Nueva Entrada

So, if I were to put myself in a box of being on top of this blog or not, I would have to be put in the second one. To remedy this, I intend to write un montón in this one :).

A Coruña, the city of crystal/glass, was gorgeous. We went to la Casa de Ciencias which is essentially a Science City in Spain that uses Castellano and Gallego to describe scientific processes. Fortunately, these processes are pretty elementary so it wasn't a strain to read in a foreign language; also, I'm deciding to be pleased that I could read everything and understand it. In another proud Spanish moment, when we were at the planetarium (!!! I know!!) I DID NOT fall asleep and understood almost everything the guy was saying. One might ask, Kate, why would you be proud of not falling asleep? You couldn't fall asleep during the day if your life depended on it. And I would agree and then say that the night before Valerie and I went out and didn't come home until past 6 and I had to wake up at 8 to get ready for the bus ride. And since I was paranoid about missing the alarm I don't actually know how much I slept.. but enough of that tangent. So, I followed the whole presentation and feel like I learned something, as well as talking with the helpers at the exhibits so I could get the most out of all the buttons you could push.

After the Casa de Ciencias, we went to the Plaza de Maria Pita to hang out for a few hours and explore the city and eat. Valerie, Mindy, Farashta, and I immediately left to find food because some of us were starving. We went to a typical little café place and ordered everything. Less than full with my tortilla española, I told the waiter I wanted boquerones. My bad. Apparently, boquerones are like anchovies. I think my little misunderstandings with the language barrier, despite being borderline dangerous, have all ended well. Caves in Portugal? Don't exist, but there's some nice wine at the end! Boquerones sounded like a sort of sandwich? Not quite, but they were not nearly as bad as they looked. After this meal, we headed for the beach. We were warned ahead of time not to go too far into the ocean because tourists do stupid things and basically get sucked into the current and slammed against the rocks and die. As pleasant as this sounded, Mindy and I went into the ocean just to get our feet wet. Making a point to not go too far in, we were standing there minding out own business when an errant wave splashed into us!! We tried running out but it's really hard to run in water. So, our jeans were wet and the wave started to take away our shoes. This was NOT going to go down because those were my new shoes and I am infatuated with them and have a bizarre attachment to them. So I chased them and grabbed them and then said a few bad words about how my socks and shoes got soaked and now my pants are wet, and everything is going to be sandy and smelling like ocean - read fish poop and other stuff - but really the beach was gorgeous. Another adventure, like always.

After this we went to the aquarium! I looove aquariums! I was the resident scholar on marine animal behavior because of all the hours I've spent watching Animal Planet. When we saw the tiburones I pretty much was very excited. The profesores thought it was funny how obsessed yet knowledgeable I was with sharks, but seriously, I love shark week so it's fine. :) We leave the aquarium to head back home -- it still weirds me out that at the end of all our trips 'home' is Santiago, in SPAIN -- and everyone falls asleep on the bus except Mindy and I, so we talk with Mar and it was a good conversation about really important things. We talked about suede - seriously, why would you make shoes out of suede in a climate where it's always raining? - juice, an important topic for me, and banks.

The next big thing that happened was Valerie's birthday! She turned 21 in Spain, totally pimp, I was reminiscing about how I turned 16 in Spain and then 18 in Vienna and how cool that is, so we celebrated her birthday in the Euro-American style we do best: pre-partying and partying but with international people. We went to Moore's for the English/American trivia night, which is fun as always but I'm feeling kind of over it, and Valerie was treated to a few drinks. It was a lot of fun, within the trivia competition Anna (the girl from France) and I ganked the microphone and sang Happy Birthday to her. I think we should have apologized at first, but I couldn't really hear how we sounded. Hopefully just enough to sufficiently embarrass her! :)

The next significant event, not school-related (we had our first actual paper, none of that asinine page response fluff work): Valentine's Day! Even though Valentine's day has been sufficiently advertised everywhere, oops, I forgot to talk about our excursion to El Corte Inglés [ basically just another time where public transportation sucks, a live and learn experience] and they had signs about the WEEK of San Valentín, the actual day seemed pretty anticlimactic and insignificant. It is apparently only celebrated by novios/amantes, so even if you want to wish a friend/Valerie's resident dictator 'Happy Valentine's Day' they find it awkward and it's kind of an uncomfortable situation because they assume that there is something more, but really it's just another casualty of the language barrier. Anyway, despite the number of stores with Valentine's displays and cards, there were not very many people purchasing these. I saw only a handful of guys with flowers, the firefighters parade was bigger than the V-Day hubbub, which started to debunk the Latin lover stereotype. That night, for my V-Day date with Manu, we went on a cute walk around the city and he gave me a flower that he picked from a tree and a card he made. I didn't get him anything because I haven't known him for that long and figured I could get away with not knowing how things work in Europe (a common strategy, if there's an issue or a difference, chalk it up to being American and not knowing any better. Also, every time I totally whiff on something, I call it learning instead of just being stupid). Then we went to his piso and played Mario Kart. Seriously. The most 'romantic' part was that he had a candle in his room. I guess the Latin lover stereotype is more about the sweet nothings/harassing comments you hear rather than romantic gestures.

The last topic to discuss in this epic of an entry is Barcelona. Um, so I just looked at how much I've written and have decided that I'll make a new entry dedicated solely to Barcelona so that no one is overwhelmed by reading all of this. If you are a student, I hope this is more interesting than whatever reading you may be required to do and if you are not a student, I hope/bet that this is more interesting than your actual work - with that being said, I hope everyone read all the way to this spot!! :)

XOXO, besitos,
Kate