Food, Wine, and Laughter: Looby Takes On Spain: Getting Into the Swing of Things

...and no, that's not a typo. Este fin de semana pasada fue (era? I can never tell which tense of verb I need. Grammer....) El Festival de San Mateo y había fiestas in todos calles del Oviedo (This past weekend was the Festival of San Mateo [the patron saint of Oviedo] and there were parties in every street). Hence, "swig" of things. I mentioned in my previous post how Nick had a new English friend, Simon. Well, turns out, Simon has some more English friends. There's a program in Europe called the Erasmus Programme. It's a European program that enables European university students to live and study in another country. There's a ton of Erasmus students here and our new English friend is a part of that program as well. On Friday, we all went to Simon's house for a tea party. Here, we met three English girls: Alex, Annie, and Olivia. It was so fun. We drank tea and coffee, ate different postres (desserts/cakes) and shared in some great conversation (It's so relieving to be able to speak English sometimes!). Our new friends informed us that there is a special event for Erasmus students that night to celebrate San Mateo and invited us to come along. Of course, we agreed. After this shindig, we went home to rest for a little while before going out at night to the first night of San Mateo.

Well, the Erasmus party. Lord have mercy. First of all, there's a word the Spanish use to describe what we did that night: un botellón. There must have been over 50 Erasmus students (plus us four crashers...) and we all walked to a public park to compete in drinking games. Carried in tow was enough sangria to fill a 32-gallon garbage can (Literally...I know because that's what it was mixed in and served out of. From the brand-new garbage can, to the plastic bottles that once held the orange juice used to make the sangria, to our cups). When we got to the park, the games commenced. Luckily, I'm smart enough to know my limits and when to stop because, if not, people would die. (My teacher later recounted that, on the weekends, the emergency rooms here just line kids up to give them B12 injections to bring them out of alcohol comas. Crazy stuff.) Well, amongst these games, I became pretty good friends with an English girl named Olivia -- mainly because we look a lot alike and our personalities are very similar as well. We're practically twins. After the games wound down, we walked into the streets where the parties were in full swing. It must have been about 2:30 or 3am by this time. We went into this first place (which we'll call the Octopus bar because of the paper mâché octopus above the stairs). It was alright -- I'm not huge into dancing, but that's fine. After this, we went to this place called B12 (yes, like the vitamin). I like this place because there are a lot of Erasmus students here and it's nice to meet people. I became pretty tired, so I headed out shortly after we arrived here. I returned to my apartment at 4am and went directly to bed.

The next morning, we had an excursion with Ana (our program director) at 10am. At this time you might be thinking, "but Melissa, if you had an excursion the next day, shouldn't you have taken it easy the night before?" and to this I'd reply, "yeah, probably... but YOLO". (Yeah, I used YOLO. Get over it). So, here I am, on the bus on the way to see some caves with the rest of my hungover compañeros. Anytime we were on the bus, we were all sleeping. Like, dead to the world, sleeping. We arrived in Ribadesella and walked to the caves. These things were amazing. The first cave was enormous and had a natural skylight that opened up at the top of the mountain. In the olden days, people used to have meetings, picnics, and major events here. I couldn't stop thinking about how wonderful the acoustics were in there and it took a lot of self control to not break out in song just to see what it would sound like... At the next cave, we saw cave paintings that were incredibly old. The natives drew pictures of your standard horses, but to know they were so incredibly old was incomprehensible. By this time, it was around 3:30 and we were all starving. We went to lunch and the van picked us up at 4:30.

Our next stop was a museum recounting the traces of dinosaurs found in Asturias (our province). It was very interesting and it surprised all of us how easy it was to understand what our guide was saying. However, by the end of the tour, all we wanted to do was pass out again. We were so tired. By the time we went back, it was already 6pm. I came home to find a message from Olivia asking if I wanted to come over for drinks before we go out again that night. I told her that I wasn't going out because I was so tired. Her reply? "As the Americans say, YOLO". That's literally all it took, folks. I put my dress on and napped in it until it was time to walk to her flat.

Two words: Fire Water. That was the name of the whiskey we decided on for the night. It was such a fun night. After we met up with some other Erasmus students and the rest of my American group, we went to the octopus bar. After spending some time here, we left to find another place. However, many people wanted to dance. I don't necessarily enjoy dancing, so Olivia, Alex (English), Alex (American), and I went to B12. We had such a good time. I returned to my apartment at 5am -- which is insane for old-soul Melissa.

On Sunday, I woke up at 11 to go to mass. I still can't understand a lot, but it's really cool to be apart of such a large faith community. And to be honest, it really doesn't matter what they're saying as long as we're all praying to Jesus. Am I right? After mass, I met up with Olivia and American Alex to get some pizza. It was good pizza -- better than the microwave stuff that I've been eating for dinner sometimes. Chicagoans would kill the owners of this microwavable pizza company. It's a crime. After pizza, Nieves wanted to take me to the beach, even though it was freezing out. Here's a little update on Melissa Problems: Recently, I've developed an allergic reaction of some sorts. There are itchy red blotches on my body and I don't know what they're from. I went to a pharmacy and the pharmacist told me that it's an allergic reaction and he gave me an antihistamine. It's getting better! Nieves believes that sea water can cure anything, so on the COLDEST day, she decides to make me swim in the ocean. I may or may not have been mumbling profanities in between my valiant attempts to tell her in Spanish how badly I do NOT want to do this. Alas, I found my self waist-deep in the ocean with Nieves literally slopping and kicking water on any part of my body that wasn't submerged. This is the point where I confirm the profanity mumbling.

Also, forgot to mention our cultural visit on Wednesday. We went to a lovely little place in the country with a really nice golf course and walked around. We had some wine at the clubhouse and then proceeded to (quickly -- because we loved sitting and drinking wine so much...) to see a castle. It was a full week, hence the not blogging for awhile thing. Hope all is well with everyone back in the states!