As i’m posting this i’m riding a bus to the airport, it has free wifi! Hong kong was such a pretty and fun city. Have a flight to Singapore tonight at 8pm! This posts about one of the best days of my life..

Friday: Paddle Boat Race and Jumping off the Triana Bridge!

I have a video of us jumping off the boat, but unfortunately Youtube is blocked in both Singapore and Hong Kong for whatever reason, so have been unable to post it. I’ll try posting it, so hopefully this works..

If possible, I dare say that Friday was even wilder than the day before and one of my absolute favorite days during my study abroad experience. I was awoken by Ollie and Sean around 1pm groggy and slightly intoxicated from the night before, only to have them pass me a liter of Cruzcampo to start my day off right. We spent the next hour passing around half a box of vino tinto and the aforementioned cruz before lunch, marking an unusual but entertaining start to an even more unusual and entertaining evening.

That Friday, I had planned a paddleboat race on the river which was to take place in the afternoon around 4pm. Following lunch, I took a quik nap and then we all got ready and headed over to the river. I was pleasantly surprised to see how many people had actually turned out for the event, as most of our program was there. It was a perfect day out, and we all hung out for an hour or so soaking in the sun and enjoying good conversations with better people.

Rio chillin

Bonita amigas!

Finally, we managed to rally the troops and about 20 of us or so headed over to the restaurant Acquaterraza from which we were to rent the paddleboats. We rented about 5 paddleboats, and then the race was on! We were racing from the restaurant where we got the boats to past the triana bridge towards our familiar river chill spot where the rest of our friends were waiting and cheering us on.

That tight team: We may have lost the race, but we won the war.

Our team got absolutely smashed, as we ended up with the worst Pedalquivir (Paddle Boat) ever. We had rented the boats out for about an hour, and the next 30 minutes that ensued were pure joy and entertainment as everyone began jumping off the paddleboats into the river, climbing onto other peoples boats, and friends who were sitting on the sidelines even swam into the river to join the party.

Paddle Boat Race!

Winning team

Turned into a party

Since the first week or so of the semester, we had all been talking about jumping off the beautiful Triana Bridge into the river. It was a study abroad tradition, and in the sumer time it was a popular pastime for the locals as it provided an exhilarating rush. The river looked rather dirty, with murky brown water, and we had heard stories about how many random things were floating around in there. Regardless, most of the males, and some of the females in the program decided that it was too great of an opportunity to pass up.

About halfway through the paddle boat madness, my buddy Mike Messina and I had decided that we were going to man up and just do it. We had a full plan set up, and it we executed it to perfection. Our good buddy Austin was driving the paddleboat, and so we had him drop us off on the side of the river. Although It was such a popular activity, it was still technically illegal, so we had to take precautions in order to ensure that we weren’t caught by the police after jumping in. We decided that the best and safest option would be for Austin to paddle out to close by where we would be jumping, and right after we landed we would swim to the boat and climb in.

As Mike and I started off towards the stairs to the bridge, Nick and Hirsh caught up with us and said they were in as well. We got to the center of the bridge, and looked down to see Austin posted up in perfect position with the paddleboat, wearing his tight straw hat, sipping on a liter of cruzcampo with his feet up looking like a boss. Messina and I looked at each other, and without another word he stepped on the railing and launched himself off into the river below without a second thought. Right as he jumped, I realized I had no time for hesitation, so as soon as I saw where he landed in the water I followed suit and leapt off the railing into the water below.

We jumped off the Triana Bridge!

The fall was much longer than I had initially imagined, and by far the highest distance I had ever jumped from. The freefalling feeling was incredible and like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. As long as it felt like I was falling, I hit the water in what must have been a matter of seconds, and as soon as I came above water I began swimming as fast as I could off towards the paddleboat.

Right after I had jumped, Hirsh and Nick followed closely after and the 4 of us hurriedly piled into the paddleboat, and in an attempt to draw less attention towards ourselves quietly acknowledged the epicness that had just taken place. We headed back to the acuaterraza bar, and bought some celebratory mojitos as we reminisced on the gloriousness of the past few moments.

Bridge Jumpers!

Mike’s parents had just gotten into town a few days earlier, and so they took all the Maryland boys to one of our favorite local restaurants, Taberna Macuro. After dinner, we went home, got dressed for the night, and then went to meet up with everyone at botellon.

Outside Macuro with Mike’s parents

That night, we were playing API Mission Impossible. The rules of the game were that everyone was to dress up in all black, and you would write a challenge for someone to complete that we all tossed into a bag. Once everyone’s challenges were in, people would grab a challenge at random out of the bag, and would have to try and successfully complete the challenge before the end of the night. We all took a funny metro ride to Nervion to go to Abril. There was cover that night, so instead of paying Lucas and I headed back to Betis and said goodbye to our awesome, entertaining, and extremely interesting mate Amit who lived above me, as it was his last night in the program. As you can imagine, the night turned out to be one of our more ridiculous ones in Sevilla, and most of us had great nights.

API mission impossible!

APi takes over the metro

Peace Amit!

All in all, one of my favorite days in Sevilla by far!

I’ll keep updating stuff when i get a chance in Singapore.

Cheers,

Sahil