Adventures from España: Living for the Weekends

In Oviedo, I find myself counting time by how many weekends a date is from now. I do this at home in Oregon as well, but since classes are pretty easy here and the week goes by SO FAST, I can't help but kind of forget about the actual weekdays. There aren't usually huge tests or projects that I need to study for, and without these middle-of-the-week deadlines, I am able to just look forward to the weekend! So, in case you were wondering, there are 2 weekends until my mom and Mike (little brother/bestie) get here, less than 3 weekends til Spring Break, and 7 weekends til another possible vacation! After that, I avoid thinking about, because it means I have to go home and I may start crying. April is going to be a very mellow month, and rather than traveling I am going to focus on soaking up every minute I can in my lovely Oviedo before May rolls around!

This weekend was crazy! It was a great weekend in Oviedo, but I cannot say it was very relaxing because I was so busy! Thursday night we went out and I didn't get back til 6ish, so I felt like a real Spaniard haha (see post below about Thursday night!). On Friday Emily and I fell asleep during our 9am Art History class that is 2 hours long. We sit in the front row and after getting virtually no sleep, we were both hardcore struggling haha. Luckily, Laura is our professor and she works with AHA, so I know her pretty well. She didn't take offense and chose to make fun of us in front of the class instead, which was fine with me as long as she let me keep sleeping! haha. I believe she said something along the lines of "Let's take a 10 minute break so that these two dead girls in the front can sleep" hahaha. Em and I took advantage of those 10 minutes, let me tell you! Our classes are with all of the same kids for the most part, so we are all friends and we can joke around :) They also uusally only have 15-20 kids in them, so it's nice and small compared to Oregon State. During my break Em and I sat in the sun for a bit and I like to think that I got some color. I had to go back to class, but afterwards I walked home in the sun and immediately went to shower. I didn't think anyone was home, but all of a sudden the radio turned on and I looked in the spare room. Luisa, Marisa's mom (the grandma) was sitting in the room all by herself holding a piece of paper and the radio. I told her I was home and was going to shower, and she complains, "I am SO BORED. They left me here alone and I don't know how to use the phone and I am so bored. Do you know how to use the phone cause I don't. And this is so boring!". It was probably the most adorable complaint I had ever heard! haha. Luisa is in her 80s and just had Cataract surgery, so she has been staying at our house all week. I have also now met the entire extended family. Anyways, I showered and slept all day, and then went out to meet Laura, Chloe, Goksu, Roberto and his friends. He had invited us out, and when we got there he introduced us to like 10 of his friends. Turns out the man knows EVERYONE! Everywhere we go, he stops and talks to someone and he is always chatting it up. His friends were nice and after getting some light drinks we headed to a club called Funky Room. Of course, he knew the people there too. We danced for a while and had fun, but I was super tired and had to meet my conversation partner for the first time in the morning, so I went home "early" as far as Spain is concerned.

Saturday morning I walked down to school to meet Estefania, my conversation partner! She is adorable and we went to a cafe to talk. We are supposed to talk in Spanish for 30 minutes and English for 30 minutes, so we started with English and then switched to Spanish. We talked about a ton of random things, and she is a really cool girl! She is from Leon, but is studying chemical engineering at University of Oviedo. We got carried away and ended up talking way longer than an hour, until Laura passed us and told us what time it was. Thank God she did, cause I had told everyone I would meet them at school 15 minutes earlier! We said goodbye to Estefania and she offered to pay for my drink (so sweet!), and then we went to meet everyone because we were going to climb up to El Cristo! We eventually made our way to the bus and got off at the stop in the middle of nowhere, but at the base of Mount Naranco. We started climbing and immediately the view was gorgeous! We stopped at the 2 old churches, then took a path that lead right up the mountain. And I mean straight up, it was one of the steepest roads I've climbed. We got lost a bit but ended up finding a small path that came up the backside of El Cristo. It was a long hike and by the end I was struggling, but I am very glad I did it and the view was great! You could see all of Oviedo and the surrounding mountains on one side, and another city (Gijon?) and the ocean on the other! The pictures below do not really show how great it was, but I promise it was really beautiful! Also, Roberto has told us that at night there are wild pigs on the mountain at night. I don't know if I believe this guy, but he wants to climb it at night so that may be an adventure we take in the future...

After hiking, we went to this doughnut shop that Em found a couple weeks ago, that is very similar to Dunkin Donuts. It was delicious and a great way to celebrate, but it ended up being a lot of sugar! I came home and showered, and then we had promised Goksu that we would go to her apartment for a bit because she wanted to make us Turkish food! Saturday night was hard because there was SO MUCH going on and I didn't know what to do. Em and the Brits were having a party, there was a cooking class through the city, Goksu had people over, and Estefania invited me out! It was overwhelming and I was so tired, so since we already had plans with Goksu we went to her house, and then I pretty much ended up going home and passing out! Roberto and Carlos were at Goksu's, along with me, Laura, Chloe, and Megan, and it was a lot of fun to just hang out. Since we aren't allowed to have people over to our houses or go to other people's houses, it was cool to go to Goksu's flat where she didn't have a host family to tell her we couldn't be there. It felt kinda like home, just hanging out at a friends house, and everyone there was fun to hang out with!

Today Em, Laura, and I were going to go to Mass, but we were all so tired and sore that we decided to wait til next week. I ended up sleeping really late and then did some homework and skyped with my parents and the dogs, and tomorrow I have to go to class again. This week I have 3 essays, 2 tests, and a couple homework assignments to do, which is a ton to do compared to the usual week! However, we've got to get them done before Semana Santa, so it is UniOvi's version of midterms. Luckily, I can't imagine them being nearly as hard as the ones in The States haha!

View of Oviedo at the beginning of the hike. The white building in the middle is Calatrava, the "Spaceship Mall". It was such a gorgeous day for most of the hike!