Weekend and Cadiz

Hola once more! This has been a busy week-- test on Wednesday and an essay and composition due tomorrow. I'm also heading to Madrid tomorrow to spend the weekend there, visit all the sights, and see a Taylor Swift concert on Saturday!

But since I won't be able to write this weekend I guess I should go ahead and tell you about my last weekend. I spent most of the time here in Sevilla again, and it rained.... and rained, and rained. Cherise and a few of my friends went to London, so I hung out with Alyssa and her boyfriend Keith, who is visiting this week from New Jersey (so jealous... wish my boy could come visit me... but he has been super busy with his job in the real world!)

Saturday we ate at VIPS, a wonderful little joint where you can get a "desayuno Americana" for only 3 euros! This includes all the things we've been craving for months: pancakes, scrambled eggs (they only do fried eggs here, and never for breakfast), orange juice, coffee (or cola cao, for me) and french fries. Delicious!

When we got outside the rain had lifted a little bit and we decided to go to the bus station and take a last minute trip to Cadiz. For those of you who don't know, Cadiz is on the beach. It's also the home of the biggest carnival in the world, which happened to be going on this weekend.

We hopped on the bus (tickets about 20 euros both ways) bounded for Cadiz. Once we got there and figured out our way around the city we headed to the beach, where we spent the afternoon relaxing on the sand, walking in the ice cold water and napping on the rocks.

Near evening we stopped at a sandwich shop (I had a sandwich my senora had graciously packed for me) and ate on a wall overlooking the ocean. We befriended a little friendly Cadiz girl and her dog, which she was walking along the wall.

As it turned nighttime we headed towards the center of town. The major part of the Carnival was last weekend (same as Mardi Gras). A bunch of people from our program went and they said it was CRAZY (imagine Halloween on Franklin Street X the whole entire city and about 10 billion more people.) This weekend was much more low key, especially since we only stayed until about 9:30 at night. In Spain, things don't even get started until 2 or 3 a.m. and go all night long!

However, it was still an incredible experience. The streets were already full of drunk Spaniards dressed in costumes wandering the streets. The Carnival costumes are a lot like Halloween costumes in the United States-- only less slutty and more creative. A major difference was that instead of dressing as a theme, many groups were dressed in the exact same costumes! We saw some interesting ones. The best was probably the American tourist-- a Spanish man dressed in a fat suit, with a Hawaiian t-shirt and a cowboy hat. You will have to see the picture.

Speaking of which, unfortunately my camera was almost dead so I didn't get a lot of pictures. Once Alyssa finally posts her pictures I will put them up! So look for many wonderful pictures to come!

After we got back from Cadiz, Alyssa, Keith and I went to a restaurant near the cathedral where we had tapas and tried the famous vino naranja (orange wine) of Sevilla. Apparently it's an authentic Sevilla tradition. It was good-- very very sweet!

On Sunday about 30 of us UNC students crowded in the back room of the Tex Mex for the Carolina-Duke game for the ACC title. This was the first game I've actually been able to watch on the TV, which was exciting, but we played horribly and lost, which was very disappointing. Hopefully we'll do better soon!

Other than that, there was rain, rain and more rain. Yesterday was the first beautiful day we've had since all this rain started, but I spent it studying, as I did today. Can't wait to be done with these essays!