Learning German and trying BBQ peanuts in Spain

I guess I'll tell you more of those quirky things I've noticed since I wrote last: Pretty much all the music in stores is in English. I never really realized it until I find myself singing along or humming and then think, hey, I'm in Spain....shouldn't these be in Spanish? The metro doesn't run 24/7 which is why I think Spaniards party until sunrise, that way they can ride the metro home when it starts running again. People have never heard of racquetball, but I think they may know what squash is. I noticed people cleaning paths outside a lot and thought it was a little weird to MOP a sidewalk and I finally realized that since every other person has a dog, they have to because the dogs go to the bathroom on the sidewalks, not in the grass or anything. The Euros are like our quarters, they have pictures from the different countries on the back, but I guess they typically use the Spain ones in Spain because that's what most of the ones I get are.

I still don't have a set class schedule yet, but I'm getting closer, I think. Right now my favorite class is German. Since it's a beginning German class, we're learning all the easy stuff and I can pretty much always understand my teacher's Spanish. She likes to speak German a lot and nobody understands. She'll go back and forth a lot too so whenever I don't understand, I have to think about if she's saying Spanish words I don't understand or German words that nobody understands. The guy I sit next to speaks a little English so if everyone starts doing something and I don't know what, he tells me what to do. Another funny thing in this class was when we had to ask each other for our names, phone numbers, and addresses, my teacher realized that my last name was German and got really excited and wanted to know about my family there. Then she realized I'm American and any family I have in Germany I don't really know.

I have yet to take a siesta at the correct time, but have finally stopped trying to go to stores during that time frame. I still forget how late they are open though.

As I told you guys before, my roommates (besides Jenny) are from Czech Republic and Slovakia. Well, one is moving back on Monday and we had a going away party for her this past Thursday. Everyone was supposed to make a food from their country (which has been a very common theme amongst get-togethers here...probably because a lot of people we've met are also exchange students) and I couldn't think of anything. Jenny suggested we make root-beer floats. Well, there's no root-beer here so we ended up getting coke. Everyone though we were crazy! A few of the guys tried it and liked it and after they didn't die or throw up, a couple of the girls tried it too. They had lots of questions like if we have it as a dessert or with our meal. We told them that mostly kids eat it and we use a different soda, but I don't think everyone understood. Some definitely thought root beer was a beer, even though we specifically said it wasn't to avoid confusion. After all that, as typical in Spain, everyone left between two and three to go out dancing until sunrise.

I'm not sure if I've told you all about the grocery stores here, so I will now. They all smell like fish. We do live on a coast so I guess I should have figured. I'm not a big fan, but I always think they're interesting to look at. There's lots of pretty much whole fist/squid/shrimp and everything else you can think of. One day I'll bring my camera and take a picture (It takes forever to attach them to these emails with the internet I have, but I'll try to find a site besides Facebook to post them on so everyone can see them). I also try to always get some random food I've never had when I go (which is every week since we have to carry everything we buy all the way back to our apartment. This week it was BBQ peanuts. Very interesting. I also have recently acquired a weakness for chocolate...more than I had before. So, usually I end up with some kind of dark chocolate too. I decided to give up that or the coffee here for Lent since I seem to come across them every day. Haha, it should be interesting.

The other two girls from my school in the US and I are going to Madrid a week from today. I'm staying an extra day and going to Toledo as well since my professor said we could go to our lab any day of the week and that was the only class I had on Mondays. I'm also getting pretty excited for Las Fallas. It's a pretty big festival that Valencia is well known for. You should look it up if you have a chance. Basically, they celebrate every day and make these huge float type things and shoot off fireworks during the day every day in the city center (and they said we can still hear them all the way from our place) and on the last day, they set all the floats on fire. Celebrations start 1 March and they burn them the 19th. It's like Rolla for St. Pat's times a million. We get a whole week off of classes for it (beat that!) and then we were told they have exams after it so we also won't have classes for another week or two. They get two weeks off for Easter as well. I really have no idea how they get anything done here between holidays and siestas.

We got internet at our apartment yesterday so now I can use Skype and stuff (for those of you who have it) without having to go to campus. We also found our roommates movies and are having fun watching our favorites in Spanish. Last night we watched Mama Mia. Everything was Spanish except the songs. It was pretty funny.

Well, this is already pretty long so I'll let you guys go. Enjoy your long weekend!