Lo siento amigos for the delay!

A mi me encanta la vida Espanola ☺

This past week has been a good one! The weather has been GREAT, so I’m automatically happy, right? Yes indeed. Last Tuesday, Alex and I took the bus to meet up with some others at Bikini Beach for the day. First off, I’m not quite sure WHY they call it Bikini Beach, seeing as how a good portion of the women go topless. No gracias. But other than that, it was beautiful. And the best part is that the sun here stays high until about 9, so we can keep working on our tans until about 7 or 8 at night. Muyyyy bien.

Wednesday was the Fiesta of San Juan, AKA the best night EVER! This fiesta simultaneously celebrates San Juan and the summer solstice, or the longest day of sunlight of the year. Well the espanoles like to add a little more light to the mix and create the HUGEST bonfires ever on their beaches at midnight and fiesta toda la noche. I mean, the whooooole night. Did I mention that they can drink on their beaches? Or rather, no one stops them. In fact, pretty sure the policia join in. Anyway, of course we all had to participate in this. I mean, it goes without saying. We got to the beach around ten after having to wait a ridiculous amount of time to find a bus not completely filled with fellow beachgoers. But by the time we had arrived, the party had merely begun. By midnight, there was hardly a free space on the beach. And let me just say that Holland has nothing on the miles of beach in Santander. They lit the largest bonfire I have ever seen in my whole entire life, and we all had the best time ever. We left way early by Spanish standards at 2:30 am, because we had school the next morning. Poop. I wish it was the Fiesta of San Juan EVERYDAY.

Right after school on Thursday, we left for Malaga, which sits on the southern coast of Spain. Let me just begin the rest of this paragraph with this statement: Ryanair sucks. We got to the airport a little after two for our 4:30 flight. Let’s just say we didn’t get to Malaga (an hour flight) until midnight. Mmk, I’ll leave it at that. We were warned by tons of our padres that Malaga was an ugly city, but we were going for the warmer weather and beaches so that hardly mattered. This was definitely a trip planned during the rainy two weeks of Santander weather. However, I’m pretty sure that Malaga exceeded all of our expectations. If that city is ugly, I don’t even want them to come to America. Cripes.

Friday night, our group of 14 was separated into 5 different hostels. Three of us went to the hostel where most of the rest would join us the next night. The beach was just across the street from our hostel, so we had the perfect location. The next morning, we met the rest of the group at el Museo Picasso, which is full of donated pieces from Picasso’s family. Fun fact: both Picasso and Antonio Banderas were born in Malaga. We toured the Cathedral of Malaga and then ate lunch outside of it. The cathedral was absolutely beautiful, chockfull of gold ornamentation and original paintings. Oh, and the largest organ that I will probably ever see. That afternoon, everyone checked into our hostel and we hung out at the beach. We all had Spanish flag body paint on for the game, which we watched in our hostel as the hostel workers handed out free shots for each goal. After the game was won by the lovely Spain (WOOO!), we headed out for the night. Everyone on the streets was going crazy after the win, carrying the Spanish flag and waving it around or wearing it around their necks on their motorcycles. And EVERYONE honked. It was excellent. We wanted to see flamenco, and ended up in the basement of a museum of flamenco history. Here enters my favorite Malaga memory. Alright, so we didn’t technically see flamenco. What we did get instead was about 20 Spanish people sitting around a table and singing flamenco songs with a guitar. HOLYYY CRAP. Most amazing thing of my life. The passion that these people have for this tradition is unreal. One of the older men even got up for a few songs and danced. You can tell that he was the man in his prime. I was absolutely enamored the entire time, and so began my obsession with flamenco music. I even snuck some videos of this greatness on my camera, so I’ll try to post them on Facebook.

The next morning, we got up to walk 5 billion steps to the top of a castle. Hands down the best workout I’ve had since I’ve been in Spain. I loved every second of it. And the view from the top made it even more worth it. The castle was more reminiscent of a fort, or the ruins of one anyway, and it has been used for war efforts since before the 1600s. After seeing the castle, we walked to an old Roman theatre. That was sweet to see, since I feel like I’ve heard so much about them, but it was under a bunch of construction. Oh well. After that, it was time to head to the airport, where Suckair delayed us another hour. During this break, I enjoyed the best Pizza Hut ever, so Suckair is forgiven. And after the delay, we arrived home without any further problem.

All in all, escaping to Malaga was a very fun weekend with great people. And our padres were most definitely wrong… Malaga NO es fea.