Fiesta de Primavera

This week was much more relaxing than last, and I am not complaining. Thursday night Javier and Beatriz went out to meet clients for dinner, so Nicole, Ana, Beatriz and I ate dinner on our own, having s'mores for dessert. It was really nice to just hang out the four of us. Apparently, babysitter in spanish is "canguro" meaning kangaroo. It makes sense but it was very odd to hear Javier call me and Nicole canguros.

Also, while walking to class, we were walking our usual route when a water balloon fell out of no where and just missed Nicole and I! When we turned back we realized it was to guys from their balcony, but we weren't able to yell at the sufficiently in Spanish so we just made the "Im watching you" notion and walked away. Thankfully we didn't get very wet, the sound of it hitting the ground just made us jump. Everyone laughed at the story when we finally got to class though.

Friday was the Fiesta de Primavera, which is a HUGE drinking party in Granada. It starts around 3 PM on Friday and continues till 3 PM on Saturday...roughly. Apparently people from all over Spain come to Granada for this "celebration." I had class until 5 and then went to the high school to have conversation classes with the students, but Nicole and I decided to check out the "party" afterward. We went to the market to buy alcohol just because we could, and we didn't get carded. Needless to say, we were more excited about purchasing the alcohol than being able to drink it. It's just so different here.

Literally the only clear spot in the crowd

But anyway, Nicole and I walked to the botellon (what they call drinking in the streets). I don't know what we were expecting, but man was it a shock. We knew we were getting close when we saw people peeing in the streets and drunk people walking down the sidewalks. We should've known to turn around then, but we kept going anyway. When we finally got to the actual area, it was PACKED with people. Several thousands of people were crammed in a huge parking lot and adjoining side streets, all with piles of alcohol bottles in the middle of their social groups. It was insane! Nicole and I were trying to find our friends, so we walked around for a while, but it was so disturbing that we were scared. The ground was wet with God only knows, I'm hoping it was just spilt drinks. It was so crowded that Nicole and I decided to get to the edge and try and walk out that way. Instead of a calm walk, we got disturbing views of guys lined against the walls peeing. It was absolutely disgusting, especially because it was just pavement, so there were huge puddles of what I would assume was pee filling up in the divits of the ground. We were horrified and got out of there very quickly. After about a 30 minute struggle of pushing through crowds and clinging to Nicole, I finally made it out of the huge crowd and into the open streets. The walk back wasn't exactly pretty either, Nicole and I laugh and joked that it was peaceful, but not in the calming way, but rather in a pee-full way. Literally everywhere we looked there were people peeing, pretty much on whatever they could. It was horrid.

Needless to say, Nicole and I are very glad that only happens once a year, and even if it did occur more, we would not be attending again. I'm glad I went to see what the talk was about, but I clung to my bag and to Nicole and watched every step I took. I would NEVER drink there, it was petrifying just being sober. So, after our interesting experience, never actually finding our friends (not that we were upset...we wouldn't have stayed anyway), we went to a cute bar near our house for tapas and dinner. As Mom said, it's much more my speed. She knows me so well. I felt much more comfortable there.