quick review of Cordoba and Sevilla

This past weekend I went to Cordoba and Sevilla with my CIEE group from Alcala, this was one of the two trips that we take as a group for the semester and was included in our program costs. We left Friday morning by bus and drove to Cordoba first. We arrived in Cordoba early afternoon and walked around the city a little bit getting a tour from one of our professors. This professor was our tour guide for the entire trip and it was insane how much information he knew about everything…It was literally like we bought a tour guide for everything and then some. Anyways we saw a little bit of the city and then went inside the mezquita which means mosque. It was really intricate and detailed and there was a lot of cool information that we learned about the building such as all the pillars inside (there were a ton) were all recycled from other roman buildings during the construction and for that reason every pillar was different. We spent a little while in there and then afterwards we had free time to wander around the city for an hour or two.

We then left Cordoba and went to Sevilla, arriving in Sevilla around dinner time…we checked into the hotel and then went out to dinner and wandered around the city for the rest of the night. I went out with one of the guys in my group (Eric) and we met up with two of his friends from back home and they showed us around a little bit. The night life in Sevilla was actually really neat and I felt like there were a lot of Spanish beauties there (which makes me a little angry I didn’t study there haha).

The next day we had another tour of Sevilla from our professor, we saw the cathedral of Sevilla – again very impressive – we also saw real alcazar which was an old palace of some sort with some really neat gardens and fountains. The tour around the center of the city and those two things took up pretty much all of our day and the rest of the time we had free to explore the city. We tried to go out to flamenco show and dinner – because Sevilla is one of the flamenco capitals of Spain – but the cheaper ones that we wanted to go to we either could not find, didn’t make it in time, or it was closed for the night, so we didn’t do that. Instead we just went out for a dinner and went to a bar to watch the Spain world cup qualifying match.

The next day we went to el parque de Maria Luisa, which was really big and had a lot of cool statues and gardens and other buildings. After that we went to la plaza de España, which is some law or government building, I can’t remember what exactly though. When we were done there we went back to the hotel prepared ourselves lunch and headed back to Alcala.

Valencia y las fallas

Again sorry this Blog is a little late…

Two weekends ago I went to Valencia for las fallas with a group of 8 other people from my CIEE program here in Alcala. Las fallas is a festival and the basic idea is that every community of Valencia builds a huge and very detailed float and then and then at midnight on the last night they burn all of the floats all over the city (this is obviously a very rough over view but I cant get into too much detail or that’s all I’ll be writing about, if you want to know more Google it…which I would recommend doing its quite interesting). I also wrote an essay in Spanish on this festival, so if any of you Spanish speakers want to read it to learn more just let me know. So we all went on Wednesday night (because we had a long weekend) and stayed in an apartment that was meant for 4. The apartment was actually really nice and we didn’t have too much trouble fitting all 9 of us in there which was awesome because we paid less that 20 euros a night each…you can tell I’m really starting to get good and being a cheap traveler. We arrived pretty late on wed night so we didn’t really do too much.

The next day we got up and walked towards the center of town and just explored on our way, we walked down many different streets because basically at every intersection and or plaza there was a falla. It was absolutely crazy to just turn the corner and there would be a 3 story tall float with all sorts of different things. When we got to the center of the city there was a mascletá which is a big firework show but in the middle of the day. Obviously since the show is in the middle of the day it’s not very much of a visual enjoyment but instead it’s extremely loud…when I say I extremely loud I mean that the windows of buildings and the ground shook as much as 5 to 10 blocks away. After the mascletá we continued to wander around the city looking at fallas, eating, watching street performers and just taking the whole experience in. We then went back to our apartment for a little bit and returned to the center for the night to watch la crema (the burning). During this whole time I forgot to mention that there are fireworks of many different types going off all over from firecrackers, m80s big mortars, fountains just everything…with that and live concerts it was loud pretty much everywhere you went.

La crema was really quite a scene they do a small firework show before they actually ignite each falla and the bigger the falla the more fireworks they did. We of course camped out in front of the biggest falla and saw a pretty intense and loud fireworks show. Then when it burned you could feel the heat from 100s of meters away (obviously because the fire was a few hundred feet in the air. During each burning they had multiple firefighters constantly spraying water on it to keep it in control but even with this they really got big. The rest of the night we just hung out in the center and enjoyed the atmosphere of the festival.

