As I type this entry I am laying in less than a socially acceptable amount of clothing in my bed trying to recover not from a hangover by any means, but instead from approximately 60 minutes of sleep last "night" followed by a few hours of needing to be bilingual and excited about teaching English to Spaniards. But I'll start from the beginning of one of the best weekends I've spent in Spain...
Friday a group of four of us Americanos decided to take a day trip outside of Valencia (about an hour and fifteen minutes driving) with a tour guide to experience the hot springs we'd heard about on TripAdvisor. We all headed out to a meeting point and were picked up in a semi-sketchy white van by a man named Miguel who I loved almost immediately upon climbing into his cramped front seat. Miguel told us he was 30, a native Valencian, and very sorry for being late, but we would be picking up a couple of Canadians and Brits before heading out to the springs. I knew the day would be a grand one when Miguel double parked to run out and meet the English couple, and, no sooner had he rounded the corner of a far off building than the man whose vehicle was trapped behind his laid on the horn and backed up threateningly toward our car. This event was followed by a lot of yelling things like "WHO CAN DRIVE A STICK SHIFT? WHAT IF WE CRASH THIS CAR IT'S NOT EVEN OURS. EVERYONE JUST CALM DOWN, OKAY?!" As I tried to calm the angry driver down, Miguel finally ran back over laughing and joking about the news headlines in the paper the next day: "American tourists beaten in public marketplace". Not that funny, Miguel. The trip went really smoothly though as we drove out to see some incredible waterfalls, cross some not-so-incredibly-engineered bridges, and finally started to wind our way through the mountains to the hot springs. The sky wasn't particularly sunny, but we started to get a little worried when we stopped for lunch and it started drizzling. But hey, we were going to "hot" springs, right? No big deal. As it turns out, the "hot" springs when being drenched with a freezing torrential downpour don't actually feel that "hot", and aren't actually even warmer than your typical 5-day-old bathwater. This did not stop us from snorkeling and swimming out to an area with beautiful cliffs which we of course wanted to dive off of with 20% vision due to the rain. I had a lot of questions about the depth of the water, why I was in a bikini in 50 degree weather, and why I was about to cliff dive at all when the hail started. At this point we all YOLO'd it and jumped off the cliff anyway. We all survived barring a rock stuck in the bottom of my foot and no one even got eaten by the fish all the girls were screaming about the whole time. Overall the trip was incredible, and ended with a great Spanish chat between Sara, Miguel and I in the front seat about hitchhiking and rock climbing as we drank tinto from a wineskin and ate nisperos that Miguel had so kindly robbed from a small village tree on the way back into the city. 70 euros well spent, believe me.
Saturday was sort of a "recovery day" so Sara and I decided to go to the Central Market for some shopping and too many pastries and then headed to the beach where we scalded our Caucasian skin for 4 glorious hours.
Sunday a group of us headed to church, checked out the "Taste of America" store (6 euros for a small can of Jif? Worth it.), and went back to our houses for lunch and a pre-San-Juan-festival-preparation-nap. Around 7 we went to the only grocery store open in the entire country (barely exaggerating) for some overpriced sangria and snacks and went to the beach for San Juan. Now Spain is notorious for having ridiculous festivals for seemingly no reason, but San Juan is really one of the best/most ridiculous. It is the feast day of Saint John, so obviously to celebrate Spaniards build huge bonfires on the beach, drink way too much, and then jump over them at midnight and run into the sea afterward. To celebrate.... the sanctity and devoutness of the life of Saint John. Sure, sure. So of course that's what all 90 of us Americans decided to do too. I made it until about 5:30pm with only one nap on the beach interrupted by a couple of drunk Americans stepping on my head and maybe a few sparks falling into my sand-filled hair, but the cops kicked us off the beach with all the rest of the crazy Spanish kids before we could watch the sunrise. I split a taxi home to catch my beauty nap before work this morning, but some troopers in the group actually stayed out until they could watch the sunrise from the comfort of the sidewalk and so kindly walked a few of their less-"awake" friends home. Overall it was a fantastic evening filled with late night ocean swimming, smelling like a good old fashioned American campfire, and in the company of some pretty fun friends. A group of four of us is headed to Milan and Venice this next weekend - so more to come!!
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