Post Madrid, we had a three day week which was nice to use to get back into the swing of things. The Thursday of that week we went to Ronda’s 16^th century bodega for a wine tasting. We learned about the process that goes into making the wine and why it’s done a certain way for each. The darker the wine, the older it is. We also stumbled across the one and only avocado tree in Ronda. It grows in the shaded patio of the bodega on the cliff side, so it’s protected from certain aspects of the weather that it wouldn’t have been if it were somewhere else.

On Friday, I woke up with two welts that could be known as none other than spider bites according to careful research (aka browsing through none other than Google Images). Susana and I went to the hospital after school to get them checked out since the bug bit me while I was sleeping and we weren’t sure if it would go away on its own. Luckily, the doctors told me (told Susana in very fast Spanish that she later relayed to me in a simple version) that I only had to continue taking the seasonal allergy medicine that I already do. They’ve since deflated and left some Spanish battle wounds that I can take back home. There’s this quote that I like that says “Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow”. Can’t help but to think that the way it applies here is kind of funny in a backwards sort of version.

I woke up like this (and proceeded to unintentionally freak everyone out at school)

Saturday we didn’t have any trips technically scheduled, but everyone planned to use the free weekend to go to a Spanish beach so the majority of us took a bus to Marbella, which is about a 40 minute drive. The town is beautiful. We got it on a cloudier day than we’d hoped, but all in all it was still fun to go to. Susana told us that you can see Morocco when the sky is clear and that it’s only 14 km away. To put in perspective as to how close we were, a few of our phones picked up the Moroccan time zone.

The beach itself also had a lot of people carrying around knockoff purses, sunglasses, and the like. Most told us that they had come from Africa and were trying to earn money to live in Spain which was admirable, but were so pushy in trying to get us to buy their things that it became annoying. The initial question and answer was the same from man to man:

“Sunglasses? Jersey? Buy this t-shirt for your boyfriend?”
“No, thank you.”

After tons and tons of people approaching us with only a few minutes between each, we resorted to more creative tactics that served us well for the rest of the trip, specifically our favorite weapon with the best Spanish accent that we could muster:

“Sunglasses? Jersey? Buy this t-shirt for your boyfriend?”
“¡No hablo inglés¡” (aka I don’t speak English)

It’s foolproof–10/10 would recommend.

Location: Marbella