Finals, Farewells, and... Fun times!!!

I had an exam Monday and another one Tuesday. I am SO GLAD they are over. I always forget how much finals suck until I'm right in the middle of them. So now I only have 1 class left that meets twice a week. My life is difficult. Ha.

Thursday was our cena de despedida (goodbye dinner), and it was so great. Michael, our program director, loves to take us out to nice restaurants and pay for us, which works out pretty great for me, because I like to eat good food (or, lets not lie, pretty much any food). So the whole program was there, all the students, Michael, Pepa 1 (assistant director who actually does everything), the 5 monitores, María Luisa (housing coordinator), and Mario (guide) in this phenomenal restaurant, laughing and eating and toasting and drinking and generally annoying anybody else unfortunate enough to be there that night.

After dinner we all tried to get into this mega-discoteca to celebrate Marissa's birthday (one of the girls on the VWM program). It was pretty disastrous. We talked to a promoter who said he could put us on a list to get in free and when we showed up they said that the name we gave wasn't on their list. Then some girls gave us coupons for the girls to get in free and the bouncers gave us some trouble with those. So basically what happened then was that one of the girls on the program screamed at the bouncers in both Spanish and English, the bouncer called her short and fat (in Spanish) and wouldn't let her in, Pablo told the bouncer that we understood spanish (or at least the monitores did) and not to talk like that, one of the other guys in the program got forcibly removed from the discoteca, blah blah blah blah. Basically the bouncers were huge assholes and even if they had let us in I wouldn't have wanted to go there. So after that people were tired and upset and most of them called it a night. I didn't want to end the night like that, so I went to a bar with the monitores and had a good time.

Saturday I went with Annie and Rachel to Aranjuez, a town outside of Madrid, on the Strawberry Train, this train from i dunno when, maybe the 1920s, where they serve you like 5 strawberries during the hour long ride (I was expecting way more strawberries). Oh yeah, Aranjuez is known for its strawberries and asparagus, hence the strawberry train- the asparagus train just doesn't have the same appeal. It was really pretty and a lot of fun to have a day out exploring with the girls. We continue to be really really inappropriate, and our favorite line of conversation tends to be anything involving Helen Keller, especially jokes and/or impressions. We're really great people.

Today I did nothing. I had no class. It was great!