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Last weekend Ella, Aubrey, Mirielle, and Yo went to Gijon. Prior to our trip they worked really hard to try and find a place to stay the night on Saturday. They only had a limited number of places to call and they were all full. We decided to go anyway figuring there were at least a dozen hostals/hotels that weren´t listed and they would also be the ones nobody else could get a hold of. We could find one when we get there............We didn´t. We had one good lead, but the telephone kept disconnecting, so we hopped in a cab and by the time we got there it was gone. Apparently we weren´t the only ones thinking it would be a great idea to go to the beach in Spain in July. It was a beautiful, sunny day out, so we decided we would just stop worrying and go to the beach and let the moment tell us what to do, and so it goes........

Las Primeras Horas:

Habia mucha gente en la playa. Mas que he visto en mi vida en una playa. El mar era tan azules y aglunas mujeres llevando solo parte de sus trajes de bano. Habia muchos trajitos de bano (Yo invente´ esa palabra para ¨SPEEDOS¨). Hasta Sabado, me da miedo la oceana/el mar porque no me gusta olas grandes. Pero las olas en Gijon era pequena. La playa fue divertida. Cuando me sali´el mar, me di panico cuando no encontre´mis amigas, pero solo un poco. Habia tan mucha gente.

We layed on the beach for quite a while, almost 7:00 p.m. A lot of people were starting to leave and it was getting a bit chilly. We decided to walk around and get something to eat. We went to this outside bar where they were serving Sidre. It is kind of like a cold apple cider with alchohal in it. We were really ready for a drink, the waiter was very busy. Finally we ordered a bottle of it, he gave us two cups and poured it in them. In order to get the sidre mixed up really well, or something like that, they pour the sidre from an armspan away, and then you drink it immediatly. A lot of it gets wasted and falls to the ground. It is pretty much all over the floors of any restuarant that serves it. You probably only get to drink about 60 % of the bottle. Any way, so this waiter is supposed to pour it for you everytime you are ready for some more, but with only two cups and four thirsty girls, that is a lot of service. We wound up just pouring it into the glasses ourselves while we waited for our waiter to return and take our food order. We gave him a game of four person yahtzee worth of time, but he never came. So we left some money on the table and went somewhere else. I was really hungry.

El Estrecho Largo

By this time it was about 10:00, we walked around looking for another place to eat and came across this internet place, we decided to go in and check if there was anything on the internet about new avaliable hostals (maybe one that just had been constructed and opened an hour ago) or considered taking a train to a nearby town. We also brushed our teeth and mock showered in their bathroom. (From riding my bike around chicago and being gone from my house from about 7:00 am until 2:00 am every day, i have really became quite good at freshening up in random bathrooms, i think i might almost prefer it.) We didn´t really find anything too promising and it was getting late. We decided to just stay up all night, there were a lot of people in town, obviously, and there would be some people out and about to entertain us.

It was now about 12:00, many restaurant/bars had stopped serving food or at least would have by the time we got a table. Finally, Ella found this great place to eat. There was going to be about a 40 minute wait, so we sat at the bar. By this time i was started to feel a little sick, i really hadn´t eaten very much that day and had been starving for so long that i wasn´t even hungry anymore. The wait for the table was turning into a little longer than 40 minutes so the owner of the bar pulled up a big old spool and we put our barstools around it. He was really nice and it was fun to get to eat on there. We ordered an enormous amount of food including octopus which was really good. When we had arrived at the restuarant, we looked at the clock and told ourselves we only had 6 mores hours to go. Staying up that late by accident is one thing, but when you know you have to do it, it kind of becomes a challenge. At 1:30 after a long day bus ridin´, beach goin´, not being 21 anymore, and restaurant/hotel findin´, 1:30 becomes a whole lot later. I really didn´t know if i was going to be able to make it. I think all of us might have been having some of the same feelings, but know one wanted to say it out loud.

Dos hombres nos empezaron hablando a nuestro mesa. Fueron muy simpaticos. Hablaban en ingles y espanol. Dijimos nuestro situacion y fueron muy enfatico. Se da verguenza todos los hoteles completos. Yo pense que estar raro. Explicamos que fue nuestra defecto. Nos dijieron que mantenerse despierto estara´facil en Gijon y nos ayudaran.

Bailando con Mochilas en La Discoteca

Carlos y Miguel nos trajeron a una barra. Hablamos, bebemos, y empiazamos despiertarse. Carlos y Miguel eran muyt simpaticos y muy sociables. Despues, fuimos a la discoteca. Normalamente, no me gusta mucho bailando en las discotecas, pero yo tengo que mantenerse despierto. A las discotecas escuchamos muchos canciones. Muchos fueron de Espana pero algunos fueron de EE UU con palabras espanoles, como Los Beatles y muchos ¨Oldies¨. Fue comico.

The clubs were packed full of people. I am not very good at walking through big crowds like that. But that night I did it and with an enormous backpack on. Often I would barely slip through two people only to come to an abrupt hault by my backpack that wasn´t so lucky. Everybody looked at us like we were crazy. The cloth used to sew my backpack alone was a lot more cloth than many of the other girls were wearing. Once we got inside we headed toward the corners of the clubs and would lay our backpacks down to take turns standing guard. So we all got to dance a little bit.

It was 6:30 . We had made it. We started to head back to the beach and got distracted by this cliff overlooking the sea. It was really beautiful and probably better than any view at a 5 star hotel. There was a bed of grass that was out of the way and calling our name. We used our backpacks as ¨goose down filled pillows¨ and our towels as ¨crisp white linens¨ and fell asleep just as Spain was turning its last hour toward the sun.

Me desperti´a las 10:30 a el sol. ¨¡Ay, yo te eche´!¨ yo dijo a el sol. Fuimos juntos para solo una hora hasta las nubes tomaron el poder de el cielo. Era frio. Yo comi´chocolate con churos por el primer tiempo. Eran muy delicioso y fresco con muchos azucar y el chocolate era tan caliente.
Yo no pienso van a probar tan bien otra vez. El dia era perfecto para ellos.

-eria

I love how so many of the stores here are just named by adding -eria to the end of whatever they sell. It is great, there is no guessing game of what is going to be inside. I would never walk into a dulceria and say ¨You got any vegetables here?¨ There are a lot of stores in chicago that try to make up the craziest names for their stores and sometimes you don´t even know what they are trying to sell. I also like how there are still stores here that do just sell one main thing. In the U.S. it seems like in order to compete with other businesses you have to have a compound business because there are so many places you can go to get everything done all at once. I can´t believe how many stores there are that just sell perfume, i think it is great. I also think it makes a better sense of community when you have to go around to get different stuff and talk to all of the people who work at different places as opposed to going to Walmart once a week and going thru the self-check and not talking to one person the whole trip. I try to support the small business in my neighborhood and it is hard sometimes because things are more expensive and it does take a little more time--but i think in the end it is worth it. I am going to try even harder once i get back to the states to do this.