Flamenco y El Campello

Hola! This past week was fun.. lots of activities and great weather!

Tuesday night we went to a flamenco show with USAC. It was nice that they planned something like this for us .. the shows can get pretty expensive so it was great to not have to pay. Everyone got all dressed up and met at the theater (Teatro Principal) down the street from my apartment.



Teatro Principal




Inside the theater

(i didnt bring my camera so i got these from google images)

The show was awesome! It was was different then I expected. The dancers werent wearing typical flamenco dresses like i've always seen. It followed a story line (kind of like a ballet) so they wore costumes that went a long with the story. The dancers were sooo good and I couldn't get over how old some of them were. Some of the men were in their 60s and i couldn't believe how fast they moved their feel. It was really cool to watch. At the end of the show we clapped for about 15 minutes. Not an exaggeration. It must be some flamenco show tradition because the curtains went up and down 3 separate times and we literally clapped for 15 minutes before it was over. Wierd.

Thursday I had my final exam for my european union class. It was an oral exam so we had to pick a 15 minute timeslot to go in and talk with the professor. We were allowed to work in pairs so me and Corey were together. Everyone else that went before us told us they were allowed to pick their topics - they basically walked in the room and he asked them what htey wanted to talk about, then he sent them outside so they could have 15 minutes to prepare. Since we heard that we didnt stress out about studying too much but I stayed on campus til I was done class at 1 until my exam slot at 5:45. However, the professor threw us a curveball when he instead GAVE us a topic to talk about. It was pretty stressful and frantic trying to prepare for it but overall i think we did ok (this is the only class i actually need at UMD, so as long as I get at least a C then I'm fine!)

Friday during spanish class our teacher took us to El Campello, a town outside Alicante about 20 minutes away on the tram. We saw the archeological sites there which were pretty cool. We were supposed to swim in this ancient roman fish farms but it was freakishly windy and cool so we opted out. Can't wait to go back on a nicer day! We also got to meet my teachers Mom and Sister. Her mom lives in Campello and her sister is in town visiting so that was fun too.