The South

I can't believe it's been almost a month since the last time I wrote. Things have gotten absolutely crazy here in Spain!! I've been super busy with homework--reading several Spanish books and writing papers in Spanish. I still have a few more things to read, two papers to write, and two exams coming up by the 18th of November. Today's the 9th. If you do the math, you realize that that's a lot to do and very little time. Then the 19th of November we have our "graduation" and group party and then the 20th of November, I am headed to the airport. Destination=ITALY!!

Anyway, I'm going to try and use my quiet Sunday here in Spain to update you all on my last few trips. The last time I updated my blog was right before we left on our week long trip to the south of Spain. So that's where I'm going to pick up.

So Tuesday, October 14th, our group met at the train station at 7:50am to leave on our "big" trip. We start off by going to Consuegra where we saw the windmills of Don Quijote and acted out a short scene and took some pictures. Then we were off to our first real destination--Cordoba. Our first stop was la Mezquita. It had over 850 double arches that were red and white...it was absolutely gorgeous! I can't do justice to it trying to describe it, so I will just let you see it in the pictures. (I sent a postcard of the arches to you guys...aka the family...so, you should have a good picture of it.) After exploring that, we walked around the city. We saw an old roman bridge, an old waterwheel, and a few statues and monuments. Then a group fo us went out to eat. I got some Turkish Kebabs with a few other girls. (The kebabs are amazing, and there are these little Turkish Kebab places all over Spain.) Anyway, then we met up with some other groups in the plaza and all hung out and talked for a bit. The plaza was really cool because it was different than all the other plazas we had seen in Spain. It was all done in Arabic style architecture. Anyway, while we're sitting there talking, some gypsies start performing a fire dance in the middle of the plaza. So we watched them dance with fire, eat the fire, and put the fire down their pants for a while before heading back to the hotel.

Then the next morning we had an amazing breakfast with real food, not just crouissants and coca coa as is normal on our excursions. After breakfast, we headed back to the city where we saw the Alcazar de los Reyes Catolicos, a jewish synagoge, and a monument to Maimonides. The Alcazar was amazing! The gardens were absolutely gorgeous. Then we tried finding a grocery store to pick up some food for lunch but somehow ended up at a McDonalds. So we ate there instead and then headed to the bus. As we were all headed to the bus, we found out that one of the girls from our group was missing. No one had seen her for a couple of hours. So we sent people to search the places we'd visited and the hotel to see if they could find her. They didn't have any success, so we ended up having to call the police. Finally, the professor got a call from her on his cell phone, and the hotel owner was able to go pick her up in his car and bring her back to the bus. It turns out she had fallen asleep in the gardens and didn't wake up until everyone else had already left because we all just left whenever we wanted since we had free time to explore and buy lunch. Anyway, then when she left, someone was following her, and when she tried to lose him, she got lost. It all worked out in the end though.

After that we headed to Medina Azahara. It was the capital of Al-Andalus during the reign of Ab Abdherman III. So we explored the ruins of the old city/palace. They had some fruit trees there that were Madrilenos, which is the symbol of Madrid. The translation of that is strawberry tree, but ps, they're not really strawberries. Strawberries don't grow on trees. They were pretty good though.

After exploring the ruins, we got back on the bus and headed to our next big stop, Sevilla. After checking in to our hotel, we had the rest of the night free. So, we got our maps out and marked them up with the sites we wanted to see, then hit the town. We went to the ayuntamiento to look at the fachada and then went to the archivo de las indias where they have some fo Christopher Columbus' journals. It was closed, so we only got to look at the outside, but that was cool because it was designed by the same person that designed El Escorial which we had visited previously. (There should be pictures of it up on past blog posts...that's the place where I got lost :) )

Anyway, after that we headed to an Italian restaurant to eat and then to the hotel to go to bed. Angela, Stella, and I could crawl out our window and use the few inches of roof as a little balcony...kinda scary, but super fun. So we talked out there for a while before going to bed.

The next morning, we had breakfast delivered to our rooms before heading to the Real Alcazar de Sevilla. Once again the gardens were amazing! After that we went to the Cathedral. In the cathedral was the Giralda, which is an old tower. To get to the top though, there were 35 ramps instead of stairs. They made it that way so that they could ride horses to the top...haha. Anyway, I walked up all 35 ramps and got to see the amazing view of the city. Then we went to a little Spanish restaurant. I had a Spanish Tortilla Bocadillo and then we went and explored more of the city. We had the rest of the afternoon to ourselves, so we could explore at our own leisure. We saw the torre de oro and the Plaza de Espana. They filmed part of the first Star Wars Movie at the Plaza de Espana in Sevilla, so that was cool. We also went to the parque de Marie Louis and did some shopping before heading back to the hotel.

