¡mi familia española!

I've had multiple requests for pictures of my host family here, and on my last day in Valencia I finally got around to taking a couple pictures.

Amparo- mi madre española :)

Ainhoa- mi hermana española

I really liked the family I was placed with, they were very helpful and my host mom made the transfer to Spanish culture so much easier.  She was always ready to help me with any question I had and always made sure I ate copious amounts of food and had many many blankets.  Today she wrote out 2 recipes for my favorite foods that she makes and is going to show me how to make tortilla de patata tonight- something I will definitely be making myself in the future.  

I didn't blog about my trip to Madrid/Segovia, but I'll put up some pictures of it. It was a short trip, I got to tour a material engineering building/labs because that's what Chelsea is majoring in and she visited one of her professors who is doing research in Madrid.  I also saw the "center point" of Madrid, which is marked with a tile that says "kilometer 0," supposedly all of the roads start or end there.  Segovia was the first city in Spain that I saw when I was here three years ago, I stayed with a host family there for three days.  It was fun to be able to go back there and see the aqueduct and alcázar castle- I definitely never imagined that I would get the chance to go there again.  It feels like I've come full-circle with my Spain traveling but hopefully there will still be more opportunities to come back here in the future. 

Chimo - my intercambio

Spain 2010: the best, worst...and most bizarre

As a recap to my semester in Spain, I thought it would be fun to do something like a "best and worst" blog post.  So I spent some time making up categories...and here are the winners!


Most Beautiful: Ciudad de Artes y Ciencias

Most Disgusting: seeing a man holding his baby over a curb while the baby pooped


What I will miss the most: endless running trails and gardens in the Río


What I will miss the least: people smoking everywhere and smelling like smoke


Most Creepy: getting stared at by stray alley cats at night


Most Bizarre: the random explosions I hear pretty frequently- possibly fireworks?


Thing I wish I could bring back with me: Fanta Limón! (and lots of chocolate)


Most Surprising: bananas are kept in the fridge, milk is kept in paper cartons in the cabinet, shoes are always worn in the house


Best Discoteca: Umbracle

Most Addicting: Spanish bread


Best Bargain: 6 euro flight Barcelona to Pisa


Most Thought-Provoking: the reality of living in a city rather than just visiting


Most Delicious: Llao Llao covered with chocolate and strawberries

Worst Hair: (tie) the woman with bright orange dreadlocks all the way down her back & the man with exactly 3 dreadlocks all the way down his back surrounded by a normal haircut


What I wished I could point and laugh at: the men decked out in full suits while riding their mopeds when it was 90 degrees out


Best Landmark: Alameda Bridge

Best American stereotype: that we eat at McDonald's all the time

Favorite Photo (tie, I couldn't decide): 

Strangest Spanish phrase: "Véte a freír espárragos" literally translates to "go fry asparagus" but actually means something like our "go fly a kite" phrase


Best smell: Bakery's fresh bread in the morning (and pastries)
Worst smell: the seafood section of Mercado Central

Scariest moment: second week here- getting on the wrong bus and being taken completely out of the city (off my map) before looping back to the exact same place I started only to realize that I should have gotten on the bus on the other side of the street. 


"Why is this happening to me" moment: Being forced to sit on a clown's shoulders while he is riding a unicycle in Granada

Most popular discoteca song: "No Speak Americano" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR8logunPzQ

Best View: from el Penon de Ilfach rock in Calpe

"Probably shouldn't have done that" moment: wandering through the dark alleys of downtown Valencia following a "Google Maps" route to the discotecas


Most awkward: every elevator ride taken (they are extremely small) - they say hello and goodbye whenever you or someone else enters or leaves the elevator


Most memorable professor quote (about the island near Spain): "Ibiza is just sex, drugs, and 'rock and roll.'" 


Favorite meal at home: tortilla de patata, puree de calabacín, and an enormous quantity of bread


Funny and shocking at the same time: my host mom screaming "guapo!" (handsome/attractive) at the TV whenever they showed Fernando Torres- her favorite soccer player


Favorite literal spanish to english translation: caballitos del mar = little horses of the sea (seahorses)

a taste of fall in granada

Everyone knows that an 8-hour bus ride no matter what your destination is isn't very fun, so I'm just going to skip over that aspect of my Granada adventure- it will be a much more pleasant story that way.  


