Something Wet and Something Dry....

Valencia Oceanografico!!!
This Friday I went with a group of people to Valencia to the Oceanografico, which is the largest aquarium in Europe and contains over 500 different species of sea creatures!!!  We left Denia around 10am ate our bocadillos(sandwiches) and then headed off to explore!  We meandered from the Mediterranean to the Tropics and then over to the Red Sea and then to the dolphin show (which was the BEST part of the whole place!!)  This place was sweet!!  They had places you could walk under and huge tunnels with sharks and stingrays swimming over top and on either side of you!

There were so many fish and sea creature enthusiasts in our groups that we ended up staying there until the place closed down. Then the not so fun part came...going home.  Around 6:30pm we got on the train that would take us to the bus station so we could get home to Denia.  The only problem is that the train and bus station don't really work very well together even though they are in the same building....so when we arrived at 8:15 to the Gandia bus station we found out that our bus had left 10 min earlier, which meant essentially that we were stuck in Gandia until 10:30!!!!!!  The only draw back in this plan was that we were all really super hungry....so we walked over to a nearby cafe and had colacao (basically hot chocolate), cafe and muffins!!!  When we got back home we hung out at Jenn's house and made spaghetti and garlic bread!  yummy.  :)

Saturday we decided to hike up Montgo which just happens to be the mountain that is standing in my backyard!! :P  Suprisingly we got a group of approx. 11 people to go with us, I think that is a record so far this semester for us!  We began our treacherous trip up Montgo around 11am.  Montgo has an elevation of around 753m and it takes around 3 hours to get to the first peak.  It was super fun, we started out going at a nice pace and then we spread out as some people wanted to go faster and others slower with the idea of meeting up at the top.  Now I don't know if you know this, but Spanish paths are hard to find/follow...so it was only a matter of time before, yes, I got lost on the mountain...alone.

I had no idea that anyone could get lost from a group of 11 people, but I managed it. somehow.  I walked right past the HUGE wooden sign telling me where to go and just kept following the path I was on.  (which did really lead somewhere actually)  The more I kept walking the stranger I thought it was that I couldn't see anyone anymore.  Thankfully about 5 minutes into my new path I got a call from Kevin who was wondering, along with everyone else, where I was.  I managed to backtrack and find the correct path, thankfully. Once reaching the first part of the top we proceeded to climb along the sharp rocks and bushes with spines that gave us bloody scratches until we reached the first summit (Cima (summit) de Denia)  There we ate lunch and hung out for a bit taking pictures of the awesome view of Denia down below!!

 Then about half the group left to go back to Denia, but some of us had not had enough of getting lost, and the lovely pricker bushes so we started out again for the Cima de Javea.  This initially proved to be a desaster when I lead us again on a path that was nonexistent so we decided to let Kevin lead us there, being the only guy and the one who found the right path again!  It took a while but we eventually made it up to the Cima de Javea!  It had a beautiful view to both sides of the mountain!

  From there we started back down because we still had a 3 hour hike back home and it was already 4pm.  On the way down we did, sadly, get lost..again.  But it was a simple fix and we are going to blame that one on the badly faded yellow arrows....    Back in Denia we ate dinner with our families and then went over to Josiah's house for a little bit of futbol(soccer).  (we did get lost on the way there too..it was a really bad day for getting lost, that or we are just very bad at directional things.) 
Sunday I went to the beach for a bit in the afternoon, but since I hadn't really done any homework I spent all evening at home studying and getting ready for this week.  Over all it was a great weekend...although my legs still hurt from Montgo!!!

Something Fallas and Futbol...

 Falla Saladar - This won one of the first place awards.

 Falla Paris-Pedrera - this Falla got 3rd in the special awards!

Fallas = loud; burning; drunk people; candy; fun; macletas, which are basically fireworks; and large objects in the middle of the streets!  You wouldn't believe how loud Spanish people can be, and how long they are loud...basically we were woken up every morning this week by the desperta (wake-up call) which sounded like bombs going off next to my house.  Then all the small kids would run out into the streets and throw petardos (firecrackers) and eat candy alllllll day until around 12:00am when the younger ones would head off to bed and the older ones would come out and hang out in the streets until about 4:00am when they would finally stop putting the firecrackers into the trash cans to make them louder and go to bed themselves!  The Fallas themselves are works of art. Some of the larger ones were 5 stories tall, and in Valencia they were even taller!!!  Fallas are a form of satire created to critique some aspect of the Spanish govt, entertainment or whatever has happened in the last year.  So what happens is groups of people get together and work on these Fallas all year and then put them up in the streets of Denia for the past week and a half.

 Falla Centro with a sea theme...

 Falla Baix la Mar - 1st place in special award!

On the day of San Jose they have the crema (burning), which starts at 9 for the children's fallas and 12am for the big Fallas!  So obviously since we have heard all the firecrackers and seen the mascletas this week we had to go watch the Fallas burn!!!  Beginning at 8:30 with the last huge mascleta we proceeded to literally run back and forth through Denia in order to see the most cremas possible!  It was so much fun!  We ended up right in the front for a lot of them. The Falleras light the fuse to the Falla, there is a firework show and then they start it on fire!!