The next day we woke up and went to the beach of Valencia to relax and recuperate from the long day of fiesta before. We spent pretty much the entire day on the beach…I went for a run with the other guy that was there (Eric), we went for a little swim in the Mediterranean, listened to music and just relaxed. After the beach we went back to our apartment and decided to eat in so we went and bought pasta and one of the girls, Eric and I cooked dinner with freshly made garlic bread, pasta and some typical cheap Spanish wine.

The next day we did more of the tourist thing and saw some museums and such. We went to the aquarium which was kind of like a little bit smaller version of SeaWorld. At the aquarium we saw a dolphin show which was really neat and multiple other exhibits. We were there for most of the day, but after we were down we went to the science museum for a couple hours. The whole complex of the museums and aquarium is probably one of the coolest architectural things that I’ve ever seen in person and I took many pictures of it if you check out my facebook albums. After the museum we went back to our apartment to get ready to go out for dinner. We looked up a place that had dinner with a flamenco show and went there. Flamenco is the Spanish cultural dance, sort of like tango to Argentina. This was my first time seeing flamenco and it was really cool and the dinner was really good as well, so all in all it was a good final night in Valencia. The show wasn’t over until around 12:30 so we just went back to our apartment and hung out there before going to bed.

The next morning we woke up and went to the museum of las fallas to learn more about the fiesta. In the museum they also keep a portion of the best falla from every year so it was really neat to see how the architecture and designs changed over the years. After the museum we went straight to the bus station to head back to Madrid.

I think that this was probably one of my favorite trips that I’ve been on so far, due to the fact that we had the chance to experience a little bit of everything. The next weekend I went to Sevilla and Cordoba as part of the program here so that will be my next post. And as I am writing this it is the night before mom and dad come here to visit for my spring break, so that’s what I’ve been up to and will be up to for the next week and a half. Que pasáis bien, hasta luego.

Barcelona

Well sorry that this update is a little late but I’ve been really busy with traveling and school work as everything seems to be piling up right now for the end up the semester and before break. So anyways me and another girl from my CIEE group went to Barcelona from march 12-15^th, and I am going back there for a few days when mom and dad come for semana santa (Easter week). Barcelona is a very cool city and we were actually able to walk around and see the majority of the highlights in the couple days we had. The first day we walked to parc guell which is a park designed by Gaudi, very cool. We then walked to another cathedral and la Segrada female (which is also by Gaudi). The Segrada familiar is a really detailed building that was started over 100 years ago and is still being constructed with no end really insight as far as I know…needless to say it was really neat. After that we returned to our hostel and wandered around las ramblas which is a really big street with lots of stores, cafes, restaurants and street performers. This took us up to dinner because walking added a lot of time (we probably walked at least 10km in total) and we spent a decent amount of time at each thing location.

After dinner we decided to meet up with a kid I knew from Albion studying in Barcelona. He told us that the thing they like to do in Barcelona is botellon on the beach, a botellon is where a group of people get together buy some alcohol and go to a location outdoors and just any out. This sounded cool to us so we decided to go buy some drinks and head to the beach to hang out for the night. It ended up being one of the most fun things I’ve done here…we were just sitting on the beach enjoying the full moon over the ocean and singing songs, after we were singing for a bit a guy came up to us with a guitar and started playing and singing with us as well. This continued for a few hours and a few of the people that congregated with us left. After they left a group of teenage Moroccans came with a drum and some other instruments, we then continued to stay on the beach and dance with them for a while until we were too tired and just decided to go back to our hostel which was a good 30 minute walk from where we were.

The next day we walked around the city more, explored the port area of the ocean, las ramblas more and the gothic neighborhood. We ended up going to a place where there is an art museum and the Olympic stadium from when Barcelona hosted the Olympics. This also was a bit of a walk so we explored that area for a little while until dusk. Once the sun set there was a fountain show in front of the museum so we stayed for about a half hour to watch that which was really cool. The rest of the night we just relaxed, ate dinner and went back to the beach again to hang out although it wasn’t quite as fun as the night before. We woke up the next day and packed up and headed to the bus station thus concluding our trip. We got back to Alcala on Sunday afternoon and then the next wed night headed off to Valencia for las fallas because we had a short week due to father’s day here. Therefore las fallas will be my next update and hopefully I can get that up soon. Ta luego.

