Carnaval

Last night was Carnaval in Alicante.  It is a festival that is basically Mardi Gras and Halloween rolled into one.  Everyone dresses in costumes, anything from princesses to random scary things.  A lot of boys here like to dress up as woman--its a euro thing.  Most people have something on their face, either a mask or paint or wigs.  Libby and I found a little store run by the Chinese, "tienda china," where we found some great costume gear.  There will be pictures soon!

Spain is on a completely different schedule than the rest of the world.  Here, the parade doesn't start until 10 or 11, concerts are going on in all the plazas from about midnight until 4 in the morning.  People go out late and stay out later.  I still haven't gotten used to it, by about 2 in the morning I'm spent.  Anyway, we all went out together, and by we all I mean some Missouri kids, some German girls and some Japonese kids from our classes.   One of my favorite things about Alicante is that the university has a huge foreign exchange department and there are tons of students from all over the world, especially europe.  It's really fun to speak spanish with someone else who is learning spanish, who doesn't speak english.  If they speak english, its too easy to cheat when you don't know a word and break into spanlish.  When the only language you have in common is spanish, when you don't know a word you are forced to break into charades and act it out somehow.  I love that.

Classes don't start until Wednesday, so Libby and I have a few days to get everything organized in the apt.  We live right above a pub names O'Hara's that is showing the super bowl tonight, which is on at about 2 AM our time.   I am hoping that they show all the same commercials...  we'll see!