Dancing and travel!

Second week of classes – only 5 more days of interim class then trip to Barcelona! I love the Spanish siesta – I usually take an hour nap after lunch – it’s great!  It’s also a good time to just relax and read a book!  This week has been very eventful so far.  Church on Sunday was a good two hours long! The sermon had 5 main points and at least 4 or 5 sub points for each main point with bullet points underneath each sub point!  It was nice because they were on a PowerPoint and we could easily read and follow along.  On Monday when I arrived home from school all of my t-shirts were hanging out on drying racks in front of the house in full view of the neighborhood! At least we have a small patio in back for some of my other clothes!  On Monday night I went to my first dance class of Flamenco!  It was a blast! There are 6 or 7 of us girls from Calvin and 3 women from Denia.  The dance studio is on the side of the castle.  The teacher was very nice and taught us about how there are two types of Flamenco dancing – mambo and fandango.  We learned steps for both and then she made routines from both and we learned them.  We learned 2 long fun dances the first day! She was really easy to follow as she called out each step as we did it.  One of my favorites was waving our pony tails as we turned in a circle :)  I'm not sure where we're going to go from there but I know we will learn tons!!  We stomped a lot with our feet as this is a dance of strong women.  Next Monday after school we are going to the marcadillo to buy flamenco skirts and some tacones (heels).  On Tuesday after school we went to a small town in the mountains called Javea.  It is beautiful!  We received a very nice greeting in the town hall and then were shown the Catholic cathedral and town museum.  At the cathedral we got to go on the roof way up high.  Since the roof is domed there were small hills on the roof.  It was fun to run around and take tons of pictures!  Ah- but the stairs were another story.  It was an enclosed spiral staircase that was no bigger than a normal shower.  The steps were steep and close together.  It was an adventure!  When we went to the visitor center the floor was glass and we could see the ruins of graves beneath us.  Evidently there are ruins everywhere around here.  The museum was neat, there were some beautiful pictures of the mountain, old scenes of homes and some old objects from excavations.  After that we went to a restaurant to have tapas (appetizers).  There were two TV’s; one with old soccer highlights and the other with the snowboarding in Colorado!  There were empanadas, potatoes, Spanish tortilla (potato filled) and much more.  For my drink I ordered orange juice (as I have unfortunately obtained a cold).  Oh my gosh!  I’m pretty sure they went out to one of the orange tree groves and picked an orange and freshly squeezed it just for me – it was delicious!!!  On the way home, the bus driver wanted to give us a better view of the mountain so we took the skinny roads on the side of the mountain, in a bus, on the side of a mountain!! I was praying the whole time J Once, we didn’t turn wide enough and hit the rock, everyone screamed, pretty scary but we are all ok!  We have been having a cold spell here – it has been in the low 50’s and gloomy.  But the weekend is soon and hopefully so is the sun!  I hope everyone is doing well back home! Hasta luego, Jenn

P.S.  The regional dialect here is Valenciano and some characteristics are that they don’t seem to finish their words and as I was just writing hasta luego someone near me said “ha lugo”.  It is very hard to understand initially as it seems they are not speaking very clearly.  Everyone here speaks both Castilian Spanish (the “proper” form) and the dialect.