(Photo courtesy of Zaza Pachulia's twitter page)
See, I bought this camera right before moving out here and one of my main reasons for buying it was that it was water resistant…super water resistant…like you take it in the ocean to take pictures of fish and sharks swimming around water resistant. Cool, huh? I was able to get my mom to take a few shots of me suffering under the water. Fun stuff. Overall, my parents had a good time here. They were only here for a week so it really wasn’t much time to get everything in and they didn’t really get to see my great city of Seville because we were in Malaga but it was nice. One of the major highlights of the trip was when they visited my class. If I wasn’t before, I am definitely now one of the most popular “teachers” (I’ll just group myself with them) in the entire school. My dad took over the class as if he had been teaching for more years than I’ve been living. My mom was there to act as the sweet motherly type (giving everyone 2 kisses at the end of the class) and they both passed out candy. If I figure out how to put up a video of it, I will. It was absolutely too wonderful for words. Rafa, the Social Studies teacher, loved them as much as the children. He still asks about them to this day. 
On to the next, I traveled to Barcelona the weekend after my parents left. Meaning my apartment saw very little of me in that first month. Being the goof that I am, I couldn’t find my passport and for Ryan Air (which really sucks besides this fact) requires only a passport from foreigners traveling within Spain. Luckily my tickets with them were fairly cheap. I arrived in Barcelona on Friday and the what-was-supposed-to-be Spelhouse Spring Break began. Then we headed to the beach side to see about the nightlife. Well, it was almost impossible to get into those places for free or even cheap (the going door charge was 20 euros!) so we took a taxi back to the center where we ended up running into a promoter that turned us to the hottest hip hop club in Barcelona! Maybe I exaggerate but the music was the best I’ve heard in all of Spain AND it was not a fluke because we went both nights. The next day we walked around and went to Gaudi’s park and saw some other tourist-type things. 
One of the greatest highlights…I went to Subway and got my fave tuna sub on honey wheat with honey mustard! Yes, I am such an American. WHATEVER. That sub was so delicious I wanted to save it for the entire time I’m here.
My next travel spot was Cadiz during our Holy Week. Holy Week is called Semana Santa and there is no school during that time. My school had activities on the Wednesday before then where there were classes for belly dancing, break dancing, a pseudo hip hop aerobics, and some field trips. I have video of some of my students participating. Too great! I was cracking up at them attempting to break dance everywhere. I headed to Cadiz (the southern-most part of Spain) so I could go to the beach with some friends from Madrid. Our place was in El Puerto de Santa Maria, which is not exactly the center of Cadiz but it was cool with me. The first day we went to the beach where it was slightly chilly. A friend and I still braved the cold and jumped into the water. Well, we actually slowly walked into the sand and let the waves come to us but we felt the water nonetheless. The next day we headed to the city of Cadiz so we could do some sightseeing like real tourists. We saw the Roman Theater, the Cathedral (it looks so different when it's not Carnaval-time), the wall that protected Cadiz in some historical period, and something else. Needless to say, it was HOT out there so we decided to hit up the beach. Only problem was that we forgot (intentionally) our towels. So what did we do? We made towels out of our clothing. Yes, that desperate for the beach. After our intense sunbathing (which I have obviously benefitted from seeing as how I’m about 3 shades darker-maybe not that much but noticeably), we went for food. We traveled back to El Puerto by ferry, that’s how we arrived in Cadiz by the way, very cheap (1.90 euros). We ended up at some random restaurant close to our resort that had really delicious fried fish. That’s what Cadiz is known for, the beaches and the pescado frito (fried fish). The other two nights we ended up at a restaurant in the center of El Puerto with the cutest little waiter! The food was great. It was across from a place called Kapote. Great potatoes, great tuna in pepper with cheese melted over the top, and great wine. We went to a Bodega or Wine Vineyard on Tuesday…Osbourne. Little did we know, Osbourne has ham, orange juice, and water on top of their sherry products. Great times there. After Cadiz, we traveled back to my neighborhood of Seville to see procesiones for Holy Week. The Holy Week in Seville is one of the most popular in the world. Everyday from Sunday to Sunday there is a procession where men and women partake in displaying floats to represent Jesus, the saints, and the Resurrection. I really enjoyed watching them at night, with the candles acting as the only light and the somber music. There are some figures that many teachers warned me about because…well…they look like the Klu Klux Klan. The KKK apparently adapted their dress from the men partaking in the processions here. So there were people wearing robes with hoods in white, maroon, blue, black and probably other colors. 
I have to admit that the ones in white did make my heart skip a beat slightly. It’s hard to detach the feeling one gets when they are faced with images that are meant to invoke fear for so many years only to turn around and have that image be something really positive. 
But I kept reminding myself that these were not members of the KKK and this has a completely different meaning. But seeing some of them at night was a little scary still.
In terms of my personal life here, it has been wonderful. I met up with a Spelman student and she took me to a Cuban spot called Azucar, where everyone thought I was Cuban. They should’ve known better after seeing my poor attempt at salsa dancing. Just kidding, I know not all Cubans can dance salsa. It was fun there because the guys were willing to help us out since we didn’t know what we were doing. And for an hour they have drinks for really cheap (always a plus). I have been slacking on my Sevillanas classes, horrible, I know. I actually didn’t go to any for about a month. Oh well! We’ll see if I’m prepared to dance when Feria comes around. My friend told me they are trying to break a Guinness Book of World Records by having people dance Sevillanas on Sunday. I will be going only to watch because we all know my dancing is horrible since I have gone to all of four classes more or less. I have been practicing my Spanish and I see that I am able to understand it more. I could speak better if I spoke more but soy una persona de pocas palabras (I’m a person of few words) to begin with so you know how that works out. Oh yea! I found out there’s a vegetarian restaurant in my neighborhood…and by neighborhood I mean it takes me less than 5 minutes to walk there. I will be checking that place out in T-minus-5-4-3-2…well, tonight. Right now, I’m sitting on my roof and it is a little bit windy and sunny. Que pena L I also think I smell popcorn and subsequently am tempted to go buy some. Luckily my laziness and cheapness prevents this from occurring. The smell is most likely coming from the movie theater by my place *sigh* Oh well!
