WE GET HARD HATS TODAY?! score! :)

Today we get to tour ANOTHER DAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) woot hehehe. this one was in the process of being built though! These cool spanish engineer's let us check out the construction of the dam. first they gave us an engineering presentation though.
I'm not sure how many people out there now reading this (still, go you guys!) are engineers but one of my favorite thing about engineering presentations is how many people they take. I go to experience this with SAWS and it is something I find completely hilarious. IT doesn't matter that there will only be one person presenting about an engineering subject matter, they will still haul 8 other people out there to "help" with the presentation. So during the presentation its just one dude talking for like 15 minutes and 8 other dudes standing there watching him. All these people may be involved in the project in some way but i'm pretty sure it only takes this one guy to give the presentation and all these other guys were just like "ummmm yeah i should probably be there right boss...". Oh what people won't do to get out of work :) hehe.

So we got throught his HILARIOUS presentation :) and went to the bus and they gave us all hard hats and vests!! YAY!! The girls took a cute little pic:

All the other stuff I got to look at was just the dam being built and a bunch of technical stuff that is totally exciting to me but i'm thinking not so much to you eh?

Then we got to visit this channel thing where they just move water around through it and we got to see how they control flooding and whatnot. more technical stuff that I am loving:

Something I was not loving however were there doors. Yeah those are doors in case you didn't know. so how cool would it be to watch these doors move up and down right? yeah i thought so too; well these were nice engineers and they weren't about to deprive us of our wishes, so there were like yeah we are going to show you that of course. you can watch the doors move. yeah what they didn't tell us what they move AN INCH EVERY HOUR. So they are like okay, we're making the doors move now.....every is staring intently.....is it working?? yes of course it is working...i mean we hear machines going and stuff.....yeah an inch an hour. I'm pretty sure those spanish dudes were just cracking up inside and had to everything in their power not to just burst from laughter.
i think we got duped. haha

But then the next thing we did was check out a water distribution facility! OH YEAH BOY!!!!!!!!!!!! and guess who knew exactly what was going on....me. and guess who knew what jobs all the machines performed....me. and guess who was explaining things to the rest of the class......ME. 
yeah that pretty much happens once every blue moon for me in engineering so i was just soaking it up for the 15 minutes that it lasted. and it was actually a really cool facility! They intake water from the channel i showed you earlier and most of the water is used for agricultural purposes and so they showed us the sprinkler system...

pretty intense eh? kind of puts our system to shame dad hehehe. :) Well this system is not only huge but its solar powered! also there is a little sim card in the pumps SO YOU CAN START YOUR SPRINKLERS  VIA TEXT MESSAGE! yeah dude; its insane; farmers just have to send a text and their crops get waters. NUTS. it totally blew my mind

Then the Spanish people took us to a super fancy restaurant for lunch; the view from which was INCREDIBLE!! AHHHH. spain is so pretty; i love the landscapes and looking at everything and how laid back everyone's lifestyle is :) it is MUY FABULOUSO!

So as a mentioned, this restaurant was SUPER DUPER fancy. We got this four course meal that obviously very high end. Even though Texas A&M thinks my dad is a millionaire, i'm really glad my family isn't super uppity and doesn't eat at these types of places; i will take my alamo cafe thank you. So i tried a bunch of crazy stuff this meal. I am here for the experience so I am more than happy to try things but I don't want to make a habit out of eating freaky things....on this trip I have essentially mastered the art of eating things that taste insanely terrible and keeping a relatively pleasant expression on my face.
I will say however that the absolute best part of this meal apart from the fact that it was free was the bread. by far the best bread i have had in spain. an bread is like chips and salsa; they just keep bringing it out to you and so you can fill up on this stuff if you don't like the meal; which i am more than happy to do! :) hehehhe but actually I have been clearing my plate despite the funkadelic things they eat hehehhehe.
So bread:

Notice the fancy tablecloths :)
Then we had pate; its a french thing and so the word has a weird looking a and e that i can't put in here but pate is finely ground meat and fat minced together into a spreadable paste. do you know what this meat typically is? the plan was not to tell me until i had tried to pate but someone didn't get the message and they let it slip that this stuff is goose liver meat. yeah that's why it was so minerally....thanks for that addition steven :)

and that little brown sauce there? chocolate you say. WRONGO! it was balsamic vinegar sauce. just another surprise in this treat :) haha. but let me say i down this stuff LIKE A CHAMP! i should start taking pictures of my empty plates too so you people believe me ahaha

Next dish was was i deemed a quiche...apparently only plebians eat quiche and steven launched into another explanation of what this dish was. All I know is it had an egg base with stuff mixed in and I'm pretty sure it was baked...yeah that sounds like quiche to me dude. The stuff that was mixed in was mushrooms and spinach. YEAH DOWN IT LIKE A CHAMP AGAIN FOOLS. i only picked out 2 count them 2 mushrooms because towards the end it was too much to handle haha.

The sauce made it way more bearable btw :) hehehe

next dish was steak. this steak was so rare and juicy you would have thought they just killed the cow today and didn't have time to cook it for us. it was really good meat and super tender and i loved it. i guess thats because i'm a carnivore barbarian who loves her meat raw :) so i ate this with an honest pleasant expression on my face hehe.

The last dish (dessert) was actually quite pleasant as well :) It was this like lemon flavored milk and usually i hate milk but i think my love for milk based products just overruled that childish tendency :) hehhee and i drank this DRANK (hehehehe) right down ya'll! and then we had freaking incredible coffee. i think i will bring back coffee and drink it at home; because it is so strong and good and i totally dig it.

oh yeah and we had white wine instead of red. reminded me of champage vaguely. derishious.


tonight I will meet my host family and I will post all about them tomorrow

Love you all,
Emily