Carnaval and Mid-Semester Madness

Hello everybody!

When I left off, I had just gotten back from Paris. The week following that trip was pretty busy with school work because we were approaching the half-way point in the semester and I ended up spending a lot of time at school. Major upside - the weather has been incredible lately. For the past two weeks it´s been nothing but sunshine and 75 degree temperatures. Another cool thing that started last week was the start of my meetings with my intercambio ("interchange"). It is a program set up here at school that pairs an American student learning Spanish with a Spanish student learning English. Once or twice a week we get together, usually at the cafe at school, and talk with each other. My intercambio´s name is Maria Jose and she´s 22 years old and really nice. When we meet we usually meet with at least one other pair of intercambios. We alternate back and forth between the two languages but usually we, as in the UNC kids, speak in Spanish and the other girls speak back to us in English. I´ve met with Maria twice now and it´s been really cool getting to know Spaniards my age; it allows me to see a different side of modern Spanish culture. Also it´s been great practice considering it´s difficult to speak at home because our señora never stops talking and Elizabeth and I can never get a word in.

This past weekend a bunch of us went down to Cadiz, a beach city on Costa de la Luz, for Carnaval, a two-week long Carnival. I´m honestly not sure what the event really entails because when we were there it was more or less just one big costume party in the streets, very similar to Franklin Street on Halloween. I went with Grace, Emilee, Natalie, and April and the five of us dressed up as gypsies (we tried to keep it as cultural as possible). We took a bus from Sevilla at 8:30 Saturday night, got to Cadiz around 10:30, and then more or less hung out in the streets all night. It was absolute madness, literally wall to wall people everywhere you went. A lot of people compare it to Mardi Gras in the US. We hung out for awhile, met some people and walked around, and then caught a 3:30 bus back to Sevilla and got home around 6:00. It was a lot of fun, but needless to say I spent most of Sunday sleeping.

Every kid in my program has been referring to this past week as Hell Week, and ít´s definitely a deserved name. I feel like I haven´t done a thing schoolwise since being here and then all of a sudden I had two tests, a quiz, three papers, and a ton of reading all in one week. Because of all of that more or less every night I spent either at school or at home doing schoolwork. We all took a break on Tuesday however to celebrate our friend Amelia´s birthday and Mardi Gras. The kids from Los Remedios went out for dinner at a tapas bar and we found a great place that had outdoor seating right next to the Cathedral. After dinner we went to a small bar called Bodega where our friend Lauren made friends with the bartender and who allowed us to throw a Mardi Gras/Birthday party there for all of the kids here from UNC. It was a lot of fun, but a lot of us had to leave early because of a test the next day.

I´m leaving for a 3-day trip to Morocco tomorrow, so the next post should be more exciting than this one. ¡Hasta pronto!