¿Qué he estado haciendo?

Hello everyone! I haven't written in a while and that may be because I'm doing so many things lately.  Well, let's see, I left you with St. Patrick's Day.  What happened next, you ask? Well, we had a week of midterms.  And by a week, I mean three days for me.  And by three days, I mean that I had two on the first day, two on the second, and one on the third.  How'd I do? I have thus far not received anything lower than an B+ in the Spanish Grade scale.  They do grades out of 10 and an 8 out of a ten is a B.  You can actually get a 5/10 and still pass the class.  It just transfers to the states as a D-.

So that was fun.  At least after Wednesday, I was done.  Now I can put the car on cruise control until the end of May, which is swiftly approaching.  That's right, I've been gone for two months and believe me when I say that I'm enjoying myself here.  On the weekends, like last weekend for example, I went out four nights in a row, not coming back until after 4 each night, but I met so many interesting people.  And not only were they people, but they were Spaniards.  I got to practice my Spanish so much and even though I'm not perfect, I can feel how much I've grown as a Spanish speaker.  It's a great feeling.

I do miss things from home.  A friend of mine here posed the question that besides from people and pets, of course, what do you miss the most from the states.  My first answer was iPhone.  I actually can't believe how well I'm coping without it, though the iPod touch does a stand up job replacing it.  But then I thought a little harder and I came up with three things (two are food related). I miss my record player and all of my records.  I listen to them here, but it isn't the same.  Maybe I'm lacking the environment of my basement or playing ping pong, but I do have a craving to listen to Bat Out Of Hell or Rumours on vinyl.  The second thing I miss the most is Craisins.  Ah, craisins.  I assume they have them here, but it isn't as attainable as it is back home.  I practically drink them when they are presented before me.  And then the third thing I miss the most is Tabasco sauce.  Our host mom has been repeating meals, which is understandable since we have had two meals a day for the past two months.  I just wish that I could spice it up with some Tabasco.  Those are the things I miss most from home.

But I digress.  Two things that I have done in the past 10 days.  One, we walked through Albaicin, an area of Granada where most of the gypsies live.  It was fun because we got lost, but we kept taking random turns and we found out where we were.  We also saw a cat.  Oh, and I am still enamored with the graffiti here in Granada because it is so interesting to look at.  I took many pictures and I will post some here.  The second thing I did was see this church called San Juan de Dios, a church that was built in the 17th Century.  This was during Spain's downfall as it had once been the most powerful empire in the world, but was losing territory everywhere.  Instead of admitting defeat, they spent money they didn't have on huge projects, like this iglesia, to show to the world that they still had money.  We are reading some poems from this Siglo de Oro, or Century of Gold, and it was required that we saw a church made in the 17th century.  Right from when you walked in, you could tell that it was over the top because the only color you saw was gold.  It had intricately carved walls and statues and it was just massive.  It made the church in Sacromonte look simple, and do you remember how impressed I was with that chapel?

Ok, so those are the highlights, the things destacados.  Now, I'm actually on break, but you should look forward to the following places:
-Tonight, I'm going to a Flamenco Show
-Friday, I'm going to Córdoba to see la mezquita
-Tuesday, I'm going to Paris, France for 5 days
-The following weekend, I'm going to Cork, Ireland

Wow, where am I going to find the time to blog? I'll be so far behind by the time I get back from Paris.  Well, expect some long blog posts because you know I can write forever on just one tiny thing.  Until next time, ¡Hasta Luego!

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I played an ultimate frisbee pick up game with a team of half Spaniards and half English speakers.  Then the next day I planted trees in Generalife, a hill really close to Granada that lost a lot of its vegetation due to fires.  And finally, I had an intercambio with this woman that I met through the CLM, which consisted of us talking for two hours in Spanish/English and arguing over stereotypes and why things are certain ways in Spain and America. 

Destacados de la Semana Pasada

Ay, que mucho ha pasado.  A lot has happened in the last week, so I'm going to try and show you the destacados, or highlights.



