Beachy fun

---

We went to Nerja for the day on Saturday with our program, which is this gorgeous beach about an hour and twenty minutes away. First things first, one of my legs got FRIED because when we got there it was cloudy, and then I fell asleep on my towel and woke up because I was hot and it was uncloudy. I must have been distracted when putting sunscreen on because I missed the back of my right leg entirely. At least I didn’t discover this great sunburn until the bus ride home, so it’s not like it ruined my afternoon. The water was FREEZING, but kind of refreshing at the same time. There were a lot of jelly fish so we had to be careful, but with water that clear you can see everything. One of the boys on our program spent 60 euros on a nice little european pair of swimsuit trunks that didn’t exactly…. Fit. He had quite the little muffin top over this outfit and drew lots of attention to himself when he ran into the water, and then turned around screaming and ran back out. We spent a lot of time walking up and down the coast and discovered this rock you could jump off that was about 45 feet above the water. I could not bring myself to do it, but looking back on it I wish I had, so when we go back I will do it! We also visited the caves in Nerja which are in the guiness book of world records! They were pretty cool I have to admit, but they had these cheesy sound machines playing sounds of water dripping and bats flying that kind of ruined the ambience.

The coast of Nerja is lined with restaurant after restaurant that all claim to have the best paella, our guides had told us of a place before we got off the bus that actually did, so we hunted it down for lunch. First of all, these tents are hot as hades even though they are in the shade, because they have this giant fire going in order to cook paella in a cast iron pan that was at least 6 feet in diameter and about 6 inches deep. They throw the raw chicken in first, then the rice, then some liquid of some sort and a million grams of saffron and then they put the prawns on last because they don’t take long to cook. The one thing I really just can’t get over is that you’ll be chewing rice and then all the sudden there will be something super crunchy. I made the mistake of asking what it was the first time I had it. Shrimp feet. You know those little claws that are like mini toothpicks on their bodies? Well turns out they fall off in the paella and you end up eating them. My host mom told me “it adds great texture” however, I beg to differ.

The bus ride home was something straight off of a TV show. First off a bunch of people in our group have learned the dances to a couple of shakiras songs, like waca waca (sp?) and so the bus driver, is messing with the stereo while driving on this curvy mountain road attempting to find shakira in the playlist, and when he finally did basically everyone was dancing in the aisle of the bus or on top of seats. Since that is illegal, shocker, we had to shut all the curtains on the bus which then led to the bus driver flickering the lights on and off. It was fabulous. Basically a little mini discoteca in our bus. The best part was when our program directors joined in. Watching Marisa, who is 40 something and probably the most entertaining, sassy, and happy person I have ever met in my life, dance like she was at a discoteca and only 20 years old was the single happiest moment of my life this summer. I wish I could kidnap her and bring her back, she actually probably wouldn’t protest considering she did teach at DU for 8 years and loves CO, but still. She makes these little sound effects when shes trying to explain what something sounds like, that are in fact nothing at all what it sounds like, but it’s hilarious. And she will mock a nice little whiney voice and say something like “but marisa my air conditioning wont turn off on the bus and im freezing” and she’ll go “I don’t give a shit you should have listened to me when I explained how to shut it off!!”- but in a strangely nice way? I have no idea how to explain it but she is a riot.

Yesterday, Sunday, Julia and I had a lazy day. We slept in for the first time since we have been to Spain, ate breakfast, and then booked our trip to Portugal in July!!! Afterwards we went to the pool and laid in the grass and read our books until lunch, if you haven’t read “Water for elephants” I strongly suggest it, I read it in 2 days it was that good. Our host mom made us this special lunch that was potatoes and meat and we had coke, and then this homeade ice cream cake thing for dessert. AHHH so good. We went back to the pool for a little, then when it closed for siesta, we went home and took a siesta. Haha. And then woke up in time for dinner, and afterwards ran to this little lookout in the Albyzin to watch the sunset. We then returned, showered and went up to the terrace and read some more. All in all, all we did was sleep, lay out, read, eat, and repeat.

For lunch just now….. my host mom, who knows I hate fish decided to play a nice little trick on me. She put a whole cooked fish on my plate. Eyes and all. The thing was looking at me. Had it not been for that one small thing I might not have had an issue with it. After watching me for a couple of seconds she started laughing and said it was for her not me. Thank. God. I was about to die. Omayra, her daughter, picked up the fish and was like “Hola Anna, porque no quiero comer a mi” Which means hi, why don’t you want to eat me, and she just got such a kick out of it. I was trying to figure out the word for something the other day and was explaining it to her, and she goes “Ah! Desierto!” which 1. Means desert and 2. Was nothing even close to what I had just described and I said something like “No fue uno de tus momentos más brillante” which means that wasn’t one of your brightest moments so now we are in this little momentos más brillante war. Its great.

That’s pretty much all that’s going on here, pretty relaxing weekend, next weekend is going to be the exact opposite. We are going to this giant water fight festival in the mountains followed by a huge bonfire on the beach and it goes from 630 pm to 7 am or something crazy like that. Wooo! When in spain, right?

Luego

Annemarie

---