La Día a la Playa

Today was fantastic, but last night was terrible. After dinner, Meg and I went out with the whole Arcadia group. We went to this Cuban club that was giving free salsa lessons and spent about 2 hours failing miserably at dancing. It was a lot of fun, but once you realize how bad you are at keeping rhythm, you don't want to keep doing it for the rest of the night. Unfortunately, it was a Tuesday night and most of the native Spanish students aren't here yet. Therefore, nothing was really going on and we kept running into the same groups of different study abroad programs. While it was nice to see other Americans, it felt as though we were the only ones out and that the night wasn't very authentic.
Around 2 am, Meg and I decided to call it a night. We had to get up early today in order to go to the beach, so we just headed home with Zach, a guy in the program who lives a block away from us and walks us home when it's late. Zach dropped us off at our building and we went up to the apartment door and could NOT get the keys to work. It was as if they weren't for the door. They would fit in the lock alright and even turn, but it wouldn't open the door. Meg tried to call Juan Carlos, the son, but he didn't pick up his cell phone. Finally, at around 2:45, we had to ring the doorbell and wake Maria Carmen, our host mom. She was so sweet and showed us how tricky the locks are here. You have to turn it to the left as soon as you get it in, because if you move it to the right, the door double locks and you can't get in. It's just some flaw in the lock, apparently. It was really embarrassing and we both felt terribly for waking her up. Of course she said "No pasa nada", which is the people of Granada's favorite phrase for "don't worry". I'm just glad that we didn't come home later in the night.
This morning we got up around 7:30 and got ready to meet the group in La Plaza de Isabella to catch the bus to the beach. The ride was about an hour, but it was completely worth it. While the beach was rocky, it was the Mediterranean Sea and absolutely gorgeous. We rode waves for hours and laid out until about 5 pm. There was also this rocky hill that we all climbed that looked over the city and the sea. It is definitely one of the prettiest places I've ever been. Our senoras packed us all lunches, so we ate on the beach and watched the waves. The only bad thing is that European women have a tendency to go topless at the beach, so we had to get used to that.
After the beach we arrived back home and now I am waiting for dinner. We are staying in tonight and relaxing because tomorrow is our first day of class and we want to be well rested. We got our schedules today and Megan and I are in the same class from 10 am - 2 pm for the whole month of September. I am very excited and am looking forward to tomorrow.
I know I've been writing a lot on this blog, and I probably will continue to during the next week or so because every day we do something different. As I get more accustomed to being here and Arcadia stops planning something different for us every day, I probably won't keep up with it as closely. Thanks for following me so far and I hope it's not too boring! I miss you all.

Love Always,
Em