Fun Fact #1- Granada is the Spanish word for pomegranate, which I thought was fun because I love anything pomegranate flavored from custard to chap-stick, and now I know how to say it in Spanish. 

view from our hostel

Anyway, our hostel in Granada was called the Rambutan Guesthouse and it was the coolest hostel I have ever stayed at and definitely made the other hostels I have been to seem awful.  The staff were incredibly friendly and welcoming, the first thing they asked us was if we wanted some coffee or tea.  The people running it didn't seem to be much older than us, probably in their late 20's, and from Australia and Ireland.  It was a very "hippie-esque" place, they just seemed really mellow and they had music playing the whole time as well in the main room.  It was quite a hike to get there, but totally worth it in the end.  It is literally built into the side of a huge hill and when we got to it we had the most perfect view of the Alhambra.  To anyone going to Granada, I would highly recommend this place.  


Fun Fact #2- most Spanish (and English) words that begin with the letters "AL" have roots from the Arabic language (ex: alcohol, algebra, alchemy, Alhambra). 

The Alhambra (or "red fortress") has a long history that I would have to research thoroughly to fully understand, but in a nutshell it is a palace/fortress that started to be constructed in 1237 by the Moorish rulers of Granada.  The Nasrid dynasty completed the majority of the Alhambra, but additional palaces and alterations were added by Queen Isabella, King Ferdinand, and Charles V in the 1500s.  Boabdil was the last Nasrid Sultan to control the Alhambra before it was surrendered to the Catholics in 1492.  

The Arabic engineers and designers of the Alhambra were geniuses to say the least.  All of the water and fountains in this palace were gravity-powered using aqueducts that were built straight through the mountains.  There is a river somewhere that the aqueduct picks up water from, and with a slight downhill gradient it carries the water to the Alhambra.  I don't know how those gravity powered fountains work, but there was so much water running down the hill on the walk up to the Alhambra and countless other fountains inside of it.  The sound of water everywhere was amazing to listen to, and the woods surrounding the palace were very pretty as well with their fall colors and falling leaves. I missed the fall season in Valencia, everything here is still pretty much green. 

I absolutely loved every wall that I saw inside the palaces.  I want to just take one of them and put them in my future home, they were so intricately detailed- I can't imagine how much time it took to create every inch of wall space in these palaces.  I also would like to know how the designers made all of these designs work, where do you start when carving something to be a castle wall? And they were all perfect, no room for error when working with stone. If something wasn't carved, it was tiled.  There were beautiful tile designs everywhere including the floors and ceilings.  


We also learned about the Arabic baths when we were here.  They were rather ahead of their time in terms of personal hygiene, and there were buildings devoted to bathing that included 1 hot water room, 1 warm water room, and 1 cold water room.  There was some kind of process for this bathing, but it basically turned into a huge steam-room that still is standing today.

we couldn't take pictures of the real thing

Something really neat that they are doing at the Alhambra is restoring a famous fountain called Fountain of the Lions, which has come to be one of the main symbols of Granada.  It's a circle of 12 lions with a fountain in the middle, and water also comes out of the lion's mouths.  So far they have restored the lions, but the fountain isn't put together yet.  

After our Alhambra adventure, we treated ourselves to a very nutritious dinner consisting of a mountain of churros with cups of "hot chocolate," which was more like hot chocolate pudding for dunking the churros into.  It was like heaven on a plate, and it's a good thing these places don't exist in Wisconsin for obvious reasons.  

Our second day in Granada started off with a tour of the Albaicín area of the city given by one of the guys who works at our hostel.  He was from England and was the most entertaining, knowledgeable and theatrical tour guide I have ever had.  As he was telling us the history of Granada he would assign characters to different people in our group, so it was easier to remember names and the history seemed more real.  He was funny and kept throwing in random pieces of information about Granada like stories about the nuns who sell cookies or the nuns who sell wine, and about the old men who like inviting foreign girls to look at their gardens, and how people killed each other in the 1300s by crushing glass and putting it into food.  We didn't walk up to the caves that people actually live in because apparently he thinks they are a little too weird to show tourists- but he did tell us that there is an IKEA cave and everything inside is from IKEA. 

We did a lot of touristy shopping that second day- most of the little streets have the exact same types of stores.  There is a lot of Arabic influence in the kind of things they sell, but they are all targeted towards tourists.  


