Dia 32-34: Pantalones de "Party" y Gazpacho

Que pasa chicos, 

On Sunday, we woke up around 9am completely exhausted from all of our crazy adventures on Saturday night. We sadly packed up all of our belongings and emotionally prepared ourselves to say goodbye to the great city of Roma. Como siempre, we went downstairs and had our lovely cappuccino and nutella croissant. Once everyone in our group was ready to go, we headed to the Termini Station to make sure we had our bus passes and could find our specific bus stop.

             

Then, we went and had a lunch/snack as our final meal. I ordered lasagna, and it was lovely. Then we went in search of our final gelato of the trip. Finally, after several failed attempts we found a place where I got chocolate and hazelnut gelato again. While I was in the gelato shop ordering, I look outside and see Steve, Sara and Cara literally crying because they are laughing so hard and they are completely doubled over. They were laughing so hard that it was contagious as soon as I walked up, plus I had a pretty good idea what was so damn hilarious: Steve’s backpack.

             

Alright, Steve decided to be super cheap and go to a Chino (what the Spaniards call stores owned by Chinese people) and buy a 6 euro backpack so that it would be small enough to be a carry on. Well his backpack was so small that he basically had to wear the same clothes everyday because he couldn’t fit anything more. FURTHERMORE, the backpack was an EPIC piece of crap and everytime he went to grab a strap to pick it up, it would break. Legit, this backpack was a running joke on the trip. The buckles broke off, the material ripped, the straps became unstitched, it was HILARIOUSLY pathetic. To add insult to injury, the backpack had the most glorious phrase on it that read “Sports Group, Gooos, Feel Yours”. OH MY GOD. I can’t express how hard we laughed about this backpack. I hope that I described it well enough that you at least smiled because I’m sure the only way to really do it justice is for you to meet that bad boy and watch Esteban fail miserably at every attempt to use it. Come the end of the trip, he was bear hugging the backpack to avoid touching any of the oh so delicate straps. BTW, I’m shaking laughing as I type this.

             

Alright, enough about that insane backpack. We got on the bus, got on the plane and arrived again in Sevilla. Everything went pretty smoothly. When I got back home, my family had left over Paella Negra waiting for me that was super delicious. Then I ate the Spanish Tortilla with them for dinner and spent the night looking at all of my glorious pictures from Rome instead of doing homework. 

On Monday, I went to class as usual. For lunch I had the very tasty orange soup with sausage, meatballs and carrots AND got to skype Julie, Mike and Brandoli for a good while. My little weasel can walk!!!! I am so excited to see him when I get back home. 

In the later afternoon, I met up with the girls in my Culture Group Project so we  could figure out our presentation that was due the next day. We each had watched a movie directed by a Spaniard. The meeting went much faster than we anticipated, so Laura, Katherine and I just walked around into touristy shops looking for gifts for our families aftwerwards. Sadly, because we met in the afternoon, this meant I didn’t get to play soccer with the whole group again.

For dinner, we had French fries and fried chicken, It really doesn’t make sense to me how the US has the bad rep for frying all of our food when I don’t know anyone who has a fryer OR eats French fries as much as my family. Honestly, everyone in my program said their homestay has AT LEAST one fryer and that they use it alllll the time. Although my house parents are fabulous cooks, I am soooooo exhausted of French fries. Apparently, Prince Carlos eats French fries with every meal. This kid is legit a joke. He’s a total prince. He doesn’t do a single chore. He doesn’t put his dish in the sink LET ALONE in the dishwasher, so rejected food and garbage all sitting on the counter. He doesn’t eat any meals with us and he never eats the same meal as us. It’d be one thing if the kid was like between the ages 8-12… but he’s 17. SERIOUSLY? I apologize for the rant.

Tuesday was party pants day at the ISA Office…. Not officialy… but we basically made it official. Since we’d all been going HAM buying several pairs of party pants, we decided we’d all wear a pair (MJ too!) and then take a big picture together. It was an epic success:

Class went as normal. Today we were SUPPOSED to present about our movies, but 3 groups went ahead of us and used all the 2 hours to present so we will present on Wednesday instead. No pasa nada. For lunch I had albdondigas! Yummyyyyyyy. THEN, lucky lucky me, I randomly facetimed Colleen and she was available! We spent about an hour chatting and catching up. It was quite the pleasant surprise to spend a bit of my afternoon as if we were together. I deff miss my Tommy! Then, at around 8ish, Maca taught me how to make gazpacho! It was actually super duper easy!!!!! I have confidence that I can make this well back in the US. Julie shall be pleased. Here is a pictorial recipe:

 (2 kilos of tomatoes)

 (chop them into large pieces and put them in a pot)

 (add a chopped green pepper)

 (Peel a cucumber)

 (chop and add to the mixture)

 (add 1-2 diced cloves of garlic)

 (Let two slices of bread soak in water for 5 minutes)

 (add 5 turns of white wine vinegar)

 (add 1 small cup of EVOO)

 (add several large pinches of salt)

 (tear up the wet bread and add to the pot)

 (Maca said the cook must always have a beer while preparing Gazpacho)

 (mix all the ingredients up in the bowl)

 (add 1/3 of the ingredients into a blender)

 (mix until smooth)

 (the final bowl, blender and pot of ingredients)

That night, I met up with Sarah Diamond, the one and only girl in the group not from UF, down near the cathedral for some drinks. We spent a couple hours gossiping and just filling each other in with all the details from our adventures from the past weekend. Sarah had spent her weekend at the beach in Malaga. We then wandered to some other bars to have a couple more beers and then fortunately passed by an Heladeria that was still open, so clearly we indulged. 

(I love the Giralda)

 That's all folks!

Hasta luego,
Raquel