Aventuras en España: Wait, I actually came here for classes?

Cariños,
(this means love/affection and is what our host mom often calls us) so cute!

There are so many things I'd like to tell you all about--the cultural differences (good and bad), the food (pretty much all good), the people I've met, classes, language barriers, and fun things that I have seen/done.

I'll start off with classes... I actually like them. My professor for intermediate is named Juan Luis and he's very nice. We only have six students in the class, so we have a lot opportunities to practice speaking together. Also, Juan is always telling us about cool restaurants, etc. in Alicante and I love that! My professor for conversation is named Conchi (don't remember how to spell it) and is also very nice. She speaks more quickly and has a thicker accent than Juan, which completely intimidated me at first, but now I'm starting to understand her better and am learning a lot in her class. This week has been pretty heavily loaded with homework and studying because we have midterms on Friday... classes move fast when you're only here for a month.

The food actually is not that different from foods we would eat in the US. They use a lot of olive oil, eat a lot of pork, and our host mom uses oregano a lot. However, for the most part the foods are things that we eat in the US. The biggest difference is probably the daily routine of when to eat certain foods. And there is also much less junk food--awesome! Breakfast consists of something small, a delicious chocolate croissant maybe, and a waytoosmall coffee with sugar and milk. Most people then wait to eat until the big meal--comida--around 2pm. This is when we come home. Our hostmom, Eva, is an amazing cook! She prepares all her plates very meticulously and you can tell that meals are very important to her. I really enjoy and admire this about her. Between comida and dinner we usually have a few small snacks and then eat a light dinner around 10pm. New things that I've tried and enjoyed are: tuna and crab (cold) on a salad... delish!, mussels (they taste like buffalo chicken but freak me out a little), and lots of variations of cooked pork/chicken and vegetables.

Sunday and Monday evening Emily and I went to a festival in our neighborhood (called San Blas) to watch the parades and reenactments of the war between the Christians and the Moors. Click here for a short wikipedia description of these festivities. The parade on Sunday was of all the Moors. They were dressed in elaborate, beautiful costumes. There were animals, funny dances, and the parade was very long. We stayed from 8 until 10:30ish and it was still not finished. Monday evening was the reenactment of the fight, and this turned out to be very interesting. First, the two kings did a 15 minute skit of arguing over the castle, and then they rode away on their horses and the crowd began to disperse. Emily and I were a little confused why everyone was leaving, but were excited that we could move up for a better view. Just as we stepped up right next to the road, a cannon fired louder than anything I thought was possible and we just screamed. It was exciting and painful at the same time. We met a really nice middle-aged man during this loud tradition and he told us a lot of history about the festival, the castle, and the city of Alicante. He's lived here his whole life so it was really interesting to hear what he had to say. Although, with the gunshots I could only hear about half of what he said, and only understand half of what he was saying... but it was still awesome to meet him.