Mullets and Manpris - My Adventures in Spain

Stella, Courtney, and Michael in the Newark, New Jersey airport....actually, in the train going to the terminal for our Spain flight!!

Stella and I finally made it to Spain. Here we are waiting for our bags to come.

For anyone who knows me, I am definitely not a light packer, and my roommates make fun of me every year because I have so much stuff. So here I am proudly showing off that this is all I brought for four months in Europe...go ahead and admit it, it's rather impressive :)



Well, I arrived in the Barajas, Madrid airport on Friday, August 22nd at around 10:30 am. Ten people from our group were on the same flight. The flight was a little bit late because the time our flight was leaving from Newark, New Jersey was "international flight rush hour." It was probably better that our flight was late though because it meant we didn't have to wait in the airport as long for everybody else. All of my luggage got here safely although there is still one person in our group that is waiting for his luggage!

(Here is mine and Stella's room to the left.)

Once we arrived, we took a charter bus to the plaza in Alcala de Henares where we were all paired up with our host families. Our "mom" and one of our "brothers" was there to pick us up. We then went back to their house where we cleaned up and ate and got to know our family a little bit. We just have a mom, Marie, and two brothers - Guillermo who is 19 and Daniel who is 25. Their mom calls them Yermo and Dani. They're all nice and took us around the house and explained the rules of the house to us. Our family is not LDS; they're Catholic.

After we ate, Guillermo took us to the plaza de Cervantes (to the left is a picture of Guillermo right before he dropped us off) where our group was meeting up to take a walking tour of Alcala. He also showed us where we would be taking classes and a couple other important places in Alcala. So when we met up with the group, we had already seen half of the tour. Haha. We also had to explain to our professor that it was our brother we were walking with because she thought we had already picked up a random Spaniard on the street. :)

That pretty much sums up our Friday. We hung out a little longer in Alcala and then had dinner with our family and went to sleep. During dinner we were so tired that we could barely understand what our mother was saying.

Then on Saturday we got up early and met up with our group at the train station and then went to Madrid and learned how to use the metro. We went to the archaeological museum (to the left is a picture of our group in front of the museum), walked around various sites in the city and then were set loose. So a small group of us went and got limones granizados at one of the restaurants which were super good and went to La Plaza Mayor, La Plaza del Sol and to El Museo de la Reina Sofia where we saw La Guernica by Picasso. That was amazing, but we weren't allowed to take any pictures. (Below is a picture of me and Alarie in the gardens outside of the art museum.)

That evening then we came back to Alcala with only a few problems with the autobus and had dinner before we left to go to the Plaza de Cervantes for las ferias. We were supposed to be meeting up with some of the other girls in our group, but they had some bus problems as well and never showed up. So after walking around the plaza for a bit, we decided to head back home because it was almost midnight. We ended up going to the wrong way though and ended up at a huge fair with tons of rides, etc. So we decided that we probably won't have the opportunity to ride the ferris wheel (la noria) in Spain ever again and rode it once before heading to our house...headed in the right direction this time. :)

Oh, I forgot to mention that our mother is completely cool with everything and lets us eat whenever and do whatever. The only thing is that dinner is supposed to be at nine and lunch around 2 or 3, but she'll feed us whenever. When we asked her what time we needed to be home by she just said that we shouldn't come back too late if we were going to get drunk. Haha. We explained to her that she wouldn't have to worry about any of that. Her son got home at six in the morning and she was totally cool with that. I don't think that they really drink, at least not openly, because she doesn't allow any alcohol in her house and she told us that her husband never drank.

Anyway, Sunday was good as well! It was very tiring trying to understand everything for three hours, and my understanding got progressively worse. Then we took the wrong bus home and Pablo, a guy from church, helped us figure out how to get on the right bus and get back to our house. Then we pretty much just ate, slept, and talked to our family on Sunday. Our brothers wanted us to go to the movie theatre in Madrid to go see Batman with them, but we had to explain to them that we can't go on Sunday but that we'd love to go some other time.

Then on Monday, it was another early day. Stella and I were at the aparcamiento first to meet up with the charter bus and our group in order to go to Segovia. Pretty much Segovia was amazing. We got to go inside the Alcazar, a huge castle, the Catedral which was amazing, and we saw the aqueduct and the Palacio Real. At the Palace we got to see the gardens which were amazing!! It was one of the three days of the year that all the fountains go off, and it was crazy. Up above is a picture of a few of us in front of the Alcazar after we went inside, and then beside it is a picture of one of the fountains going off.

There were a ton of people!!! When the fountains started going off, everyone started singing and clapping, and then all of a sudden they started jumping in the huge fountains. It was so crazy!! So, we started jumping in too...and pretty much it was one of the most amazing experiences ever. Haha. After I jumped in the first time and was trying to get out, one of the Spanish guys around the fountain pushed me back in, but then we ended up jumping back in again later. We also jumped in the biggest fountain "La Fama," and got completely soaked! It shoots water up 15m and soaks everyone outside of the fountain too. The water was soo cold and when it came around to us, we couldn't see for about 30 seconds because there was so much water.

(To the left is outside one of the buildings we went to in Segovia.)

We also went to El Laberinto in the gardens which was like a bush maze. Then we went on the bus and got back to Alcala around 10:00 pm and back to our house at like 10:30 pm. So we ate dinner and went to bed.

Then this morning was our first day of class. We just took a placement test and then met our professors. They're all pretty young looking, and I'm excited to start. Anyway, I've got to go!

Stay in touch. Hasta luego.

Getting Ready for Spain

Hey guys! I had been planning on doing an e-mail list to keep you all updated while I am in Europe but figured creating a blog would be way more fun. So here I go...

For fall semester 2008, I will be studying abroad in Spain in order to finish my Spanish minor. I'll be staying with a host family in a university town outside of Madrid. The name of the town is Alcala de Henares, which you can see on the map (to the northeast of Madrid).

One of my roommates from this past year at Brigham Young University, Stella Harward, and I will be living together with our host mother. So far we don't know anything but her name and address, but I wrote her a letter the other day and Stella wrote her a postcard.

In less than two weeks, Stella and I will be at the Madrid-Barajas Airport where we will meet our Senora (host mother) and go back to her house (our new house for the next three months). We arrive at the airport on Friday August 22nd and then start classes on Monday August 25th at the University in Alcala. I believe I will be taking two classes at the university in Alcala with their professors, two more classes will be under the supervision of our program directors from BYU and some of the local church leaders, and my last class will actually be more of an independent study course which only a couple of people on our program will be taking. It will probably involve reading Spanish plays and/or texts and then doing some kind of related hands-on experience such as visiting a related place in Spain or going to see the play performed live, etc. Then after we have done the reading and related experience, we must report back to our program directors on what we have learned. That is one of the classes I am most excited for!

As far as everything else goes, I am not too sure what to expect, but I am getting super excited and can't wait for these next two weeks to be over so that I can be in Espana!!