I probably have to mention the fact that I was forced to be part of a clown routine while passing through a plaza with an open-air market.  I was just standing there and this clown comes over and drags me into the middle of the circle, gives me a ridiculous hat and giant sunglasses to wear, and somehow gets me on top of his shoulders.  I thought this was the worst of it (I also had a sweet bicycle horn in my hand), until I realized he was holding his unicycle, asking the crowd of people surrounding us if he should get on it.  As they are all yelling "sí! sí!" I'm yelling "no!" Clearly I am helpless, and of course he gets on that unicycle with me on his shoulders.  I was just holding on for dear life, it was one of the most confusing 10 minutes of my life- he didn't feel the need to speak ever, just used hand gestures.  My spanish probably would have failed me at that point anyway. Thankfully, I survived and will be sure to keep a safer distance away from clowns from this point on.  Chelsea was very amused by all of this and I will be sure to get some of the pictures she took. 

cheers! brilliant! mind the gap!

My first thoughts when disembarking the plane in London, England - "I can see my breath!" Yes, Spain has turned me into a complete wimp when it comes to cold weather, and I wasn't exactly prepared for the 30 degree temperature drop that awaited me after 9 months of mild to extremely hot weather.  The fact that we could see our breath thoroughly amused us for awhile, until it became a longer and longer wait for our bus to take us from Gatwick to central London.  
The tourist buses in Valencia look like these, so it was weird thinking of the double-decker as a normal bus in London.

London Eye

Our hostel was interesting to say the least- we were literally sleeping above a club/discoteca (which luckily we couldn't really hear), and there was also a window that refused to close in the room so it was kind of like sleeping outside temperature-wise.  I'm always impressed by the fact that we are able to actually find our hostels in places like Rome, London and Athens.  We never had any major issues with being lost for extended periods of time.  

The first thing I saw when walking out of the tube (the awesome, idiot-proof underground system in London) was the London Eye.  I had no clue that the London Eye was basically a ferris wheel, I'm not even sure what I thought it was.  It is definitely more impressive at night when the entire thing is lit up with blue lights.  Apparently it takes about half an hour to go all the way around, so you can't even see it moving.  Right across the river from that is Big Ben, Parliament, and the Westminster Abbey- future location of Prince William's (or Principe Guillermo as they call him in Spain for some reason) wedding. 

One little detail that I had forgotten about England- they like doing things completely backwards like driving on the left side of the road.  This freaked me out on our first bus ride, because every time it turned I thought we were going to drive into oncoming traffic.  It's also pretty dangerous (as we soon discovered) being a tourist and having to cross streets all the time.  Fortunately, England expects to have to deal with situations like this and kindly wrote which direction to look for traffic at literally every intersection. If it weren't for these messages I most definitely would have gotten hit by several taxis and/or buses.  There were still some close calls. 

Our next stop was Buckingham Palace, where we arrived just in time to see the Changing of the Guards.  I can't believe they do this entire ceremony every day...I really want to do some research about the daily lives of the British palace guards, like what they do outside of standing out in the cold all day.  Now I can say that I've seen this ceremony in two different countries- except that I preferred the Greek routine which lasted about 10 minutes to the English version which was drawn out for close to an hour.  We did get to hear several songs played by the guards with their instruments.  They do have pretty awesome hats as well. 

Day 1 ended with a trip to the Chinatown area of London, which was pretty neat to see.  There were so many Japanese, Chinese, sushi, and Thai restaurants to choose from.  We were craving something with substantial flavor/spiciness, since those are pretty much non-existent in Spain. Oh and of course we had to take our phonebooth pictures as well :) 


The land of HARRY POTTER :D  I loved part one of the final movie, and of course I cried at the end of it.  It seems perfect to me that after being obsessed with Harry Potter for the last 12 years of my life I had the opportunity to see one of the final movies in London, where there are so many Harry Potter references.  Chelsea and I are complete Harry Potter nerds and loved pointing out anything and everything that had the slightest connection to the books. We walked across Millennium Bridge, which was "destroyed" in one of the movies by the bad guys, and of course paid a visit to King's Cross station and the famous Platform 9 3/4.  Apparently we looked pretty lost while trying to find this platform, because one of the workers asked us "are you looking for Harry Potter?" in his awesome British accent. 

We're going to Hogwarts!

