I apologize for being MIA the last two weeks or so, but I have just been too busy dealing with many problems. For starters, I was convinced the world was ending. It was a casual day here in Murcia... and all of a sudden the sky turns orange. Not just any orange, I mean a bright fluorescent orange, and it was not sunset time. To add to this, I'm on my 30-minute walk home from school, and it starts pouring dirt! Here everyone is thinking the world is ending, but it turns out it was just a dust storm coming from the Sahara Desert. As a result of this our air quality actually turned Hazardous and we were given health warnings to stay inside. This, of course, was a week after i decided to get back in shape, and for those of you who don't know me well, I don't give up on something I've already made my mind up on. So for the next week, there I was running in hazardous air conditions with dirt being rained all over me after recently recovering from bronchitis. It was truly an experience. I feel like I've been through a lot already living in Spain for a semester, living through a war, a dust storm, and horrible air quality conditions. But here I am still thriving and surviving 🤠
Here is a documented picture of me running in the rain a week and a half after the dust storm when the skies finally blessed us with only water floods and not dirt water floods:
Anyways, during all of these shenanigans it was actually exam week for me, so when I wasn't worried about the world ending I was studying very hard trying to make sure I do well on my midterm exams. It wasn't too bad, I actually took study breaks to cook with my friend Gabi. We made homemade vodka sauce for our pasta and we cooked some amazing chicken. It definitely made me feel better.
Continuing on, I don't have enough time to give all the details, but another factor leading to my 2-week prolonged stress levels was receiving my exam grade. So I go into the exam, well-rested, prepared, and very confident. I take the exam (only 15 multiple choice questions) and feel great about it. Later that evening, the teacher posts the grades. To my surprise, the professors here actually post the entire's class' grades including each person's name and score! Well at first this did not worry me since I was sure I did well on the exam. BUT THEN... the scores were saying that I got a 0.1 out of 2, meaning I got a 5% out of 100% and meaning I got the lowest grade. Now, at this moment, I was absolutely sure the world was ending. I emailed the teacher right away asking what happened because I knew I prepared well for the exam and I couldn't have failed the exam, it was not possible. He said he think I filled out the answer key wrong and that he would check in 3 days. Well luckily 3 days later he responded and said after correcting it himself I did fine and I did not fail the exam😂
Overall this experience probably took 5 years off of my life since I was beyond stressed out. My outlook after these 2 weeks from Hell is that everything will work out the way it is supposed to. Anyways, after the good news my friends and I went out to celebrate the good news by dancing, it was very fun. I will definitely miss being able to go out dancing on Thursday nights when I go back to the US, it just won't be the same. Thursday's here are like Saturday's in America, it's the most popular night to go out surprisingly.
After life calmed down again, I was finally able to go on a girls trip with my friends to Ibiza! The first problem we ran into however was that there was no busses to Alicante (where we fly out of) the morning of our flight. Because of this we had to take a bus at 7pm the night before our flight that arrives in Alicante at 8pm.... our flight did not leave till 7am the next morning. While this was inconvenient, we were all excited to go so we made the best of it. We ended up going to the city center stop instead of the airport and we walked around for awhile looking for a place to eat. At around 9pm we found a Domino's in the city center and we decided to eat there. We spent about 2 hours in the Domino's feasting and enjoying each-other's company, and at around 11 we started our walk to the city bus stop to the airport. To our luck we were able to catch the last bus to the airport. We went in and spent the next 6 hours there haha. While my friends slept, I was nervous since there were others in the airport so I ended up pulling an all nighter and watching movies in the airport instead.
After our airport shenanigans we made it past our bag check and on our way to the gate. We first stopped for breakfast, and I was very happy to get my favorite Starbucks coffee and a chocolate chip muffin (for those of you who have not been blessed with the opportunity to have a Starbucks chocolate chip muffin before they were discontinued in the United States, I hope you get a chance in Europe one day). After breakfast we boarded the plane and 45 minutes later we landed in Ibiza!
The weather was slightly windy and rainy like in Murcia, but we weren't surprised since almost all of Spain had these conditions due to the Sand Storm. Regardless, we hopped on the bus and made our way to the city center of Elvissa, Ibiza! We first stopped at the local Santander to take out cash since I was insistent we don't use our cards if we don't need to (*side note, it turns out my international credit card somehow got scammed in my last trip to Madrid so I had to cancel the credit card; I was also very careful with it and it still happened so from here on out I am trying to use cash when traveling). After that we found a local café and sat down to have some coffee. After about an hour there we called our Airbnb host who said we could make our way over soon. We decided to go pick up some groceries and other necessities at the local market which was only a 10 minute walk from the Airbnb.
When we got to the Airbnb (we were staying on a boat) we became slightly nervous since the outside of the boat looked smaller than we imagined and there were eight of us! However, when we got inside we were pleasantly surprised! It turns out the boat was extremely roomy and very cute and aesthetic. They even gave us chocolates and a bottle of green wine (vino verde) as a welcome gift. The boat was amazing, it had wifi, a fridge, a stove, and oven, two bathrooms, two showers, three bedrooms, and a couch. It even had somewhere to hook up your phone or laptop for bluetooth and we were able to blast our favorite music throughout the whole boat -- it was probably the best airbnb ever!
After we settled in and all took a nap, we went out to get some dinner at a local taco bar. It was actually one of the best taco places I've ever been to! It was beautifully decorated and they had tacos for 1€ and margaritas for 5€ -- this is definitely a good deal. After dinner we all went shopping to find something nice to wear when we went out that night since we all travelled with only one backpack. After a successful shopping trip we headed back and started getting ready for a night out on the town. We played card games and had some good girl bonding, and we got some recommendations for places to go out to since it wasn't party season in Ibiza yet and most of the best clubs and bars are closed until April.
We settled on going to a local Latin Discoteca, which to our surprise actually had an older crowd and was playing techno music that night. While neither of these things fit our group's vibe, we went in anyways after some persuading and price discounts from the bouncer, and we decided to make the best of it. We ended up having a blast and made friends with DJs! Overall it was a great night and none of us were disappointed.
The next day we got coffee and had chill day on the boat. Later on we went out for Italian food and had another good night of girls bonding. We played music on the boat and played cards, and later we went to a different Latin Discoteca which surprised us with great music and fun vibes! We even made some friends from America who were on exchange in Italy and were visiting Ibiza there! Later that night (morning) we walked home and cleaned the boat and packed. We had to get up two hours later to make the bus to the airport. Our flight ended up leaving at 9am that Saturday.
Once we made it back to Murcia, we napped all day and that night we decided to go out one last time since it was our Moroccan friends' last weekend before Ramadan. We ended up going out with them and having so much fun dancing and celebrating their last weekend before their responsibilities start. Overall the last half of the two weeks from hell ended up making up for all the bad things, and it turned out to be okay :) Now hopefully life goes back to normal here!
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