Paris

This past weekend was my trip to Paris; we left Thursday afternoon and came back Sunday evening. It started off a little hectic as I originally thought our flight was at 5 pm on Thursday afternoon but when I went to print off the confirmation e-mail I realized that it was at 3 instead so I had to run home after my class which ended at 12:30, pack everything and go to the airport. It all worked out because one of my sisters and her friend drove us to the airport, but it was a little crazy leading up to that point. We made it to Paris a little later than expected and we were planning to meet up with Pat and Matt (two guys from Albion that live my house at school). We were supposed to meet up with them at 6 in Cergy which is a suburb of Paris (where they were staying) and we were planning to stay in their hotel room the last night so that we would not have to pay for a place to sleep. We ended up making it to Cergy around 8 o’clock so they of course did not stay at the train station for 2 hours but we had no way of contacting them since they did not have a phone and I did not think my cell from Spain would work in France. Eventually I ended up getting my phone to work and called one of their friends (that had a phone) from France. Their friend ended up picking us up from the metro station and taking us to their hotel, so it all worked out…just a little crazy start to the trip.

That night we met up with Pat and Matt after they ate dinner and we went to an apartment of one of their friends. They were both there for they week with a business program…their task was to create a business connecting the culture of France to their own…they were also with other students from around the world such as Austria, Hungary, France and a few more. So back to my story…that first night we hung out with all of their new friends at this apartment which overlooked the city of Paris (very cool). We had some drinks and ate a few appetizers such as duck liver and escargot…neat experience.

We woke up the next morning to go to Paris (Pat and I slept in because we were too tired and I knew I needed the rest for the rest of the weekend after seeing how my body reacted to the lack of sleep on the Granada trip), the rest of the group left around 8:30ish and pat and I went around 11:30ish. Even though I tried to sleep in I still did not sleep very well and was very tired all day. We got to the city ate lunch, walked around by ourselves trying to meet up with the others (that didn’t work until about 7 o’clock), saw le Louvre, ate crepes, and went to the Eifel tower. We finally met up with the others at the Eifel tower and spent some more time there (going up to the top level) and then all went out to eat together. After dinner we headed back to Cergy to go out for the night since it was their last night in Paris. They had to leave at 6:30 in the morning for the airport so Alexa (the girl that went with me) and I had been worrying about what we were going to do after they left since we had been staying in their hotel for a free place to stay and we didn’t make plans for the nights after that. We finally decided to stay in their hotel room after they left that morning until the maids came to kick us out (which was about 9). We got up at 9, packed our stuff really fast and headed out towards the city where we planned to look for a hostel.

This part is a little confusing so try to stay with me…

Earlier in the week we were thinking that we would try a thing called couch surfing for the nights that we could not stay at Pat and Matt’s hostel. Couch surfing is a website online that has a bunch of people that you can look up and stay with them on their couch over night for a free place to crash. Since we were trying to save as much money as possible this option really appealed to us, so we sent out a couple emails to stay with people…no one got back to us so we thought we were going to have to look for a hostel. While we were on the subway heading towards downtown Paris we got a text message saying that we could stay at the place of one of the couch surfers. We were really excited that we wouldn’t have to walk around Paris searching for a place to sleep and that we were going to save the extra 30 euros that we were going to have to pay. Once we arrived in Paris we went looking for this guy’s house, and we found it without too much trouble. Once we got to the house we took a nap and then planned on going to the catacombs, but on our way out we found out that they closed at 5 and we were leaving the apartment around 4:45 so we weren’t going to make it. We then decided to go back downtown and see le Louvre and night, Notre dame, the arch and I wanted to try and go into the Louvre. We first went to the arch and then started heading towards Notre dame and le louver. We went to Notre dame first, and we got there right after it was dark so we got to see it lit up, which was pretty cool…we then walked in and there was a mass in session so we snapped a few pics and headed back to le Louvre. We got to le Louvre and it was really cool lit up at night so we took some pictures outside but then went in to find out that it also closes early (at 6 PM) so we missed the chance to go inside that as well. I knew I had to go inside at least for a little bit to see some of the famous art so we decided to come back in the morning before our flight. We went home, hung out with our couch surfing host and then went to bed.

We woke up the next morning after sleeping in a bit, packed up and headed to le Louvre with our bags. I went in by myself because Alexa had already been inside and walked around for about an hour before we had to head to the airport to catch our flight. We made it to the airport a little early and worked on some homework we had to do for our grammar class because our final was Monday morning. After doing some homework in the airport, I did a little bit more on the plane and then we made it back to Alcala around 10 PM. I finished up the rest of my homework and then went to bed.

