you can look but you can't touch

some friends and i are going to the shore to check out mardi gras-esque carnival in cádiz. we went costume shopping last night. i´m going to be a viking complete with a plastic, obscenely large bosom. tim is going to be spartacus, and the costume he bought basically looks like a bedsheet. it´s practically see-through.

i hope it rains a lot. like a lot, a lot. ;)

jk but it does look to be crappy weather. can´t turn back now though we´ve already bought our bus tickets. we leave 5pm, up all night and catch the 5am bus back to sevilla.

should be interesting. i have a feeling it will either be super fun or way crappy. we´ll see.

valentine's day and sharing

i didn't realize today was valentine's day until i opened the care package my best friend had sent to me. it was filled with lots of valentine's day goodies! how thoughtful.



i don't remember what the hell i did for valentine's last year, and perhaps nothing too extraordinary happened today, but i have a feeling i'm going to remember this valentine's for a while.

after class some of us decided to go to an actual restaurant for a valentine's dinner. there's nothing wrong with tapas and bars, but we felt like we had to sit down for this holiday. i think no one saw it coming that we would end up in a chinese restaurant. it was kinda surreal sitting there with the waitress trying to speak to us in broken english but then realizing that we could all communicate much better through spanish.

we each only spent 8E on dinner, dessert, 2 bottles of wine, and 2 pitchers of sangria.

amazing.

the service was good, and so we left a .35E tip. i'm still not used to this whole no tipping deal. we didn't want to leave nothing, but then none of us could get over the fact that .35E seemed somewhat insulting.

they wanted to stay out after dinner, but i peaced out early b/c i'm a lamer and have to get up at 8am.

the buses stop running at midnight, so i caught the last one home. while waiting at the stop i started talking to this old lady. i asked her how her valentine's day went, and she said it was ok - nothing special b/c she doesn't have a pareja. awww! i told her i don't either and offered her one of my chocolate kisses from the heart container that i received in the aforementioned care package. and oh she was so delighted! she told me to sit down next to her, and we talked while we waited for the bus to come. when it finally came, she insisted that she pay for my ride.

of course i refused but the old lady was spry and wouldn't take no for an answer. so i thank her and follow her into the near empty bus and oh how awkward! there's my friend harmony sitting in the middle. and she waves all excitedly and moves over for me to sit with her, but then i didn't want the old lady to pay for me and me not sit with her.

afdjdfsakldfsakjldfsajkl.

i stood there all confused and awkward. looking diagonally back and forth between the old lady and harmony with both of them telling me to go sit with the other.

finally we compromised. i sat with the old lady, harmony sat in front of us, and we all talked the entire way home. the old lady, Rosa, lives in the next street over from me and so i walked her home. soooo cute. she definitely made my happy mood even happier.

when i got home i actually talked to my hawt host brother pepe. i offered him some chocolates too!

in case you missed it, he's like hot.

i noticed, out of all the chocolates, he chose to eat one of my chocolate balls. which means nothing, but i wanted to point it out anyway.

moral of the story: i like sangria.

class?

univ courses start today for the semester.

the different faculty buildings are spread throughout the city.

students here pretty much just stick to one faculty for their entire studies. which sucks since i'm pretty much in 3 faculties and having the hardest time finding classes that i can make it to in time. miercoles i have class 10 -12 at the psyc building, and then 12:05 - 1:45 at the palacio which is a good 30 minutes on the other side of the city.

all 5 of my classes have this type of conflict at some point and time.

so i think it's safe to say it's the first day of class and i don't know my schedule.

anyone surprised?

obviously.

andalucia

we traveled to cordoba, jerez, and carmona this week.


me sitting on a grave in a burial ground at the roman necroplis in carmona. wow how many prepositions did i just use?

they let just walk around in the ruins and touch shit in the museums. way cool, but i'm a dork so whatevs.


one of the 4 groups of kids reenacting some roman war. this was the green bow and arrow group, the other groups were broken down by color and weapons: spears, swords, and the last group was shields.

i would have been pissed if i were a bunk ass shield. we kept running into them as they marched throughout the tiny city of carmona in battle formations and shouted war cries while deflecting deflated kick ball-esque boulders thrown at them from the palace walls of the alcazar. too cute.

i kinda wanted to play.

córdoba

today we went to Cordoba. The 1.5 hr bus trip was nice and uneventful. 5 of us were supposed to go, but 2 slept through their alarms and didn’t make it to the 9am departure. perhaps celebrating the end of class and expecting to get up in time to make it to the bus stop was a reach goal.

here are some pics:


cordoba w/ its history of la cultura arabe is all about the patio


so we took a patio tour








mezquita turned into a catedral during the reconquista


but so pretty they kept all the arches and the mihrab in tact


this is the dome of mihrab section. the position of the mihrab points to the direction of mecca


alcazar of cordoba


view from the alcazar tower


this is from the night before. a guy/hooker all in white that caught my attention


we were there all day and got home a little after 10pm. fun stuff. a day of cultural exploration to make up for a month of bad decisions and gross time mismanagement. yay!