Carnaval and Altea.

Lately I have found it much easier to forget to write on my blog and that just isn't acceptable, I have to keep on top of it. Also looking back at some of my other posts I realized there are definitely a lot more pictures than words. I think pictures are more how I explain and tell what has been going on in my life and I have never been a very good writer so that is how what my blog has transformed to, more pictures less words. I don't know what people prefer more words or pictures, but I am going to have very few pictures in this post because I simply don't have any more pictures to show you yet.

The main reason I don't have pictures is because I refuse to bring my camera out with me at night especially for Carnaval cause I did not want it to get stolen or anything else happen to it.

I kind of wish I would have had my camera for saturday night of Carnaval because it was CRAZY and there were so many cool costumes!!! Seriously Spaniards know how to party it up. Friday night Mandy, Britta, a few other random people and I went out to see the parade they were going to have. Well that was kind of a flop... Mandy's teacher told her there was going to be a parade at 9:30 starting at the Plaza de Toros, which was perfect because it is right by our house. Then Britta was looking online and said it didn't start until 10:30 so we waited and went down to the plaza around 10:30. Of course when we got down there there was no one around so we decided to go down the street a little further and see if we could find it. Nothing, absolutely no one was out looking like they were waiting to watch a parade so we went back up to the plaza de toros just to check again so see if anyone was there. Still no one so we ended up meeting up with a few other people from our program and went to a little bar and relaxed and talked for an hour or so. We were pretty bummed that there was no parade and we felt kind of stupid but that is okay we still had a good night.

Friday afternoon after I got out of class Mandy wanted to go to the chocolatería so Mandy, Rebeka (my Swedish roommate), and I went. For those of you who don't know which I assume is most of you a chocolatería is a little shop, that kind of looks like an old time ice cream parlor, that has an entire menu of just chocolate stuff. It is amazing! Here in Alicante since the Valor chocolate factory is so close the chocolatería near us is a Valor one.

We were literally the only people in the place besides a women and her daughter who came in for about 10 minutes.

This is what Rebeka got, it is a cold chocolate drink with whip cream and sprinkles on top.

It is kind of hard to tell but Mandy got churros and chocolate.

It is delicious, but the chocolate is a lot to take and technically you are supposed to drink the chocolate once you are done with the churros, but I don't think any of us could have done it.

I got the coolest thing of the menu. The are little shot glasses full of different intensities of chocolate.

I would barely even have half the shot glass of any of them so Mandy and Rebeka helped me out. My favorites were the lightest ones, but I liked the dark chocolate one too. The one I absolutely hated was the second on in from the left. Something about it was just disgusting.

This explains to you what I got. They had it is Spanish and in English, that is what I call a cheat sheet :)

We also got a box of assorted chocolates so share. We got a row so we picked the five flavors we wanted. They were all really good!

The next night of Carnaval Britta, Mandy, and I went out to see what festivities were going on and guess what we found a parade!!!! We just laughed when happened to stumble upon a parade we weren't even looking for. It made us feel a little better after the night before. We walked around looking for people from our group and ended up running into a kid from my class and his group of friends so we hung out with them all night. It was fun because I finally convinced Mandy to go out on a weekend!!! Normally she isn't the type to go out and drink and such but I told her that it is just as fun going out and just dancing. Low and behold she came out didn't drink danced and shockingly had a good time :) I was happy I got her out of our house for a change.

Saturday night is the big night for Carnaval. It is the night where everyone dresses up like it is halloween and pretty much just parties in the street. Here is Alicante they closed off La Rambla, which is the main street where all the bars are, and had stages and vendors lined up all over the place. I was C-R-A-Z-Y there was an insane amount of people all over the place and what got me is that it isn't just adults, kids were out too with their parents. I don't think I would ever bring my child out when I knew it was just going to be a huge drunken party. Pretty much the entire night was spent walking around looking at people costumes and dancing. It was a lot of fun but a tad overwhelming for me. Even when we went down to the port there were people everywhere, it is definitely the younger crowd though. I was terrified someone was going to fall in the water or something because practically everyone was wasted. On my walk back home at 5:30 in the morning I was looking at the ground and thinking I feel bad for whoever has to clean this up. It was such a mess, alcohol, broken bottles, pieces of costumes, pee, and all sorts of random stuff on the ground. Overall it was a lot of fun though but not something I could handle for more than one day.

Sunday Pepita had here entire family over for lunch and she made delicious pork roast! It was so yummy I had it for lunch dinner and lunch again the next day. Unfortunately it caused a little stomach, acid reflux pain but it was good while I was eating it.

Also Sunday Mandy decided she wanted to take the tram a few towns up to Altea so her, Samuel and I went around 4:00. Unfortunately we went a little late so it was kind of cold and it got dark really fast, but it was nice to get away for part of the day and explore a new place.

Again yet another beautiful place :)

I loved that it wasn't sand beaches, it was white rocks instead. It made such a soothing sound when the tide would roll in and out.

Mandy

We were thought we could take this path all the way around and quickly realized we could not unless we wanted to get wet.

Haha this picture is hilarious. Samuel was jumping from rock to rock and I just happened to snap a picture right when he was jumping with perfectly straight legs, perfect posture and hands in the pockets. For some reason it just looks strange and it cracks me up.

The city was so beautiful at night with the cathedral at the top of the hill all lit up.

Almost as pretty as our castle at night.

So I kind of lied there were quite a few pictures but not as many as normal and I made sure to write a little more. Hope you all enjoyed it!