Once we got to the hotel, we had a little bit to get ready before we headed out for Flamenco night. First of all, we all went out to dinner as a group and had some amazing tapas. Then we walked as quickly as we could to the Flamenco Bar. It was called Patio de Sevillano, and the dancing, singing, guitar playing was all fantastic. Flamenco isn't just a dance, but it is the dancing, singing, guitar, clapping, everything all together. The dancers were great. Then we headed back to the hotel and went to bed.

The next day after breakfast we headed out for Granada, our last big stop. We went to the Capilla Real there and saw the tombs of Fernando and Isabel (the ones that helped Christopher Columbus with his little exploration) and also saw the tombs of Juana la Loca and Felipe el Hermosa. Then we walked to the Alhambra and had a lunch stop before going in. We spent over 5 hours inside the Alhambra and easily could have spent several more!! It was soooo gorgeous. It was the palace and gardens of the Moorish kings at the height of their reign before they had to be signed over to the Reyes Catolicos in 1498 (Isabel and Ferdinand--you know, the ones that helped Columbus). Washington Irving, the writer, lived there for a little bit to write the Tales of the Alhambra, and then after he had that published, they fixed them up and they became a big tourist place. Before that, they weren't really important at all. Also, we were told that it used to not cost much for the tickets there, but that after Bill Clinton went and visited about 6 or so years ago and raved about how amazing they are, they jacked the ticket prices way up. Way to go Bill, you just have to mess up everything don't you...j/k. They are now one of the must see sites in Spain...and man, it was amazing!! Oh, and I made a little Spanish friend there, Alejandro. He was a cute little Spanish boy that came up and started talking to me while I was working in my cuaderno.

After the Alhambra, we got on the bus and headed to our hotel which was a little ways outside of the city. After a quick dinner, we just went to bed. Then the next morning, we had a short bus ride back to the city before seeing the old Moorish baths and an old Corral were they performed plays during the Golden Age. Then we were free to do some shopping...and let me tell you, I got you guys some amazing stuff!! I can't wait until Christmas!!

Then we got some stuff to eat and got on the bus for our 5-hr ride back home to Alcala.

Picture Time!

Here are the pictures that correspond with my last post.

At the Cafe Gijon with my leche merengada

Statue of Goya outside of El Prado

Crazy Environmentalist Demonstration in the Plaza Mayor...Yes those are people rolling around on the ground in white body suits

Don't worry...it didn't end there. This went on forever!

Madrid at night!

In the gardens at the Museo Sorolla

The Royal Botanical Gardens in Madrid

Me in the Botanical Gardens

The entrance to the botanical gardens

Aranjuez - This is the Royal Palace that we took a tour of

Another picture of the Palace

Me in the gardens outside of the palace

Almost the entire "travel group" in the gardens outside of the palace...everyone but Will

A fountain I found in one of the other gardens around the city...I was able to catch the light just right

I could definitely fit inside this tree

I'm a tree hugger...no, not really, but after I saw the demonstration in the plaza, I thought I'd give it a go

Basically, we went to Aranjuez on the most beautiful fall day ever! This is one of the pathways we walked down as we explored all the gardens.

(The pictures of my day trip to El Escorial aren't on the computer yet. I'll post them later.)

Half-way Point

Well, this week marked the halfway point of our trip. We have less than 45 days left in Spain, and we are going to make every single one of them count. We started this week out with an exam which went pretty well and then things just kept getting better from there. Wednesday, I went to the Cafe Gijon which is another famous restaurant in Madrid where people like Hemingway used to eat. Stella and I had leche merengada which is a drink kind of like a malt, but basically sooo amazing. Then we were on our way to the Prado to continue our visit where we'd left off the last time but were a little bit distracted by some shops. I now have some great ideas for Christmas. We didn't end up making it to the Prado in time, so we ended up doing some more looking in the shops and then headed to the Plaza Mayor so that we could see it at night. It turned out that they were having some sort of crazy environmentalist demonstration there, so we got some good laughs and great pictures and then headed home. Then Thursday a group of six of us (our official travel group :) ) took a day trip to Aranjuez, a small city about 45 minutes outside of Madrid. It was such a cool city, and we took a tour of the Royal Palace there and walked around several of the gorgeous gardens in the city. And of course, we took a ton of pictures. The reason we went to the city is because most of us in our travel group are reading a novel in Spanish right now, and most of the events took place in that city. So it was cool to finally put some pictures with what we have been reading.

