This week was midterm exams week. This was exciting because it meant that we are half-way done with our classes. It was also a bit scary because the grades for each of my classes are only based on two exams. Also it is extremely hard to study when there are so many other things going on. In the end I made it through all my exams and did alright. There still is a lot of room for improvement so I hope to do even better when finals come around.
On Thursday night after exams we went to the residence halls to hang out. One of the girls on the trip lives in the residence halls instead of with a host family because she is older than the rest of us and preferred to live there. The halls are really cool because they live in flats. You share a flat with a few other people. Each person gets their own room and there is a living room, kitchen, and two bathrooms. The girl lives on the third floor, so when we were done hanging out a few of us decided to use the elevator.
Elevators in Spain are really small. They only comfortably fit two or three people. Five of us squished into the elevator. Then one of the girls thought it would be funny to jump. That was a bad idea because the elevator stopped and we were stuck inside. There was some panicking by a few of the people in the elevator. One girl gets claustrophobic really easily so she kind of curled up into a ball in the corner. Another girl was freaking out telling us how in the movie “Final Destination” people died when they were trying to open the doors of the elevator. The girl that jumped felt bad about it and was trying to calm down the situation by making jokes and trying to change the subject of us being stuck in an elevator. The guy that was with us was trying to communicate with the people we heard outside the elevator doors and tried to open the elevator. I calmly watched all the madness that was occurring. I tried to use my phone to call for help but I didn’t get service in the elevator. We tried the alarm button on the elevator and all it did was make a lot of noise. Luckily one of the girls’ phones ended up barely working and we had the rest of the group call for help. After what felt like an hour, but in reality only was 15 to 20 minutes, an elevator repairman opened up the doors for us and we crawled out.
This week Carnavales began. Carnaval is the celebration that happens before lent. It lasts about a week. At night people go out wearing costumes. The biggest day of celebration is supposed to be on Tuesday; which is Mardi Gras. On Saturday we went with the school to Ciudad Rodrigo because they have a big Carnaval celebration. They also have “Running of the Bulls”. Some of the streets were fenced off for the running. People end up running through the streets with the bulls and end up in the Plaza Mayor. Around the Plaza Mayor there is a big grandstand with an arena in the center. This is where we sat. We watched people run into the arena with the bulls following and then they messed around with the bulls for awhile. We did see one guy get flipped by a bull. He bull hit him so hard that his shoe flew off. Luckily he didn’t get stabbed by the horns. Later there was a bull fight but we didn’t get to see it because we didn’t have tickets for it.
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| The Arena with the Bulls |
The other cool part about Ciudad Rodrigo is that everyone is in costumes. My favorite part was when a whole big group of 10-15 people would dress up as the same thing. We saw a big group of Smurfs and a group of bees. I wore a Snow White costume! They also had carnival rides, games, and a market area. We had an awesome day hanging out in Rodrigo.
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| Giant Group of Smurfs |
Next weekend I am going to Istanbul, Turkey.
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