Finally, yummy food!

Most of today's highlights were food-related, so you may not want to read this post until after you eat something!

Finally, some honkin-good tapas!

After a few days of not eating any mind-blowing food (minus the chicken on day-2), I was getting a little worried that Murcian/Spanish food was just not my style. Today, I was proven pleasantly wrong!

To give a little background of why I spent my day how I did, I'll explain what happened this morning.
I headed over to the Language School a few minutes after 9AM with some fellow ISEPers to find out which intensive spanish course level I had gotten into. I was so nervous when I didn't see my name on either of the two lists (Intermediate I or Intermediate II). To my complete surprise, I had tested out of the course and am now left with a free week!

The challenge: figuring out what to do/where to go with my next seven days. Settle into Murcia? Travel within Spain? When I found out that most of the students who didn't have to take the class (mostly native-speakers) didn't want to travel, I was pretty disheartened. A whole week seems like a long time to have no plans, especially since I don't have work or a class to attend.

It came down to Jenn (from Chicago) and I, being the two who were able to travel. I spent a fairly long time on skype with Mom, my instant go-to for any difficult decision. I couldn't decide if I wanted to settle down and explore Murcia or if I wanted to travel, especially since I had really only hung out with Jenn like once or twice. I got pretty stressed out when we talked about leaving tomorrow morning--I've only been here for four and a half days! In the end, I decided to spend an extra day or so here (we haven't bought tickets yet) and we are going to take a bus to Granada. Jenn found a cheap and pretty hotel there, so we will spend a total of under 200 euros, after food and other expenses. It may seem like a lot, but we really won't have this long of a timespan to travel again until Spring Break, and I will be travelling with my parents.
I will definitely take home from this trip the ability to break outside of my comfort zone and really do something I'm unsure of. I didn't feel like I was prepared for it, but I realized that I was just scared and that I needed to force myself to do something before I regret it!

Essentially, I spent much of my day figuring out what to do. Now, for the food!

The hams on the top are what I fell in love with.

Yet another huge group of Americans:
we devoured our food like animals

A group of ten of us met up for lunch after they got out of class at 2pm. Like usual, non of us could understand the menu because items are listed without descriptions, including tapas like "tigres" (tigers) and "matrimonio" (marriage). The waiter was super-friendly and offered to bring out huge sampler plates for all to share. We ended up trying six different plates--all were completely delicious! My favorite was one of the first tapas: a sweet ham wrapped around some sort of nut. Sounds weird, but really yummy.The waiter took a picture of us at our table then motioned for us to go behind the bar. All confused, we eventually understood that he wanted to take our picture behind it...I felt like a VIP, haha.

The tiny eggs are doves'!

I was so full by this point,
I didn't even try this plate

Suprisingly, not much spicy food.

Can I go swimming in this?

+ hot chocolate= mmm

After our tasty meals and figuring out this week's plans for a few hours, Kayla, Natalia, Jenn, Alexa and I headed to Plaza Santo Domingo to try the hot chocolate. We sipped at Kusso (German for kiss, according to Alexa), a super-modern cafe with delicious-looking postres and chocolates. The hot chocolate is so thick and rich, almost fondue-consistency, and is great dipped with croissants! It was an excellent end to a semi-stressful day. I can't wait for more yummy Spanish food!

Kayla & Alexa.
Why did we have so much trouble figuring out our payment?

Alexa, Jenn, Kayla, Natalia inside Kusso