Well its actually the week after Semana Santa, or that which we call Easter Week in Spanish, and though i don’t remember all the juicy details, i figure its better to write something to have some slight record of how i spent my ´vacation time´ without my host family here on the island, since i haven’t been writing so frequently these days. (See that as a good sign that I have been too occupied to write down all my activities.)
Since my host family had made their plans long before to go during Easter week to the United States to visit their son in New Jersey, I had also been planning on ways to get out of dodge for the time being, since I didnt want to be alone for the week, and it would be a great opportunity to travel, since everyone is on vacation. So initially I had plans with my friend Anna to go with her to Galacia, the north eastern corner of the peninsula to spend the time with her grandparents there since they have a house in which we could stay and all, and we were even planning on catching a bus to Portugal to take a look. THEN, when i went to Italy, we (the group of exchangees) had started to make plans to go to Marbella, the southern tip of the peninsula, to spend the week with the group of Americans, which to me sounded much more appealing considering that I would be with this amazing group of kids, and Id thought about visiting with my friend in Valencia beforehand, and then moving onto Sevilla afterwards, and it was going to be this great elaborate excursion of all of the important southern regions of Spain and I couldn’t wait. In the end, there was a problem with accommodations, and all the people who had willingly offered their homes as places to stay weren’t given permission from their host parents, and the cheap tickets I had found came up as unavailable. After a lot of stress, tears and frustration, I couldn’t change that I would be spending my Easter vacation here in the Island.
It had been arranged that I stay with my ´aunt´, who lives right in Los Christianos, and I ended up having a great time passing the week here in the island. I skipped school Friday with Maude, and we went to the beach; I was red as a cherry at the end of the day because I still havent learned to use sunscreen. That night I went out to the discos with a big group from class, which works out nicely having a home in Los Cristianos because it is not necessary to pay for a taxi home, as everything is in walking distance. Saturday morning, with three hours of sleep, I woke up early to go to the Playa de San Juan and cheer on my sailing school classmates in their regatta, or sailing race. Because there wasnt enough wind, they couldnt compete. That night I went out again, though with little enthusiasm because of my tiredness, with Andrés, the Italian, Soledad, the Argentinian, and Maude but we left early, around 3 because we were all tired. Sunday I walked to the beach with Anna (my aunt), I went to Palm Sunday mass, and then we met up at the beach and relaxed and recovered from the night before (she had also gone out to dance). We went to bed early that night. Monday was the second part of the Regatta, fortunately there was wind; the kids from our school all did really well, one boy Uli, took second place. Tuesday I had sailing class, in order to compensate for all the kids that didnt participate in the regatta over the weekend when we would have typically had class, we had our classes during the week. There was no wind that day, so we went out in the plastic canoes. This turned out to be quite the experience, it was me and this seven year old boy, Ricardo, a smart kid who is not afraid of stating his opinion, and we got in a mixup with the a strong current which we couldnt seem to row out of no matter how hard we tried, and the waves were big that day and the wind had started to pick up, which worsened even more our struggle to break free from the current and we were headed straight for the rocks. I was having a great time and enjoying the situation until he started crying and yelling at me and screaming ´we are going to die!´ in spanish. The poor kid, I felt so bad, but I couldnt really do much but try and calm him, which wasnt working so well. Finally Monolo, our instructor came to the rescue and pulled us out of there. We returned to land smiling about it, but the last thing he told me was ´I am not going to forget to tell my parents about this.´ Comforting. The next day we had class again, and it was another day without wind, so we rode around in the Lancha, the new motor boat, and watched the dolphins and rode along the coast. We had a paella at Marisols with all the family for el dia de los padres. Thursday was a free day for me, so I did a little hiking. I walked about three hours (there and back) to Las Galletas, on the other side of the mountain, then went to have lunch at my grandparents house for lunch, and later that night went to hang out with some friends. Friday I went to Adeje pueblo to watch the Easter processions which ended up being different than i thought they would be, and more like a theatrical reproduction of Easter Sunday than anything, with one man playing Jesus, etc, etc. Later I went to my grandparents again to eat, and then to the movies with Emilio and Anna and we watched The Chronicles of Spiderwick. Saturday we had sailing. again. Finally I went out in the boat with Niko, a friend studying in Madrid; we went together in the Vorean and he practiced his English in that sexy french accent of his ; ). Later that day I watched my little cousins, Eva and Mar for Marisol, then went out to the discos later that night. Sunday was another day at sailing and the wind was acting really crazy and I tipped two times in my first ten minutes and then had to go in because of the speed and irregularity of the wind, that and i was very tired from the week before and didnt have much focus, so i went home early and rested. My host family got home late that night, so I spent my last night at Anna´s house.
Monday we started again with school. The worst part of any vacation is getting yourself back into your normal everyday routine. Maude got back Wednesday from Sevilla, and we have been planning and preparing ever since for the visit of Juliette, an exchangee who lived close to Maude in Barcelona who will be arriving on April 13th and staying for 9 days.
