HELLO ALL!!
Tonight I leave for our first spring break, Semana Blanca. Since I will be traveling for the next 12 days, and possibly without internet, I thought I should give you what you want most—an update on ¿Kaye Pasa? I know it is the highlight of the week for many of you. You’re Welcome.
Anyway, I’ll stop being sarcastically narcissistic and tell you a little about my week!
My Weekend of Fun in Granada:
Well it was fun! But very rainy so I never did my tour of the city.
Thursday:
We went out for tapas and we met a group of Americans studying in Barcelona. And in our effort to really integrate ourselves into the Spanish culture, we hung out with them for the first half of the night. After our tapas of chicken nuggets, fries, and calamari, we went to the Chupiteria—the shot bar. (It is really important to pronounce this correctly. I called it a Chuputeria. And that is a whole medley of bad words and awkward things to say together. So don’t do that! Of course, it is not as funny as when Kelly referred to her “senora” and a teacher and the children’s school was highly confused. Apparently, when you say “mi senora” you are saying “my wife.”) Then we followed our need to dance to a discoteca called Kapital. We got there around one, so it was pretty empty. But we bring the party. It was a really fun night. And essentially, we danced from 1 to 4:30am.
Typical MaryPat and Kaye Picture...
The next day I slept until about 2pm. I think I hung around the house during the day. Then we went out again for tapas and Kelly, Katie Dudek, Kevin, and I went to “Feelings.” After stopping at a Chino for candy! J We spent this night also dancing. But this place had a lot more Spaniards. We met two Spaniards. Kelly tried to teach one of them to say “Get it, B!” and I tried to show them how to “get that dirt off your shoulder.” But they knew what was up. Then we had an international connection when Michael Jackson’s Thriller came on and we danced to it. At the end of the night, one of the guys, Jesus, gave me his number so we could meet up some other time if we wanted to be shown around to cool tapas places, etc. Of course, I am super stoked because now I have Jesus’s number in my phonebook. It’s comforting, really.
Saturday. I think I slept all day then too. And then Michelle Payne and I met up to work on our “hour long” presentation on Cataluña for our Culture of Spain class. Saturday night, I decided to stay in and attempted to sleep off the headache from being around smoky bars the past two nights.
Sunday: I did homework all day and tried to look over some plans for our Semana Santa.
Monday: I don’t think anything significant happened this day except that I stayed up until 3am and woke up at 6am on Tuesday to work on our presentation that we had at 9am. Michelle and I met up at 8am for coffee and to go over things. We were extremely nervous throughout class and while Antxon talked. Eventually 45 minutes had gone by and I looked at my watch. Antxon asked me why and then we told him we had our presentation. He forgot!!! So we didn’t have to go until (Today) Thursday. I had been extremely nervous the whole class for nothing! Though we did get our tests back this day. Turns out Antxon is an extremely tough grader.
Afterwards I did my first tarea externa at the colegio. The sixth grade class interviewed me. They were ADORABLE!!! I sat in this room and they came in one at a time to interview me.
The following are the questions they asked me:
-What. Is. Your. Name? (They paused a lot. They were sooo nervous! I’m sure that is what I look like when I speak Spanish.) “Kaye. K A Y E.” And they would spell it “K A W I”
-Where are you from? “Chicago.” “AHHH buen city.”
-Are. You. Married? “Uh, no.”
-What. Is. Your. Efavorite Clothes? “Clothes? Like Ropa? Uhh shoes?”
-Do. You. Drink. Coca-Cola? (Big smiles on their face.) “Yes”
-Who. Is. Your. Efavorite. Celeb Rity? “Tina Fey.” “Tien Fead?” (That’ll do, Niño, that’ll do.)
-What. Is. Your. Efavorite. Singer? “Ingrid Michaelson.” “uh…….” “Lady Gaga?” “OH!! I love Lady Gaga!!”
Pretty darn cute.
