Tuesday was our last day of classes, and Wednesday was our finals day. Crazy to think that my time in Spain is just about over! I've really enjoyed my classes here, and even though everyone crammed hard core for Rebeca's Civilization final literally hours before it happened, I think we all did really well haha.
While cramming for Rebeca's final, I went to McDonalds to use their Wi-Fi and their A/C, and decided I should probably buy something so I got a hot chocolate... most classy McDonalds hot chocolate ever. It came in a real cup with a fancy spoon and had cream and cinnamon.. we need to up our game in the US.
Also, here's a picture of Stefan and I at the Madrid temple.
Unfortunately, every day isn't a party. (Even though most days certainly are!) This week is our last week in this beautiful country, and as such we have finals. Ugh. So we've been spending some quality time in the library the last couple days... the library is air conditioned though so we don't mind too much.
Tangent: Almost none of the houses here are air conditioned - it's so rough. It gets to be in the high 90's and you come inside and you just melt. Especially because McKenzie and I have our room in the attic - we leave the window open 24/7 and it cools down at night, but during the day we can't go up there it's so stinking hot. Our new favorite hang out spots are the library, the school, and McDonalds. All nicely air conditioned :)
Stef and Sam trying to be techy and figure out the smart board. Didn't work out too well lol.
Doing homework is a lot more fun with churros con chocolate ;)
So our host family is the host family of all host families. They have sooo many foreign students along with three kids of their own. There are 3 girls here from Mississippi, 1 girl from Ghana, 3 boys from Virginia Military Institute, and then McKenzie and I. Meals are so fun! McKenzie and I are the only ones that really speak Spanish, so we're pretty missed when we leave. They're all doing a lot better though! One of my good friends out of this group is Sam. He's awesome, he hangs out with Stefan and I a lot. He's awesome.
Also: This is a photo of me in a towel poncho from our beach day in San Sebastian. Hadn't been posted yet, so I figured I'd through it up here. Stef took it. Big fan haha.
Today we traveled home to Alcalá. On the way we stopped to see the famous windmills that Don Quijote de la Mancha battles against. Don Quijote is a famous book written by Cervantes, who was from Alcalá. It was pretty cool!
We were trying to look like the windmill...didn't really work.
We got a little crazy with our picture ideas... but it was so fun. We decided to put Preston on Stefan's shoulders, and me on Preston's shoulders... I've never been so tall in my life! McKay, Weston, and Andrew were my spotters and they made stairs for me with their hands so that I could get up on top of Preston's shoulders. It was awesome! The picture itself is pretty sweet, but I think that I like the after picture even better when my spotters are rushing in to save me so that I don't fall haha.
The last two days of our excursion we were spent in Granada. This city is famous for a beautiful Muslim building here called La Alhambra. It's an Arabic fortress and palace. It's so cool!! But first.... pizza.
Okay, so now the Alhambra. It was beautiful! Before we went inside we went to this little presentation about the different Arabic characters and what they mean along with the significance of the building and all that jazz. Not gonna lie, I nodded in and out. But what I was awake for was cool!!
There are tiny fountains like this everywhere - while it was important to the Romans and the Christians to have the big beautiful fountains, the Muslims preferred these tiny ones. Why? They thought the sound of the water helped with meditation rather than the beautiful spectacle being what's important.
The gardens were beautiful too... big fan of the gardens.
Afterwards we had to go to this conference about some Spanish poet whose name I don't even remember... long story short I fell asleep and Preston took a really embarrassing picture where I look like Dad does when he falls asleep on the couch. He hasn't sent it to me though so it can't go on the blog... shame lol. Anyways, this conference was the actual worst. Everyone was basically asleep and the WhatsApp group chat was hilarious.. it was a good character building experience hahaha.
Our second day in Granada was fun too. We basically had a free day but we did this tour of all the places that Federico Garcia Lorca had lived. He's another famous Spanish poet/play wright. That was also super rough lol. My favorite part was while we were at the place where the guy was murdered, this butterfly landed on my nose!! It was sweet!! I saw it flying towards my face and at first I didn't know what it was until it had landed on me. Stefan gets major props for the sweet pictures.
Some sweet grapes
Then we went back to the hotel and we did homework. Ew. Afterwards a big group of us went to this Arabic Bathhouse... it was so legit. We couldn't take pictures once we got past the waiting room but it was the best. It was decorated/built in the style of all the old Muslim mosques that we've been seeing with the fancy glass and patterns and the arches... it was legit. The lighting was all by candle and the lights behind the glass so it was pretty dark, and there was relaxing Arabicy music going on and it was awesome. You start by taking a shower, then you get in the warm pool, then the hot pool, then the cold pool, then the steam room, then you rinse and repeat. You go however fast or slow you want, and it was seriously the most relaxing thing ever. Then we got a 15 minute massage. It was the bomb.com.
