primer día de clases

this morning came a little early, but i actually woke up around 7 and couldn't go back to sleep. there's no air conditioning in the apartment so it's warm at night after a day of sunny windows and i've never been the type to sleep without covers. there isn't even summer heat yet...

so i got up and had breakfast and talked with mi madre. that is really helpful, talking with mi madre a lot. she just listens and corrects a little. her accent is pretty strong. that's the thing that gets me a lot, the accents. I can understand a lot of what people are saying if they slow down and once i get used to their accent, i'm golden. but they talk SO FAST here. i keep talking to people in the street if i need to find something or if we're at the bus stop together and they realize pretty quickly usually that i'm not from around here. they talk to you slowly at first and make sure you understand, but it seems like the more i understand and can respond, the more they think i know what i'm doing, so the faster they start to talk. then i lose them usually and do a lot of empty head nodding.

yesterday was the first day of classes at the center and long story short, my classes weren't what i wanted but i went anyway. i was in intermediate classes that i took last semester so everything was really easy but on monday i'm switching into classes that are more challenging and so they'll be more interesting but they're also at 8:30 in the morning instead of 10:35 so we'll see if i can stay awake. we only get 1 late day before they add up to absenses and take points off our grade. todos los profesores were sure to tell us that classes were going to be hard and fast and a big deal so we shouldn't miss anything if we want to keep up since the classes are only a month long.

i went to meet my friend buehler at the bus stop in the morning and let three buses go by while i waited for him to get un-lost and find me. i talked with a woman at the bus stop for a while about which buses go where and found out that since the university age kids here are still in classes, there aren't a lot of buses that go to the beach and back yet. they start running june 12th. so i gave up on beuhler and gave him directions and went to class. Classes were good, most of them have about 12 kids and my two teachers seemed great. I'm switching into two different classes though, so I'll be that girl on monday and have to explain to everybody what's going on. I'm hoping there's no homework due monday... I should probably check on that.

After class I went with some guys to figure out which bus would take us to the beach, and we took number 32 all the way there and walked along this boarwalk type place past lots of cute restaurants on the beach. The beach was really cool, it's not a short little beach area like most of the beaches I've been to, the distance from the start of the sand to the water was probably at least 100 yards so there's tons of room for things like volleyball courts and mini soccer goals, which were plentiful. I've already been asking around trying to get people who will play volleyball with me a couple times a week and a couple girls with the program actually said they used to play in high school and stuff so it might be solid. There are also these little exercise machine things that are painted as if they're supposed to be on a playground but they're just scattered down the boardwalk. There's a Tony Little-esque gazelle kind of thing and a little squat machine and some arm machines, not sure how difficult they are to do but they're really fun to play on. Why not enjoy your exercise, right??

One of the first people I saw was a pregnant woman, tanning topless. At first I was surprised but i've always heard that about european beaches, being cool with toplessness. But not everybody was doing it so i guess it's just a tops optional beach. there were also lots of thong swimsuits. and lots of really buff guys playing soccer or paddle ball or whatever. and there were people walking around trying to sell us massages or henna tatoos. I think it'll be insanely packed once summer officially starts for the schools in mid june cause it was pretty crowded yesterday afternoon on a weekday. So we stayed on the beach for a few hours until storm clouds came in around 7. The sun really doesn't set until around 10 here so there's tons of daylight. I got some drinks with two guys and we chatted up the barista a little about which verbs to use for which situations. When we tried to find a bus to take us back home, there wasn't one. The bus system here is strange. In the mornings, they're pretty regular and they come every 5 or 10 minutes and you can get where you need to go. but as the day goes on it seems like the bus drivers just start doing whatever they want. there are little bathrooms on some of the bus stops so they'll just get out and take a break and sit on the bench for a few minutes, have a cigarette or a snack while we all just hang out on the bus waiting. and they become more and more sparse in the afternoons, just kind of stop when they want and you have to flag them down or they won't stop for you, as we found out the hard way. so we walked around the town by the beach for about an hour trying to catch a bus and finally flagged one down and rode home.

There are tiendas littered around my neighborhood where you can buy kind of anything, clothes and food and gadgets, so i went and bought these soda-looking mixed drinks in bottles. they're .99 euros for a liter and a half and they taste kind of like carbonated sangria. they're also called don simon con limon which i find hilarious. but i think they may be my drink of choice so that i don't run out of money too quickly.

I met up with the same two guys and they were getting coffee at a little place around the corner where there was an especially rambunctious group of teenagers singing as loud as they could, really funny. we walked through the rio to meet some friends at feria de los naciones, which is a little festival area that goes until mid june and it has a bunch of different booths from different countries. by day it's a market place type thing where you can buy jewelry or trinkets from that specific area (already bought two pairs of ecuadorian earrings) and by night it's for drinks and foods from that country. so we hung out there for about an hour or two and ran into a ton of people from our program. we all headed down toward the bar we went to the night before and it was a pretty long walk. we all decided to only speak in spanish to eachother though so i got a ton of practice. we stopped to use the bathroom in a small bar filled with people who all seemed to know eachother and just be hanging out and they got one guy we were with to chug a beer and they thought it was hilarious and all yelled and cheered for him afterward.

So we got to the bar area and heard there was a discoteca under one of the museums near the aquarium but couldn't find it to save our lives, so we got a taxi and headed toward the centro historico where i've heard a lot of stuff goes on. we kind of ended up getting lost and never really made it anywhere in particular but we just walked around and ended up walking back pretty late but still had a great time making jokes with eachother in spanish. i went to ask a group of people where the discoteca was but accidently said "dondé están las bibliotecas" instead and my friends made fun of me all night for it.

i skyped with haley when i got back and it actually felt wierd to speak english after a night of pure spanish, so that's a great sign

woke up this morning around 10 and had some breakfast (typically toasted bread with strawberry jam) and headed off to meet the bus to Xativa. at the bus stop (new word, parada) i met two little girls wearing volleyball jerseys and they were going to the beach for un torneo. They said they'd only been playing a year and usually play inside but today they had an outdoor tournament.

It was about an hour busride from where we met at the futbol stadium near the school and a really long walk up to the top of the city where the fortress was. We stopped in the town in a cute little plaza with tiendas con frutas y verduras and a carnería that had jamónes de serrano in the window. Also went to the Museo del Almudín and saw lots of paintings, one of a king who they didn't like so their solution was to turn his picture upside down in the museum. Insane views of

of Xativa from the top of the hill that the fortress was on. I didn't know Spain was so mountainous but it's a really gorgeous landscape. It was really hot and a little bit of a workout to get up to the top but so worth it for the views and the breeze. We ate lunch (packed bocadillas from my madre) on the steps of the fortress overlooking the city. I had a sandwich with tuna and cucumber and some leftover tortilla de patata from last night's dinner. We walked up into the towers and got even better views and a little bit of a feel for what it'd be like as the guys who kept guard in the towers peeking out of little windows over the city.

We all rode back around 4 pm and I missed my bus stop and had to walk about a mile back to my apartment but it was a gorgeous day so i didn't mind. also found out that i live very near to a burger king and three asian clothing stores with really cute shoes for sale, i'll have to go back there soon.

i'm about to nap and eat dinner in a few hours and then head to meet some students and professors at a bar en el centro near the carmen area which cami told me to look out for so it should be a fun night. we're celebrating the beginning of the experience and getting to try "agua de valencia" which i'm told is NOT water and it's kind of a mimosa type thing. should be a fun time, i love the atmosphere of being able to go out with adults and teachers and get to know them as people instead of just teachers.