Oh. Sorry for not posting anything yesterday. I was tired and mad.
So yesterday morning, I woke up, and had to go to school in the morning. So, at 8:30, we trudged down the road and did our presentation. We were second, and I did well enough, even though my group-mates dropped the ball. I did my bit about Spanish history, and I bored everyone but the teacher, since I used some big words that they probably couldn't- or wouldn't- understand.
We talked about... something after that. Weeeirrd. After I had a coffee, I can't remember two whole hours. I hope we didn't talk about anything important.
I walked back to the house because I wanted some time alone to rest (I was tired), and I had lunch somewhere in there maybe. I know that I got some work done on my book, which caused me problems later that day but I don't want to expound upon that. We met at 6:30 at one of the many plazas in Sevilla and walked to the Flamenco museum to see a show. We were a little late, so my seat was very bad, but maybe that's for the better since the dancers got very sweaty and the first three rows were drenched by the end of the show.
Flamenco. What is it? It's one of the two major Spanish dances, the other being the Paso Doble. Flamenco originates in Andalusia, probably in Sevilla, and flamenco dancers are everywhere on the streets.
It's a very different kind of dance, and the best I can compare it to is Tap. Flamenco utilizes foot and wrist movements above everything else, can be done in tiny spaces (or larger ones) and is danced in parts.
Flamenco music has no real melody, is almost exclusively on guitar with vocals, but there aren't really words either. For example, last night, one of the "songs" consisted solely of the singer wailing "Mariposa" over and over again. Oh, and "¡Olé!". The songs are instead more of a short piece of showy rhythms and some difficult semi-melodic blurps, where the dancer dances very quickly. After this solo type thing, they slow down significantly.
Flamenco originates in the Moorish time, and it shows. The vocals sound very much like those used in traditional Arabic music, and even though the rhythms in flamenco are distinctly Spanish, one has to wonder where that Hispanic sound comes from...
After the foot tapping gave us all a headache, we asked Maria to suggest to us where to go eat. She pointed us to an Italian restaurant, where they played repetitive club music at us. I had some pasta, and while I like the other Italian pasta I'd had, this was also not bad.
Apparently the waitress gets as sick of the music as we did. I feel a bit sorry for him.
We slogged back home... and passed some fund-raiser in one of the Plazas. They were playing Guantanamera... not the version by Pete Seeger, unfortunately, but we had to stop for it.
Something to say here is that in the US, if they tried to do what they did here, no one would dance, and if they did, it would hardly be called "dancing." Here in Spain, when you dance, you dance. The entire crowd was moving in unison. It was lovely.
This morning, I woke up a little later, ate my breakfast and hid from people. Then I wandered over to Plaza de España again before I went to school.
Today, we had a cooking class. Where better to have it than at a school?
Maria was very, very, very excited. She loves cooking, apparently, so she got straight to work and had us choppin' up veggies for gazpatcho and Spanish tortilla. I was put in charge of peeling a potato with a dull knife. Very safe. However, my job was certainly not the worst. We had three onions that needed cutting.
Apparently, Spanish onions make you cry more than American onions. We all, every last one of us, were practically chopping our respective veggies blind due to the swelling and the tears.
The tortillas were very tasty, and the gazpacho was better than the other gazpachos I've had, all things considered. I still don't care for the stuff. At all.
We had about an hour to kill before we had to take a test. So... I watched the guys and a few of the girls playing Monkey in the Middle with an unripe orange. Things got intense!! Also, we were joined by the world's largest grasshopper.
We went and took the test, which was wonderfully easy (except the map labeling. I had no idea where the tallest mountain in Spain was, nor did I know the exact location of a river.) and after that, the other professor came in and we did some review games. She realised that we had just taken a test, and felt sorry for us, I guess.
We went home, ate dinner (Señora made us... spanish tortilla!) and here I am now. I am still really mad at my roommates, so I'll be doing my best to spend my day off tomorrow away from them either shopping, reading, or writing. Or sitting for hours on end in Plaza de España.
Sorry about the lack of a decent post, guys. Really.
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