Family Dinners:
So this all started with the first time Team Missouri got together to plan our Semana Santa trip and I decided to turn it into a dinner date, with the planning afterwards. All of the girls came over, and I made fairly epic lasagna, to which they contributed baguettes and bottles of wine. To be honest, we may have had a bit much wine, because very little planning got done. But it was a good night, and I can accurately say that I was the cause of the first time Stacy was ever actually full in Spain.
Anyways, this has turned into our once-a-week American dinner night. After my lasagna, Lindsay made fried chicken, mashed potatoes, salad, and I brought deviled eggs. (Just assume after this point that at every meal whoever is not cooking will bring wine, baguettes, and Lindsay will bring delicious chocolate covered flaky sticky pastries.) Next, Stacy made this awesome casserole that her mom usually makes that was similar to Shepherd's pie, but with tomato instead of gravy, and also salad. Then I ended up going again on a week when Kate didn't have time to cook, and I made meatloaf, baked potatoes, and salad. Kate went next, and we had fajitas! With sangria, bread and tortilla chips, of course. After that, Leslie cooked us an awesome pasta from a recipe she got from her brother that had a cream sauce and your choice of close to ten or so toppings. Delicious. Lindsay went again and made a spring-y meal with chicken salad vinaigrette sandwiches, goat cheese balls covered in spices and bacon pieces, and bread and more cheese. Then Kate's turn again, and she made a brie pasta with basil, cherry tomatoes and ham, and salad. So we're caught up! It's so great though – it's really nice to have a night set aside to sit down and eat all as a group, and hang out no matter how busy we are, and not to mention to eat complete meals reminiscent of home, even if they are our culinary experiments. We've decided that when we get back to Columbia, we'll have Spain nights, and try to cook Spanish dishes. I've figured out tortilla (http://photos.wingerz.com/d/1255-2/tortilla.jpg) -- I made one yesterday! It wasn't perfect by any means, but it turned out and actually looked like a tortilla, and tasted awesome! The next one will be better, I'm sure. And then we'll progress into more interesting things, surely. Yay, family dinners!
Warm weather in the P-Lo:
This has, obviously, lead to lots of fun adventures! I'll try to keep things in order, so I won't skip too far ahead (do you feel the anticipation building? Of when I'm finally caught up? Can you bear the excitement to hear about all of my (mis)adventures?) but I'll leave you with the results of my solitary photo-ventures:
The Communications building on the University of Navarra, Pamplona campus. 
And then here with Kate, Leslie, and Lindsay (Stacy was in Alicante visiting Nicole):
Churchy things:
First off, upon Santiago's suggestion, Lindsay and I decided to go see a performance of the Mozart Requiem that was being put on for Palm Sunday at la Iglesia de Carmelitas Descalzos (the church of the barefoot caramels…haha, kidding, kidding). So, with very obscure directions and an update that Santi couldn't make it, we wandered through the city and then found the church, two hours too early. Which we didn’t' realize. So we attempted to get into a locked church (angrily) for half an hour, because we could HEAR the music, and didn't realize until the choir director's husband showed up and explained that they were rehearsing why we couldn't get in. Before he showed up, and I had angrily settled with sitting down, back to the locked front doors of the church, listening to muffled Mozart. So, we went back to our part of town until it was the proper time to go to the concert, and came back, arriving right at 8, when it was supposed to start.
The church was COMPLETELY packed – I ended up sitting in the aisle on the floor alongside one of the pews in the back, but it was well worth it. The choir performing was the Sinfoneitta Academica, and it was really incredible. It was so cool, because I've sung parts of that requiem at church, and we've played some of it in band, so every now and then a movement would come along that I knew note for note. Always fun. So yeah, that was our second cultural concert experience, and I'll be on the lookout for another.
As for church in general, for awhile there I was doing a good job of going every week. It kind of felt obligatory in such a religious country – or atleast town/university. Not to mention there's a service in English. And church here is so fancy! It's cool to go see, even if you're not there for the service. I'd like to go to a service at a neighborhood church with a choir sometime, though. I'll be looking into that, too, I suppose.