Let's start with last Saturday.  Me and a group of people went to this town that borders Granada city called Monachil.  It is really well known as a place to hike as it has lots of small hills you can climb and paths to follow.  It even has a suspension puente, bridge, that goes for 40 meters. We spent several hours there and enjoyed the view from atop of a rock, and man, was it breathtaking.  I don't know if it's just because we're in Europe, but everything looks and feels better here.  The rocks had a great color scheme of gray, red, and dark gold that interrupted the crisp blue skyline.  We even ate lunch on top of one of them.

After we hiked up, we decided to follow a path through a cave that led to a stream.  We crossed the stream and took another break.  As I was eating my naranja, or orange, I threw the peels into the bushes, an action that unintentionally invited a small guest to come dine with us.  This mouse started munching on the peels and staring at us.  After our quick break, we kept following the path until we found a field.  Though as beautiful it could have been, it was covered with cow pies.  This is where we decided to turn around and head home.

Sunday: returned to the beach, but a different beach than before.  I told you we went to Salobreña, but we were in the mood to try a different place called Almuñecar, which is supposed to be the second best place behind Nerja, which is much further away.  Nerja also has caves to explore and hills to climb, but it is two hours away. Anyways, we went to Almuñecar and found actual sand as opposed to the rocks that Salobreña offered us.  There was also a cheap ice cream place that had one scoop for 90 centimos, or cents.  And then we played frisbee with our green, large frisbee that was super cheap at a chino store.  Just for your information, that is not a racist common as there are these cheap stores that are owned by the Chinese.  That's where I bought my costume for Carnaval.


Wednesday: Fútbol.  I was so excited to play a competitive sport, and I did miss soccer, but man was I overwhelmed by the amount of running I had to do. Firstly, it was 5 on 5 soccer, meaning four in the field and one goalie.  The field is smaller than a normal 6 v. 6 field meaning that there is a lot of back and forth which means a lot of running.  Even worse was that it was on concrete.  We had 12 people on our team, so we were subbing in and out constantly.  Unfortunately, we lost by 4 goals, but we attributed that to getting back into the game.  Luckily, we think we have another game this week in the loser's bracket, but vamos a ver, we will see.

Friday: La Fiesta de la Primavera.  This must be the biggest party that Granada has because there were thousands of people gathered in one area near our house.  They were celebrating the coming of Spring, primavera.  At this location, there is no open container law and thus people from all over Spain, including people we met from Madrid, come and hang out and drink.  The party started at 1 PM, but we went around 5 and stayed for a few hours.  It was pure craziness.  There were just people everywhere.  It was definitely a good way to meet Spaniards as they were on our left and rights, our fronts and backs.  So we talked to them while we could, but as soon as the sun started to set, we left.  We had been warned that it can get kind of dangerous after dark.


Saturday: El Día de San Patricio, St. Patrick's Day.  Now, I spent last St. Patrick's Day in Canada where it wasn't done over the top as it is in the United States.  I had the same expectations for here, and I was right.  All we had to do was find a nice Irish bar and we actually found two and had a great time.  I even got a hat for drinking two Guinnesses.  Dunn's would be proud.  Especially because it is supposed to be a Guinness with a clover as it's coaster.



Sunday: Today.  I should be studying for midterms seeing as I have 5 in three days, but I'm only worried about two of them.  Those are the two I took a break from to write this long post to catch you all up on what I've been doing this past week.  Aquí está, and there it is.  Until my next cultural experience, ¡hasta luego!

A Los Siguientes Días

Wow, can you believe all of that happened in my first day of Rome?  Me neither.  Though there are two more days to talk about, I'm going to go into them in less detail to make them fit in this blog post.  So, let's move on to day two.

We woke up at eight, ate breakfast included in the hotel, and then met outside for our Panoramic Bus Tour of Rome.  This basically means that API paid for a bus to drive us around the city and drive by some important places.  I wasn't that impressed by it because we saw so much and the tour guide told us so many facts that I couldn't remember everything.  We did stop at el Coliseo, or the Colosseum.  Unfortunately, I didn't get time to go in and see it, but the structure is still massive from the outside.  After we saw the Colosseum, we all got in the bus and the tour guide asked if we wanted to continue the tour or if we wanted to see the pope speak.  He does this every Sunday at noon and he gives a speech in Latin.  Most all of us wanted to go, so the tour guide, kind of reluctantly, brought us to Vatican City.

