As if I could ever wrap up Spain, put it in a box and under my sub-leased bunk bed. I can confidently say that I gave Salamanca everything I had and that I brought back with me more joy and self growth than I could have ever imagined. Maybe first I can tell you what happened, and then I can tell you how it felt. Is that fair?
Something interesting about Bull Ranches, they say that bulls are the only animals bred for their intelligence.
Well that was the first topic I wanted to discuss, and the next was Tight and Bright. My friends and I decided one day while we were having a picnic by the rio (river) that we needed one last hoorah before finals and going home. Ours was called “Tight and Bright.” We dressed up in our most ridiculous outfits and divided up into teams and ran around the city performing tasks for the ultimate photo scavenger hunt. In reality, it was haphazard at best and had little to no structure, but we were running around with our friends and were all going to end up together at a discotheque. It was a grand time, I just don’t know if I can ever wear my outfit again.
Then, on Saturday, I went to a concert. It was great, and really good framing. Bree and I heard the band’s most famous song on one of our first nights out, and we listened to them religiously ever since. Then, while I was walking from class to the AIFS office, I saw a poster emblazened with the band’s signature symbol and discovered that they had a concert coming up. So, on our last Saturday, Bree and I went to a Maldita Nerea concert. It was a great time, I loved the band, they were good performers and they were energetic. Bree and I worked our way to the front by saying we had to get to the bathrooms (at the front) and so we were only a few feet away from the stage. It would be like the equivalent of going to a Maroon 5 concert. The band gets about that much radio time with songs that catchy and draws in that type of audience. It was cool, everyone there was dressed up and letting loose. It’s something I’m for sure happy about doing in my life.
Robyn Hanna, I really don’t have the words to describe how close I am to her or how good of a friend she is. I think it will suffice to demonstrate it by the fact that we spent two weeks together in Europe, and that it was something we had been dreaming about doing since Junior year of high school. She came to Spain for 4 days and we won a beer pong tournament. Now, Robyn brought me back a shirt last summer when she got back from Rome, so all semester I was looking for a shirt to get her. I found that one of the local bars has a weekly beer pong tournament and one of the prizes is a t-shirt. I dreamed all semester that maybe Robyn would come up and visit me and in the one Monday she was in town, we’d participate in the tournament and win the shirts. Some how, we did win, but they had just happened to run out of shirts that week. Bummer!
On Wednesday, Robyn and I had lunch at my Spanish friend Monica’s house. I plan on having two more posts before finishing my study abroad blog, and in one of them, I will discuss how improtant Monica is and was to me. She’s a big deal, and I’ll get to that later. Anyway, it was still really great to go to her apartment though, because that’s the real moment that I felt intigrated. I had a Spanish friend, and we hung out together, introduced each other to our friends, and had each other over. She wasn’t my friend by convenience or proximity, she was an actual friend that I joked with and enjoyed getting to know. Monica was probably the hardest thing to leave.
And when I say two more posts on study abroad, I mean that more than anything, in two more posts, I am concerned with getting everything out, and then after that I intend to go back and revisit how things felt and came to be. So far, I feel like my blog is a rough draft, outlining events, and later I want to present it again.
Very truly yours,
Virginia
