whew!

So I JUST finished my second paper and did all of my homework! That means that the only thing standing between me and Italy is a global studies midterm and about 250 nautical miles...

Since I have so much to tell everyone about spain I'm going to post it one day at a time so that I don't overwhelm anyone! But before i get to that i just had to mention that yesterday when i was playing with Ryder his mom let him go in the pool with me and John (the guy who watches him the hour before me) and i made the mistake of teaching him Motorboat Motorboat which he loved and made us do about 50 times so then to distract him I got him to jump into the pool and sang "Ryder be nimble, Ryder be cool, Ryder jump into the swimming pool!" Which also turned out to be a bad idea because then he wanted to jump in again and again and again. On the bright side he knows my name now : )

Ok so here is some spain...
Day 1
I woke up early to go to my FDP (a required field trip for a class) and got there early because I was so excited. We waited for a LONG time for our guide Georgio. We walked to the beach (in Cadiz… Playa Del Mar I think) and stood by the seawall and talked about oceanography stuff. It was fairly boring and it got really long and it was hot out and I was hungry so our professor finally noticed that we were all drooping and so we walked down to the beach (before we were at the top of the seawall on the street) and on the way there our prof announced that we were done with the field trip but since Georgio was staying with him at the beach we were welcome to stay and chat. So we ate our box lunches from the ship (aka. A chicken leg, a hardboiled egg, a Capri sun, oreos, an apple, and a really dry sandwich… I didn’t eat the chicken or the egg). I ate with some people I met named Betsy and Dan. So then a girl names Alyssa joined us and we all went to explore the tide pools and we found a hermit crab and got all excited but then these little Spanish boys walked up and had buckets full of little tide pool animals like crabs and sea urchins (yeah we got showed up by 4 yr olds…). So then we went and chatted with Georgio and walked to Playa Victoria, which is the beach where Halle Barry was filmed coming out of the water for that one James Bond movie. So then I decided to go back to the boat to meet my next door neighbors and go out and Dan came with me. We got lost pretty much instantly but thankfully Dan had a map. I didn’t mind getting lost because the streets were all so cute and I got to see a lot of old Cadiz.

We got back to the boat at about 2:45 so my friends had already left so Dan said I could join him and his friends. So I went and got my suit on really fast and we walked back to Playa Victoria and went swimming for a while. Dan’s friends (Katie, Hilary, John, and Sean) were all really funny and nice so I had a good time and the guys actually went in the water so I had someone to swim with (yay)!! So then we walked back and got dinner on the ship and I went and got ready for my flamenco trip.

I fell asleep on the bus to the flamenco place but the minute I got off the bus they handed me a glass of sherry so that woke me up. First we went to a bull fighting ring and watched some flamenco dancers dance with a horse. It was good dancing and I really liked it but the announcer was super awkward! He was Spanish and I don’t think he knew what he was saying in English but he kept talking in a really low creeper voice and saying things like “Make love to the horse” “The horse is thanking you for your heart”… (don’t worry I took a video!)  and then this guy wearing ridiculously tight pants (don’t worry I took a picture!)  come out to fight the bull (they were testing it or something to see if it would be a good mom to future fighting bulls) and the bull was really shy at first and he ended up chasing it around the ring but finally the bull started fighting him and I got some awesome pictures and then the flamenco dancers came back out for one more dance. After that we went inside for some Sangria, Tortilla Patato (I don't think that's spelled right...), and really good cheese (too bad i can't remember what kind it was!). After they let us chat for a while the flamenco dancers and a singer and a guitar player came out and danced some more. This was the best part. The guy flamenco dancer was really good! When they were done dancing they went out to the crowd to get people to dance with and after a little while everyone was up and dancing. We did the Macarena (which the spanish ladies found hilarious for some reason) and then a similar spanish dance that was really fun.

I got back to the ship at about 11:30 and changed really fast and went out with my friends Georgina, Taryn, Lexi, Bridget, Justine, and Ashley. We went to a restaurant that had a lot of S@S-ers first and then went to New Cadiz and found a less touristy place. At 3:45 we got cabs to head back to the ship. When we got back we all sat around mine and bridget's room and decided we were hungry so we snuck up to the union to eat at the breakfast buffet they had put out for the students going to Barcelona. After that we all went to bed.

I didn't like my FDP that much until they stopped the lecture part. Then i loved it! My favorite part of the day was probably getting lost on the way back because it was so pretty.