Fiesta en la Playa

I have now spent an entire week here in Valencia. Time flies…


This weekend started with a fiesta en la playa organized by our school. We met at the beach around 6:00, and the first item on the fiesta agenda was a volley ball tournament between the various language schools in Valencia. We divided up into teams and commenced with the "volley". I do not need to tell my family and close friends that I did NOT play volleyball.



The beach was pretty, but different from other beaches I’ve seen. The sand was very, very fine, and it was brown (as opposed to white sand like I saw in Florida or black sand like in some beaches in Hawaii). It was more like the color of Texas sand. The water was extremely cold, and I do not have to tell my family and close friends that I only put my toes in the water (I don’t swim with fish). The water was not clear like in Florida-more like the water in Texas. The afternoon was cloudy so I couldn’t really tell what color the water was.



After the volleyball games we sat around on the beach and drank and ate. We had an opportunity to meet other students who are studying at our school, and there is a wide variety-from France, Sweden, Holland, England, and some Americans-and those are just the ones I met.
I left the beach at 2:00 am, and you would not believe the amount of people who were there and still arriving. It appears that the playa is a popular place for Valencianos to hang out at night on weekends.



Saturday and Sunday we hung around and explored the city some. We shopped, had coffee, had beers, etc. We went out on Saturday night in La Zona Carmen and sampled Agua de Valencia. This is the local "sangria" that consists of orange juice, cava (the Spanish version of champagne), cointreau and I believe some sort of alcohol like vodka. As it was at the beach, there were tons of people out and about in the city at night.



I’m looking forward to this week of classes, and hopefully from my cocoon of inarticulance (is that a word? Is that ironic that I don’t know whether "inarticulance" is a word?) at least one wing of a verbal butterfly will emerge…or a leg…antennae…something…