This morning was a struggle to wake up. I got about 4 or so hours of sleep and was super tired in the morning. In class we got our exams back and our final grade. I got a 10, 10, 9.5, & 9 all out of 10; I'm hoping that converts to an A back home. We went over the entire test and explained what we did wrong. I have problems with accents and the listening comprehension section, which is what I thought would happen, but I did better on the listening section than I predicted yesterday. We took a break after reviewing our tests and I got a tomate y queso empanada and some junk food to attempt to wake me up. After our break we started to work on our dance for tonight's fiesta. We all had different mini groups that kept transforming into a different idea to the point where our final dance is nothing like the original. My job is to hold up the 'sad' sign during a couple of verses of the song "La Vida Te Da." We do a lot of spinning and snapping, hopefully it'll turn out alright. If everything goes horribly wrong it'll still be fun, right?
When I was in casa I also made my list of things I still need to do before going home. I still need to go to the Cathedral and take a tour; see the Lux Greco tomorrow night; pack; and take in everything I can about this city. It's so weird to think that I only have two more nights here before I'll be home in Nebraska. I read through some of my first posts and reflected over the last few weeks. I realized I made a lot of new habits, for example: siestas, saying 'Vale' instead of 'Okay', eating everything with bread in my left hand, actually using vosotros in conversation, as well as a million things I've probably picked up subconsciously. It will be interesting to see what habits I maintain back home, as well as the habits I didn't realize I acquired. I think my eating schedule is going to be the most difficult to get back into an Nebraska norm, since I'll be home for a few days and then on vacation with the Carlsons and I'm always eating at weird times on vacations. I do think that I'll end up 'attempting' to make some of the food Sandra makes but it still won't be the same; on my list is tortilla española since that was one of my favorite foods. For almuerzo today we had turkey leg and legume soup. It was alright but I would've liked to put some cheese on mine and for dessert we had grapes. I thought I was going to be really tired but I couldn't siesta so I decided to go to the Cathedral. At the Cathedral they give you an audioguide to follow along while walking through the Cathedral. It was really impressive and I kept pressing the 'hear more' options. My favorite part was obviously the stained glass everywhere, and a monstrance they carry through the streets once a year made from some of the first gold from America.
After the Cathedral ESTO put on a farewell fiesta. We were given leis and carnations; and afterwards we got a copy of the group photo. At the party each class performed a dance. Ours was a mess and Martín accidentally fell off the back of the stage into the banner behind. The whole thing was mildly embarrassing. After all of the dances were done we headed to the bus stop to take a bus to the discoteca. We did a lot of waiting for the bus and for everyone to arrive at the discoteca so I had time to talk with people from other Nebraskans' classes and we all had to use Spanish. Once we got into the discoteca we were served paella and tapas and I talked with someone from China and someone originally from Africa but now lives in Brazil. We compared all five cultures we were familiar with and ate paella and drank sangria. It wad really rewarding to be able to communicate with people with such diverse backgrounds. After everyone had inhaled their food we watched a video of all of the photos from the past month and I got really sentimental. After awhile my friend group decided to take shots and I had my very first shot of rum; apparently my expression was priceless. After that we all started to dance and I was tipsy enough to not care too much about dancing like crazy people. I definitely still had some camp counselor tendencies and tried to convince everyone else that they needed to dance or at least come and hang out with everyone. My group of co-dancers had a representatives from a lot of different countries so we were all speaking spanish to each other and I discovered that I'm more comfortable speaking Spanish when I'm a little tipsy because I'm not embarrassed by my mistakes and there isn't pressure to make 100% sense. We had a lot of fun dancing to different song from different countries. Towards the end of the night Alex, Colby and I took a shot of tequila; I was naive and had no idea what I was doing so my face was priceless again. I decided that I like the sweetness of rum over tequila, so someone remember that in a year when I turn 21 and I'm legally allowed to drink again.
Lots of Love!
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