i´m writing a book
So I guess it´s been almost a week now... and an eventful week at that... since I´ve sent out an email.
We had our first week of classes and they weren´t that bad. I mean, I thought it would be horrible having class from 9 to 12:45 everyday with only a 15 minute break, but the classes go by pretty quickly. My culture class is kind of boring... we basically have to read 2 chapters before each class... and the chapters are about 40 pages each of spanish, so it takes a while to get through. And they´re history chapters... and I´m not a fan of history... but some of it is actually interesting. My conversation class is great though. All we do is talk about things we like or don´t like or some culture aspect of spain and how it´s different than the US. On Thursday we actually had from 9 to 10:45 to go to the market to talk to the locals about bullfighting (and do some shopping while we were at it!)
After classes I have been going over to Brittany´s pool or have gone running or just went back to my house to sleep... but it goes pretty quickly because after siesta it´s 5:30 or so and we hang out at the pool until about 9 and then shower and eat dinner and then go out.
On Monday I didn´t do anything really at night.
Tuesday the Spanish boys invited us to play some volleyball at the gym. Sarah had gone to play soccer with the Trujillo team so it was just Brittany, Megan, and me. Luís, Jose Luís, and Antonio were also on my team. We played some other people I didn´t know, but one of them was Luís´s psychotic ex-girlfriend... she threw the ball at his head so many times. It was hilarious.
Wednesday was the Milan v Liverpool soccer game that we watched at Vilu. The bar was divided half for each team. I was for Liverpool so it was kind of depressing when Milan was up 3-0 before Liverpool came back. It was so exciting! The entire bar was going crazy! After Liverpool kicked ass it was time to celebrate. We hung out for a long time at that bar and then moved on out to Cabo Verdes for a change of scenery. I didn´t like that bar as much as Vilu, but it was still fun. We weren´t with our normal large group of spanish guys either, just Javi and Diego, so it was a little easier to speak with them in spanish. Brittany is so crazy, I love it. She was trying to explain that guys are sensitive on their ears and when they didn´t understand (which I think they were only pretending not to understand because now I know they speak english) she gave them an example. Kyle, one of our american comrades, had to remove himself to gain composure after she had finished. He was seriously about to jizz his pants and it was absolutely hilarious!
Thursday was another crazy night. Sarah had another soccer practice so I went out with the girls... yep, I have a "the girls" here, which is pretty neat. We went to Vilu with the guys and the other students and our professors. Lola was crazy. She kept on asking me to have chupitos with her... which I did... The thing about Spain is that the hours are so different from America that because we eat dinner so late we are full and the alcohol doesn´t get to people as quickly. We figured that since we didn´t really have class in the morning it would be OK to go crazy. Also, the American group has kind of divided. There is the group that goes out all the time and just spends time with the Americans (who were playing Never Have I Ever at the bar- and it looked like fun and everything but...) and there are the girls I hang out with who go out with the Spanish guys every night. But the Americans went to Cabo Verde and we went to Abadía with the Spaniards. The club was dead, but that didn´t stop us from dancing... and seriously, every time I turned around it was about time for a new chupito. I started to turn them down though when it got to 4 am. But the night wasn´t over yet! We piled into the car and drove to the castle where we continued our dance party. I love the castle at 4 in the morning! It´s seriously more fun there than at the bar sometimes because it´s more quiet and you can actually have a conversation with them and practice your Spanish with other words besides chupito or borracha. I ended up getting home around 5:30... good enough to sleep until my oral exam at 11:30.
The oral exam wasn´t bad at all... and since I had finished my legend I ended up just going home and sleeping the rest of the day.
Friday night I left my house early to get dinner with Brittany and then Javi picked us up to go the the feria in Cáceres. Cáceres is about 30 minutes from Trujillo and they drive so so fast on those little roads! Oh my god, I LOVED the fair! We went with Javi, Antonio, Jose Luís, Luís, and Beni and there was Brittany, Sarah, Sarah, Megan, and me... which worked out perfectly for the people who wanted to couple up. Unfortunately I wasn´t one of those people and I ended up with the leftover... which is mean to say because he really isn´t a leftover... but I mean, who likes to be forced to hang with someone because the other guys are all taken by the other girls so you have to talk to this guy the whole night... (which gets even stickier once I found out that this guy chose me as the American girl he likes... which means you´re off limits to the other Spanish guys... they´re really possessive of their girls here) Ugh. I stayed sober that night... I don´t know why. I mean, I can´t drive stick so there really wasn´t anything I could have done... but my driver was sober too so that was alright. We rode some rides... so fun. Mechanical bulls were there are six people per bull and it rolls around and you try to stay on... some water thing... and the ferris wheel!!!! The bull was funny because one of the girls was wearing a tube shirt and when she fell off, so did her shirt and some guys that were at the fair stayed around to stare for the rest of the time we were riding. Also, a very interesting point, the fair didn´t have bathrooms so when we had to go we had to manuever our way through hundreds of people and find a nice car to drop our pants behind. On one of our bathroom breaks we stumbled across a couple having buttsex against their car. One word: hilarious. The look on that guys face was priceless... pure ecstasy. But the fair in Spain is a little different than a fair in America. For one, it´s free to get in. Also, it´s basically bring your own booze, so a good bit of the time we were standing in a circle with our bag of ice and bottles of vodka and whiskey and our mixers in the middle of the path. Also there are about 30 different bar and clubs... some with exotic dancers!!! Hooray! Everyone got completely drunk that night and it was so much fun. We ended up getting back to Trujillo at 6:30/7:00 in the morning and I had to wake up at 8:00 for our trip to Mérida.