Then Friday Stella and I headed to Madrid early in the morning and went to El Museo Sorolla. Sorolla was an artist in the early 1900s. His style is similar to impressionism and the whole museum was his works of art. The museum was actually his old house and also included several of old pieces of furniture and ceramics that belonged to the painter. Then we headed to the Royal Botanical Gardens where we walked around for awhile before heading back home for lunch. After lunch we met up with our "travel group" and walked around the medieval market that is in town and then ran into our Spanish brother who told us about a movie that was about to start. It was a German movie with Spanish subtitles. (Man I feel so cultured after that...haha) We watched as much as we could before we had to head home for dinner, and I definitely want to rent it so that I can finish it.

Saturday we got up bright and early again and met up at our usual spot near the train station to go on a day trip with the whole group. We went to El Escorial, another city not too far from Madrid. There we went to the monastery/palace that is called El Escorial. It was huge, and we definitely did not have enough time to explore the whole thing. Then we went to el Valle de los Caidos which is a big monument and church dedicated to those who lost their lives during the Civil War of Spain. In reality though, it was a monument to General Franco and houses his tomb and was built by the prisoners of war...kind of a creepy place. Kind of felt like you'd walked straight into hell...but was a good experience nonetheless.

After that we went to a castle called "El Castillo del Marques de Santillana." It was really cool, but we only had about an hour to walk around and explore before heading back home to Alcala. Overall though, it was a great trip. Oh, and I forgot to mention, I also had a couple adventures getting lost on this trip...like getting left at the bus station with three other girls because we were using the bathroom. While we were there, the whole group left and had already gone to the monastery. We were able to find our own way to get their though. And then I had a grand time battling old people in the monastery/palace trying to meet up with my group for our guided tour, but unfortunately got stuck in the Pantheon with all the did kings and queens and just missed the tour. So then I got the opportunity to talk to some of the Spanish workers and one of them was nice enough to unlock the big rod iron gate and escort me to where the rest of the group was. Haha. Dang viejos...they block the ENTIRE room when they're on tours and give you attitude when you try to pass them...haha. It all worked out in the end though.

Anyway, tonight I'm going to a fireside in Madrid, tomorrow I have class, and then Tuesday we leave for our trip to the South! We don't get back till late Saturday night. We get to go La Alhambra and pretty much everywhere amazing. :) I'll definitely be taking a ton of pictures and will update my blog when I get back.

Pictures (Avila, Salamanca, Corrida de Toros, etc)

The Roman Wall

Stella and I walking around the wall

Part of the Plaza Mayor in Salamanca

Bells outside of the little church in Tordesillas

Little church in Tordesilla (From 7th century)

Temple of Debod in Madrid

Two of the original entryways to the temple

The concert near the temple in the park

Stella and I at the Casa Botin in Madrid

Michael and I at the table in the Casa Botin

Sopa de Ajo - Our first dish

The pigs we ate (I snuck a shot on the way out)

Um...yeah, this crazy guy was acting out the bull fight on the metro for us and then when we got off wanted to take a picture with me...Will and Michael were protecting me

Coltan and me at the bull fight

Pepito! Okay, so that's not really his name, but I don't remember what it was. Here he is showing off some of his amazing skills.

The horses are caring away the dead bull :(

Stella and I, giving some roomie loving on the way back from Madrid one day...we were crazy exhausted

Churro time!

Hehehe...Stella's going to kill me for this one!

Christie, Kimber, Me, Courtney, and Minta saying goodbye to Courtney! She went back to the states on Sunday. We miss you Courtney! (She was one of the girls in my FHE group...I feel like I just lost one of my daughters. Tear, tear.)

It's Been Over a Month Now!!

So as of September 22nd, I've been in Spain for a month! (I'm now closer to a month and a half.) Since the last time I wrote, I went to a play in Madrid about the 2nd of May, 2008 (when Napoleon's troops invaded Spain). I also went to an exposition over it. This was all for one of my classes. It's just five students and the professors, so the one-on-one time is really nice.

Then after a short week, we were off on another weekend trip to Avila and Salamanca. In Avila we saw an old Roman wall that surrounds the city and got to walk along the top of it. We also learned about Santa Teresa and went to two of her convents and also to the Cathedral in Avila. Then in Salamanca we went to the church of Saint Stephen and went to the old Roman bridge there. We also went to the Plaza Mayor in Salamanca and had some great tapas that night before returning to our hotel room.

