What I've been up to lately

• Taking Spanish tests. I'm so thankful for the immersion program when I take tests. We were tested on things like relative pronouns and quantitative words (more, less, any, none, etc). I never even thought that you could be taught those, I just assumed the rules were absorbed by speaking. Hopefully I got a good grade and I'm not needlessly confident. I was a little frustrated by the oral exam. Not because I have to speak; obviously that's an integral part of learning a language. I get frustrated because the topics are stupid. I was asked "is recycling good or bad?". I thought we as a planet decided that it was pretty okay. We do a lot of those communication exercises in class, where we're asked questions that CLEARLY have one right answer but we're supposed to debate the topic anyway. It's silly. ANYWAY, the test went well.
• I went to the Alicante Museum of Archaeology because they had a sweet mummy exhibit on loan from some Parisian museum. They had mummies and sarcophagi and pages from the book of the dead, and mummified animals.
  

Like this mummified crocodile.
They also had displays of artifacts from the bronze age through the middle ages. Spain had a LOT of Roman influence back in the day, being that they were the grand conquerors of the world and all.

• Happy Valencia Day! Valencia is one of the 17 autonomous communities in Spain, and Alicante is one of the cities in the community. As far as I know, Valencia Day celebrates when a Christian king came and kicked out the Muslim kings. Spain has a really long history of trading ownership with the Muslims since, like, forever. In a lot of places, like Granada, Spain still has quite a large Muslim influence. Anyway, today on the plaza there was a parade with huge effigies of kings and queens (Moors and Christians) and traditional Valencian dancing. I went with Juani, her daughter Eva, and Adrian. 

It was nice.
Tomorrow I think we're hanging out at Eva and Adrian's house. On Thursday I leave for Amsterdam! Tomorrow I have to find out where I actually catch the bus. The bus system is not the clearest thing in the world in Alicante, but at least I have free time to figure it out.

Hasta luego
Maren