February 4

I woke up feeling great (seems to be the case if I get more than six hours of case). It was drizzling but I walked with a group that had a good shortcut, so I learned a new way to shave off a few minutes on my daily walk. In Literature we learned about Garcilaso de la Vega, Spain’s first renaissance man. We studied a few of his sonnets, which was a great exercise to compare the similarities between English and Spanish sonnets. Scott and Ben did a presentation on him, and I really enjoyed it.

In Culture class, we had a substitute teacher come and she taught us about a popular rock song over here called Zapatillos. There were a lot of slang words and expressions we learned which always helps in conversation with students. The class went really quickly and I was excited to see the rain had stopped for the day.

I walked back and wrote in my blog before lunch. It was awesome, we had mashed potatoes, steak, and spagetthi and it was just what I needed. I made a spaghetti sandwich and put some olive oil on there too. Washed it all down with an orange soda and left feeling really refreshed.

I had loved my nap so much the day before that I decided to just sleep for an hour. Well an hour turned into three. It felt so good. I woke up feeling like a new person. I hung out in the room until dinner at 8:00. We heard about a huge pre-party they were having that I guess is tradition after they finish exams called el butelon. Basically everyone that lives at the dorm goes to a soccer field and hangs out until the discotheque opens at 3:00 a.m.

We all met down in the lobby at 11:30 but of course the Spanish students were casually late and we didn’t actually get on the road until about 12:00. It was like a ten-minute walk, which was fun because there was a mob of about 75 of us (25 Americans and 50 Spanish students). I practiced my Spanish a lot and really took a lot away from the pre-party. I was kind of mad because a lot of us were using some of the slang expressions from the song we studied and they were outdated and none of the students really understood what we were saying.

At 3:00 we all took a five-minute taxi to the club called Indiana. It was absolutely crazy. It was an old warehouse that they turned into a two story dance club, with multi-levels having different music and everything. Drink prices were ridiculous but our cost of admission included a drink. A group of us from Rector Peset danced by the DJ stand. I left at about 6:00, exhausted. I skyped Laura and got into bed, so happy about the day I had.