carnaval in cadiz.

So on Thursday I was still suffering with some kind of weird cough/chest cold/bronchitis deal. I actually went to the pharmacy and explained to the lady in my spanglish how I was sick, how I’m asthmatic, and how my doctor in the US wants me to be on antibiotics but I didn’t have a prescription. The pharmacist lady actually gave them to me with no problems. Thank you socialist healthcare.

Anyways, this weekend was a lot of fun. Fridays are always good bc there is no school. We slept in and then went adventuring in the afternoon we were actually trying to find the Jardins de Murillo on the edge of the city center, but didn’t end up finding it so we just wandered. We stumbled on this FCSevilla store and so we bought some futbol gear in hopes of wearing our new soccer paraphernalia to a futbol partido mas pronto.

Saturday night was Carnaval in Cadiz. In the morning, Amir and I just went walking around the city getting lost again, which is always an adventure. In the afternoon, the girls and I went to Aldi’s which is like a really cheap German market (or grocery store – as Sharlarose would say); apparently they have Aldi’s in the US too. Aldi’s makes their food/items so cheap bc only have like 3 people working in the store at a time, they don’t spend money on unnecessarily advertising in their store, or doing like food item displays, oh and they also charge for bolsittas (plastic bags – they want you to bring your own to save the earth!). And they’ve all been telling me about Aldi’s in Los Remedios so we went and got food, necessary items, and such to get ready for Carnaval. We went over to Amir’s apartment to get ready for the festivities and then we had to meet the DiscoverSevilla buses @ Plaza de Espana at 8pm, so the day ended up going by really fast.

Carnaval was SO CRAZY. So much fun though. It was just like a huge botellón– where people just party and drink in the streets. Oh and it was like a huge costume festival, some people were dressed up as weird things, it was just wild, with tons of people. I didn’t really have a costume bc I didn’t feel like buying something new and adding to my Halloween collection. I couldn’t bring anything over here bc my bags were too heave but Mallory, Daniella, and I had like mardi gras masks that ended up lost/broken by the end of the night. And I also wore like a cute purple serapi thing. Carnaval was tons of fun, we left Cadiz at 4AMish and got home around 6 in the morning then slept until lunch on Sunday. I’m glad I took my camera so I had pictures of all the craziness. They told us not to bring purses bc there are so many people there and you’d probably lose it or get robbed. So we brought drinks in plastic bags, yes, a plastic bag was my purse for the night. I was really worried about taking my camera too, but I put my camera, keys, my cell, and money in my boots, so it ended up being just fine.

Sunday, Ally and I went to climb up the Giralda Tower in the Cathedral but it happened to be closed yesterday. So instead we just sat outside, had a nice chat, and enjoyed the sun. It was such a nice afternoon. Then I had a skype date with Gma Elsa, Christine, & Sharlarose. It was so good to hear their voices, it made me happy.

I think this weekend exacerbated my cold/cough/bronchitis deal thing. Today (Monday) it was actually so bad that I felt like I was dying at school and I haven’t been sleeping that much because I will wake up and cough for like 30 minutes and then sleep for an hour. It’s awful. Part of the reason I’m so sick is because I refuse to sleep too, I don’t want to be stuck inside bc the weather is so good and bc I’m in Spain of course. But my cough/symptoms have gotten worse over the weekend partly bc carnaval too. Anyways, so I finally went to some crazy Spanish doctor today (which I was really apprehensive about to begin with but my senora has just been pestering me so I went so that so she would stop talking about it). The doctor actually wasn’t crazy and I talked to him in Spanish about my sickness and he thinks I have pre-stages of pneumonia aka I have walking pneumonia while in a foreign country. Wonderful, right. But I’m really proud of myself bc I didn’t need Mary Alice to get on the phone and translate, and I had a fluent conversation with him in Spanish all by myself even when I was feeling like crap. Yay. Anyways, he gave me three different medicines including more antibiotics so hopefully they work and I will be able to stop hacking during the night/through my classes. We’ll see.

Pictures won't upload.. bc my connection is slow right now, I will upload them later.