a weekend of new experiences

ForformatingpurposesIneedthisline
The pictures are:
*Two pictures of the Mediteranean. As you can see the sun is quite absent, and the waves are a bit extreme for swiming...
*Salvo with water! A needed commodity after an evening of going to the bars.
*Marco and the sea.
*The place where the Bus should have been... but isn't because it was an hour late....
I have had an interesting weekend. On Friday night I went out to the Pub's with my apartment mates and a bunch of their friends. It was an interesting evening to say the least. To begin we all had cocktails at the apartment between 10:30 and 11:30 and then went out to a bar for tapas. Around 12:30 we moved to a bar with something of a far east theme for more drinks and dancing. After that, Julie, Salvo, and I went across town to a different bar where a bunch of the Erasmus students (a very cool student exchange program for Europeans) were having a party, where we stayed untill that bar closed at 4:00 AM. Then, THEN at 4:00 AM, Marco asks "Vamos a bailar?" (We go to dance?). The very first thought that ran through my head was "Are you crazy? It's 4:00 in the morning." Luckily Julie was tired as well and we went back to our apartment to sleep. The night was a blast, but I felt a bit old for the entire night. Part of me thinks "When in Spain, do as the Spanish do." But that is a culture that I have never been a part of in the States and so it's strange for me take part in it here.
At the end of the night, Salvo and Marco had asked a bunch of people if they wanted to go to the beach on Saturday, and I did, so at 10:00 on Saturday I met them at the bus stop, and we went got on the bus (Note: I hate busses, they are big slow and smelly. I much prefer trains, also note 4:45 AM to 9:15 AM is about 5 hours of sleep for me) for an hour long trip to the Mediteranean. Then when we got to the beach the day was extremely fickle. At times it was raining, at others it was sunny and it was windy for the entirety. But I had a good time. Marco and Salvo are both Italian and are learning Spanish as well, so we were continually making horrible mistakes in our Spanish, and relying on gestures to communicate, but it is always interesting for me to hang out with people who are from a different culture than my own and I had a lot of fun.
Also, the drive between Granada and the beach is beautiful, even though it was on a bus. Granada sits in a little bowl in the middle of a bunch of mountains and so the drive was up over and back down the intervening ridge. The closest experience I can compare it to is the time my Uncle Terry took my brother, my cousin and I up to Yosemite. The small, constantly switchbacking roads, the omnipresent hundred+ foot cliff on both sides, and the slight fear of death if the bus happened to roll off the cliff. The beach on the other hand, didn't hold a dime to any average beach on lake Michigan. But the smell of the breeze that rolled off the water struck a note in my soul that reminded me how important living close to water is for me. I don't think I would ever be able to live in a place that was extremely dry for very long.
The bus ride back to Granada was spent sleeping, and I have been recovering for the rest of the weekend. A couple of random things that I have realized recently.
*It is easy speaking spanish with other people who are just learning it, because they speak a lot slower than native speakers. However, for the purposes of learning, it is perhaps not the best.
*I brought a lot more "STUFF" than I needed to live here, and now I'm confronted by a desire to get rid of a bunch of it. I don't like having a bunch of things. They are a bigger chain to a location, and anchor slowing me down than anything else.
*Beauty exists everywhere in the world, but there is something unique for me in Michigan, that doesn't exist in Granada.
*Friendships are very fragile things. The first stage is amazingly fast, like the first week of growth for a tree, it increases its size by an incrediable magnitude, but it takes a very long time to put down roots with the ability to weather a storm of any strength. Will any of the friendships that I make here weather the course of everyone moving back to their respective parts of the world.....? Who knows, maybe.