The running joke that the tour guide used was that we were leaving the country.  "They won't ask for your passport and you won't get it stamped," he said.  Then he explained it is because there is an agreement between Vatican City and Italy.  Now, I said this before, but Christianity is everywhere.  Even though I knew it existed, and some of the ins and outs from Angels and Demons, it's crazy that the center of Christianity has its own country.  I saw the outside of Vatican City the previous night and it looked amazing, but seeing St. Peter's Basilica is absolutely stunning.  When we arrived in the city there were already many people gathered.  When the Pope started speaking, everyone cheered.  There were kids on our left who were waving around blue handkerchiefs.  After the Pope finished his sermon he started speaking in Italian.  Some people cheered further away from us cheered.  Then he started speaking in Spanish and the people on our left cheered and waved their handkerchiefs.  Then he started speaking in English and welcomed all of the students from America.  That's when we cheered.  Unfortunately, we didn't have anything to wave, so we just cheered really loudly.


After this, we went and saw the Castillo de San Angelo, which is a castle that was used a long time ago.  We didn't learn much about this history, but there was a great view from the top.  This building also contains il pasetto, a not so secret entrance directly to the Vatican.

The next thing we did was go to the Wedding Cake.  I don't remember the real name, but when we drove by it, the tour guide called it the Wedding Cake of Rome.  It is a massive white building that you can go to the top and look out unto the city.  It was 7.50 €, so two of us opted out, but two others wanted to go up to the top.  Instead, we went through this museum of ancient artifacts that followed several wars that Italy had fought.  Then we saw a nice iglesia, or church, that was situated right next door.  You can tell the impact of church because of all of the effort they pout towards making them stand out.  Simply amazing.

After this, we met back up with our other friends and went out for dinner.  I got this amazing pizza called Diavola with "spicy" meat.  It was huge and it had meat, so it was awesome.  That's all I'm going to say on dinner and then we had a slow night and went back to the hotel and watched The Gladiator, an appropriate movie for the place we were in.

Alright, we arrived at our last day.  We spent the majority of the day in Vatican City.

The two major sights were St. Peter's Basilica and the Vatican Museum.  St. Peter's Basilica was massive.  We found a list of the popes, which also helped me understand who was alive and when.  I didn't actually connect the fact that the first pope was St. Peter right after Jesus died and the fact that they have had a Pope all of the time since, making a lot of popes.  We also saw the place under which St. Peter is buried.

Then we went to the Vatican Museum.  Essentially, there was a giant collection of everything.  It is probably worth billions.  On top of that, there was the Sistine Chapel, a building that houses Michaelangelo's most famous work.  It was disappointing in the sense that it was so far away, as it was drawn on the ceiling, and because there were so many people.  And the security team kept yelling, "No photos!"  But obviously, it is still a masterpiece and I'm glad I got to see it.

After this, we went to Las Catacumbas, or the catacombs which must have been the oldest ruins we got to walk through.  It was also the furthest place we had to go.  It was on the outskirts of the city and it was surrounded by a plain of sheep.  They were built during the third century and used up until the fifth century and has over 500,000 people buried underground.  The place came about because Rome banned the burial of anyone within the city walls.  So, the Roman Catholic, Calista, donated his land for the burial of Roman Catholics.  Unfortunately, in the fifth century, the Visogoths came in and raided all of the tombs.  This included the removal of some remains of past popes and saints.  After they left, the Christians reburied the bodies deeper in the caves.  We couldn't go down that far but we saw the old tombs and the body of a saint and of a little kid.  Their bones were so frail and weak, but the human skeleton still existed after 15 centuries.

So that was essentially my trip to Rome.  Sorry that so much happened and I had so much to write about, but if you skipped everything and are just reading this part, look at the pictures.  They are worth a thousand words.  Just by looking at two you will have learned more than I wrote.

