típico...

I'm going to walk you through a typical day in Alcala.

I wake up at 7:30. The sun has yet to rise on Spain at 7:30 am, did you know this? Breakfast consists of (every day) tea, pineapple juice (sooo good), milk (semientero, which has no real equivalent in the US... it's like double whole milk, I think), 2 tostados, and cookies (I guess they figure it goes well with the milk?). After breakfast I walk 20-25 minutes to school, right through the downtown area of Alcala. It's a very beautiful place, and every morning I walk through the Plaza Cervantes (http://www.uah.es/grafica/universidad/galeria_alcala/plaza_cervantes.jpg) right as the sun is rising. Pobre mio!

School (http://www.facebook.com/#/photo.php?pid=30569644&id=1107720003) is a pretty nice place too. It's just a couple streets off of the Plaza Cervantes so really it has to be nice looking. Classes get out at 2 pm every day, which is ace because from 2-5 is siesta, during which you eat an enormous lunch (lunch is the big meal in Spain, whereas in the US dinner is the big one), play guitar, write in your blog, read, run and sleep, not all at the same time, but somewhere in the 3 hour span of siesta. After siesta, typically I will continue doing the same things I was doing during siesta until 6 or 7. Then maybe I'll do some homework before dinner, which is at 9 pm. It took me a while to get used to the time changes for meals (I'm used to eating way earlier) but I think I might prefer it this way. One advantage is that after eating dinner, your body is digesting, which at 9:30/10:00 pm is pretty strenuous for the body to handle... it's easy to just pass right out at 10:30.

But if I don't pass out right after dinner, I typically will watch the news and try to decipher what they are saying. Then comes sleep!


So that's a typical Monday-Thursday. Fridays I have no classes, so weekends are always 3 days... I would walk you through a typical weekend but there really is no such thing. I've done something different every weekend, from traveling somewhere (Madrid, Segovia so far... Toledo, Barca, Lyon, Sevilla and many more to follow...) to "going out" with my Spanish brothers (I use quotes because it's not at all the same concept as in the US. In the US if you are "going out," it's basically inferred that you and your friends are going drinking, correct? Well, in Spain this can be the case but it can mean a lot more activities than just drinking/clubbing. Live music shows, going to the "navi" (basically a warehouse that kids rent out and use as a hangout place) and doing anything there from ping pong to foosball to videogames (though I am awful, the Spaniards destroy me on the xbox), or just hanging around talking).

That's a lot of parenthesis. Anyways my one other point about Spanish weekends is that Spaniards are crazy. They stay out way too late, and I mean way too frickin late. At 4:40 am one time I was like "hey guys, I'm exhausted and I want to sleep. How do I get home from here?" and they were all like "Seriously, dude, it's so early..." So I had to put my foot down and explain that I don't like to sleep all the next day to recover from my ridiculous nightlife habits. Aka I told them I was still adjusting to the time difference...

Such is the life of an uncultered American studying abroad. I have to get going 'cause there's a soccer game on which I do not want to miss but I'll be keeping you posted... If anyone's got questions, ask and I will make sure to responderte!

Peace out, suckas!!!