one of the monkeys grabbed a cookie from someone and ate that, then another one grabbed a new bag of peanuts and opened them on their own. I gave one of them some chips twice and the last time he started looking in my pocket to see if I had more.
Dhruti and I in front of the "Rock"
Maria, Dhruti, and Chris inside St. Michael's Cave
What a smart monkey
Anyways, so this was a short week of classes and it was the last week of 2 classes. I definitely think I failed my literature test on Thursday as well as my language class yesterday. Above it all, we had to write a paper for the lit class after the test yesterday. Probably one of the worse papers I’ve ever written. But yeah, now I am really happy because I only have 2 classes for the rest of the semester and no classes on Thursday and Fridays!!
I can’t wait till tonight. It’s the Carolina-Duke game!! I’m jealous of the people that get to the game. You guys better be sportin’ the baby blue! One of the guys in our program is having a few people over and he has internet at his house so I think we are just going to hunch around his computer and watch it. Even better, it’s at 3 AM here…woohooo!!
Hope everything is going well. Btw, I've started posting some pics on Facebook in case you are interested. I wonder how many people actually look at this blog besides me.....haha
Que es la verdad? What is the truth?
Me and the lizard at Park Guell, another work by Gaudi
St. Josep fresh market where you can buy fruit, cheese, olives, bread, nuts, seafood, and unfortunately, pig heads
Some old fellas in the street playing a french game that they called padanka(dont know spelling)
We got to see the best futbol player in the world get on a bus
A view of the city as nighttime approaches
Casa Batllo, yet another work of Antonio Gaudi, he really owns this city
Barcelona is one of the top cities for street performers, they stand still until someone pays them in the bin in front of them, and then they start performing
Fountain show