The next morning we headed to the Plaza Mayor once again, this time to eat a quick breakfast and then explored the city until about 2pm. We went to the university there to look at the facade and also went to a medieval market that was in town. After that we went to a tiny town called Tordesillas which had one of the oldest churches in Spain. It was from the time of the visigoths in the 7th century. It was pretty cool, and the capitels had carvings of bible stories such as Daniel and the Lion's Den (I took a picture for Daniel) and also carvings of the sacrifice of Isaac and Abraham.

We then made one more stop on the way home to see the place where Juana la Loca was was locked up for several years. We then got back at a pretty decent time on Saturday and just ate dinner and relaxed a bit before going to bed.

Stella and I also got to go the Prado in Madrid for the first time this week. It was soo amazing, and I got to see a whole room full of works by Titian--he really did paint people with mine and Sarah's hair color...true story, mom. Crazy! I also got to see Las Meninas by Velazquez and tons of other crazy famous pieces of art. I could have stayed in there forever and definitely will be going back a few more times.

I also have had some big changes take place with school--our teacher at Alcalingua got a different teaching job, and so we got two new teachers. I'm feeling soo good about this change and have a lot less stress now which is great. I love my new literature teacher and am really excited to really learn something...and also am crazy excited that we don't have to write our ten-page paper anymore. :)

Also, Stella and I got a new sister this week. She's Chinese and doesn't know much Spanish at all. She's soo cute though, and Stella and I've decided this is going to be tons of fun! She should be staying here until we leave, so we have a little while to get to know her.

Then this weekend was amazing! On Thursday after class, Stella and I went to Madrid to the Parque del Oeste (Park of the West) where they have the Temple of Debod. It's an Egyptian temple dating back to about 200 B.C. which was given to Spain in the 1960's as a gift for helping them rescue some ancient monuments from the Nile flood waters. Anyway, we walked around the temple and then around the park for a bit and then noticed that they were about to start a concert back by the temple. So we walked back up there and found out that the "Banda Sinfonica de Madrid" was giving a free concert in the park. The orchestra was so good, and Stella and I stayed for the whole program. It's so cool to be surrounded by people that speak all different languages and as the band is playing suddenly realize that even though we're all from different countries, we all know this music. (They were playing songs from Phantom of the Opera and some other classical music that is recognized in many places around the world.) Anyway, definitely a good experience. Then we tried making it to the CCM to volunteer, but we were on the other side of Madrid and didn't make it in time. So we headed home for dinner.

Then Friday we started out the day with looking up information for our travel after Spain. Stella and I are going to travel with Madison and Alarie for about 10 days. Then we'll continue on, and they're going to head home. We now have our flight booked for Rome, Italy, and are planning on booking the rest of our flights and hostals before the end of this week. After planning a little bit of that, Stella and I met up with a big group of people from our program and went to the Casa Botin which is a famous restaurant in Madrid. It's the oldest restaurant in the world. The food was good, but I'm not quite sure it was worth how much I paid. We had sopa de ajo (garlic soup), cuchinillo (suckling pig), and helado (ice cream). Overall, it was a great experience.

It got even better after that though. We hung out in Madrid for a bit and then headed over to the the stadium for the Corrida de Toros. Wow!! The torero was only 24 and is really really good. All the Spaniards on the metro kept telling us that we were going on the best day possible for the corrida. So I guess normally, they have like 6 different toreros and each one kills a bull. Well this guy was supposed to kill all 6 himself. It was amazing (and pretty sick)...but yeah, amazing!! And we definitely got some action too....like when the torero got gored by the bull and then after getting checked out by the doctors just kept going. Then he got thrown in the air a little bit and after landing, stood up, had a tourniquet tied around his leg, and then proceeded to kill the bull. Crazy! The first bull that came out wasn't brave enough, so they took it to the back to kill it and sent out another bull. So the torero basically "played" with the bull that wasn't brave enough and then killed 5 bulls in front of us. Then he couldn't go on anymore to kill the 6th bull, so the backup torero came out. He wasn't very good...people said he was more like a Mexican torero (supposedly, according to the people in my group who have also been to bull fights in Mexico, Mexican bull fighters are not nearly as good as the Spanish bull fighters...they are a lot more brutal and not as skilled.) Anyway, so he comes out and things got a little crazy. The bull came out and almost picked one of the horses up off the ground that had a person on it trying to stab the bull, so the person went flying off the back of the bull. Then "helper people" came running out to fix him up, and one of them ended up getting hurt too. But somehow in all that commotion, the guy on the horse got back up and got back on the horse and started jabbing at the bull again...then the new torero who was awful had to use three swords to kill the bull...and the crowd was booing and calling him an asassinator. Overall extremely interesting.

