The weekend

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Saturday I was up early, as usual. So I decided to go for a run because Carolina was still asleep (and would be sleeping until 2, haha). I ran toward and through campus to get to the sports pavilion, where I wanted to check out the outdoor track. I get there and there are multiple coach buses lining the street and people in the stands. As I get closer I realize that a game was taking place! At first I thought it was futbol (soccer) because they were doing a kick... but then they picked up the ball and started running with it so I thought football... not until they huddled and started pushing did I realize they were playing rugby! So I took a breather and sat down in the bleachers and watched. What a violent sport!

As I was leaving, I was walking underneath the stands, a rugby ball falls right in front of me. I look up and three boys are running towards where I'm standing underneath the stands. They motion for me to help them out and start yelling things I couldn't understand in spanish. I tried to launch the ball back up to them, something that proved to be quite difficult for me. I attempted it several times but either my aim or my strength was off each time. They kept yelling, "mas fuerte" as in 'harder' but the ball just wouldn't reach them... as I was starting to feel like a silly girl, I launched it a final time. This time it hit the underworks of the bleachers and bounced back down and into a fenced-off storage place. Great. I am no help at all. Then they proceeded to ask me how to get down and I showed them, while I went upstairs to meet them half way. But by the time I got upstairs to where they were standing they already had some other boys working on it. I apologized for being a complete failure but they told me, "no pasa nada" which basically means 'don't worry about it'. On the run home I passed the tennis courts and the soccer fields. Looking over I noticed that one of the fields had people playing soccer with blindfolds on. Blind soccer!? It blew my mind.

The rest of the day was spent having lunch and watching a movie with Carolina. It was called, "Tu a Boston y yo a California" (you to Boston and I to California) or something... apparently an American film from back in the day? The new one has Lindsay Lohan in it, playing twins... It was cute. Watching movies and the news in spanish is helping my ears adjust to hearing the language. I should have started doing that back in MN. But I think I would have felt quite silly trying to follow the spanish soap operas I know nothing about.
Saturday night the group met up to go out and we found el Botellón. It's basically a street party that goes on every weekend and tons of people show up to stand in this closed-off street to socialize. It was fun, I was just amazed at how many people were there. Then again, a lot of students had just finished their finals in February so they were probably out celebrating. Botellón is apparently illegal in several spanish cities, according to the news channel. Malaga is not one of them.

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