What holiday?

Ugh. I detest Valentine's Day. It is a holiday invented by stores and restaurants and flower shops to get people to spend money for no good reason. I would hate it even if I had a significant other to celebrate it with. I don't intend to do anything remotely related to Valentine's Day today, including wearing red/pink (Meg's idea)! But enough of that!

This week wasn't too exciting, but I have a lot of little comments about things that have happened. On Sunday evening Meg and I went to our second futbol game (the first one was free). We had better seats than the first game, even though they were still nosebleed section, and we made it in time for the fight song before the game started. At halftime, we went to find everyone else from Jewell who were also at the game. They were in a section below ours, and in order to get to them we had to jump a barrier, which was probably not allowed. The barcelona stadium is set up so that the gate you go inside takes you directly to your section and no where else. It is really, really hard to go find better seats and crowd control is everywhere. Definitely not the Royals stadium where you can go sit on the bottom level if you want. Well, we found the boys and sat with them for a while, but it was COLD and windy so we eventually left. We saw all three of the goals that were made so we didn't miss out!

I'm entertained by something new everyday in my two Tuesday/Thursday classes. Last week we taught my teacher how to properly say 'feces' in English. The only word equivalent he knew was 'shit' and boy did he use it, to talk about the fish and the seagulls and the little plankton and nutrients, etc. He figured something was up when the whole class kept giggling with the way he used the term. We taught him a few different words that were a little less crude. I've heard my Spanish teacher say it as well when talking about caca, so maybe it is just a perception that Spaniards have of how America uses that term..very strange.

Thursday, Megan and I went with Eloi (a student on our hall) to a rugby match. We had never seen one before and were excited to go. The game was a match between UB and UPC, two local universities. Eloi normally plays for UPC, but he was injured (shoulder) and so was not playing in the match. On the way to the match, he made a comment, out of the blue, that we looked very "American". We asked him to enlighten us as to why, and he just said everything and then mentioned our sunglasses (it was sunny out, others had on sunglasses as well!), our blonde hair, our shoes..I guess we're not trying hard enough to blend in, but oh well. I'm not going to change those things, I'll just have to look American. The rugby match itself was very different. I enjoyed watching, but it just seemed like 30 men competing to see who was the toughest. It also looked like a painful game, and I didn't see how it is much related to football. UPC was slaughtered and lost by 8 goals or more, but no one seemed too disappointed.

Yesterday, Megan and I walked around Barcelona in the afternoon in the process of finding a hotel her sister is thinking of staying in when she visits. We were in a very neat area of town, but the coolest thing we found was a little hole in the wall candy shop named "Happy Pills". You can buy jars of different sizes that look like prescription containers, put a label on them, and fill them with any sort of candy. It was a brilliant idea and very cute. We are definitely coming back. Some people might get happy pills as their souvenir, haha.

Yesterday was my first Spanish midterm! I actually think I did pretty well on it. I was worried because I don't know how she tests, but the test was not bad at all. Also, at the end of class she brought us an example of a spanish cultural afternoon snack (but for little kids, I think). It was delicious! It was a type of milk made from Chufas (also called Horuchata, or Tiger nuts) and tasted sort of like soy milk, but sweeter. She compared the nuts to almonds. She gave us a sweet bread to dip into the milk as well.

My last thought has to do with the girls' dressing habits over here who are from the U.S...this is probably the 'style' and is totally in right now, but why does every girl have to wear tights, only tights, with every outfit? Tights are NOT pants, and they don't cover anything, even if you can't see skin...About half the girls in every one of my classes wears tights, and just with normal shirts, not even something that will halfway cover their butt. The other day in class, three girls went up to the board to answer a question and they looked like triplets, with boots, tights, maroon shirts of some sort, and a scarf. Made me wanna barf. The worst is that many girls just don't have the body shape to look good in that sort of outfit. If you look nice, then go for it, but dress for your body, because tights don't hide anything! That's all of my complaining over that subject, haha. Tomorrow I am going to a festival in another part of the city. I'm not sure what it is about, but my spanish teacher mentioned dragons and free food and music so I'm going to check it out!

Ciao!