Post for July 16, 2012

WOAH!! This past weekend was the BEST OF THE BEST!! I don’t think I have ever had so much fun in that short amount of time.

It all started with the end of last Thursday night when I went out to go see the Magic Fountain. Which, by the way, was in itself one of the coolest things I have seen. (I feel like I say that about everything here.) But it was mesmerizing to sit there and watch the fountain show. I was supposed to meet a friend, David, there but I never saw him and instead ran into Yianni and Lauren there. After the fountain shows were over we were on our way to meet other friends from our program near some bar when a pick-pocketer tried taking something from Lauren. When I looked back the guy looked super nervous and he tried to play it off by asking if we spoke Italian, but he quickly turned around and walked away. Luckily he did not manage to take anything from Lauren’s bag. Eventually we found our friends outside a bar called “The Dow Jones”. One of the girls convinced us to go to a club she heard about called Razzmatazz.

At Razzmatazz we waited a while because none of us wanted to pay fifteen euros to go in but eventually one of the club promoters came out and let us in for six euros and one free drink for everyone with us. The whole hype for Razzmatazz was because it supposedly has 5 different floors where they play different music, but when we were there they never opened up any of the other rooms so we were stuck listening to dubstep the whole time. I swear about half the people there must have been on acid or ecstasy or something because they were so crazy! But it was also kind of fun and wild just to jump around and act like them, or even just watch how strange some of the people in there were.

The next morning we had to be at our school ready to leave for Valencia which was difficult since we spent most of the night out and about. I think I only got like two and a half hours of sleep. Valencia was SO FUN!! When we first arrived we went to a small restaurant for lunch and the food was delicious. Unfortunately, I sat next to the most annoying, spoiled, ungrateful girls I have ever met (which kind of ruined my lunch) but I tried not to think about it. It’s clear how overly privileged they are, because they were so picky and rude to our waiter and all they did was complain to each other about everything. Anyways, the ice cream we had for dessert was very good and I made a great effort to stay away from those girls during our trip from then on. After lunch we went to a really modern-looking museum of arts and sciences and my favorite exhibition was the one of Marvel Comics. We also got to watch a documentary about the Nile River in an IMAX theater. During our free time Shelby, Christal, and I went to see how much the aquarium cost but it was close to thirty euros and none of us wanted to pay that much so we went back to the museum and on our way we got free Sunny Delight t-shirts at a children’s recreational event.

After the museum we all went back to our hotel and had free time for the rest of the night. Some of us just went out for a walk to find a place to get dinner and we found a really nice gellato shop and a cheap pizza place that had very interesting types of pizza. I tried a slice of pizza with french fries and egg as the toppings. After that, we spent a little bit more time in a bar near our hotel and then went back to sleep. The next morning we went to the beach and had another delicious lunch of Valencian paella (made with chicken) and then went swimming in the ocean and played on the beach. It was quite a blast, but it was only the beginning to my favorite day so far. When we got back to our hotel, some of us were hungry again so we searched for a restaurant and we found one where we tried deer meat and strange sausages. After that we were running to make it back for a parade of drummers called the “Parade of the Monsters and the Big-headed”. No one ever explained the significance of the monsters or the reason for the tradition to us but it was quite the spectacle to watch. After that we waited for a firework juggling show that started around 10:30pm.

After the jugglers show was over I was supposed to lead a group of people to a street with several clubs in Valencia because I knew the way, but by pure chance we stumbled into a small concert out on the streets. It was a free concert full of people and cheap drinks and the music was great! The band played Portuguese, English, and Spanish music and I was surprised that I recognized a lot of it (including one Portuguese song). We danced and cheered the night away with several other strangers who were also there just to enjoy the music and have a good time. I will never forget that night. I had such a blast.

Yesterday, before coming back home, we stopped by a museum/gallery of “Fallas”. Fallas are basically giant statues made for one of Valencia’s annual festivals in which they depict significant events from the past year with satire and humor. The Fallas are made of paper and are displayed at the center of the city for the entire festival and the last day they are set to flames for everyone to celebrate around. The museum/gallery we visited had some salvaged parts of the 30 foot high Fallas on display from every year since the tradition started. All of the fallas were very well made and quite realistic at times.

This last picture is from when we finally made it back home. The shirts Christal, Shelby, and I are wearing are the Sunny D shirts we got near the science and arts museum we first went to.

(Pardon all the pictures but there was so much to show from this weekend.)

Jose