Last weeks in Valencia, España

So I know I haven’t blogged a lot lately, but I have been extremely busy. Life around here has been insanely busy and filled with final projects, papers, quizzes, theater and a trip to Switzerland.

Last week in Valencia was one of the hardest weeks I have had here in Spain, but thank goodness it had a happy ending. As I previously said we have lots of final projects as finals are rapidly approaching and one of them is a scrapbook of our time here in Spain for my Culture and Civilization class. It sounds fun and is right up my ally since I love making scrapbooks in my free time. Well, writing the 40 commentaries in Spanish was not the hard part, no the hard part was finding a place to print pictures and printing them.

I wanted to make this scrapbook look good so I can bring it home with me and show everyone about my time in Spain, so I wanted to print lots of my photos. Well, my friend Jess and I went to OpenCar, which is like a Walgreens here minus the drugstore. 3 hours later we only had a 3^rd of our pictures because the machine kept breaking ever 5 minutes. Well, the man assured us that the photos would be ready the next day and we could just pick them up whenever. Well, I headed to the OpenCar the next day and of course he handed me 5 pictures when I should have had like 145 more. So I was like ok and luckily he gave me my money back. Well, Jess and I needed our photos so we asked someone at the school where a good store would be to print photos… we thought we had found the store, gave them our USB drive and the lady said it would be ready by 5:30 PM sharp. So we went about our day and returned later that afternoon to find that they had not even printed half of them by 6 PM and the quality was terrible. At this point I was a train wreck and decided that we just have bad luck trying to print pictures in Spain. Finally, only having one more option, I headed to my favorite store here Corte Ingles. Within 5 minutes I have 20 photos printed in great quality. Should have gone there the first time… Needless to say, I finished the scrapbook and turned it in today. I am very proud of it and cannot wait to show y’all.

Admist all of the craziness with the photos and scrapbook drama, I was able to have a chance to go to the lightening of the Christmas tree and light in Valencia with my friend Kristin last Wednesday. The two of us love Christmas and it was nice to know that Valencia was actually doing something for the holiday, since they normally celebrate 3 King’s day, so we decided to go. We got to the plaza de ayuamiento and there was a crowd, including a group of kids who sang Christmas carols in Valenciano. Although, I don’t know Valenciano I was able to recognize the songs and it was pretty. Next they turned on all of the lights in the city and it was gorgeous.

One of the buildings in the Plaza de Ayumiento decorated for Christmas

This is funny to me to see Palm trees with Christmas lights on them

The Christmas tree in the Plaza

More lights

This means happy holidays in Valenciana

Also last Thursday was the play production at school. I am definitely not an actress, nor have I ever wanted to be. I was drawn into this play because my theater teacher is crazy and almost insisted that we take part in the play. I really had no way out of it so I made it to 2 practices and learned my role of a “guest” to the wedding and reception. All it required doing was wearing all black and walking around. Gracias a Dios that there was no speaking parts. Needless to say it was comical and I still cannot believe I participated in a play. Luckily 2 of my best friends Laine and Jess were also in it with me.

My friends Jess and I survived theater

-MO