Let's not jinx it...

How about we all collectively knock on wood when I say (or type) this, but I have a feeling that this is going to be a really good semester.
It all started Thursday night when first Elena, James and I went to Abica for dinner. If you've forgotten about this restaurant, go back to the post about when my parents came, I'm 99% sure I raved about it for a while. After dinner Arinelli joined us and we went to a bar to get some drinks. Kat had talked to Elena before and told her to call her about getting together. It turns out she and her boyfriend were in a park nearby with friends, having some drinks and hanging out (I know it sounds sketchy, but it's a very common thing to do called botellon). James and Arinelli had never met Kat before, and it was fun to talk with her, Pablo, and their friends. At some point in the night too we started talking with a group of guys who were sitting next to us. They weren't from Coruña, but live here in apartments during the year since they go to school here. They were really nice, and when Kat, Pablo and all of their friends moved on to a club, our new friends invited us to go with them. We spent the rest of the night with them, exchanging names, numbers, and promising to find each other on Facebook.
Then the next day one of the guys was talking to Arinelli on Facebook, and they invited us to go get tapas with them! So we went to La Bombilla which is a tiny little corner "restaurant" with three 2 person tables inside, and a giant crowd of people outside. It's an old, famous spot in Coruña because they serve big portions of tapas (I know, that's kind of an oxymoron) for only 1 euro each. After dinner we went to a cafe and just got coffee, waters, ice teas and talked. I was exhausted from Thursday night, so I went back home after that, but Elena and Arinelli stayed out for a little more hanging out with them. James and I walked back and we were talking about how we're not quite sure why they want to be our friends! They are genuinely nice guys, not creepy at all, one of them has a girlfriend... It seems that they could easily befriend people who speak their language fluently.
Anyways, the next day they again invited us to go out with them. First the 6 of us Holy Cross kiddies in Coruña grabbed dinner together to plan out traveling for the rest of the semester, and then afterwards we met up with them at botellon. The rest of the night was so much fun, speaking a lot of spanish, them occasionally attempting english, dancing, singing, and maybe a couple drinks? Sunday was a pretty relaxing day. I left the house once to go work on an assignment with Nora. Later that night James, Kelsey, Nora and I went to our program director, Pablo's house to watch the Jets vs. Patriots game. He has this insane television package and gets a bunch of American channels. It was interesting to watch the football game, with Spanish commentary, and another weird thing- no commercials. Now you'd think this would be a good thing, it's not. I mean, they still have all the breaks, it's just that instead of commercial we had to listen to two Spanish commentators talk ever 4 minutes. Poor guys, you could tell by the end of the game they really had nothing to say, and were definitely tired. It was still fun to watch the game though, and Pablo said that we could all come over for the Superbowl too!

Elena, Arinelli, Yelco and Javier at Monte de San Pedro

Then the next day I was talking to one of the boys on Facebook and he invited us to hang out with them in the afternoon. Elena and Arinelli had told them that they'd never been to Monte de San Pedro, a park area on top of a mountain where you can get gorgeous views of the ocean and the city. So they invited us to go with them. There is a cool bubble elevator thing that you can take to the top of it, except it costs money so they decided it would be better to walk up the back. Turns out it's pretty long and steep walk up the back of that mountain. We were all cracking up as they were making fake news report titles, "3 American girls found dead on mountainside" "5 young people perish in freak-avalanche". Thankfully we made up the mountain with no injuries/deaths, and it was gorgeous as always. We walked around, took some pictures, and then grabbed a coffee at the cafeteria that's up there. After hanging out with them Elena and Arinelli came over and we just hung out in my little room and talked. Arinelli went home for dinner, but the 2 of us then met up a little later that night to get some cheesecake and wine. Just livin' the life over here.
So yeah! If things keep going like this, I'm pretty sure that this semester is going to be awesome! Of course, I did have a little bout of bad luck. I think at this point I would feel like something was wrong, if everything actually went right. Saturday night I went to an ATM and the machine ate my card. As in it gave me no cash nor my card back. It was kind of a bummer, and one of those "did that really just happen" moments, but I got my card back no problem yesterday. Actually, I had a little bit of good fortune there considering that most banks are only open in the morning. I think maybe because it was a Barclay's bank which are based in England, it has a more flexible schedule? Whatever the reason, it worked out for me!

So that's the update! I realize that I've been forgetting about my shout outs. So, this post's shout out goes to Ms. Audrey Gehring, because I JUST received a card and a beautiful doodle from her.