Parque de las Ciencias

¡Hola a todos! Now, I don't know if you know this or not, but last Tuesday, Fat Tuesday, is also known as Pancake Day in England.  That bar that I told you about, Totes y Amigos, where I go for intercambios is a British bar and to celebrate Pancake Day they gave us pancakes, or crepes, as our second tapas.  This was a great business scheme to coerce us into getting two beers and thus getting the pancake with the second one.  Though Pancake Day was described as a day where housewives would get together all of the foods that they wouldn't be able to eat after Ash Wednesday to create pancakes, these ones fell a little flat.  They were the average size of pancakes, but they were much thinner.  Instead of syrup, they actually gave us a choice of lemon or orange.  I opted for orange and they served me my flapjack with a quarter of an orange on the side.  I saw someone squeeze their orange over the pancake and sprinkle sugar, so I followed suit.  Then I tasted the pancake, and you know what, it wasn't half bad.  Even though this experience was strange for me, it must have seemed even stranger to Silvia, the Spaniard I was talking to.  I chuckled when she asked if we had Pancake Day in the United States because I was just as surprised as she was.

This is the Rio Genil, the river that is right in front of Totes y Amigos

Another event of Pancake Day is the Pancake Race.  This involves flipping a pancake, or dar la vuelta, in a pan and running to a predetermined spot and back.  Then you pass the pan to the next person in line.  My team almost won, but in the last second Alberto snuck in and took the lead.  I was ashamed because a.) he beat me and b.) that means my cousin Michelle's team had won.  But it was fun nonetheless.

That was Tuesday night.  I also went to intercambio Thursday night, but the group I talked to weren't really talking back.  They started out talking and willing to learn English, but then one went home and the other went on her cell phone, so I moved to another table.

That was Thursday night.  Friday, today, we went El Parque de las Ciencias, or the Science Museum.  Because I had been spoiled with the MoS from Boston, I didn't have as high expectations for this.  Still, being the science major I am, I spent the 6€, and boy, was I glad that I did.  This museum is especially known for it's planetarium, but we decided not to see that today.  Instead, we went to the main attraction: the T-Rex that we had seen on posters all around the city.  More on that later.

We started in what seemed like the little kids section because they were very simple science experiments and optical illusions.  Still, we were impressed by some of the facts like: no matter what a hole looks like, the shadow it makes will be round...assuming it isn't right next to the ground.  We also found an echo creator, a tube that was really long, and heavy rocks that would move because they were sitting in water.  That phenomenon seemed to be a favorite as it appeared all over the place.  One thing that caught my eye was this series of interconnected rails that had balls rolling around on them.  I remember as a kid we would go to the Children's Museum in New Hampshire and they had this machine that was essentially a machine trying to achieve perpetual motion.  This had a similar feel except that it called on us to keep the ball rolling, as it were.  The ball would stop at some places and we were have to pull a lever to move it up the stairs or crank a screw to bring it to it's next location to keep it going.  We enjoyed this for awhile, we were still in the kids' section, but then we moved on and found maze.  The maze was simple.  I say simple because I figured it out with only two wrong turns, but I was also racing against my friends.  Still, I had fun doing it because who doesn't like getting lost?