Day two started out at the Tower Bridge, which was one of the coolest bridges I've ever seen.  I can't decide if I like this one or the Golden Gate more.  We also went to St. Paul's Cathedral, Tower Hill (which is where they used to hold public executions), and Traitor's Gate where criminals would sneak back into the city.  London has so many different types of neighborhoods, it's hard to believe they are all located in the same city.  I have never seen anything like Camden, London before.  It was basically one gigantic outdoor market and the rest of the buildings were tattoo shops.  There was a really neat section of the market that was completely food stations from a huge variety of countries- Poland, Brazil, Pakistan, Mexico, Peru, France- pretty much anywhere.  It all smelled delicious and I couldn't resist buying a Brazilian churro filled with homemade chocolate and rolled in cinnamon sugar.  It was the best churro I have ever eaten and now I'm craving more when I go to Madrid next week :) 


Overall London was my favorite city that I have seen so far (except Valencia, of course).  It just seemed a lot more mellow than Rome, cleaner and less noisy than Athens, and they spoke English! Too bad the exchange rate makes me want to cry, otherwise I definitely could have spent more time there. 

what would you do for 20,000 euro?

So there is this thing in front of Nuevo Centro (the mall) here called La Casa de Cristal, and it is basically a dorm-room sized house made of glass with two people living in it.  For 33 days the entire world can see everything they do, and if they make it 33 days without leaving they get 20,000 euro.  They had never met each other before this contest, and now they are basically the same as animals on display in a zoo.  

I'm not sure what the point of the contest is besides giving away 20,000 euro, but it seems pretty creepy to me that people just stand and watch what you do all day.  I've walked past a couple times, I've seen the girl on her laptop and this morning when I was there they were both sleeping (yes, I did feel like a major creep while taking pictures).  Not being able to leave would also be difficult, 33 days is a LONG time to be stuck in a place this small. 

Here's your answer to the first thing you thought about when reading this: how do they shower? 

I'm not sure if I'd be able to do this...but 20,000 euro is a lot of money to earn in 33 days for basically doing nothing.

city biking? no, gracias

Who knew that riding a bike in Valencia would be so challenging?! I must have looked crazy or at least like I had no clue how to ride a bike.  My intercambio met me tonight riding one of the Valenbici's (valencia "bici") that can be rented for a yearly rate because of all the cars and traffic for the soccer game.  So I thought it would be fun to try riding it back to where he had to return it, about 3 blocks away.  
It was a challenging 3 blocks- all of the people walking to the stadium, cars parked everywhere, crosswalks...I just focused on trying not to hit anything.  The bikes are different than normal bikes.  They are heavier on the front (plus there is a basket) so mine just kept swerving all over the place because I wasn't going fast enough to stay balanced.  It's a good thing I walk everywhere, I don't think I possess enough hand-eye coordination to successfully steer a bike around in this city.  

short & sweet excursion to Xátiva

view from one side of the castle

The final group excursion was to a small town about 45 minutes from Valencia called Xátiva.  Like most of the places we've gone to, there's basically one big tourist attraction and in Xátiva it was the castle.  It doesn't look like your "typical" castle, it's really spread out and more like a giant wall with two peaks on each side.  It was another fun climb to the top, we started taking short cuts through the grass instead of staying on the switchback roads all the way to the top of the cliff.  

We also went to a museum called L'Almodí, where the famous upside-down portrait of Phillip V of Spain hangs.  He is hung upside down as punishment and in memory of his decision to burn the city of Xátiva after one of his victories in battle.  Xátiva is also the birthplace of two former Popes.  


It's hard to believe I will be on my way back to the U.S. in less than a month now.  Each week seems to go faster, and since I will be traveling for the rest of my weekends here, it will be even more of a blur.  I'm leaving for London on Friday night to begin my Harry Potter-filled adventure :)  We have mapped out various locations where the movies were filmed that we want to see for ourselves in addition to seeing part 1 of movie number 7.  Personally, I'm going to try my best to be the first muggle to get to Hogwarts through Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross Station.

la albufera and the "gondolas" of valencia

An impromptu roadtrip led a couple of friends and I to the nearby nature reserve called La Albufera.  The small town it is located in is called El Palmar, and when we arrived after our 30 minute bus ride from the city, it seemed like we were the only living people there.  It was about 10 a.m, so we figured the inhabitants just liked to sleep in on a Saturday morning.  