I know this post is a little long, but I figured doing a play by play would be best to capture all the experiences we had, even though I left out a lot of them. Its nice being done with exams, but the only two I’ve gotten back so far didn’t go well at all so I’m a little bit bummed about that. I also am a little bit sick probably from the trip, lack of sleep, and the stresses of exams all piled up but hopefully that will get better and also when I get my other exams back hopefully they will be better than the first ones as well.

Hope all is well in your respective hometowns. Until next time, hasta luego.

Real Madrid and Midterms

So it’s been a while since I’ve updated the blob, mainly because I’ve been so busy over the past week and a half. Two weekends ago I went to my first futbol game in Spain…Real Madrid vs. Real Betis, Madrid won 6-1 so I was able to see a lot of goals although it was not a very good game. We arrived to the game a couple hours before to try and experience the atmosphere outside of the stadium before the game started. We found a café to eat dinner and drink a beer before we went in the stadium, I also bought a jersey of real Madrid and a scarf of Spain, the scarf says: “This is Spain if you don’t like it get out!” (after translation of course). Barcelona is also on a losing skid over the past few weeks so la liga (the Spanish league) is only currently a 4 point different between Barcelona (1^st place) and Real Madrid (2^nd). I hope to make it to another game at some point and hopefully have the chance to see a better game because I feel like the atmosphere would be much better at a closer/more important game.

Last week was also midterms so I spent the rest of last weekend studying for them and preparing myself for the week ahead. I had one Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and today. The only one I’ve gotten back so far did not go so well so my grade in that class might not be so hot at the end of the semester (I am still hoping the others went better, I’ll probably find out within the next few days). I was a bit bummed when I found out that I did not do well on this midterm because I spent a lot of time studying for it and I just cannot figure out how to do well in that class no matter how hard a try. I guess the language barrier is really having a bigger affect on the than I thought…I feel a little better that the majority of the people in the class did bad on the midterm, which means I’m not alone. I also lost my computer card for the computers at school this past week, it is the card that you need to put in the computer in order to log into the computers at school (a system which I think is stupid). So now I cannot use the computers at school anymore, but the worst part is the stupid card is going to cost me 100 euros to replace. Needless to say this past week was not my best week and I was looking forward to the weekend and my trip to Paris very much.

I’m starting to come to the realization that my grades might not be as good as they are normally in the US, but I guess that’s Ok because I want to get the full experience while I’m here and if I get a C or 2 I suppose it’s not the end of the world. It is somewhat hard for me to accept that fact since I have been focused on my grades so much my entire life but I am trying to get the mindset down that I’m here for the experience and to learn the language and all of that does not come from the class room. The next update I have is for my trip to Paris which I did this past weekend, and I am hoping that I can get to that either later tonight or tomorrow.

Granada n such

So this past weekend I went on my first planned trip separate from Emilio as well. Two girls from my group at the university and I went to Granada, which is a city in southern Spain. Granada is a city with very strong Arabic influence on its culture and the people as well. We left on Thursday evening and arrived Thursday night of course in time experience the nightlife in Granada. One of the girls I went with had a friend from her home town who was studying in Granada this semester so we met up with her and she showed us around a little bit. We then woke up early Saturday morning to go to an Arabic bath/spa (this was the perfect cure for a hangover, I finally figured it out!). They had around 7 pools/hot tubs to sit in; we got free tea and a 25 minute message. How it worked is we went in the locker rooms, changed into our bathing suits then went out and relaxed in the hot tubs…after a few minutes they took us to get our message and then after the message we rinsed off in a shower and then relaxed in the pools again for the rest of the time (it was an hour and a half total). This was definitely an experience that I’ve never had before and it was really cool to see the Arabic culture of the city this way as well. The rest of the day we just wondered around the city, I took a Double Decker bus tour to all the main attractions and got some cool pictures from being on top of the bus. We could also see the Sierra Nevada really well from various parts of the city so I took a lot of pictures of that…it really made me want to go snowboarding. After the bus tour we just hung out around down town and explored, nothing really exciting just took some more pictures. I then went and got my first Spanish haircut later on…I decided since we did not really have any plans for a few hours that I would go and search for a peluceria (I think that’s how you spell it but its like a hair salon). I took me a while to find one but eventually I did, while I was waiting in line I was debating about what I wanted to do…I didn’t want to do anything too crazy but I was also thinking maybe of getting it cut more like the Spanish guys here to try and fit in to the culture a little bit more. So as I was debating I decided I would ask for the same hair cut that the barber had (which would also make it easier to explain what I wanted in Spanish). So that’s what I ended up doing…Its not really any different than normal but he cut my sideburns differently and it is best when I gel it kind of like a Mohawk.

