Valencia and My BIRTHDAYYYYY

Hello All,
Sorry for the long interval since our last post, I will try and make this one extra good to make it up to you, dear reader.

When last I left off we had just returned from Paris. We only had 2 days of school that week because it was a national holiday (I don't know what it was for though (maybe Columbus or something)).  On Tuesday we had a mexican fiesta lunch for our friend Heather's 20th birthday.  Lots of fun and NACHOS!

This past weekend we took a program trip to Valencia where we arrived at the 21st century.  Instead of admiring endless Baroque and Gothic stuff we did some modern things (after we admired some Baroque and Gothic stuff)!  First we checked into the hotel (On the card in the room it said SH Ingles which looks like shingles) it was really nice and we had SHEETS and CNN in English!  We then ate our, as usual, delicious, program lunch.  Paella is a Valencian thing so we had a ton of it.
After we were well fed and drowsy we commenced our walking tour of the city.  As usual, we went to the cathedral:

And saw an old market that was super ornate:

As we had eaten our weight in paella for lunch, we went out for a very light dinner that included Horchata, another Valencian thing (it is like this milky sweet drink made from some nut) and pulpo, our old fave.  Since we were all living together for the first time since Santiago, we had a pj party and watched Little Miss Sunshine!

The next day we went to the Arts and Sciences museum.  The buildings are some of the coolest I've ever seen.  If we felt like we were living in the time of Carlos III this was like being rocketed into the world of the Jetsons.

Imitating art

There was an awesome aquarium there and we communed with our marine friends.

We went on a boat tour of some rice paddies (where the Paella magic starts).
And at night we got some more paella and walked around the city.  It was really beautiful.  And then we had another pj party and watched some shows in English!

On our last day in Valencia, we went to a modern museum and the BEACH!  It was good to get my toes back in the sand.  We ate more paella and left.

Here are some funny things from that trip:
-Michael Aronna, our program director, had a little puppy with him.  We were all trying to figure out its name when  Rachel tells us it is Ranch. Later, after talking about how weird Ranch is for a dog's name, we found out that his name was actually Hugo and not Ranch as we had suspected!  What an odd mix up.
-We played the dating game and its reverse to amuse ourselves in the long bus ride.  (The dating game is when one person asks typical dating show questions to the rest of the people who pretend to be someone else. ie When I asked Rachel who her role model was she said Big Ben (she was Flava Flav)
The opposite of the dating game is when the person next to you writes a name on a piece of paper and you hold it on your forehead.  You ask questions to the rest of the group to figure out who you are (I was grandmother willow, the talking tree from Pocahontas)

Anyway, YESTERDAY WAS MY 21ST BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!! (as well as the halfway point of this semester)

It was a super awesome bday!  I went shopping at bought myself a necklace.  Then for dinner about 20 of us VWMers went out for tapas!  We ordered 18 tapas, this may be unheard of.  The food was so delicious.  I was also so glad that so many people came to wish me a great 21st.

Me dear friends brought me a cake which we all devoured in a savage fashion as well as Homage to Catalonia, a book by George Orwell, (this was not devoured).  Afterwards, a bunch of us went to an original language movie theater to see The Social Network.  This was an awesome birthday!!!

This weekend Rachel and I will be making the trek to Marrakech, Morocco, and her birthday is on Sunday!!

Hasta la Vista,

Hilary