"Bacalo."

Well, I've started two posts already for how awesome November has been, and I promise you all will see them/it! For now, I really want to remember the hilarity that was the night of the 21st of November, and give you a small glimpse into one of my Rotary Meetings.

At 8:30, Zlata arrived at my house. As she only lives about a four minute walk away, we spend a lot of time at each others houses, which is also cool because we will be switching families directly in March or April! We waited and waited for our club counselor, who has the special Spanish ability of turning  "I'll be there in five minutes...", into ten or fifteen, or twenty minutes. Interesante. Surprisingly, we made it to the meeting (which begins at 9pm. NINE PM.) a bit early, thanks to our counselor's super speedy driving skills. Normally, the meetings last about an hour or so, but the meetings here in Spain (or at least, in my club), are very different from the ones I've been to in Florida! They don't sing any funky songs to begin the meetings, there's nothing about the four way test at the beginning or end, and they mostly just talk. Sometimes, its in louder voices then are really necessary, but that's Spain for ya.
Normally, after the meeting, we eat in the restaurant of the hotel where our meetings are held, but this time for whatever reason, we all ate at a different restaurant along the coast, that specialized in sea-food! If you're reading this and you knew the Nicole from last year, who considered the only edible sea food to be tunafish from a can, you must be surprised right now, as was I! I'm waiting on the pictures from Zlata, but our dinner consisted of clams, octopus, soup broth with a single meatball, cod-fish, little crispy fish things that I thought were asparagus sticks, snails, smaller snails, stuffed peppers, and finally, a fruit platter that lasted about 6 seconds. The beverage options were Spanish Beer, Spanish Wine, or Water...........and of course, non-alcoholic beer as well ;)
For this dinner in particular, I was so happy to finally have another exchange student with me to experience all of the....interesting foods that the restaurant had to offer. After what felt like 4 hours of eating (it was a little less than two hours), we headed out. Taking the long way home with our counselor (who had had more than a few glasses of.....beverage), he pointed out all of the clubs and discotecas that his children usually go to, and told us that one weekend when they are home from college, he's planning on us spending the weekend together, discovering the discotecas of Torrevieja.

So that's about it. Actually, it wasn't a normal Rotary Meeting at all (at least, as normal as you can get here), but I had a really great time, and thought you all deserved to know at least a little of what I've been up to this month. I hope to post my November blog in real life, and not just think about all the things I'd love to put into it. But for now, this is it.

Que tengais una buena semena, (and Dia de Accion de Gracias!)

---Nicole/Николь/نيكول

 Did I not mention that I've learned how to write my name in Russian and Arabic?! Because there are so many people here (not exchange students, but people in Torrevieja), from Russia, Morroco, Angola, and other countries from South Africa, I'm learning a bit of both languages, as well as Castellano!

Ciao! до свидания, وداعا