What a day. I was so tired and the girls I had gone out with were still drunk that day. The bus ride was so long and I felt sick. Especially because I had skipped breakfast. But Mérida was absolutely beautiful. We saw the Roman theatre and the amphitheatre. It is so incredible in real life. Pictures don´t even do it justice. I got goosebumps just standing there in the middle of the theatre in the orchestra pit looking up at how huge this building was and how incredible it was that they could build something so beautiful. It´s interesting though that half of the theatre is fake. They replaced it with metal that looks like stone so you´re walking and there are two different sounds, one for the old stone and one for the new metal. The amphitheatre was really cool too. We stood in the center where the gladiators fought and saw the cages where the animals were kept before being released to fight the gladiators. Oh man!!!
But after seeing the historical places I was dead. I think I almost fell over I was so exhausted and didn´t ahve any energy. We ended up seeing a Roman bridge and took it to the mall that was closed so i took my siesta on a table top in a restaurant. Fun times.
When i got home it was time for another night out. I went to Luís´s house and hung out with him and Beni until it was time to go to the club. Again, I had fun there... but I need to buy some eye drops because I can´t keep my eyes open with all that smoke!
I ended up leaving early (4 am- yep, that´s early here) and sleeping all day.
About to go to the bar for a quick beer before bed... then another week of classes.
I have pictures up at community.webshots.com/user/aubreyinspain . go visit! and email me about life in America! Can´t wait to hear from you guys!
Love and miss you,
Aubrey
We had our first week of classes and they weren´t that bad. I mean, I thought it would be horrible having class from 9 to 12:45 everyday with only a 15 minute break, but the classes go by pretty quickly. My culture class is kind of boring... we basically have to read 2 chapters before each class... and the chapters are about 40 pages each of spanish, so it takes a while to get through. And they´re history chapters... and I´m not a fan of history... but some of it is actually interesting. My conversation class is great though. All we do is talk about things we like or don´t like or some culture aspect of spain and how it´s different than the US. On Thursday we actually had from 9 to 10:45 to go to the market to talk to the locals about bullfighting (and do some shopping while we were at it!)
After classes I have been going over to Brittany´s pool or have gone running or just went back to my house to sleep... but it goes pretty quickly because after siesta it´s 5:30 or so and we hang out at the pool until about 9 and then shower and eat dinner and then go out.
On Monday I didn´t do anything really at night.
Tuesday the Spanish boys invited us to play some volleyball at the gym. Sarah had gone to play soccer with the Trujillo team so it was just Brittany, Megan, and me. Luís, Jose Luís, and Antonio were also on my team. We played some other people I didn´t know, but one of them was Luís´s psychotic ex-girlfriend... she threw the ball at his head so many times. It was hilarious.
Wednesday was the Milan v Liverpool soccer game that we watched at Vilu. The bar was divided half for each team. I was for Liverpool so it was kind of depressing when Milan was up 3-0 before Liverpool came back. It was so exciting! The entire bar was going crazy! After Liverpool kicked ass it was time to celebrate. We hung out for a long time at that bar and then moved on out to Cabo Verdes for a change of scenery. I didn´t like that bar as much as Vilu, but it was still fun. We weren´t with our normal large group of spanish guys either, just Javi and Diego, so it was a little easier to speak with them in spanish. Brittany is so crazy, I love it. She was trying to explain that guys are sensitive on their ears and when they didn´t understand (which I think they were only pretending not to understand because now I know they speak english) she gave them an example. Kyle, one of our american comrades, had to remove himself to gain composure after she had finished. He was seriously about to jizz his pants and it was absolutely hilarious!
