Sunday- Day 4

Hola mis amigas!

Today was an awesome day in Valencia. Katie and I (aka Lewis and Clark) slept in until 10:30 or 11:00 a.m. We saw that the weather was fantastic, sunny (70 degrees) and a little windy, so we decided to use our free day to go to the beach. We met up with John and Jake and made plans to meet others at the beach in the afternoon. Our host family had told us a few days ago how to use the metro and what card to buy, so we thought it would be pretty easy. Turns out nothing is really that easy to do in Spain, even if it may seem that way. When we met up with the guys at the metro (right around the corner from our house), it tooks us a little while to figure out how to work the machine. They have options to change the language to English, but low and behold the machine didn't really want to behave for us.. Katie and I figured out which metro to take after buying our cards and we got right on. After riding for about 5 minutes, we realized that we were on the metro line that did a loop around the city.. not the line that went directly to the beach. Lewis and Clark failed once again, whoops! Again, we don't really know why everyone in our group trusts us with directions. I guess it's because we still manage to fix our mistakes once we make them? They will learn soon enough, haha!

After about 30 minutes of us asking the metro directors and looking at the map, we finally got on the right metro. Once we arrived at the beach, we were welcomed with an awesome view! So I guess all the frustration was worth it and we definitely won't make the metro mistake again.

Beach in Valencia

 

We found a nice spot in front of a giant hotel (where we were supposed to meet the others) and found that the rest of the group was nowhere to be found. About an hour into sitting on the beach, Jake spotted three other girls from our group down the beach and we met up with them. Turns out, they had been right near us the entire time. That's the problem with not being able to use our phones I guess! I'm not sure what people did without technology, haha, but it has worked out in our favor thus far. On the beach in Valencia, it is common for women to go topless and men to wear tiny bathing suit shorts.. Needless to say, we did not partake in the topless beach action.

 

For lunch, the girls decided to ditch the guys for a little while and we ate at a small cafe along the boardwalk. We got some strange looks when we each ordered a meal for ourselves and decided to split each of the meals as a table. Aka, we ordered three pizzas and two pastas for only five girls. Apparently, it's common to only share maybe one or two pizzas and one pasta as a table. However, big girls gotta eat and we were starving from skipping breakfast. We also decided to try the Sangria and ordered some waters for the table. Water is one thing we have definitely taken for granted in the United States.. Here, you pay for bottled water at every meal or on the street. It can cost anywhere from 0,50-2,00 Euros. (Euros are equivalent to about $1.30 right now).

 

We headed back to our homestay at about 4:00 to try to get showers in and homework completed before dinner. When we got back, Katie and I saw that our host parents hadn't moved all day. They had friends visiting from Barcelona, so we think they may have partied a little too hard the night before, haha! After almost falling asleep while trying to finish homework, we took a break and took a walk to the cafe across the street. We ordered more "sus sus" and I got a coffee to fix my coffeine withdraw. Anyone who knows me well knows I have coffee every morning.. which I definitely miss about home.

 

Cafe con Leche (coffee with milk) and "Sus Sus"

 

When we got back, our host mom had prepared us dinner. She made tortillas de verduras (egg quiche with vegtables and meat) and put out the dreaded tuna pasta salad. It seems Katie and I can't escape the tuna and we aren't exactly sure how to tell them thanks but no thanks without being rude. Katie and I ate about half of the tortilla, all of the bread, and moved the pasta salad around on the plate to make it look like we ate it all... you gotta do what you gotta do. We did like the tortilla though!!

 

Left to Right: Tortillas de Verduras, Pan (bread), and the Pasta Salad

 

Our attempt to hide that we didn't touch the pasta..

 

After dinner, we worked on more homework. Turns out, we aren't going to be able to procrastinate in Spain. We quickly realized that we aren't just here to enjoy the scenary and the culture. We had a alot due on Monday because it was our first offical day of classes. I was up until 12:30 doing homework and Katie stayed up until like 12. Now we know that we can't do that! It will help that we have some free time at the institute between classes during the day. Katie and I both fell asleep pretty easily and everyone else in the house was long ago passed out when we finally made it to bed. We both keep having the strangest dreams because we are in such a deep sleep, haha. We are excited for our first full week in Valencia tomorrow. More to come in the next post.

Hasta Luego!