¡Hasta Luego!

Roma: El Primer Día

¡Hola a todos! I know that it has been a while, but that means I have so much to talk about.  As most of you know, I went to Italy, so let's start there.

We woke up at 5 AM to take a 6:30 AM bus for our 11:00 AM flight that landed at 2:00 PM.  Then we were in the land of the Romans.  Luckily, the Italians didn't clear away all of the ruins so we were able to see them right as we drove through the city.  Once we got to our super nice hotel, we dropped off our bags and then hit the city.  Unfortunately, unlike in Madrid, our hotel wasn't in the center, so we had to walk a little bit to all of the main attractions.

I'm the kind of person that wants to see everything on the first day and then take it slower for the next two days, so that's exactly what we did.  Our first stop was, of course, a Gelato store.  I looked and tried probably seven different flavors, but I finally settled on Kiwi and Strawberry, or fresa.  It was amazing, but a little too sweet for my liking, but I got to experience gelato where it is known to be amazing.

The first actualy place we went to was Piazza Novana, which was a plaza that had three fountains in front of this enormous cathedral.  Fortunately, it was open and free so we walked through it and it was beautiful.  Unfortunately, no photos were allowed, so I'll only have my memories.  There was one room that had a tomb and there was a piece of circular glass that revealed the bones of what looked like a small child.  I probably should look up what that who that was.

After we got our full, we headed to the next closest attraction, The Pantheon.  On the way there, however, we saw this amazing street performer break-dancing in the street with a huge crowd surrounding him.

We maneuvered through the crowd and went down a couple of side streets and found the Pantheon.  Unluckily, it was closed so we took pictures of the massive structure from outside.  More about that on the following day.

The next place we wanted to go to is called the Fountain of Trevi, a giant fountain depicting Greek/Roman gods that is a must see for anyone who goes to Rome.  There is a rumor that if you throw a coin over your shoulder and into the fountain, your true love will find you.  I only threw in a 5 centimo, or cent, coin, so I don't know how likely that will be.  But we did see a man throw a coin over his shoulder and hit a girl from our program, so he may never find his true love especially if he keeps attacking women with coins.

The fountain was very majestic with its statues of men, horses, and shells where water flowed over all of them.  We even saw a guy get up on top of the giant waterfall and do a back flip.  Apparently that was illegal because the police were there immediately to talk to him, but everyone still cheered.  What is legal, however, is drinking in public.  Rome does not have an open container law, so we bought some wine and sat by the fountain drinking it.

A building called the wedding cake.  More on that tomorrow!

As soon as we were done, we felt cold and decided to go back to the hotel to get some jackets.  As soon as we were leaving, we ran into three of our fellow APIers who had been in Italy for over a week.  They had originally planned to meet us in Rome when our flight was scheduled 2 days earlier, but that changed and they didn't want to cancel their flights, so they enjoyed a week and a half long trip to Italy.

We greeted each other as we would any long, lost friends and then started walking.  Their stomachs were empty and so were their pockets so we went on a search for a cheap pizza place.  We found one near the night-life center of Rome and stopped to have a bite.  Then, since all of us had been exhausted from a long day of traveling, we went back to the hotel.  We sat down in one of their rooms and they quickly whipped out a deck of cards.  They had played President, a game the Cotton Family is no stranger to, but with all of the wrong rules.  I showed them the light, and we played a few competitive rounds were I had three terms as president.  Then we played Hearts.  I didn't think anyone would know how to play on this trip, but this one kid did and we tried to teach the others.  He played ok, but I think I'm better (he releases the queen like a hot cake) and it will be interesting to see what happens when we have weekly card nights.  Yes, apparently other people share my passion for cards.  We also found out this other girl plays Hearts with her family, and I think she's pretty good.  I can't wait.

So that concludes my first 8 hours in Roma.  I saw a lot of buildings and found out new facts about the people on my trip.  I will soon write day two and three (and four doesn't really count). And hopefully, I remember to tell you about today because it was very interesting as well.

A funny sign