Thursday was another crazy night. Sarah had another soccer practice so I went out with the girls... yep, I have a "the girls" here, which is pretty neat. We went to Vilu with the guys and the other students and our professors. Lola was crazy. She kept on asking me to have chupitos with her... which I did... The thing about Spain is that the hours are so different from America that because we eat dinner so late we are full and the alcohol doesn´t get to people as quickly. We figured that since we didn´t really have class in the morning it would be OK to go crazy. Also, the American group has kind of divided. There is the group that goes out all the time and just spends time with the Americans (who were playing Never Have I Ever at the bar- and it looked like fun and everything but...) and there are the girls I hang out with who go out with the Spanish guys every night. But the Americans went to Cabo Verde and we went to Abadía with the Spaniards. The club was dead, but that didn´t stop us from dancing... and seriously, every time I turned around it was about time for a new chupito. I started to turn them down though when it got to 4 am. But the night wasn´t over yet! We piled into the car and drove to the castle where we continued our dance party. I love the castle at 4 in the morning! It´s seriously more fun there than at the bar sometimes because it´s more quiet and you can actually have a conversation with them and practice your Spanish with other words besides chupito or borracha. I ended up getting home around 5:30... good enough to sleep until my oral exam at 11:30.
The oral exam wasn´t bad at all... and since I had finished my legend I ended up just going home and sleeping the rest of the day.
Friday night I left my house early to get dinner with Brittany and then Javi picked us up to go the the feria in Cáceres. Cáceres is about 30 minutes from Trujillo and they drive so so fast on those little roads! Oh my god, I LOVED the fair! We went with Javi, Antonio, Jose Luís, Luís, and Beni and there was Brittany, Sarah, Sarah, Megan, and me... which worked out perfectly for the people who wanted to couple up. Unfortunately I wasn´t one of those people and I ended up with the leftover... which is mean to say because he really isn´t a leftover... but I mean, who likes to be forced to hang with someone because the other guys are all taken by the other girls so you have to talk to this guy the whole night... (which gets even stickier once I found out that this guy chose me as the American girl he likes... which means you´re off limits to the other Spanish guys... they´re really possessive of their girls here) Ugh. I stayed sober that night... I don´t know why. I mean, I can´t drive stick so there really wasn´t anything I could have done... but my driver was sober too so that was alright. We rode some rides... so fun. Mechanical bulls were there are six people per bull and it rolls around and you try to stay on... some water thing... and the ferris wheel!!!! The bull was funny because one of the girls was wearing a tube shirt and when she fell off, so did her shirt and some guys that were at the fair stayed around to stare for the rest of the time we were riding. Also, a very interesting point, the fair didn´t have bathrooms so when we had to go we had to manuever our way through hundreds of people and find a nice car to drop our pants behind. On one of our bathroom breaks we stumbled across a couple having buttsex against their car. One word: hilarious. The look on that guys face was priceless... pure ecstasy. But the fair in Spain is a little different than a fair in America. For one, it´s free to get in. Also, it´s basically bring your own booze, so a good bit of the time we were standing in a circle with our bag of ice and bottles of vodka and whiskey and our mixers in the middle of the path. Also there are about 30 different bar and clubs... some with exotic dancers!!! Hooray! Everyone got completely drunk that night and it was so much fun. We ended up getting back to Trujillo at 6:30/7:00 in the morning and I had to wake up at 8:00 for our trip to Mérida.
What a day. I was so tired and the girls I had gone out with were still drunk that day. The bus ride was so long and I felt sick. Especially because I had skipped breakfast. But Mérida was absolutely beautiful. We saw the Roman theatre and the amphitheatre. It is so incredible in real life. Pictures don´t even do it justice. I got goosebumps just standing there in the middle of the theatre in the orchestra pit looking up at how huge this building was and how incredible it was that they could build something so beautiful. It´s interesting though that half of the theatre is fake. They replaced it with metal that looks like stone so you´re walking and there are two different sounds, one for the old stone and one for the new metal. The amphitheatre was really cool too. We stood in the center where the gladiators fought and saw the cages where the animals were kept before being released to fight the gladiators. Oh man!!!
But after seeing the historical places I was dead. I think I almost fell over I was so exhausted and didn´t ahve any energy. We ended up seeing a Roman bridge and took it to the mall that was closed so i took my siesta on a table top in a restaurant. Fun times.
When i got home it was time for another night out. I went to Luís´s house and hung out with him and Beni until it was time to go to the club. Again, I had fun there... but I need to buy some eye drops because I can´t keep my eyes open with all that smoke!
I ended up leaving early (4 am- yep, that´s early here) and sleeping all day.
About to go to the bar for a quick beer before bed... then another week of classes.
I have pictures up at community.webshots.com/user/aubreyinspain . go visit! and email me about life in America! Can´t wait to hear from you guys!
Love and miss you,
Aubrey