The grace period is over.

They said when we got here that the one-month mark would be pretty important because we would understand Spanish a lot better. Well, I’ve been here exactly one month, and I suppose everyone knows that because I am now expected to just automatically speak perfectly. Mama and others have started straight up correcting me mid-sentence for stupid stuff I guess they assume I should know by now. I told Mama I had una paraguas, and she cut me off to say UN paraguas. I suppose that’s the only way I’m really going to learn, but now I’m scared to talk too much. I guess I should be fluent by now? On the bright side, I do think they were right about understanding better. When I’m in a crowd of people talking, I can pretty much hear everyone’s conversation like I would in English.

Such was the case last night when a group of us went to the free Arctic Monkeys concert that MTV put on at the Ciudad de Arte y Ciencias. I went with a group of my girlfriends and we met up with some chicos from the University’s intercambio program (where a student is matched up with another student from Valencia and they meet once a week to speak in English and Spanish). Paúl recently graduated from university and I believe Hector is still in school. They helped protect us from the crazy Spanish crowd at the packed concert because apparently Arctic Monkeys is good for moshing? Who knew? And some people were getting attitudes with us because whenever they hear us speaking in English, they like to say all 10 English words they know. It’s actually really annoying because they think we’re some idiots who don’t know anything, when really we understand everything they’re saying about us and they’re the ones making fools of themselves because they speak terrible English. But as I was saying, I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop or anything, but I guess some key has been turned in my brain where it’s a lot easier to just understand what everyone is saying.

Aside from the violent dancing and aggressive pushing from the crowd of +10,000, the concert was really fun. I knew who the Arctic Monkeys were before I came to Valencia, but they aren’t really big in the US. If last night was any indication, they are a LOT bigger in Europe. They were good live, though, and I got some pretty good pictures.







When the concert ended at 1 AM everyone was starving so we went to the only late-night place in Valencia, the Donor Kebap. We took our food to go and went back to Hector’s apartment where we ate and talked and in the grand tradition of college, played drinking games. I even got a couple of Spanish pointers from Paúl (NOT Paul), and we all had some pretty funny conversations. I can’t remember the last time I laughed that hard. We will definitely be hanging out with Paúl and Hector again.




Yesterday was Valentine’s Day and my family celebrated with a cute little cake that said "tu y yo" with a little plastic cupid figurine on top. Hope everyone at home a great Valentine's Day!