First bucket of many at La Sureña!

     First full week of intensive courses is almost finished and time for the weekend! The classes are still super boring but the four hours go by faster so that's a relief. Difference between U.S teachers and Spanish teachers- when you ask them if we can watch a movie in class tomorrow... the teacher's response in Spain- "sure, what movie do you guys want to watch". The professors here are way more laid back and will just let the students go off on rants during class discussions rather than just sticking to a specific schedule. I'm definitely liking this difference between the U.S and Spain's teaching styles.
    
    Everyday of this week I've grabbed coffee at Época Coffee, the coffee shop where I had my first grande coffee since the U.S. The coffee there is perfect, much better than most places back in the States. Plus the environment and lighting at this coffee shop is perfect too! The only problem is I'm not sure if it's common for people to spend more than 2 hours in a coffee shop at once here. Back in the states, my friends and I would literally spend half of the day studying in a coffee shop (Root Note in lax- oh how I miss that place). But here, my host sister said it's not as common for people to spend a long time there. Except this place is close to the high school and university so more students study there making it more acceptable to spend more than 2, 3 hours there.
    We had our first intercambios on Tuesday night- it went much better than I expected. There were four spanish speakers (hispanohablantes) and 7 of us study abroad students. We talked with the local for 10 minutes in spanish and then the next 10 minutes we talked in english. It was really fun changing languages in the conversation, definitely difficult at times to understand the local but it went much better than I had anticipated. Two of the locals gave my friend Holly and I their numbers so we can meet with them outside of class for café or tapas and talk more in spanish/english.
    
   Last night, after 2 hours of searching, Holly and I finally bought our tickets for the FC Barcelona fútbol game in Barcelona for April 7th! It's on my bucket list to go to a FIFA soccer game and I'm going to actually be able to cross that off my list! The tickets were a little expensive but we're right in the middle of the action, on Barcelona's fans side, facing the side of the field and on the first level. We're planning to go all out- face paint, jersey, scarf, headband... we'll be those fans. The game is on Sunday night so we're going to spend the weekend in Barcelona exploring the city and monuments until the game. So excited though!
     After booking our tickets, we headed to a tapas bar that my friend, Janel, recommended- La Sureña. Apparently you buy a bucket of cervezas (beers) for your group and then a side of fries or other foods. The bucket was so cheap (£3) We finished that bucket and fries in no time and headed to another bar (Hannigans) to meet the rest of the group. There, we ordered more beers and watched the FC Barcelona vs. Valencia game. We think we've found the best beer in Granada- Mil-novecientos- Veinticinco (stands for 1925 in english).
     Tomorrow's friday so that means tapas and discotecas tomorrow night!