After the maze, we moved to the butterfly exhibit, a humid, hot room that housed under 10 butterflies, or mariposas.  But more than just butterflies, there were turtles and koi fish.  The butterflies were so tame that we could get up close and snap a good picture of them.  They may have been too tame though because we saw a kid pick one up by it's wings and then drop it to the ground.  A friend of mine went over and yelled at the kid in ok-Spanish talk and the kid walked away.  I'm sure he learned his lesson.  After, we went outside and enjoyed the air with almost 100% humidity less than the room we had just left, and walked towards the Birds of Prey show they were putting on.  This was amazing.  They started off by showing us a barn owl that kind of resembled Hedwig from Harry Potter.  She was graceful and beautiful, but it still seems cruel to tether them to leashes.  The handler said that the only reason why they fly is because he is holding food in his hand.  They don't actually enjoy flying as we might if we were to have wings.  Nevertheless, they brought out the second bird which was an eagle.  It didn't look like your typical bald eagle as it was black and small and had a large tail.  This bird they didn't have on a leash so they let it fly all over the small arena.  Then came the showstopper, a giant, blue-gray hawk.  This hawk can fly as fast as 300 km/h (186 mph!) and they showed us just what it could do.  The trainer had this leather doll tied on to the edge of a rope and he would swing it around as the bird flew all around us.  At the moment of its strike, it went straight towards the ground and then directly towards the doll, which evidently, was full of meat.  It was incredible to see it change speeds so quickly and remain in control.  Each time it hit the doll even though it was moving through the air.  Nature can be simply amazing.

Next, we went to search for the big attraction: the T-Rex.  On the way we saw this lightning exhibit that resembled the one they have at the MoS.  I remember going there with Nana and Chelsea when I was a lot younger, but we left because it was too loud.  Though we didn't do it today, I think I'm old enough to handle it.  Right across the way, found the T-Rex and he was massive.  He was situated next to his triceratops friend, who was also just a skeleton and then there were some "realistic" 3-D depiction of the T-Rex.  I say "realistic" with quotations because we really don't know what they looked like.  We can piece together their bones, but there is no evidence of their skin color or type.  Another cool scene they had set up involved mechanic dinosaurs that were attacking other dinosaurs.  Now, in the United States they may not make it as gruesome because they know that kids might see it, but here they couldn't care less.  There was one scene where the T-Rex was eating the intestines of a triceratops and another where these little dinosaurs were eating a big platosaurus.  It was cool to see dinos in action, but they probably could have done it a better way.

Finally, we went through the human body exhibit.  I was especially pleased for this one because I was a neuroscience major and because I am a biology major.  I even took human physiology last semester and it was my favorite class in high school.  I was also traveling with two other science majors, the only two other science majors on the program, so we were all excited.  The museum did not disappoint.  We started out with the origins of life and the primordial soup where molecules came together and formed organic molecules which led to cells which led to prehistoric creatures.  There are even these shrimp like creatures that exist today, called fossil animals because there are fossils of the same species from millions of years ago.  After we found out where we evolved from, we dove right into the human body.  We looked at x-rays and compared hearts of different species with ours.  We saw where the most heat was on our body and how to do a sonogram.  There was even a whole room on the brain.  The highlight was Mind Ball.  In order to play, two people had to sit down and put their forehead against the head rest.  Then someone pressed the button and the game started.  A ball in the center would move away from a person who was not thinking at all.  The objective was to force the ball towards the other person by simply not trying.  At the same time, they showed your alpha and theta (I think) brain waves.  When they were equal, you were doing well, but when the theta waves were higher, you were thinking too much.  We even saw this happen because we would talk to the person and they would answer, but before they answered, we saw a spike in theta brain waves.  Truly amazing!  Unfortunately, we were all getting tired so we left.  I at my host mom's bocadillo, or sandwich, that she had prepared for me.  It was a Spanish tortilla with chorizo, a juicy meat that resembles pepperoni.  It was delicious.

After the museum, I went to buy tickets for Sevilla, another city of Andalucia, the province that Granada is in.  This experience was quick and easy as I hopped on the 10 bus to the bus estación, or station, and just ordered the tickets right then and there.  Fortunately and unfortunately, we are leaving at 7 AM on a four and a half hour bus ride.  At least we'll get to see a lot of the city and not waste an entire day traveling.  Anyways, that's where I'm going to leave you and I'll have exciting stories from Sevilla after the weekend, which is a five day weekend, if I might add.  Also, if I might add, we're going to Roma the following weekend.  Yes, I'm just living the life.  ¡Hasta luego!