 (This is what a Fallera looks like!)
Something you should also know is that the policia are not quite as concernd for our saftey over here.  The police line was only several hundred feet away from the huge burning fallas, so if (and this happened several times) it got too hot and you started to burn or if burning pieces of ash began to float down on your head, all we did was back up a bit!!  :P  It was rather dangerous, but super fun!!!  Have no fear, none of us actually got burned, we just ended up with black ashy faces! As you can see in this next picture they were really really big fires too!!!

 Falla Campaments burning....This was sweet, the Geni's bottom half burned first so it looked like he was floating in a ring of fire!!  Sooo cool!!!

Falla Diana burning!!!

The above picture is kinda fun.  As you can see there were firemen at everyone of the fallas, but not to put out the fires. They spent their time spraying the surrounding buildings with water so they wouldn't burn.  This created an interesting combination of wet/hot ash that stuck and stained clothing as it fell! 

Falla Baix la Mar burning.  This Falla was at least 5 stories tall and was also the winner of the Fallas in Denia.  It had the prettiest firework show and burned super hot!!!


Sevilla vs Valencia
Now that you are sick of reading I'm going to talk about Sunday!  I traveled to Valencia on Sunday with 4 others from our group to see a professional futbol game!!!!  It was Sevilla vs. Valencia in the Mestalla stadium.  We got cheap tickets for the nose-bleed section (literally we were in the last row alllll the way on the top!!!)   It was a fantastic day for a game!  As a result of one of the members of our group having lived in Sevilla for several years we were there to cheer on Sevilla.  It is a good thing to, because they needed supporters!!  I know there had to be other people in that stadium for Sevilla, but we could not find them.When Sevilla scored it sounded like we were the only people in the stadium cheering....which is probably very close to being true. (I'm not sure we were very liked in that stadium!) 

Mestalla, Valencia's stadium!  I think I'm really starting to like futbol!!! 

 The group except Taylor, who took the picture!  Jenn, Hannah, Katie, Kevin, and Josiah!  We had a great time and it was totally worth waking up at 5am the next morning to take the bus back to Denia in order to get to class on time!!

 Kevin and Josiah were very,very, very excited to be there!!!  It was worth it to go just to see how excited they were!

 This is the beginning of the game, Sevilla red, Valencia white. Fun fact, you see all those people in the stands, well us girls figured out pretty quickly that the guy-girl ratio in that stadium was probably 1 girl for every 500 guys!!!  Potential recommendation if you are a female....take up liking futbol!  :P

The final score...GO SEVILLA!!!!!
All in all it was a great weekend...although I didn't get a whole lot of sleep I will be making up for that with the siesta, one of the best parts of the day, and going to bed relatively early this week!

Something Chocolate....

Hey ya'll, so I've been informed that I was on my way to internet abandonment which I hear is almost the same thing as a crime, So I thought I'd whip up something for you all.  :P  This week was not so fun as it included 3 exams, but I managed to get them.  This week also marked the beginning of no class of Fridays!!!!  So I am in Spain, and I have an extra long weekend!!  I love this place!! Thursday evening we hiked out to a cave that is called Cueva Tallada (carved cave). 

It was a long walk but with such good company that it didn't matter!  :)  We walked around for a while, used our 3 small flashlights to find the back of the cave, took some pictures and then headed home.  When we got back we headed over to Jenn's house for our second movie night of the whole time here!!!  (we miss them a little)  We made pasta and Chocolate Chip cookies (literally from scratch!!) and then watched a movie and talked.
Friday was rainy so everyone slept in for a ridiculously long time and then that night Jenn and I bought Ben and Jerry's ice cream and chips and salsa and settled in for another movie....(the reason for all the movies was one of our friends was gone for the weekend and left us her hard drive!!) 
Now here comes the chocolatey part....  :D  So you all know that girls love chocolate right, well Saturday a group of 4 of us decided to take an adventure to a chocolate factory that is about 1:20min away by train.  Valor Chocolate.  If you have never heard of this chocolate you should all stand up right now and go to the store and buy some....no matter the cost.  Yummy.  Random chocolate fact, did you guys know that chocolate beans come in a pod...which sticks out of the side of the trunk of the cocoa trees???  How cool is that!!!  It looks like the orange things in the picture below.

 So yeah, we learned about how they make chocolate and then we got to tour the factory and then best part...FREE SAMPLES!!!  I love free chocolate samples!!  :)  That evening we went for a walk on the beach and found some Jellyfish!!!! 

Yip, it was good stuff.  Sunday we didn't do a whole lot of anything, I had church and then ate lunch with my family there...such good food!!  After I went for a walk with some of the other girls and ended up just going to bed early.  

Oh, some fun information about life here this week.  It's Fallas this week. Which involves lots of bands and firecrackers and noise and firecrackers and burning huge paper machete like things and firecrackers and lots of drinking and...did I mention firecrackers yet? Yeah, like more fireworks than ever and these people let them off in the morning, afternoon, evening, 2am in the morning...It's nuts!!!  And this is only the beginning of the week. It's only going to get better...or worse, not sure which one!