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Published: January 25th 2009
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Outdoor Market
Strawberries, Cherries and grapes. Saturday 24 January—Today I got up at 9am, which is early for a Saturday in Alicante to meet a friend near her house to go to an outdoor market. Her house is about a 20 minute walk from mine and then we walked about another 30 minutes to the market, just to find out that the market is about a 10 minute walk from my house. Once we got there, it was less than half the size it was the week before when she went with her host family because it was extremely windy. I learned later in the day that the wind was from a huge Sahara Desert Sandstorm that was blowing across the Mediterranean Sea. While walking to and from the market it looked like a sandstorm at times, but we enjoyed exploring the city anyways. Although the market was missing the clothes, leather, wood crafts and some fruit vendors, there still were enough brave venders to make it fun. Tessa and I were interested in buying some strawberries, so we scoped the place out and found the cheapest place and bought ¼ of a pint that we ate in a park later. Since the day was still young,
Outdoor Market
Pineapples and oranges. we decided to explore a supermarket and the Supermarcado Central. Now it may seem stupid, but looking around a foreign markets filled with locals is quite interesting. As you can see by the pictures, it isn’t like going into Cubs or Piggly Wiggly. After fighting the wind all over the city and a huge lunch, it didn’t take much for me to take a nice long siesta. When I woke up, I met John and Samantha (CIEE students) and 6 Spanish students that were friends of John’s host brother for supper at 11pm (the meal schedule is a little different here). As weird as it sounds, we actually went to a Mex-terranean place. Basically it was all Mexican food, but with a Mediterranean spin. This was an extremely fun and cheap way to spend 2 hours working on my Spanish. The Spanish students are also students at the Universidad de Alicante, so I look forward to seeing them around on campus.
Domingo 25 Enero—Today, I had to force myself to sleep in because my body told me to get up at 8am, but I knew that I didn’t have much going on. I did manage to sleep until 10:30,
but it was a tough fight, haha. At 11, I met Samantha, John and 2 Spanish guys from the night before to go to a local fútbol game of Hercules (the Alicante team) vs. Salamanca. This was my first fútbol game, so I was really excited. Let me just say that although this was a Second League (basically the equivalent of a minor league) I wasn’t disappointed. The game started off kind of bad with us being down by 2, but the second half picked up and Hercules was able to tie it up. However, even with the full support of the fans, the game ended in a tie in overtime. I really enjoyed watching this game and hope to watch more in the future. Also, I hope that soccer becomes more popular in the States because it really is a cool sport. I mean, it’s really a team sport, but both teams respect each other. For example, one of the Salamanca guys got a cramp and a Hercules guy helped him stretch it how before they went back to battling for the ball. In baseball or football, it’s rare to see that kind of sportsmanship. After a lunch of
Outdoor Market
Tubs of olives. a pasta soup, fried mushrooms, baked fish, fresh bread, an orange, a coke, sermon jamon (thinly sliced spiced pork), a chocolate pastry and a cup of Spanish coffee, I wandered down to the beach. I call it Spanish coffee because it’s basically an espresso that they add a lot of sugar too. At lunch, I talked to mi madre and abuela about it and there view of it was that American coffee was too watered down. I think that I would have to agree, but I think that I would prefer 30 oz instead of 10oz of really strong stuff. At the beach, I met up with about 5 other CIEE students. At the beach, there was a lot of middle school students that we found out were Americans that went to school in London, but were in Alicante for a field trip. When we asked why they were in London, one girl put it as, “Most of us it’s because of oil, but my parents work for cell phones.” I just thought that it was interesting how globalized our world is getting that parents will follow their jobs to London and then send their kids to the beaches of
Spain when their only 15. It finally stopped being so windy, but then a rain storm blew in. Rain in Alicante is extremely rare and even this 1/8 of an inch storm scared all the locals to go home. We “brave” Americans went to a Burger King and watched the rain. At home, I watched some fútbol with mi hermano and then spent the rest of the night on the internet. This weekend was very relaxing, which allowed me to recover from the last week of studying as well as prepare for this coming week.
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