Illnesses:
So I guess at some point before April 6, I had been sick. Well. Let me just tell you that the illness that befell me right before we left for semana santa we have since named the 'plague'. I was DYING. I have never had such a horrible cough, snotty nose, headaches, inability to sleep, just awful in my entire life. And then on top of that, I was traveling Europe, so I forced myself to ignore it and have a lovely time and see everything, but every night I would wake up atleast two or three times and have a coughing fit, to the point w\here I started sleeping with a water bottle (a tactic that ended not so well, seeing as by our last night of traveling I was so used to it, that I subconsciously opened the bottle, and awoke to my water bottle pouring all over me, at which point I was only holding the cap and had to push all my blankets off my bed to find it and close it, and then take off my soaking wet shirt and sleep in a sports bra pressed up against the wall on the dry half of my mattress, using the dry half of my blankets. Excellent.)
And let me just tell you, medicine here makes NO EFFORT to be fun, delicious, or even bearable. In Spain, because it 'works faster' (hah) they have soluble powders that you pour into a water bottle and drink (chug), which they attempt to flavor but it really just ends up tasting like you tried to swallow a pill and it dissolved in your mouth. Horrible. And then in Italy (where I had to restock on meds) they have honey-flavored cough syrup, which was nice, and decent cough drops, which were also nice. So maybe it's really just Spain with the nasty meds.
PSP elections:
Phi Sigma Pi Honors Fraternity, to which I belong and love dearly, had spring elections just before and during Semana Santa, and my brothers nominated me for about seven upper level positions, and then (after I send in videos for four and wasn't elected for any) maybe four or so lower level positions (for which, lacking my own computer, I emailed paragraph 'speeches' for all of them and again wasn't elected for any). It's understandable – I'm in a foreign country, and there's an entire pledge class of 20 some odd people who have no idea who I am. To be honest, I'm really okay with it – something will come along for me to do, and in the meantime the people who were elected are going to make an awesome e-board and e-council. Everything is going to be done superbly well, and I really look forward to seeing all of it happen.
Free entrance to Marengo:
This. Night. Was. Epic.
For starters, let me explain that Marengo is a dance club (discoteque) here in Pamplona. It's nice, and Wednesday nights, you get in for 8, Thursday 9, Friday 10, and Saturday 12 euro (I'm pretty sure). Now, on a Saturday night, Team Missouri and I decided we were going out, but had really no place to go because there weren't any school parties that night, so we elected to go to a bar (Singular) that plays music and is generally pretty fun. We had a good time, rand into James and Jane, met some creepy guys from Vittoria, and then made friends with some older (late twenties into the 31 range) guys who introduced themselves by buying us free shots that tasted like candy. Alright, we'll humor you and chat, fine.
Well, the 31-year-old energy engineer who has worked all over the United States and Spain named Alex (ironically) took a liking to me, I suppose, and when Singular started to close, asked if we were going to go to Marengo, at which point we laughed and told him we were poor students and didn’t' have the budget for expensive club entries. At which point he and his friends offered to pay for all of us to get in. Repeat: pay for all of us to get in.
So! We strolled down the street to Marengo, and after an awkward fifteen minutes of them sorting the money and us awkwardly debating if we should just go home because we weren't sure that they actually wanted to pay that much money for us to come out, they walked over with tickets to get in, and we went in.
Now, Marengo is pretty ridiculously crowded most all the time. So we went to check our coats, and then after that to the bar to get the free drink that comes with entry. We get our drinks, and walk with one of the guys who's friends with Alex, and turn around and none of the rest of them followed us, so Alex's friend says he'll go find them and come back, and leaves us. There is no way that guy was ever going to be able to find us. And we were in Marengo, for free, holding free drinks. So we danced and had a nice time, until I started to feel guilty, and we made a bathroom trip, where we ran into Alex himself, and went and hung out with them for the remainder of our time there (during which Alex offered to pay for us to go skiing? What? Yeah.) and then we excused ourselves when it got to be really late, and happily walked home. There are benefits to being blonde, American, and pleasant. Who knew.
More tomorrow, as for now it's bedtime.
love love love,
Hasta luego!
Alex
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