Hello blog followers! Today marks the "approximate" end of 1/4 of my stint in Spain - meaning midterms! I had 2 tests and an oral presentation today (ya that presentation wasn't so hot but whatever) and I woke up at 4 am to study. For those of you - meaning all of you - who are in America, that would be about 10 pm your time. Anyways that's all over now, and I'm updating this before I go to the Fallas museum! Fallas is this awesome week long parade unique to Valencia (in March) where everyone gets dressed up in traditional costumes and they show these beautiful floats...and at the end of the week? They BURN all their years worth of hard work in a massive bonfire. Why they do this I am not exactly sure, I will investigate and post with the answer. But the museum should be really neat!

What else. I have recently become a fan of the ONLY fastfood place (or kind of fastfood place) in Spain - Pans & company. It is basically like a fast food sandwich shop. Here all the people eat are bocadillos - kind of like french bread sandwiches with the weirdest stuff. I just put ham and cheese (but ham here is not like regular american ham). Combinations people have gotten include - avocado and eggs, spanish tortialla, tomatos and some sort of cream cheese, etc. Not exactly the most normal lunch. Anyways I like this pans place because you can get regular sandwiches. I have found (and this was also the case in Argentina) that spanish speakers LOVE ham. Love ham. Which I actually did love at 5 years old, but I no longer sport the same affection. Anyways that's enough about food. Except for the fact that I found a cafe (the place with the wifi) that sells...Smoothies! Valencia orange, banana, and strawberry smoothie? quite exciting seeing as they are my staple back in hooville. Unfortunately I asked Paloma if she's ever had one and she didn't know what it was. So I took that as a no.

My adventures for this week have been quite limited, aside from some shopping excursions. I didn't do anything under the pretense of studying but didn't really study either. I actually have no idea what I did with my time. I have noticed in my short (or long) stay here that the Spaniards wear a lot of really baggy, kind of unattractive/plain clothing. This was somewhat surprising to me because I always thought Europeans were really with fashion. Then it dawned on me that they really are, because their accessories ROCK. I am serious. They just deck themselves out. Shoes, belts, bracelets, necklaces, earrings, scarves. They have got it down. I decided to explore a new road yesterday, which ironically happened to be where the mall was - the mall meaning this giant department store called "el corte ingles" (aka super-macys) which I had been in before to buy my 19 dollar atrocious phone. Anyways I have never seen so many accessory stores in my life. Based on what I saw popular stores here (that I have walked into at some point) include: Zara (obvi, it's actually a spanish store and apparently a lot cheaper here than in the US), Stradivarius (which is I guess some pun on the violins???), Pimkie, Mango, and Blanco. For weeks I have seen every female ever carrying bags that say blanco on them, and I finally discovered why. It's basically Forever21. There were tons of stores I haven't investigated yet but will get to eventually, you can count on it. Basically while I am here I am going to STOCK UP on green and white accessories for my future-not yet a KappaDelta-little.

In other news - I am officialy going to Madrid between the 2 Sessions here! So exciting for me. Ok I will put up my pictures once I come back because now I need to shower/change/go see gigantic floats that will be burned next March/and eventually go eat paella with my new friendsies to celebrate surviving this horrendous day of testing. Hasta pronto!!!