Loving the 'Siesta Fiesta' lifestyle

The next few days were spent exploring the city, sunbathing on the beach a lot and eating out for every lunch and dinner. On Sunday, we finally bumped into Chelsey! We all went for tapas that night and had frozen yoghurt from Smooey, mine was covered in Ferrero Rocher pieces and strawberries, was a great discovery... Smooey is literally the best. 

Malaga crew with our first Smooeys

On the Monday, we went on the bus to uni for our welcome meeting. A meeting to literally tell us the same as what the welcome booklet had already said. Three hours of sunshine wasted! We did however meet a few of the Erasmus people, and found out that we will be spending our Erasmus year with mainly Germans, and a handful of every other European country. We also introduced ourselves to some Germans, and a lovely French girl who didn’t speak English. My level of Spanish really got put to the test in that situation. We all went for our first Spanish Taco Bell as a group, thoroughly enjoyable, however not quite the standard of the American Taco Bell!

Taco Bell, happy days!

We got back to our hotel to get ready for our meeting with our landlord but as we got all our money out of the safe, 400 euros was missing. Certainly not ideal considering how much we needed for our deposit. 150 was mine, and 250 Charlee’s and whoever took it was very clever by taking it from different envelopes, and leaving bankcards, jewellery and a further 2000 euros all in place. In that situation you can only point the finger at the hotel staff, the only people with access to the room, and access to the locked safe the money was in. Another test of Spanish was explaining what had happened to the hotel receptionist who obviously didn’t believe us, we argued with him for a good while, I cracked out the Callaghan-Smith ‘I’m not taking any of your c-rap’ attitude and finally managed to speak to the manager on the phone. We then had a lovely trip to the police station. This was where having the ability to speak Spanish meant we were actually taken seriously. Half an hour later, we each had individual crime reports, bingo! Something worth a mention here is how incredibly good looking the Spanish police are, it’s almost like it is in their job description to be exceptionally guapo. Mr policia who took our statements was an absolute hottie.

The next day we had our Spanish classification exam, Spanish exams are so different to English. We were literally left in a room with no supervisor, with the ability to share answers and talk, yet surprisingly we actually all kept dead silent and completed our tests individually.

That evening was the first ‘proper’ Spanish club night out. We started by a bottle of champagne before we left, and then found everyone at the cathedral. There was a massive Erasmus crowd, and this is where we met the Americans for the first time. We finally had the opportunity to chat to people and make some friends! We went on to some clubs that played typically Spanish music and a little bit of English chart, it was great. One of the highlights of this night was the Norwegians who took a shine to me and Charlee, and bought us roses! Never been given flowers before, so I obviously hung on to them all night long!

<3

The next few days were spent going to class and afterwards going to the beach! El Palo is a beautiful beach, and we have a little grass mound which we’ve now made Erasmus hill. Everyday after class, you take a two minute walk to the little mound on the beach and have a cheeky siesta and tanning multitasking session. The evenings we spent with family dinners and tapas outings, and drinks in Plaza de la Merced, followed by late night walks to the beach front with bottles of vodka to share. We started our own Botellon as all the other Erasmus kids were off to bed, the English and the Irish (and the one American) kept the party going.

Blue sky and soft sand. Amazing!

The lifestyle here really is incredible; siesta followed by fiesta is a winner for anyone. The food is cheap, the drinks are cheap and the people are just so, so nice. I know I'm going to love it here!