A new semester is upon me...

So, as of Monday at noon, I finally am finished with last semester. My last exam was a 3 hour slugfest with Digital Logic, but I survived and here I am to tell the tale. The exam was far too involved for a 3 hour exam... I am not certain that a single person finished it in whole. Regardless, I don't have classes until next Tuesday, so until then I can relax a little.

First things first, Jessica Potter finished her exams last Friday, and held a party in her flat to celebrate. It was a bunch of Swedish folk, a Colombian/Swede, Germans, French, a Canadian, Mexicans, and then us Americans. I don't think I left anybody out. Here are some pictures from that part of the night.

Left to Right, Top to Bottom: Jess and me, Ivan (Spain) and Frederick (Sweden), a couch full of Swedes, and then a bunch of people.

After hanging out for awhile at Jess' place, we decided to go to a club. The Mexicans (Iker, Jaime, and Miguel) were leaving Saturday morning, so they decided they wanted to go to the club Indiana. The club has a 20 euro cover charge and tanks with sharks, so it is supposedly fancy and nice. I still don't know. What happened is that a few of us arrived a bit later than the others. Jaime and Miguel, two of the Mexicans, tried to enter... and were blocked, because they were wearing white sport shoes. The club supposedly has a "policy" against such shoes, even though I saw several enter with similar shoes. However, the only way to get in with such shoes is to enter in the middle of a group, and since Jaime and Miguel tried to enter singularly... bounced away by the bouncers. After some talking with the bouncers, we realized all of us would not be able to get in. Already more than half the group was inside, and there were only 6 of us who didn't enter before Jaime and Miguel tried to enter. We couldn't get ahold of anyone inside... so we ended up reluctantly going to another club. It is called Dockers, and I actually liked it a lot. Free entrance, large open areas, not too many people... perfect for me. However, I think it was a bit hard on Jaime and Miguel, since on their last night in Valencia they couldn't be with anyone. Here are some pictures from the club:

Coreen? (Canada) and Jaime (Mexico); Miguel (Mexico) and Michael (France).

I ended up getting home around 7-8 am.... thankfully, I didn't wake up with a cold like I have in the past after such long nights. Saturday and Sunday were then spent with me telling myself to study... but instead procrastinating. I did get some studying in Sunday, but not enough... which made that Monday test a bit tougher than it would have been. I still think I did fine on the exam though.

So, Monday night I was invited over for dinner at Miranda's (Sweden) place. Miranda was in my Spanish class last semester, but we have never really hung out much. Several of the people from Friday night were at the dinner, and I even met a few new people. Her brother was visiting Valencia before he heads off to study abroad in China! Good luck to him (Benjamin)! The dinner was extremely delicious. Swedish meatballs and mashed potatoes, and even gooey brownies for dessert. Sadly, I have no pictures of the night... I accidentally left my camera in my apartment... grrr...

Tuesday night I met up with Jessica to talk about exams and life and to just relax since both of our semesters are over. Well, at least I am able to relax... she has already started into her second semester classes. We both had milkshakes... I was expecting them to be frozen ice cream/milk shakes, but they were just luke-warm flavored milk shake thingies. Still, not too bad.

After meeting with Jessica, I went to a bar called Radio city to meet with Miranda and her brother Benjamin. On Tuesday nights, at least in February, the bar has live Flamenco music performers... and the ones that were performing this time were amazing! There was a guitarist, a percussionist, and a female singer. Her voice blew me away. I am including here a recording I made of her singing... but it doesn't do her and her group justice. If you listen to it, around the 3 minute mark she starts dancing around, stomping her feet to create the music instead of singing. It was seriously amazing.

• Here is the link to the music file: flamenco.mp3 (To save: right click and select "Save target as")

I also am going to try and include a video. If this works well, I might do it a few more times :)

Here is the link to the video as well, in case the embedded video is slow: Flamenco Video

Now here I am, writing my blog. I am sorry for waiting so long to write it, but I am glad I waited as I had a lot of cool things to talk about. Next week, I start up my classes on Tuesday... wish me luck. Until next time, you stay classy people who read my blog.