Our daily schedule consists of breakfast in the morning at 8 a.m (or in Larkin's case, 8:30). Breakfast here means some sort of prepackaged bread pastry, yogurt, some kind of granola "cereal," but most importantly, coffee. After breakfast, we mosey on over to our first class which starts at 9 and lasts until 10:30 or so. Our next class starts at 10:45 and goes until 12:15 and is followed by 2 hours of pining away after lunch which we don't get to eat until 2. We usually take this time to finish homework or sleep. After lunch, which is never as good as we want it to be, we take off on the long trek to the beach. It's about a 45 minute walk, but it is definitely worth it once we get down there! We spend most days at the beach and come back in time for dinner which is at 8:30...and is also never as good as we hope it will be. We did have hamburgers the other day, however, and it made us realize how much we really do miss American food.
Denia is a laidback, slow-moving city and I hardly ever know what time it is. The sun doesn't go down until 10 p.m. and people don't start going out until around 2 or 3 a.m. That is something we still haven't quite gotten used to. Our favorite discoteca is called La Guitarra, and every night we don't have something to study for, we walk down to La Guitarra to dance the night away to Michael Jackson, Rihanna, Katy Perry, and various songs from Grease (You're the One That I Want is a favorite of the DJ).
Last weekend we ventured to Barcelona and shopped, saw cathedrals, shopped, walked around, and shopped some more. They definitely cater to the tourists there! We saw the Sagrada Familia which has been under construction since 1805 and isn't expected to be finished until 2050. It is one of my favorite things we have seen so far! We somehow ended up in the ghetto of Barcelona one night, but escaped that near-death experience with flying colors. We traveled back to Denia on our bus Esteve and were so glad to be home.
This past weekend has been quite an eventful one. After staying up way too late at La Guitarra, we woke up from our slumber at 7 a.m. in the morning to walk down to the train station to hop a train to Alicante. Turns out, Alicante=Denia. They are the exact same. So we woke up early, rode a train for 3 hours (on which our roommate Allie threw up from motion sickness 5 times), and hung out in the McDonald's of Alicante for about an hour and a half before giving up and catching an early train home. Last night we took the nap of our lives, and ended the day with a trip to the Blues Bar where a band was covering all sorts of Classic Rock songs! It was a blast!
TODAY. Today was the day of the much-looked forward to kayaking trip on the Mediterranean. It all started out well, but before we knew it, Larkin and Ben had tipped over their kayak, the waves were making us all seasick, and we couldn't get into the caves, which was the whole point of the kayak trip to begin with. One kayak of girls tipped over into the rocks more than once, and they eventually had to climb up on our two person kayak so we could row back into shore. One of the girls got stung by a jellyfish, Allie threw up again, and it seemed like days before we made it back to shore. Needless to say, it is funny now, but 7 hours ago I wanted nothing more than to punch our kayaking guide in the face.
So now, we have retired once more to the classroom to study for our tests, and we will begin our last week of adventures here in Denia! We miss you all, maybe as much as we miss American food, and will try to be better about updating this week than we have the past few weeks....
Hasta luego!
