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Melissa's Travels

Todos los caminos llevan a...Madrid??

SPAIN | Friday, 18 April 2008 | Views [446]



The older I've gotten the faster time seems to fly by and my month so far in Spain has been no exception. I feel like it was just yesterday that I walked through the door of my host family's apartment here in Alicante and now I will be saying good-bye to them tomorrow afternoon before I embark on my train ride to Madrid. There are so many things I would like to reflect on about my time in Alicante, but with it already being 9:30 on Friday night I'm bound to be called to dinner soon (I hope...though wouldn't be surprised if I have to wait two more hours...) so I suppose sharing some of my photos from the past few weeks will have to suffice. Truthfully these are photos from my friend Jasmin, but since we spent nearly every day together I feel that I can call them my own.






Mark, Jasmin and I during our second week in Alicante. We discovered that a local bar, Havana, hosts a free salsa class every Monday night. We arrived promptly at 10 for the class, only to discover that it was actually "Spanish" time and the class didn't start until 10:45. This gave us the opportunity to enjoy mojitos on the Ramblas. The teacher of the salsa class is quite a character. He's from Paraguay and is always wearing cowboy boots, tight white pants, silk shirts with several of the top buttons undone and swinging around his long black hair while he's shaking his hips. The other night we were sitting outside of another bar nearby when we saw him walking by with a tamborine. He said he was walking around making music for himself but agreed to play a little bit for us. So fun! I'm really going to miss going to salsa every Monday...especially because I just got to be friends with one of the guys who goes there! His name is Alejandro and he's from Uruguay. This past Monday we practiced salsa with eachother and when we parted ways he said "maybe I'll see you around." I thought this was such a great line, it reminds me of the movie "P.S. I Love You" where the two main characters run into eachother on the road and totally hit it off and then say if it's meant to be they'll run into eachother again. Little did I know that Alejandro works at Havana and I have seen him every single night this week, plus Alicante is a such a small place that you're bound to run into people even if you try to avoid them... (more about that later...)



La playa. Only 10 minutes from my house, but I only spent the afternoon there about once a week. I'd much prefer to spend the afternoon having a siesta in my bed, at a cafe with my friends or walking around the city. Of course, when I go to Madrid and there is no beach I will probably kick myself for not going more. At least I wont wish I'd spent more time getting tan since even if I spent every minute at the beach I would still be white! My host dad told me one night that I needed to go to the beach more. I am pretty sure I also heard him use the word "mortician" and then he made an imitation of a zombie with their hands stretched out in front of them. I'm pretty sure he was suggesting that I am so white I look dead, but since it was in slurred rapid Spanish I will never know for sure.



A Saturday at the top of the castle in Alicante with Johannes, Nor and Jasmin (taking the photo). My first week in Alicante Jasmin, Mark and I attempted to climb up to the castle without success. Thankfully (or maybe not...) we had Nor as our guide this time and after some initial thoughts that he was leading us in the wrong direction, we finally did arrive at the road leading up to the castle. As Nor told me, ¨Todos los caminos llevan a Roma,¨and after he repeated it several times I finally understood that he meant All Roads Lead to Rome. It was an interesting afternoon to say the least. The sun was shining, the view of Alicante and the vast expanse of the Mediterranean was amazing and Jasmin and Johannes were great company. Although it was very gracious of Nor to offer to be our guide, I can´t say I was thrilled about it. He only speaks Spanish (and Arabic) and after a late night of dancing the night before my brain wasn´t up for endless conversing in Spanish. Not to mention that he was enamored with me and since I don´t know how to say ¨Let´s just be friends¨in Spanish, I was left with the conundrum of how to make it apparent that I wasn´t interested when I couldn´t use the easy cop out of having a boyfriend because I´d already told him the truth. In the end I decided to remain silent for most of the afternoon, which I later found out he really liked! For the next week we would run into Nor every single day. Granted, Alicante is a small town, but some of the circumstances seemed a bit too coincidental. It probably didn´t help that our favorite cafe was directly below his apartment...Anyways, by my last night there I think he had finally gotten the hint and I was able to return to some of my favorite dancing establishments without worrying if he´d be there or not.


Unfortunately at the moment I don´t have many more photos from Alicante accesible for this blog. There were many times in Alicante that I wondered why I had even chose to come to this relatively small coastal town when I knew my heart was in Madrid, such as when my roommate ¨borrowed¨my cell phone for the night without asking or when my host family locked their kitchen cupboard leaving me with only crackers for breakfast. However, the good memories by far outweigh these darker spots and thanks to my optimistic attitude I think I will forever remember Alicante with fondness. Although my roommate wasn´t everything I could of wished for, I somehow found myself on the same path as an amazing girl from Switzerland, Jasmin, who had also decided that taking a break from her job to learn Spanish in Alicante from March 23rd to April 19th, 2008, was just what she needed. We had the privelege of spending nearly every day together and through a mix of English and Spanish enjoyed many conversations about relationships, priorities and worldviews while she drank her token black tea with milk and me, always a cafe con leche. As I sit here in my new school in Madrid finishing this blog, I can´t help but remember the esplanada of Alicante and the crumbling steps of the barrio antigua where every night you´d find crowds of people from all over the world and of varying ages congregating for cheap beer and converstions in a mixla of languages. I´m not sure if Alicante is a city I will ever return to again, as many of my memories involve the incredible people I enjoyed my time with. However, my experiences of that city have melted into my heart and are now inseperable from who I am, wherever in the world I may be. And now...it is time to embrace Madrid!!!

 

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