1/14/09

So, I love Alicante, Spain. It is THE beach city. The thing that surprised me most when we landed on January 7th was that there are mountains everywhere, and it´s not really a chain of mountains but rather huge mountain peaks everywhere. It is just a beautiful area. Another great aspect is that it is literally right beside the beach. What more could a girl want? There are palm trees everywhere as well as orange trees in the country side. Also, el castillo de santa barbera is so amazing to see. The legend has it that the king wanted his daughter, Cantara, to get married. So, he had two suitors, prince Ali and prince Abed. He gave them each a task. Abed´s was to search for rare spices from India. Ali´s was to construct an aqueduct that collected the water from the river into the city. Abed completed his task, and Ali didn´t, so the king gave his daughter away to Abed. But, she was in love with Ali, so she decided to kill herself. When Ali found out, he threw himself off the tower of the castle. Because of this, there is a figure of an arab face on the castle that looks like prince Ali. And, that´s how the city got it´s name Ali+ Cantara = Alicante. Yeah, how cool is that story? But yeah, I´ve had good days and I´ve had bad days. As of now, the good days just keep on coming. I´ve only been here a week, but it feels like a month! For our orientation time, we had different sessions about Alicante and the program. We were able to meet everyone in the CIEE program and hang out. We took a tour around the city which was really cool. It was fun walking in and out of all of the little streets, and looking at all of the little shops and cafes. The food we ate that day was excellent. For lunch, we had paella, which is a huge pan of rice and then either veggies, meat, or seafood. I had all three, and the seafood was the best. We even had some calamari mmm. For dinner that night we had Tapas, which are small portions of appetizers. I tried everything the waitor brought, and loved most of it. After dinner we did a toast with shot size glasses of wine and said ``Ariba, a bajo, al centro, para adentro!´´ which means up high, down low, in the center, inside (your stomach). It was a lot of fun.