The gods have a cruel sense of humor.

After this week I am convinced there must be demi-gods. Why? My reasoning is this: if there is one God, he or she must be a loving God (according to most of the world's major religions) and I don't take him or her to be vindictive. I don't deign to think that the all-powerful God would have time to play jokes on me. However, some omnipotent being is clearly trying to teach me a lesson or play a joke on me. Therefore: there must be multiple gods.
After my first real night out in Granada, I came down with a cold. I figured I had worn myself out staying out late and caught a bug. A few days of resting and not going out except to class got me back on my feet. I finally rejoined society to celebrate the birthday of one of the girls living in the dorms with me. The next day, I was in bed again with a fever and extremely painful sore throat. I got to experience the drop-in clinic. One of the resident directors who accompanied me to the doctor's office said she often sees the doctor drinking coffee on the plaza when he is supposed to be seeing patients, which is why the wait period is always longer than it should be. The doctor basically told me to get some prescription strength ibuprofen from the pharmacy and some cough syrup and to come back if my fever didn't go away in a few days.
I was finally feeling better on Saturday and decided I was tired of missing out on all the fun, so I went out to some tapas bars Saturday night with three friends. We checked out all the bars within a one block radius of our dorms (there were about three we hadn't explored yet) and then finally decided to go to the salsa bar right behind the residence that we can hear at night. The salsa bar was packed with locals who clearly knew what they were doing, so I was a little intimidated to try at first. But after some convincing we all decided to try our salsa skills. One of the guys had been taking salsa classes through the university and I learned some basic steps a while ago, so we taught the other two how to salsa (sort of). It ended up being a lot of fun. My friend Alan and I (the one who is taking salsa classes) even sort of figured out how to do the basic meringue steps by watching the people who knew what they were doing and I think we did alright. We were by far the youngest people in the bar but no one seemed to mind too much as long as we didn't step on anyone.
I should have known as soon as I started having fun that illness was not far behind. (If you are not interested in the gory details stop reading now.) At the beginning of the night my eye started watering and I thought I had just gotten some makeup in it. Later I noticed my eye was a little blurry and I went to the bathroom and had to wipe some film out of it, which should have been another sign but I thought my eye was just irritated. By the time we got home my eye was swollen all the way around and in the morning I had to peel it open because it had glued itself shut overnight. I am hoping that it is not pink eye, but I'm waiting until tomorrow to find out because I don't want to add a trip to the emergency room to my list of experiences here in Spain. That is officially three times in a row a night of fun was lead to illness. I am completely convinced there is some demi-god just waiting for me to enjoy myself so he or she can stick me with some new infirmity.
Before my eye looked like quasi-modo I took a trip to the beach for the day. The bus ticket is only 8 euro each way for about a 1.5 hour ride to the coast. We boarded the bus around 10am on Saturday and were on the beach by noon. We brought sandwiches and apples and some other snacks to munch on while we sat on the beach. It was so fun to just explore the little beach town (I think it was called Nerja) and lay on the beach. Plus I was in my bathing suit soaking up the sun while I would have been studying my butt off back at Berkeley. Bonus points. I think I may have gotten some sand in my eye while I was napping, which may be why my eye looks like it was stung by a bee and is oozing a constant secretion of slimy gunk. Do eyes work like oysters? If so this better be one hell of a pearl.