Ernesto

The "thing" to do at La Albufera is to go on a boat ride through the lake/large pond that is the source for growing rice and raising eels.  There also seemed to be an unusually high population of ducks.  So after passing numerous signs telling us to go on "un paseo en barca," we chose one, which happened to be a boat tour with one of the more "well-known" boat drivers in Palmar.  His name was Ernesto (we even saw a sign with his name on it later) and he explained what the different areas of the water were used for and the churches or other small buildings along the shore.  He also seemed to really get a kick out of all the ducks, because whenever we saw one he would point and yell "patos! patos!" 

After the boat trip, it took about 15 minutes to make a complete circle around the town (which is like a little peninsula surrounded by the water), then we proceeded to try and figure out if and when our bus would show up again.  We walked around asking people, and were finally told that the bus stop sign had fallen onto the ground (who knows how long ago), but it was definitely still there.  I liked how everyone knew the sign was on the ground, but clearly there was no hurry to fix it.  

pingüinos y delfines!

Today we had our group excursion to the Oceanográfico, which is the only part of the City of Arts and Sciences that wasn't designed by Santiago Calatrava.  It is a huge complex of different aquariums with creatures from all over the world- Mediterranean, Arctic, South Pole, ect.  It pretty much had everything- beluga whales, seahorses, walruses, sharks, and a bazillion other types of sea creatures. 


It was a really fun aquarium because it had tunnels that you could walk through underneath all of the fish, and there was even a weird "bubble" that you crawled into and sat in which made you feel like you were sitting inside a fish tank.  

sitting inside the bubble

I was thoroughly amused by some of the spanish names for the animals, like pingüinos for penguins, and caballitos del mar for seahorses (which literally translates to "little horses of the sea").  We had perfect weather for this trip (we were outside most of the time), it doesn't feel like November at all because lately it's been around 75 degrees and sunny all the time.  

The best part of the aquarium was the dolphin show (a.k.a. los delfines).  I've seen dolphin shows before but it never ceases to amaze me how clever dolphins are and I always am amazed by how well trained they are.  How do they train them to do two flips in the air? Or spin vertically? Also, how on earth do the trainers managed to stay balanced on the noses of the dolphins while underwater?! I might never know these answers, but I do know that it would probably be awesome to be a dolphin trainer. 

55 degrees?? time to break out the jackets and scarves

I met with my intercambio for the first time in over a month tonight, and I definitely think my spanish has improved since the last time we met (it would be kind of depressing if that didn't happen...).  I was able to carry on a pretty good conversation with the words seeming to come to me without thinking.  He showed me around his old university and then we drove to the Mediterranean, which I did not realize was only about a three minute drive from where I live.  Probably because I'm never in cars here and usually walk everywhere.  


It was really pretty to see the Mediterranean at night (and to actually see stars!) when we walked out on some kind of pier to see the entire city.  He seemed to think it was cold when we were out on that pier, and I had to explain to him that if I were in Wisconsin now and it was 55 degrees, I probably wouldn't have even had my coat on.  Valencia has turned me into a wimp when it comes to temperatures, and it will probably be funny to see how ridiculously cold I am when I get back.  I don't even want to imagine the freezing cold 6 a.m track practices that are in my future...

más Zume, por favor!

Last night I went with my friend and two spanish girls (my friend's intercambio) to a zumeria, which could be translated into "juice bar."  It is located on a tiny street in the downtown center of Valencia, and I never would have known about it if these two spanish girls hadn't taken us there.  It's called Zume and they serve fresh fruit smoothies and crepes.  There were so many choices for smoothie flavors, it was a struggle to decide because I probably would have loved all of them.  They are served in gigantic glass goblets with colorful straws that I would need to use both hands to pick up.  I chose an orange-strawberry-banana-milk combination, but I'm certain I will be going back to try others! They all had fun names like Tutti-Frutti, and *bonus* it's no smoking and comes with free wi-fi! Hmm..new homework spot perhaps? 


We sat in the back of the juice bar where there were tiny tables surrounded by colorful cushions and pillows lining the walls on the floor where you sat (very cute). It was nearly empty when we were there at 8 pm, but I'm betting it gets more crowded later at night.  


Zume was the first smoothie I've had in Spain, and it was a delicious and refreshing way to end my day :)