The Wheels on the Bus Goes Round and Round, But the Bus Goes Nowhere

Location: Valencia and Madrid, Spain

Sunday June 20, 2010

The breakfast workers were even pissier than the morning before last, because word had gotten around that students took food out of the buffet yesterday either for snacking later or for friends who were too lazy/running too late to come down to the restaurant to breakfast, which is so obnoxiously American, don’t you think? I’m sure the hotel staff was mighty glad to see us check out and take off to the beach.

Other than the one in Hong Kong, the Valencia beach on a weekend afternoon was the most crowded beach I’ve been to. Imagine a sea of people (npi) everywhere you look. It was like the halls of Sunrise during passing time but turn the middle-schoolers into European families in bathing suits under the hot, hot sun. Being the lazy bums that we were, we followed a baby boardwalk that lead to the Mediterranean, stemming from the main boardwalk, walked a couple of steps in the sand, and plopped right down with our towels (, snacks,) and shit. I don’t understand how people lie out in the sun for so long without getting bored out of their minds/feel like their pieces of bacon being sizzled in a pan for a good ole Saturday morning brunch after getting a great half-hour episode of Fillmore! that made you feel like you were a inadequate and totally uncool junior high kid. Granted, I did take naps on the Porto beach, only because you were liable to have sand cake up your eye if you were to open them. So after lying out for a bit, Nikita and I went on a walk along the ocean, wading deeper and deeper to get accustom to the cold temperature of the sea. I confess that I’m not one to ride shotgun without using my seatbelt , or go hunting with Cheney, or run and dive into chilly water. Once accustomed though, the sea was extremely refreshing to swim in. And no wonder the beach is so popular! It’s calm as Hindu cows and flat. We swam in to our necks, bobbing in the dark salty waves like apples in a barrel of water.

We were given almost three hours of free time, which turned out to be plenty, because I couldn’t stay on the beach for too long. I used Amy’s spray-on sunscreen after swimming, because I figured my initial sunscreen probably washed off a bit with the water. And her 30 SPF sunscreen, I swear, felt like bacon grease, because I felt like I was frying in the sun. Yummy, huh?

The whole group reunited at where the bus dropped us off for pickup back to Madrid, but the IES admins came to us to deliver the sad (okay, well funny) news that our bus was stuck in the sand of the parking lot. This was obviously not met with cheers as many people were way ready to head back. To kill the hour and half that they needed to get a tow truck, we got sandis (sundaes) at a way over-occupied Boorgur Keeng (Burger King). Nomnomnomz. On our way back to the beach, we saw all the IES administrators standing around not doing shit in the parking lot. Our giant-ass lime green bus was still going nowhere. But half an hour later, we were on the road again, apparently tow trucks are hard to come by on a Sunday. Don’t know why they found that surprising when that is universally true for all goods and services in Spain. (Think: the ghost town of Mataró during the weekend.)

After refreshing ourselves in Madrid back from the drive, Lauren and I visited our poor ole Beth (okay, Jade… I guess calling her Beth would be a bit too morbid) who had just fully came out of her strep throat battle that morning and was bored out of her fucking mind. We made the mistake of watching Totoro in Japanese with English subs for entertainment, which turned out to have pretty cool animation that illustrated a story with a nonexistent plot. I guess it is entertaining if you enjoy hearing the high pitch squeals of Japanese children who are so high energy that you’re left wondering whether their father laced their rice with crack in their bento box. I think I was most entertained by the main theme, because the tune is on my first CD EVAH(!): a mix of popular anime themes. Yes, I’m THAT Asian kid. And I did enjoy Totoro’s cat bus. If we rode that around in Valencia, we would’ve no problem leaping out of the sandy parking lot.