Rebajas=A month of Black Friday

I am back in Sevilla after 3 weeks at home. While I was home I went on a lovely trip to the Dominican Republic with my family where we had a good time spending Christmas on the beach. I got to spend time with almost everybody that I wanted to see and had a blast on New Year's Eve in Wrigleyville with some of my favorite Butler people. I also enjoyed the luxuries of central heat, a clothes dryer, a dishwasher and being able to use the data plan on my iPhone.

January is a very exciting month in Spain. Every single store is in its period of "rebajas" (sales). Today was the first day that the stores were open with the sales and every store had many items 50-70% off. When I got in yesterday, Bridget had talked to Pilar (our wonderful neighbor) and asked her about going rebajas shopping. Pilar said that we needed to be at the stores when they opened to get anything good. This meant leaving our apartment at 8:30 (very early for Spaniards and very early for a very jet lagged me) to walk over to the center of the city. On the way in, we stopped at the new Dunkin Coffee to get a cup of coffee to perk us up for the day.
                                                         
The first place we went was Zara where I bought a new dress after trying it on in the middle of the store over my jeans and tank top. I'm pretty sure the Spaniards were thinking I was a crazy American, but I'm not too worried about it. We had to wait in line for 15 minutes to check out, which wasn't too bad, then we moved on. After that store, every single store was completely packed with people and hard to maneuver. The lines to check out wrapped around the entire store at least once indicating that it would be about an hour to check out. So, although we walked around and saw some other things that we might have liked to buy, we did not end up buying anything else in the city center. We stopped for a quick snack before heading back to Calle Asuncion (the street that we live at the end of). Fortunately, there are many stores on Calle Asuncion that are the same as the ones in the center, just smaller and way less packed. We ended up finding a few other items and then headed home.

After a 2.5 hour nap, I am feeling well rested and I think by tomorrow my jet lag will be gone. Tonight we are headed back into the centro to go to our favorite tapas bar, Los Coloniales. We are meeting up with our friend Clarissa. The thing that makes me happiest about being back is that I get to see everybody again and I cannot wait to meet and catch up. I am also really looking forward to school starting on Monday :)