Hola!

This will be another fairly short entry because I only have 20 minutes. We'll see how much I can get written. There's always so much! Basic things, it's only been a day so things haven't changed much in Salamanca. I'm still happy with my host mom and roommate, classes were a little better today. Also, our host mom hosts french highschool boys, too. New ones come every tuesday and leave on saturday so we met this week's pair at lunch. They were pretty quiet, but I guess we were too since Spanish is not native to any of us.

Conversation class was very exciting today. When I was introducing myself to the teacher and class yesterday, I mention my love of the Catholic church and studying philosophy/theology(really, apologetics) and the teacher asked me to give a presentation on the church for the class. Her thinking was that we have a few chinese students in the class who would be totally unfamiliar with christianity and I could introduce it because it's so huge in Spain(94% Catholic). So, when we walked in today she asked me to take her teachers chair and I ended up spending the whole hour and a half giving an introductory survey of the christian and more specifically Catholic faith. The first 45 minutes was more or less lecturing and the last 45 minutes was feilding questions ranging from what catholics really believe about the Eucharist to why priests can't get married. I had lot of help from the teacher and MANY corrections on my grammar, but I spoke entirely in spanish to my German/Estonian/German classmates and even my catholic teacher learned a few things. It was so much fun, I didn't even realize how much practice I was getting with my spanish!

Ok, so that was my excitement for today(that, and Salsa dance lessons tonight!), but I need to get back to telling of my travels. After Granada we went to Córdoba to see their mezquita(mosque) turned cathedral, and then took the bus to Sevilla to check into our hotel for the night. The Cathedral was really incredible. They maintained almost all of the original structure of the mosque(some hundreds out of the more hundreds it had before) and put a huge altar and choir in the center. As long as you were between the choir and the altar, it seemed like any other cathedral, but as soon as you stepped out it turned into a muslim world. The columns reminded me of the Mines of Moria from the Lord of the Rings movie. Something else that fascinated me was the number of private side chapels along the outer walls. There were probably more than 30 different chapels lining three of the four walls of the mosque. As you wandered through the columns away from the central altar, you would eventually come back to a very christian outer wall. I didn't take many pictures because I was burned out from the Alhambra, but I did grab a brochure with some good shots. I'm sure images.google.com can help you out too. It was really amazing.

I also want to mention the monstrance they had there for the feast of Corpus Christi. They said the one in sevilla was bigger, but even this one was as tall as me. It was incredible. So much gold and intricate design. I can't wait for the feast to see the procession here in Salamanca. It won't be Santa Semana, but it'll be pretty cool. It's coming up in just a few weeks!

Before leaving Córdoba, we took a little time to wander through the town and jewish quarter. We were shown a pretty street of flowers with a famous view of the bell tower, but I didn't think it was a very big deal. Pretty, but not too special. We also saw a small, long-unused Jewish temple. It was built by jews and decorated by a muslim under christian rule. The big deal was the mix of culture that is present throughout all of southern spain. It was pretty cool, I guess. I really loved Andalusia as a whole.

We finished the day in Seville, all trying to recover from the long day. My favorite memory was walking down to the Guadalquivir river a few blocks from our hotel and just looking out from the bridge. It was very peaceful and made me realize how much I love rivers in general. We took a little walk along its edge and then headed home for bed.

Now I have to go to a history lecture(we have a presentation on either history or art every night). Last night we learned about the early civilizations, particularly Romans, in Spain and about the art of El Greco. Very interesting stuff.

Hasta luego!

Una entrada pequeña

¡Hola, amigos!

I can't post a lot today because siesta time is almost over and I have another class to get to. As some of you saw on Facebook, I am in Salamanca and have been since Friday. I love it here. The Plaza Mayor, Las Catedrales, my host mom, the parks, the arquitectura(architecture), everything. The food is delicious but their's too much to list since I have to catch up on so much. For now, I don't want to go into too much detail because I have to catch up on the week of traveling I didn't blog!

Jumping back to last Tuesday where my adventures left off, we got on the bus that morning and rode to Granada where we spent the day and stayed the night(in a very swanky hotel, I might add. We felt very underdressed). The two important sites we visited were the Capilla Real and La Alhambra. The Royal Chapel was very beautiful and the burial sight of Los Reyes Católicos, Isabel y Fernando who forced the moors out of spain after 700 years and united the country under a single flag and religion. They're a little controversial in the history books for their treatment of other religions, but experiencing the history gives so much depth to the situation than you can read in a classroom. In the transept of the chapel there were marble statues of the king and queen and you could take a staircase down to see their caskets below. Very cool. There was also a small museum off the side of the chapel with paintings and religious objects used by the king and queen. It was all very beautiful and probably cost a fortune. 

