La visita de Grace / La Semana Santa

Hilo all, gonna keep this short. (All pictures here http://picasaweb.google.com/x3xleggedxninja )

(León is obsessed with being separated from the rest of the country.  Autonomy is a big deal for many and this sort of graffiti can be seen every ten steps in my city.)

Last weekend my friend Grace came here from Alicante which was great!  I mean we did have a completely open room ready to go here in this house, but since what lies behind the front door of a Spaniard del norte’s is super super über private, she wasn’t allowed to stay here, which made me kinda mad.  Ironically, it’s only private if the person is well-known and isn’t paying to be an exchange student.  Mm-hm.  (Also: I can’t switch to the slightly bigger room with the bigger room and bigger window that gives more nice light and will open up nicely when it starts to get warm soon.  WHATEVER, SPAIN.)

So I showed her around León, which by now every single person in the world should know how I feel about this city.  I meet a lot of Erasmus and American students (from other countries in Europe) who say they really love this city, but normally after talking to them for a minute I realize what they actually MEAN is “I love all the other foreign people who are here, I don’t have any Spanish friends, and I have no attachments to this city.”  Yeah, I feel the same, but I’m not learning that way, and neither are you.  To be honest it is shocccccking how little some people have learned after being here as long as I have, although it even surprises me how many words I don’t know still, too.

ANYWAYS so I showed Grace around.  Weather was cold and it kinda rained a bit, so it wasn’t the most pleasant weather ever.  But I showed her everything there is to see.  So that took an hour and then afterwards we played Chinese Checkers for 2 and a half days.  Hah.  The only thing she didn’t experience was the food, which is way too bad because to understand my experience in this city you have to eat in my house.  But since watching a movie with a friend in my house has been off-limits since day 1, well I don’t even feel comfortable bringing anyone past the Door of Secrecy.

(This is a hill of sheep.)

I think she enjoyed the city as a city to visit, but I also think she understands it’s not the ideal place to live.  She even got to go to one of my classes, and I did the math during the class and we read one line of poetry every 12 minutes in that class.  Definitely not used to that, but “ESO ES LO QUE HAY” (the equivalent to “that’s how things are”).  We did go get some of the special racist lemonade that they serve here.  By the way, it’s true what they say, drink a few of those and you get a huge hangover for some reason.  We also did see an early Semana Santa procession go by, one of the first ones if not the very first.  Probably the best experience though was stumbling across a fairly large anti-abortion rally in front of the cathedral.  Although, surprising to see here?  No.

En fin, I hope she wasn’t too bored, and I thank her for coming out here, and I’ll be very excited to go see her in Alicante sometime so I can see what I’m missing out on.  Hooray cheap Ryanair!  She had a very optimistic attitude about this city when she was here, but in my defense she is an optimistic person and she does not live here.  I am turning into Scrooge, rawr!!!!  …………. Does Scrooge say ‘rawr’?

Also today I locked myself out of the house and the high was like 9 degrees celsius soooo in order to keep warm for those 7 hours and I had to keep buying alcohol to stay in bars, so I guess I got quietly and inadvertently drunk/broke until finally my host momma came back and left me the key, although I did meet some pretty cool Brazilians and an Italian guy who moved here for school a bit ago, so hopefully I see them around more.

Before I came back however I went to the cathedral because there are cars everywhereeee in the city right now to see the Semana Santa processions, and this is what I saw (this is like one of a million processions that they have during this week):

There are more tomorrow morning at like 7 in the morning but yeah that’s not gonna happen.  Now I’m cold and dying (although 95% over the cold I’ve had the last few days) but…

TOMORROW I LEAVE FOR BARCELONA!

Thank god, it’s time for some more traveling.  I’m thinking about making a Day in the life of Nate in León video before I leave here.  I wish I had a nice camera!  But this should be the best trip yet, I’ll be meeting my real momma there on Saturday morning and from there we’ll be hanging in Barcelona, then off to a little tour of Andalucía, then back to Barcelona where I’ll be sentenced to return to León and 3 major papers to write (but shh we’re not talking about that, not even thinking about it!).

So here’s to the potentially best trip so far!  20 hours and I’m outta here!  I wish you could all be coming out here, too, but don’t worry.  It’s not too late, I’m here ’til July/August!  Talk to all in a couple weeks!

¡Viva el feto! (Which can mean “fetus” OR “ugly person.”  Coincidence…?  Not in Spain it’s not!)

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~ by x3xleggedxninja on April 1, 2010.