Home Sweet Valencia

So I'm back in Valencia again, and I've already had a really interesting week. I went to a Paella cooking class! It wasn't as awesome as I imagined, since we basically just watched a chef do it and he told us what he was doing while he did it. It was still pretty helpful though, and I definitely will be making my own version of paella once I get back to the US. After watching him cook it, we got to eat it...it was really amazing. After that we went to a bar with a bunch of us, where we had quintos, which are really small beers in bottles that you can get 2 for a euro. It's pretty economical. Haha. Then we went to a Valencia game. We were all the way in the top of the stands, which was really awesome because we could see everything in the stadium as well as outside. We had lots of space and it was pretty much the ISA kids so it was really fun, but we didn't have quite the intense atmosphere as the more expensive seats with the hardcore fans. It was a good game though, and Valencia beat Bilbao 2 to 0. Yay European soccer! Valencia is third in the league, while Barcelona is first and Real Madrid is second. It's really cool seeing the highlights of the games every day on tv so I'm constantly updated with the soccer here! I love it!
Also, I've been meeting with an intercambio, a Spanish person who is learning english. We take turns speaking in english and spanish so that we can learn the languages better from native speakers. His name is Carlos and he goes to school at the University of Valencia. He's really cool! I've taught him ridiculous slang, like the word "sketchy". My accent has definitely gotten a lot better and talking with him in spanish forces me to think in spanish. It's really hard, but it kind of gives me a rush. I just feel so good when I'm understanding everything and thinking in spanish.
Our nights out are getting continually later. Last night I looked at my clock and saw that it was 3:45am. I literally had the thought that "wow, it's still early". Everything happens later at night here. Also, being in Spain has made me so much more laid back. My intercambio had emailed me about meeting one day, so I walked for a half an hour in the rain to meet him at the school, waited for about an hour, just flipping through my spanish dictionary, realized something must have happened or he hadn't gotten my response email, and headed back home. I wasn't even upset. I feel like in the US, we're so rushed. If I had gotten somewhere on time I would have waited maybe 15 minutes (not enough here since EVERYONE is ALWAYS late), been really really annoyed that they wasted my time, and left. It just wasn't a big deal to me, even though overall travel time took about an hour, plus the hour that I waited for. I think readjusting will be really hard...