My First Week: Travel

Laura, my roomate, has enthusiastically and graciously introduced me to many of her Spanish friends. On Friday night we went out for Tapas and to play bingo. Two of the girls, Ines and Isa, who are sisters and whose father works at my school, invited me to go to Isa's boyfriend Pedro's house in Albox, with their friends Juan and David and Isobel, who are from England. Albox is a 2 hour drive northeast of Almeria. On Sunday we drove through the neighboring towns looking at the churches, sancturary for monks, and the castilla/alcazaba of Purchena. On monday we returned to Almeria where I met up with Laura and her friends Maria and Juan to drive to Cobda, where we stayed with her friends Paco, Jesus, and Raquel. We stayed at Paco's house where we watched Young Frankenstein in spanish! (haha) and stayed up until 6:30am playing spanish games and singing Karaoke! Haha the sleeping schedule here is much different! I didn't wake up until 3pm! The next day we grilled out for lunch...the guys cooked all of our meals!...which is a very special luxury...men in Spain typically don't do ANYTHING domestic. It was delicious. I really like the pork, the pan con tomate (bread with tomatoe), tapas, tortilla (like an omelet), mandarin oranges, and the olive oil.

Note to Self: European cars are small with stick shift; European roads are extremely curvy; and most everyone smokes like a chimney, even in their cars...this did not help my sensitivity to car sickness...the road trips this weekend were a bit queasy and at one point my driver had to pull over for me to take a "breather." Needless to say I will be buying Dramamine, or the spanish equivalent, ASAP!! Also, there are no rest stops...I had to hold it for 2 hours over a bumpy, windy road. Not comfortable!