Second Weekend

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June 14th 2010

Published: June 14th 2010

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sammi k

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me sitting on the steps of the prison

Awesome Weekend!

This weekend was so much fun, I'm really bummed it's Monday again. Saturday was our second field trip that was included in the program. We went to to a city about 30 min away called Elche. It was a nice city but it wasn't my favorite out of the places we've been so far. The coolest thing that we got to see was this area that has the largest concentration of palm trees. There are between 200,000 and 300,000 palm trees that date back to thousands of years ago. It was really cool and very beautiful scenery. We also got to see the Huerto del Cura. This was a garden amongst the palm trees with different types of plants. It was very pretty.

From Elche we took a fairy boat ride to get to an island off the coast called Tabarca. This is the only inhabited island in the region of Valencia (even thought there are only 30 inhabitants). It is a very historical site and tourism here during the summer is huge. It has great opportunities for snorkeling off its coast which is where we are going this week to snorkel. We pretty much explored the

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a group of us on Tabarca

island and saw things like the old prison and cemetery. We also got to eat another huge feast for lunch which included the famous Spanish dish paella. It was really good.

We arrived back in Alicante at around 6pm. Later that night a group of us went to sit outside a bar and watched the U.S. play their first game against England in the world cup. We tied 1-1!! We were cheering pretty obnoxiously and all the people surrounding us were rooting for England. It was pretty funny. It is so much fun to see how big of a deal soccer is here and how the bars are filled with people watching the games.

Last night we got to go to a real soccer game in person!! Alicante has its own team called Hercules. They play against other Spanish teams in some kind of national league which would be on par with triple A baseball. It was a blast!!! Hercules won 2-1 and the crowd was going wild and cheering the whole game. Once it was over the crowd rushed the field. It was so cool to be a part of it.

This weekend was the start

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of Alicante's biggest festival called Las Hogueras de San Juan. I'm not quite sure the history of this festival but it sounds like a pretty big fiesta. It takes place next week from the 20th-29th. Each night there are parades and there are fireworks, statues, and bonfires. Its going to be a lot of fun. This weekend they had two parades (Sat and Sun) to kickstart the festival and they were so cool. They lasted about four hours each and everything about them was extravagant from the costumes to the music. I can't wait until the actual festival.

I have a midterm on Wednesday that I need to study for so Hasta Luego!!

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