Well, I'm going to have to cut this short, but the rest of the weekend was great. Conference was amazing, but I was totally thrown off with the different schedule they have here. It makes me grateful that we're on the same time zone when we're in the US...not 8 hours different like we are here. Anyway, I'd love to hear from you guys! Love you tons!

Barcelona Pictures

(Hint: Read the post below first for all the info on Barcelona...and then look at these amazing pictures!!)

Our first nine hour train ride...stoked about our Hogwart-esque train car

Standing in the Cathedral in Barcelona

The cloister of the cathedral. It was the most gorgeous cloister I have seen so far--cool fountains, palm trees, and tons of white geese

Standing in front of a cool bridge thing we found in one of the streets...admit it, you love the green pants and the cool scarf...you probably thought I was actually European...random fact of the week: someone thought I was German the other day in Madrid.

Arc de Triomf

La Sagrada Familia by Antonio Gaudi

Cool view we had of some more towers of the Sagrada Familia when we went up the elevator to the top...then we decided to take all 275 stairs back down!

Another Gaudi building

En Serio...The hostal that we stayed at

Big old gun outside of the castle in Barcelona

We decided this was a gypsy carnival...we actually had no idea what was going on...but if you look closely, you will see that some of those children are sitting on toilets...awkward.

Over half of the people in this band were old enough to be my grandparents!!

Well, those are all the pictures I have for now. There will be more coming soon of the fountain show and some of the other cool sites we saw. We're in the process of passing around our memory cards right now so that we can get everyone's pictures because we took turns taking pictures so that we didn't have to take every picture six times. As soon as I get the others, I'll put them up!

Barcelona Blast

So like Tuesday of last week a group of six of us decided that we wanted to go to Barcelona. So we talked to our professors, booked some train rides and a hostal, and two days later we were on our way. We started out with a nine hour train ride to Barcelona (though it is only like a 2 1/2 - 3 hour drive) and felt like all we were missing were our capes and magic wands. Since there were six of us, we had the train car all to ourselves and didn't have to worry about any euro smells for 9 hours which was fantastic. Haha.

We arrived in Barcelona early morning on Friday and after having a quick bite to eat and locking our luggage up in the train station, we went and visited the Cathedral. We then met up with one of Madison's friends who is on study abroad in Barcelona with another university. While we waited for him, we hung out in the shade of a palm tree and took some pictures by the Arc de Trionf.

Our next destination then was the Sagrada Family designed by Antonio Gaudi which was absolutely amazing!! It's a church in the neo-gothic style, and it was interesting being able to recognize the gothic architectural elements combined with more modern elements. While there, we decided to go up to the top of one of the towers and got an amazing view of the city and were also able to better see some of the details of the roof and sides of the building.

After that we saw some more Gaudi buildings which were cool, checked into our hostal, got changed and showered, ate, and then headed for the parque de Monjuic. The park was huge, but we were able to found the fountains just in time to see the amazing water show with lights and music. It was one of the highlights of Spain so far. I'm starting to see a trend--if it has to do with water and fountains, it's probably going to be a hit. Haha.

Then we explored the city a little bit more before heading back to the hostal to go to bed. The next morning we were up at a decent time and had breakfast at the hostal before heading to the beach. We had a great time at the beach and hung out there for about half the day. Then we went back and changed at the hostal, locked our stuff up in the locker, and continued our exploration of the city.

This time we headed out to the castle. This castle was different than the other ones we have visited...there was some crazy gypsy carnival going on, nesquick was there handing out free samples of chocolate milk, and there were some crazy old people playing in some punk rock band. You can definitely say that it was interesting. It was also on a hill overlooking the Mediterranean, so we got a great view of the city and of the sea from the top of the castle.

After the castle, we went to "Las Ramblas" where we bought some postcards and walked around before heading back to the hostal and grabbing our stuff so that we could catch the metro. We arrived at the train station with plenty of time to wash our faces and get ready for our final nine our train ride. This time on the train we got a car with bunkbeds. So we got some sleep and arrived back in Alcala around 6:30am Sunday morning.