Completing the first week

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The last couple of days I have spent going to orientation and class during the day and exploring the night life. We took a placement exam for our spanish grammar class, figured out which classes to take, started our contemporary spain class (in which we talked about Picasso) and got a guided tour of Malaga. The tour was great, we went to the castle and to a few museums... one of which was the house of Picasso. Apparently he was born there in like 1881 and lived in Malaga until he was 10. It's cool to learn the history and then be able to look at his art in a new way.

I will be taking a spanish grammar class, a spanish literature class, a contemporary spain class and a psychology of personality class... all taught in spanish. So hopefully by the end I will be fluent! My classes start this upcoming Monday (yikes!) and I'm really nervous... mostly about interacting with the spanish students. I hope I understand the professor enough to take some decent notes... my grades transfer back to the U of M so the pressure is on! But they all sound like good courses so I'm kind of excited to get back into a schedule.

There's about 12 students in our group of study abroad students and most of us want to go out at night. So we've been going back to that bar/restaurant El Pimpi because it's really authentic and neat. Apparently, according to one of the waiters, El Pimpi was what they used to call the gypsies fresh off the boat who were trying to sell things to the locals... so that's the history of our fave bar. We hit up some clubs the first night we went out, a Wednesday, and brought the party. The names of the clubs here are hilarious, we went to "sound" and then "white". Ha. It was lady's night so we got in for free everywhere and got free shots poured for us. Dancing was fun... everyone busted out their best moves to the random tunes. Thursday night we rested up and Friday night we went back to El Pimpi for tapas and then headed down to the port for 'Botellon'. It's basically a street right next to the port that is closed off Friday and Saturday nights for the sole purpose of people drinking and gathering there. As we were walking there it started to sprinkle a bit and by the time we got there everyone was running back towards us looking for shelter! It was hilarious, people were crowded under trees, in the parking garage, there was a group of people shielding themselves with a piece of cardboard... all because of a little rain. It wasn't even raining hard which is the funny part - I definitely took pictures of the silly Malaganians.

We made it back pretty early both nights, on Friday I got home before my host mom returned from her concert! People stay out till morning, literally, here... 7, 8 is not unheard of and 11 on a Sunday is completely understandable. So us returning home at 3 or so is somewhat of a joke... but we just can't keep up with the locals yet!

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Photos

La Catedral
el interior