Tuesday night I went to see my Spanish Art History teacher, Monica, sing at this really nice discoteca. It was beautiful. And Monica is an amazing singer! I love, love, LOVE her voice. I wish she had a CD. They sang a lot of American songs. Their rendition of Volcano by Damien Rice was really lovely.
The next day I set my alarm to wake me up at 9:40. My first class was at 1pm. I wanted to walk around, maybe shop a little. When it went off I decided to give myself another 20 minutes. Instead of changing my alarm, I changed the time on my watch. I woke up at 12:48pm!! 10 minutes before my first class. Apparently the three hours of sleep from the night before caught up with me. I brushed my teeth and ran to my class.
Still rainy in Granada, for our Art History class we went and saw one of the baños árabes. Most cities during this time period had one public bath. But because being clean was so important to the árabes for prayer, they have four public bathrooms in Granada. This really helped them stay healthy and not be affected by rampant diseases. Smart people.
Last night we planned some of our activities and google mapped our trip for the next week. Our flight gets into Paris Beauvais tomorrow at 10. It is an hour outside of Paris then we’re going to the Latin Quarters. Justine, Katherine, Devin, and Kevin are staying at a hostel there. But Kelly, Arianna, and I are staying with Eva. And MaryPat is staying with her best friend Maggie who is studying in Paris! We’ll be all over. But I am very excited to see the Lourve, Versaille, and Notre Dame!
And today we gave our presentation. It went pretty well for the most part! I mean as well as we wanted it to go. Afterwards Antxon told everyone that it was good. But then he proceeded to critique it and tell everyone else what he actually WANTED the presentations to be like. We’re hoping the whole “first to go” thing will give us leeway grading wise. But I know I learned a lot preparing for the presentation. I understand so much more about the Cátalan Culture. Cataluña has the tradition of speaking Cátalan because Cataluña was originally autonomous, but had a heavy influence from France. So the language is Spanish with a French twist. During the Guerra Civil, Cataluña fought for independence, but fell. Franco then came into power and was a dominating dictator that oppressed that Cátalan culture. As the people of Cataluña still view themselves as slightly separate from Spain, they hold their traditions, culture, and heritage very close to their hearts. And now I am very excited to go see Barcelona!
I just had my tarea externa again today. This time I went to the 4th grade class to talk and then the 3rd grade class. It is interesting. The 4th grade class understood a lot of what I was saying and were able to ask me questions and talk. The 3rd grade class struggled a lot with understanding. What a difference a year can make! I told them about my brothers and sister, my parents, and my dogs. Then I told them a secret. “I <3 Joe Jonas.” They went wild! Some of them made Spanish “boo” sounds. I think they meant that I could do better. In the 3rd grade class they kind of made fun of football. It was cute. But both classes called football, rugby. “No no, rugby is different. In rugby you….uh…” What do you do in rugby? I said you don’t wear equipment.
They also asked me if I had a boyfriend. Everyone giggled, blushed, and clapped their hands to their mouths. They were so excited so I told them that I recently had one and wrote Colin’s name on the board. They went CRAZY! COLL-LYN! (giggle, giggle) COLL- LYN! So funny. I really enjoy working with them. They are so sweet. And I ask them questions and they help me with my Spanish. The worst is when I try to speak to them in Spanish and they’re like…What are you saying?
They also asked me if I had a boyfriend. Everyone giggled, blushed, and clapped their hands to their mouths. They were so excited so I told them that I recently had one and wrote Colin’s name on the board. They went CRAZY! COLL-LYN! (giggle, giggle) COLL- LYN! So funny. I really enjoy working with them. They are so sweet. And I ask them questions and they help me with my Spanish. The worst is when I try to speak to them in Spanish and they’re like…What are you saying?
Oh well!
Here is my schedule for this Spring Break!
2/19-2/23: Paris, France
2/23-2/26: Dublin, Ireland
2/26-3/2: London
This blog was a little shorter than usual, but I will have pages to write when I get back!
Hasta Luego.
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