February 11

Soccer must have taken a bigger toll on my body then I thought because I was extremely sore getting out of bed. The wind was blowing pretty hard and it was noticeably colder than it has been lately.

In Celia’s class there were two presentations from Diego, Taylor, Eden and Dat, which were all really interesting. Culture class was by far the highlight though; we talked about some Spanish History and Spain’s first inhabitants. There are actually some mountains right in our back yard that has some cave paintings that you can go and see. I am definitely going to check it out.

After class and lunch, a lot of people started leaving on their respective travels. A group went to Dublin and another went to Granada to ski. Instead of napping, Ashley and I decided to bring a book to Escalones and have a coffee. I brought The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. I thought it would be a fitting book since I have/will be traveling all over Europe.

We noticed a guy sitting next to us tutoring a Spanish lady in English and we thought it was really cool. After she left, Ken came up to us and introduced himself to us. What a small world it is; he is from Decatur, Georgia and has been living here for twenty-three years tutoring. We talked with him for a while which was really cool. He told us that the key to speaking a foreign language is just being confident. He said if we want to come back he would give us a free tutoring session and we said definitely.

We spent about two and a half hours and I got a good bit through my book. After we got back, I did some more of my puzzle and hung out until dinner. After dinner we got ready to go out and met up with some of the Spanish students. All of the students in Rector Peset had an open bar for everyone. We paid 12 euros for a ticket, which was well worth it.

It was a lot of fun. The entire bar had been rented out and there was some good music. I danced for a while and practiced a great deal of Spanish. As we were leaving, I was looking for a taxi and cut through four guys not even really thinking. They scoffed at me. I most definitely should have used my head but I responded saying, “Ten cuidado.” Which means be careful. One of the four guys open hand slapped me across the face, which was pretty ridiculous. I guess I had it coming to me though. Scott was with me and the situation fizzled out as quickly as it had started. I was just really surprised.

I took a taxi home and called it a night, a little disappointed that such a fun night had been overshadowed by such a silly thing like a slap.