San Juan

Last night was the El Día de San Juan, a holiday that traditionally celebrated the summer solstice (like Christmas with the winter solstice) and is basically an excuse to party on the beach.

So first they burn the Juanillos, giant paper puppets, similar to the Fallas de Valencia. Then everyone writes down three wishes on three pieces of paper and collects three coins. Then at midnight everyone burns the wishes and tosses the coins into the water backwards and jumps three waves.

Everyone lights a fire, there are fireworks, and everyone has a good time jamming on the beach. Fun fun.

And today I got my grades. I passed everything! Even friggin' French. Très bien!

Calorrrr

So it's late June, which means everyday gets continuously hotter. Now, I started sweating in March, so that's just a little reference point for you.

Heat makes me lose the desire to move and talk and breathe, so naturally I try to spend as much time as possible at the beach.

Unfortunately, I'm already a gamba, because on Sunday we went to Conil, one of the pueblos blancos. They're gorgeous, they look like little white mountains. But the beaches are bitches cause if you don't put on sunscreen three times you end up like a gamba like me (the Spanish have a hard time with English vowels, and often same beach as bitch. Tanget GO!

In Spain,

Shoot is shit

Six is sex

Socks is sucks

Sheet is shit

Luck is lick

As you can imagine, many humorous phrases are often created by otherwise normal lucky trips to the beach with six people. Tanget STOP!)

And today I went to see my German friend dance El Vito and Sevillanas in concert. Together we are the foreigner gambas.

Matricula

So school is coming to a close and that means I'll be coming home very soon. But like any awesome professional bodybuilding slash mediocre actor slash horrible govenor could tell you,

I'LL BE BACK.

And I mean I'll return to Spain, or at least to Europe. I'm definitely thinking about studying abroad in college. Why?

College in Europe is super cheap.

How cheap? The most expensive colleges get close to €1000. I know, hold onto your seats folks.

Which is super unfair. I'm used to the idea of these dreams schools that cost upwards of $40.000 a year for just the tuition. In Europe, this is unthinkable. Which is nice, because that means everyone can go to school. Money is never an issue.

So I ask myself why it can be so damn expensive in the States. Why does it feel like our universitities are more intuitions of lucrative education than just, education? A degree isn't a privilege for the upper-class, especially, (sorry in advance for saying this..) in these hard economic times.

Me tengo que quejar un poquito..

So after Semana Santa, it would seem that I could get some sleep, right?

Haha, hoo hoo haha, good one, Patrick. But you forget, you're in Spain...

There's a little something called, Mayo de Cruces, which is more or less Semana Santa Dos, except the pasos are just crosses, and most of them are lifted by kids.

Oh but May is over, you say. Yes, my dear, dear foolish friend. But Spain is not over with me, as it seems.

As I type, there is another celebration that is suspiciously similar to Semana Santa; Corpus Christi.

It's very pretty, but still a pain in the ass, volume wise. And all these three celebrations seem to use the e.x.a.c.t. same repertoire.

I'm SOOO over Jesus right now...

La Cucaracha

So last night's graduation party was awesome. After the ceremony, I went home, ate dinner, swam in the ocean a bit, slept for two hours, then redressed and went out to the party. And yes, I went to school today. ¡INTRAX SUPERSTAR!

Of course, five of my teachers were there. And one of them was kinda tipsy! But it's all cool, today is Friday and we can all catch up on sleep during la siesta.

Now, it's very hot weather here. And very common visitors during the summer, are cockroaches.
Lovely.

But they won't come into your room if you have a light on. But if you have a light on, the mosquitos come through your window. And if you close the window you'll die of heat exaughstion.
I try to make myself feel better about this Catch 42 by singing my parody of 'La Cucaracha' when I eat soup: La cuchara.
Naturally, I'm the only one who laughs.

Graduación

So today I went to my school's graduation. It was pretty different: indoors in the theatre, no student speeches, no awards, no scholorships, no gowns, and lots of people (that graduated) didn't even show up.

Oh, and 17 of the 25 kids of the graduating class have to repeat the year.

But all in all, it was pretty nice.

Right now I'm resting up cause later there's a graduation party at 2am even though today is Thursday, but I can't complain, we all have our duties.

It looks like I'm going to pass all my classes, even science and gym! I aced the gym test today and did very well on my presentation on superpopulation in science. Cheers.