The Last Day Of Classes, ¡Ole!

Thursday April 24, 2008

Today is finally the last day of classes for the semester. Carmen gave back our history and literature finals and Victor stopped in to give us our culture final back. I was really happy with the first two, and not really thrilled with the last but they are done with and I survived to tell the story!

After classes we tried to exchange our bullfight tickets from last weekend (when the fight was suspended because of the weather) but the ticket man told us that we needed to come back on Saturday. Afterwards we headed home. When we arrived home for lunch, we quickly realized that we were going to have garbanzo bean stew. I don’t really care for these beans much, but Spaniards love them. After our host sister left we went to the kitchen and decided to make our own lunch: macaroni n’ cheese and salad with real dressing. It was delicious and I actually cooked it (just call me Emeril). After our gourmet meal Allison and I went and got our haircut and highlighted. It was a really nice day, in the nineties, so Allison and I walked around and shopped for a while.

We came home and she started not to feel well, but we both started to get ready for our “last supper” with our teachers. She didn’t end up going (sad) but I still went alone. We met up with our professors and went to a bar called, “Torre de Plata.” We had a delicious four-course Spanish meal and some good table conversation. There was a lot of reflecting back on the semester, which brought about a mix of emotions. Afterwards we headed to an Irish pub and had a few drinks with everyone and then people split their own ways. I ended up going to a club called Catedral with Elsabeth and we danced for a while…until some crazy girl ran up to us and started accusing us of stealing her purse. She was furious…but we didn’t do anything. All we could say was sorry, it wasn’t us, we can help….but all she could do was accuse and yell (in Spanish obviously). After we finally got that fiasco settled it kind of killed the night and we decided to head home.

On the way home we passed a group of people who were “botellon-ing” in the Alameda. Botellon-ing is where you buy a bottle of liquor, a bottle of Coke, you bring glasses and you drink in public. It’s quite an interesting concept, especially because as of last year its technically illegal, but that doesn’t stop anyone nor does it make the police enforce the rule. A little piece of the drinking culture that is quite different from in the States.