Adiós Abby

So this is Abby's last independent weekend in Spain. Her parents are coming tomorrow. I'm going to miss her so much, but she's ready to go home, so I'm happy for her. To celebrate her going away, on Friday Anna, Kat, Kalin, Abby, and I all ate at our first host family's house, and then at night Abby, Anna, and I all went out to the Gala. The Gala is a discotheque that the schools use as fundraisers. Some nights it's sponsored by my school, some nights by Anna's school, some nights by Kalin's school, and so on. The kids that are on student council sell tickets, and I guess that money goes to the class trip at the end of the year, but I'm not exactly sure. It's a little funny that the school is sponsoring this club, where everyone goes and gets drunk. What's even better is that the benefit from buying the tickets from the student council at school rather than buying them at the door is that the ones from school have two coupons for free drinks, rather than one. Kind of strange, seeing as how almost everyone in the school is under the legal drinking age. That's almost as bad as selling lighters for a fundraiser. But anyway, we had a lot of fun because a lot of my friends from school came, too, so we were with them a lot, and then at 3:30 Anna got tired of the Gala, so we went back to the strip of bars that everyone our age goes to. That was even better because they played really fun music, and there was a lot of people. At one point there was a group of "viejos" or old men (around 40, 45 years old) that were very drunk and kept trying to dance with us and kissing our hands and giving us kisses on the cheeks. It was a little disgusting, but after a while they left. At 4 we went home because that's when all the bars shut down. On the way home we ran into two other Americans that are in one of the colleges here. I guess there's a group of them, and we met some of the ones from Ohio in September, but we haven't seen any other ones since then. They were nice, but not the kind of people you want to hang out with. Especially since one of them is supposedly banned from numerous bars and clubs in Pamplona. But it is pretty cool that so many people are taking advantage of this amazing opportunity. Anyways, the next day me and my friends from school had planned a surprise lunch get-together for Abby at a Mexican restaurant. She was mad at first because she wanted to go home and take a shower and everything, but I had to come up with reasons to make her stay out in the wind and rain until one of the girls showed up. Then after a while Abby realized what was going on and she cheered up a bit. It was really nice, the food was good, we all had fun, and Abby was surprised and happy. The day before some of us went out and bought her a card and a necklace that had "Tus amigas de Pamplona, 2004-2005" engraved on the back, which means "Your friends from Pamplona, 2004-2005." She really liked it. We left the restaurant after sitting and talking for about 3 hours. I went home and got bored, so Anna came over and stayed the night. That was also fun because we stayed up, despite the lack of sleep, and talked to my host mom for hours. Now today I have to study because I have three mid-terms this week.

This weekend going to the Gala and lunch with my friends made me realize how much I'm going to miss them all, and how much I'll miss going out at night. It's so much fun. I mean, it will be so great to see all my friends and everything, and I can't wait, but I'll miss Spain so much.

P.S. Ma, the first thing we do when I step off that plane is relax my hair, it is officially out of control.

Comments

[Mom]

Yuck - at 40 or 45 they should have the decency to be dead by now. What's the point of going to a bar if not to get drunk and try to kiss young girls who wouldn't look twice at your creepy old sober self?