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After trying to get home for two hours after the San Juan festivities on Friday night (the city of Alicante owns about 5 taxis), I approach the door of my apartment in exhausted relief. As I turn the lock, I hear the dog, Luna, go crazy as she always does when anyone enters the house. Terrified that my late night return is going to wake the family, I quickly shut and latch the door behind me, and run to quiet Luna. I hear heavy rhythmic breathing in the living room, where my host brothers have been sleeping on the couch lately, and figure that they haven’t been disturbed by a couple yelps. Yay, I think, and mentally pat myself on the back for good, quick damage control.

What happens afterwards proves that all is back in balance in my world, and that I DO NOT deserve any back-patting.

After stumbling through the darkness to my room and collapsing onto my bed (at last!), I hear the dog bark again...and again...continuously for about ten minutes. The phone rings incessantly (and the doorbell, too, I later learn). It is as if the house has come to life with the world’s most annoying sounds. I lay in bed, fists clenched, cursing my luck.

Zoya’s thought process at 4am:
-Why is the stupid dog barking?
Nightmare.
-Isn’t the family bothered?
Maybe they let her bark them off. Sort of like facing her fears, you know.
-Who calls anyone at 4 in the morning?
Nocturnal Spaniards.
-Is it possible that nobody but me is home?
Shut up and quit asking logical questions...neeeeeeed sleeeeeeeeep.

I don’t remember how long I lay there before passing out, but the following morning, Kelly (my roommate who apparently wasn’t sleeping in the bed next to mine) wakes me up and mentions that she spent the night with the family IN THEIR CAR because I had latched them out of their house. They had gone to the esplanade to enjoy the festivities where she had run into them.

They tried calling (I never answer the phone for fear that a native Spanish speaker is on the other line), and buzzing (I thought it was the phone) and ended up at the house of Luis’s mother, my host-granny, but ran out of there because she had a gentleman caller. So they slept in their tiny European car, where Luis Sr. and Jr. snored the night away.
"The windows were all steamed up by morning; I could barely breathe," Kelly said.
At around 8am, Luis borrowed a ladder from the landlord and the family broke into their own second-floor home from the living room window.

Looking back, there were so many signals, so many opportunities to fight my innate stupidity. But this is what I do, and the events of last night are a strange comfort that all is again right with the world. I messed up big time--give me a few more weeks and I’ll shock and awe again.

Everyone took a long siesta yesterday afternoon--even Corin, my mama, who is wonder woman and I swear, never sleeps. Last night, I was out watching the bonfires with Kelly and her boyfriend Anthony, when he turned to her and asked:

Has your family Zoya-proofed the door for tonight?

Last night, Kelly and I were secretly watching Season 3 of The Golden Girls in our room in English. After catching us and making us switch it to dubbed Spanish, our host mom left us in homesick misery.

I’m done with Alicante.
I’m done with the polluted Postiguet Beach, with its cigarette butts and trash-littered sands.
I’m done with the Puerto and its discotecs that play bad music much of the night.
I’m done with the esplanade’s overpriced restaurants and annoying street vendors and shadeless marble benches that burn my legs when I sit down.
I’m so done with the creepy men that haunt me night and day (as early as 8:30 am on the bus ride to school).
I’m done with the pervading smell of sewer gas and feces that hits me at unexpected moments throughout the day, beginning with the second I exit my apartment building in the morning.
I’m done with being scared for my life and well-being at night—several people I know have gotten robbed or assaulted for no apparent reason.
After seeing Granada, Barcelona and Rome, I don’t understand how Alicante is a tourist destination—it certainly isn’t cultural tourism. I haven’t seen a single museum in this town. My friends and I were running in the direction of an indoor shopping center during a sandstorm last week, and the smell of poop—everywhere and nowhere—almost knocked us out as we realized that we were climbing a hill of manure. If I could build a monument of Alicante to burn in the hogueras this week, it would be a hill of manure, a monte de mierda.

Since writing this entry, I have found a really great pizzeria nestled in a back alley between the esplanade and bars, and it has made my final week in Alicante much happier. I’ve also had some sleep.

It turns out that the bonfires of San Juan have nothing to do with Catholicism or a man named John. Every year, during the week of the summer solstice, Alicantinos celebrate this pagan holiday by having each barrio (neighborhood) construct an enormous effigy—most of them are of fairy-like women with long, wispy features and Barbie-like proportions—and on the final night of the festival, all of them are burnt in the hogueras (bonfires).

When the Christians conquered Spain, they preserved the pagan party factor (as is apparent in the weeklong boozing, fireworks, dancing and general revelry) but since the holiday happened to fall on the day of St. John, the name was changed.

I asked one of my professors why all the monuments primarily feature gorgeous women. “Because men construct them and they’re living out their fantasies in cement and papier-mâché,” she replied with a smirk.

Last night, we were watching coverage of the festival on the news during dinner—the entire ayuntamiento (city hall) building was covered in rose netting for the flower parade. My host dad had explained to Kelly and me earlier this week that the ubiquitous monuments aren’t simply pretty structures, but for those who understand the imagery and symbolism, they actually represent political and social grievances of the Spanish people. Some issues of concern are the desire of the Catalunya province to secede, ETA and the Basque country and more locally, Alicante’s loss of business and status to Valencia, a nearby city.

So I turned to him and re-asked my question about the women effigies. I wanted to know why women were the face of these evils, why they (we?) get incinerated in order to purge the Alicantinos’ world.

Me: Porque todos los monumentos son mujeres? No he visto a ningun hombre. (Why are all the monuments of women? I haven’t seen a single man.)

Luis: Porque las mujeres son malas (because women are bad), he replied with a smirk.

I wish somebody would just answer my question.

I haven´t written in awhile but I´ve been travelling, you see, to Barcelona and then Rome with a couple friends. I know this is supposed to be a travel log--an action-packed chronicle of where I went and what I saw, but the time I spent in both cities was so profound independent of any monuments or museums that I visited. Coming back to Alicante, especially after Rome, was heartbreaking. I can´t quite relieve these experiences yet without writing until my arm falls off. So I´d rather share the illustrated version with you in person...how ´bout it?

Yesterday, I woke up and couldn´t swallow. I explained to my host mother that my throat was swollen and she made me a warm pea soup for dinner last night. I also drank three glasses of sangria before dinner--it tastes dangerously like juice--and it opened up the throat a bit, even though it killed a few neurons in the process, and was a great excuse to catch up on summer gossip among the group that I´m travelling with.
Lizarran is a tapas bar that my friends and I frequent (like three times a week) and we have a favorite server, an Argentinian, who always takes really good care of us, and brings us shots of apple chupito as a thank-you for our generous American tips (Spaniards tip hardly, if at all). The sangria at Lizarran is out of this world: it has dimension and tastes like red wine plus lemonade plus sugar plus sparkling water and it comes in a botella, which is like those glass bottles in which milk used to be delivered.
The goal yesterday was to climb the side of the mountain to the castle overlooking the beach after getting "rehydrated" but we made it as far as the Esplanade. The sun was so hot and we all had a serious case of the back sweats. I am the world´s biggest lightweight and was teetering back and forth on solid ground--mountain-climbing just didn´t seem like a wise plan. Instead, we went to the beach to people-watch and take pictures of our shadows in the sand.