a rainy day at the beach

today, chelsea and i woke up and got ready to head to the beach! the shower in our bathroom is really funny. it has one of those detachable shower heads, and i kept trying to get it to sit at the right angle, and it kept tilting down! so i guess i'll have to struggle with it again tomorrow morning. the humidity here is spain is no bueno for my hair. i have just decided to accept the fact that my semester here is going to be filled with bad hair days. oh well. 

 

anyways, we had breakfast with host mom and we headed out for the bus stop! we stopped by rachel and sophie's house to pick them up, and then we took the bus into town. it's definitely going to take at least 30 minutes to get into town every day, which means i'll probably have to leave for my 9:00 am class at 8:15--that means waking up at 7:00 at least. brutal! but the bus ride isn't bad and we don't have to make a lot of line switches, so that's nice. we got into town and we walked over to the meeting place and hoped on the bus for the beach! the ride out to the rabida and monastery (our first stop) took about an hour and half. we drove through the spanish countryside, which looks strikingly similar to idaho and washington. that made me pretty homesick--not going to lie. the ground is very brown and covered in low-growing shrubs, like sage brush. also, the land is really fertile, so we passed by lots of farms. i couldn't quite tell what they were growing, but it was nice to have the brown broken up with some green.  

we arrived at the rabida and it was totally raining! boo! we went into the museum and watched a movie about christopher columbus' voyage to the new world. it was pretty cheesy and really hard to understand! afterwards, we got to go outside and see the replicas of the nina, pinta, and the santa maria. they were actually really cool, but we weren't able to climb on the boats because of the rain. boo again! after wandering around for a while, we re-boarded the bus and headed for the monastery. 

the monastery is significant because it is old and christopher columbus hung out there one time for some reason (i wasn't really paying attention...). anyways, it was a beautiful monastery filled with great artwork revolving around---you guessed it! christopher columbus! there were some really old tapestries that were pretty impressive, and two beautiful courtyard gardens. we spent a while there and listened to a tour guide recite a very memorized speech about everything. my attention span was too short to catch it all. on one wall, there was a map drawn by the captain of the nina, and it showed what they thought the world looked like. that was pretty cool. it was interesting to see a warped india where the united states actually is.  

after hanging out for a while, we got on the buses and headed for the beach. the beach was only about 30 minutes away, but it was still raining/misting when we got there. undaunted, i headed out to the shore with chelsea, rachel, and sophie. the beach sand was an orangish color, something i haven't ever really seen. it was covered in all of these shells--most of them whole and some of the really really beautiful. we had fun wading in the ocean, picking up shells, and joking about the we could do with all of them (coasters, necklace, ashtray, bikini ala the little mermaid). it was actually pretty pleasant despite the clouds and mist. 

eventually, we decided to walk up towards town, but everything was closed for siesta! we ended up wandering into a little park and hanging out for the rest of our time at the beach. it was pretty relaxing. we made it back to our home around 6:00 pm, and both rachel and sophie came upstairs and hung out for quite a while. we were having fun chatting for a while, then i totally fell asleep on them! i felt so bad, but i was just really exhausted! i woke up around 8:30 and just laid around for a while, totally unwilling to get out of bed. finally, i did and chelsea and i ate dinner with our host mom around 9:30. we had spanish tortilla, which is very different from mexican tortilla, and it tasted so good! so far, i have been really pleased with the food, and my host mom tries really hard to feed us well. we ended up having a long dinner, because we were waiting for sophie and rachel to call us. finally, they came over around 11:15 and we headed out to explore the neighborhood a bit, in search of a bar/dessert (i really wanted some ice cream). unfortunately, everything was closed--which is REALLY surprising, because everything in spain stays open late. finally, we found a cute little bar called kiss. we just sat around inside and talked for a long time. the decor made me laugh--very bright loud colors with a disco ball and a poster of marilyn monroe. seriously, it was like some cheesy bar out of the 70s!  

anyways, we just got back from the bar and i am TOTALLY exhausted. tomorrow is our first free day, and i plan to sleep in, relax, FINALLY unpack, and do a little bit of exploring. until then, i miss everyone in boise and spokane and everywhere else so much! you are in my thoughts every day...

-M