Galicia

Pronounced Ga-LEE-thee-ah, is in northern Spain.

My program in IES took groups of us up there to show us around another part of Spain and to get to know each other more, at least that's the reason I came up with. This post will be a run down of most of the stuff that happened. It might be kinda long.

Thursday:

I was out until about 3:30 am and had to be at the airport by 5:30. Got about an hour worth of sleep, packed up my book bag, and hopped in a taxi with my housemate to the airport. I was very tired all day (actually, the whole trip). When we got there, we went to Santiago where the bones of the Apostle James are kept. People used to (not so much anymore, but still do) pilgrimage to this site to see the bones. We had an interesting tour guide who was with us the whole trip. Learned a lot of cool things. Oh, and I also had octopus. Not too bad, although too much of it started making me nauseous.

We then went and checked into our hotel which was pretty nice, although apparently if you were in a group that spoke more Spanish (I was in the beginner group) you were in a nicer hotel. The rooms also had bidets, which I think this is the first time I ever seriously used one. I'm not sure if I'm proud of that fact. Yeah...

We had a great buffet at the hotel (breakfast and dinner every day. Interesting and good food) and then walked around La Coruña. Went to bed way to late...

Friday:

Woke up at 7:30 and ate breakfast. Saw some ports and other cities. We also saw an old vineyard and I got some Kas Limon (lemon pop, you would have loved it Dad) at a local supermarcado. It was .35€.

We then went to an area where there was a gorgeous beach. Another guy and I thought it would be a sweet idea to swim out to this statue out in the water about 150 yards or so away (that's my guess at least). We didn't have our swimsuits, so we stripped down to our boxers and dove into the cold Atlantic. As we swam (and pulled my boxers back on) we were pretty excited. Then, when we were about 15 yards away, the other guy, Steven, started talking about sharks. We looked down and saw black spots and started freaking out. We almost went back but then calmed ourselves down. We came all that way, dangit, we were not turning back. We got to the statue and realized we were pretty dumb for panicking so bad, haha. It was just barnacles and stuff. We got to the statue and then swam back. Pretty cool and worth having to quickly get naked and put my shorts back on when we got back to the beach (there are no bathrooms at the beach and I didn't want wet boxers on).

We went back to the hotel and then walked around again that night. Interesting night life there...

Saturday:

Not too much to write here. Saw some more sites which was fun. I also learned about how cheap sandwiches are here. It was awesome.

Oh, and people got in trouble. I can say more later, but there were a lot of punks on this trip (especially in the beginner group) and a lot of people were hungover, drunk, and obnoxious. Someone peed on another guest's hotel door, faked being sick to get out of going on a tour, and various other things. Sheesh...

Sunday: Woke up at 8am instead of 7:30! Woo! Saw the city we were staying at and then got on an airplane and arrived back in Barcelona. Overall, it was a very entertaining and interesting trip. Beautiful area. I'm now going to shower and perhaps sleep.