On Saturday we woke up early again but this time to go visit Alhambra, they recommend that you buy tickets online in advance and we looked to do that but they were all sold out so we had to get up early enough to get there when it opened to get tickets. Luckily we did make it. Alhambra is like an old fortress I think with Arabic influence that is on like the top of a hill overlooking the downtown part of Granada. It was really cool because we could look down on everything but also we were surrounded by the mountains on all sides. I actually found out that it was in the running to be one of the “7 wonders of the world” (I don’t really know how that works but that’s what I heard). We spent pretty much our whole morning in la Alhambra and then afterwards relaxed in our hostel and then went out to explore the town a little bit more. We stayed down town for a while, went out to dinner and then to a few bars…I went back early because I was just exhausted from the previous two nights of no more than 5 hours of sleep, and I knew we had to wake up before 7 to catch our flight back to Madrid this morning. Needless to say I was a great trip but I am extremely tired and probably going to go to bed early tonight.

The next trip I have planned is to Paris the last weekend of February, and I think I am going to have to be a little stingier with my money because this past trip to Granada definitely ate it up quicker than I wanted. I also have midterms coming up in a week, so I’m hoping that those will go alright and I’ll be able to pull off decent grades in the classes that I am currently struggling a little bit in. Hope all is well with everyone else and I will post again sometime soon. Hasta luego.

A couple "firsts" in España

On Thursday of this past week I had my first true “intercambio”, this is were I talk to a Spanish local and practice my Spanish/ask questions about the culture and such and learn new words and cultural norms. It went really well actually…we ended up talking for over 3 hours and by the end I really felt like my Spanish had improved just over those three hours and I learned a lot about the culture and even a few new words to add to my vocabulary. This was a good thing for me at a good time right after I started to feel like my speaking abilities were kind of at a stand still…needless to say I'm excited to have more of these intercambios.

This past weekend I also had my first true trip while abroad…Emilio and I went to Leon to visit his friends that now life there. Leon is a really cool city, much more relaxed and much smaller than Madrid and even than Alcala but I enjoyed it a lot. We ended up not leaving until Saturday morning (the original plan was to go on Friday) so the trip was a little short but fun none the less. When we arrived Saturday afternoon we met up with Emilio’s friends and walked around the city, for lunch we went from bar to bar ordering drinks and getting tapas (the majority of bars give a little free portion of food when you order drinks which are called tapas). This was actually a lot of fun because I got to talk to them a lot and they introduced me to typical Spanish foods and drinks and also typical foods and drinks for Leon. They also showed me around to the famous cathedral of Leon and other monuments there. Like a said it is a much smaller city than Madrid so we were down town for about 5 hours and we briefly covered almost everything. When we finished downtown we went grocery shopping and then headed to their house up in the mountains. Their house is actually more like a house in the US…they have a little yard and its more spread out which I liked. Once we got to their house we just hung out and talked and ate dinner.

We had planned to go up into the mountains today but they got some snow over night and the roads were starting to get bad so Emilio was afraid we if we waited we wouldn’t be able to make out back to Madrid and we also weren’t sure if we could go into the mountains with bad roads. While we were on our way home we also heard that Madrid was getting snow and everything was chaotic (that’s three times since I’ve been here that they’ve had snow and before now they haven’t had it in like 20 years). As we got closer to being home we were afraid it was going to be really bad to drive but by the time we got back the roads were fine with very little traffic so that was a relief. After we arrived in Alcala we went to an open parking lot and Emilio tried to teach me a little bit how to drive a manual. The parking lot was really small but I was able to drive around a little bit which was cool since it was my first real time being able to drive one…I know all of you outside of the family are wondering how I never learned with my dads love for cars but it was because all the manuals we had at home were Dad’s company cars and I was not allowed to drive them. Anyway it was neat to learn a little bit and he said some night when there is not traffic we can take the car out and drive around the area a little bit which I’m excited for.

Well that’s a quick recap of what I’ve been up to, hope all is well for everyone at home or wherever you may be. Next weekend I’m going to Toledo on Friday with the free trip from school so that should be fun (its only a day trip) and then in two weeks I’m thinking about heading to the southern tip of Spain and going over to morocco with some friends from school so I’m looking forward to the next few trips. I’ll be sure to post after I go and inform you all how they went. ¡Hasta Luego!