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Published: January 31st 2009
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Castillo
To the left of this picture you can see the Castillo Lunes 26 Enero, 2009—Today, my professor was sick, so our class was spit into the section above and below us. I of course choose to return the section that was below to be with my old classmates. This experience conferred to me that I have made the right chose to move up a level. However, after receiving the exam from the Friday before; I also realized that although I am working my butt off, it will be harder to get a good grade in this middle level class verse the lower section. Other than that, school was pretty ordinary, 4 hours of intensive Spanish. At home, I studied much of the night, but did have facebook/Skype breaks. From these, I was excited to listen to my friends at Marquette radio show online, but I burned out my adaptor that allows me to plug my computer in 10 minutes before they went on air. This was extremely frustrating. On any other day, it wouldn’t have been a big deal, but I was really looking forward to listening to their show. I tried to go back to studying, but my mind was elsewhere, so I decided to go for a walk around the
Alicante
The view of the city from above neighborhood. On this walk, I found two really cool stores. The first one is this furniture store that all is very artsy and fun. The other store is basically a Dollar General, but everything has a Spanish flare and its run by a nice, old Chinese couple. On this trip, I bought a stocking cap for a Euro and a half, (although I’m in Spain and on the beach, it does get “cold” here). I ended up calling it an early night and hit the sack at around 11:30pm. From the whole no internet experience, I realized that I’m too connected to the internet. Part of this maybe caused by the internet being my connection with love ones back home, but it’s almost like an addiction. I decided that I am going to try to reduce the amount of time I am online in the future.
Martes 27 Enero, 2009—On this day in the live of Quinn, school was the same, but my afternoon fieldtrip was extremely note worthy. In Alicante, there are two castle (there not the typical medieval castle, but still pretty amazing). The castle that I got a tour of is built on what basically is
El Mar
The city along with the Mediterranean a small mountain that is between the downtown and the Mediterranean Sea. CIEE got an English speaking tour guide that lead us up the paths to the top and explained the different aspects of the Castle. For example, the castle is called El Castillo de Santa Barbara because the castle was reconquered from the Moors by the Christians on December 2, 1248, the day of St. Barbara. You can see by the pictures that the castle was amazing, especially as the sun went down. After this, I didn’t feel like studying yet, so I decided to go buy an adaptor for my computer. Long story short, I didn’t want to pay much for it, so I ended up going to 4 different stores in the city and comparing prices before buying it. Although, it was about an hour and a half of walking, I was proud of myself because I was able to ask for the directions of these stores and once in the stores, where to find the adaptor all in Spanish. So Dad, thanks for making me a cheapskate, it forced me to explore the city and practice my Spanish.
Miercoles/Jueves 28/29 Enero, 2009—These days basically consisted
of going to class and studying all afternoon and evening. Now, when I say studying, I mean I am looking over what I did in class along with trying to learn vocab. Wednesday, I did about 10 pages in my work book and did my worksheet for the Castillo de Santa Barbara, that include short answers and a 200 word essay about things we learned on the trip. Now, 200 words really isn’t that much, but in a different language, it’s quite a lot. Also, on Thursday, I spent most of it preparing for my final exam on Friday.
Viernes 30 Enero, 2009-- Today was the day of my final exam, so I got up early and made it to school with plenty of time to spare. In the mornings and at our break, we all go to this café that is near to our classrooms, where we don’t get much studying done, but it is a fun place to relax. The exam was the same format as last week’s exam with a listening, oral, grammar, and writing section that took about 2 hours. I know that this test didn’t go as well as last weeks, but I did
improve in the oral section. After the test, we all headed back downtown to go the beach. Before going to the beach, so made stops at a supermarket to pick up snacks and then at McDonalds and Burger King to get food for those that were hunger. I thought that it was kind of funny that we worked so hard all week to learn Spanish, but as soon as the exam is done we speak English and go to McDonalds. I personally don’t plan on eating at an American place anytime soon because for the same price I can go get Spanish food next door. Also, although the McDonalds, Burger King, Subway and KFC are much nicer here, they just don’t fit in. We stayed on the beach until about 2pm because we had to go back home for lunch. Since I didn’t have much else to do, I only stayed home for about an hour before heading back to the beach. It was colder and windier, so we didn’t stay long and went to the downtown area and hung out at a restaurant. As people started to disperse, I found a bench in a park that had a guy
playing guitar nearby and read my book for a while. I made it back for supper, before heading back to the beach to meet up with friends again for the night. So, 3 trips to the beach in one day, that’s why I choose Alicante, jk.
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Lisa
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Nice model pose for your one pic... lol