For lunch(thinking of you, mom) most of us went to lunch together at a small restaurant near the chapel. If I haven't explained Menú del Día to you yet, it's a popular restaurant tradition. The restaurant serves three courses(two main and a desert) for about 8-10€. Each day they give about 3 options for each course that you can choose from. I love it. I think that day I had a salad for the first course and a chicken dish for the second, but it's hard to remember. The salad wasn't quite like what you get at home. Instead of a pile of lettuce with a few other veggies on top, it was equal-serving portions of corn, tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, some lettuce, and maybe something else I've forgotten. The chicken was the best course. Yum!

The other event of the day, the Alhambra, was very tiring, but also very beautiful. I felt like I lived behind my camera a bit too much, but I took lots of pictures! The Alhambra was at different points in its history a military fortress and a palace. It was built by the muslims and possessed by los reyes católicos after the defeat of Granada in 1492. It remained in use for some time before the royal family moved elsewhere(Madrid?). The name Alhambra actually means the Red Castle which is a very adequate description as you'll see from my pictures(although it's really the most red at sunset). One of the most beautiful parts of the tour were the gardens of the Generalife gardens(pronounced hen-ey-rah-lee-fey) which were a part of the muslim king's summer home. You'll have to look at the pictures(which will be up soon! I promise!). The other most impressive part was the throne room. You'll really have to see pictures of the ceiling in there. Throughout the whole palace, there are so many intricate designs covering the walls. Apparently they never depicted humans or animals, so they decorated with a lot of patterns and words of the Qur'an. 

Lots of history, lots of sunsets. I should also mention going to the top of the watchtower to overlook Granada. Amazing. Oh, and being next to the Sierra Nevada. They were beautiful to have in the distance. Rumor has it there's a ski resort at the top, but we didn't have time for that. Anyway, we finished our day back at the hotel and went straight to bed after dinner so we could journey to Córdoba and Sevilla the next day.

Sadly, those adventures will have to wait until next time because I have to get back to class. I have afternoons free from about 1 to 5, but I'm in class between 9:30AM and 1PM and then varying times in the early evening. 

Hasta luego!

Más y Más de Benalmádena

5/22/2011 Benalmádena

10:40 - I missed my update yesterday, but do not worry! I still remember everything that happened. Still, this entry may be shorter because I don't have a lot of time on the computer. Yesterday I woke up at 11 am and got down to the beach about 11:30 after applying lots of sunscreen. Everyone else had been down on the sand for over an hour already, but we still splashed around and laid on our towels for almost two hours. It was very relaxing. The water, of course, was cold and salty, but I loved every minute of it. We went back to the hotel to shower before our vocab quizzes.

    For lunch about seven of us walked down to the boardwalk to check out the restaurants there. I had a tomato and tuna bocadillo(a toasted baguette sandwich). It was very delicious. Conversation was awesome too! I was sitting with a friend from Newman(Karen! Surprise!) and two students involved at CCF(campus christian fellowship) who were asking questions about Catholicism. Of course, I could hardly say enough. Afterwards, we split up in some different groups and Karen and I went walking through the town with two of the other guys on the trip. We did find the church, but we got lost a few times(there aren't a lot of street signs) and went to a different church for mass anyway. But we did get some ice cream at a nearby heladería(ice cream shop) as a reward for traveling so far!

     After that, we went back to the hotel and I slept for two hours. The nap led into dinner(again, mediochre and I don't remember what I ate) followed by a very traditional Spanish event: the flamenco dance! We took a bus a few kilometers down the road to a find Pepe Lopez's Flamenco Show. It was incredible. We were all amazed. And we got two free drinks with the ticket! The dancers were so impressive and worked well as a team. You could tell they all worked very closely and had good chemistry. Their movements were so quick and slow, graceful yet aggressive. Look it up on Youtube, but it will never be the same as being right there.

5/23/2011 Benalmádena

10:55PM -  Sorry! Had to cut out because the computer I was borrowing got taken away. Continuing on...

Basically al that happened for the rest of the night Saturday was sitting on a friend's balcony with a few people chatting the night away(including more talk on my favorite subject!). I had also stayed up late Friday night on the balcony talking to my roommate and friend Catherine. It's so peaceful with the breeze blowing and watching the moon rise over and reflect off the sea. Hermosa(beautiful). It's cool getting to know people I would never run into just at school. We're really a great little microcosm(minus our spanish affiliations) of the whole school. There are a wide array of majors and extracurriculars represented.

     Sunday was a very exciting day from the beginning. There were about 12 of us (out of 20!) that went to mass together. And only 6 or so of us were catholic and several had never been to a mass ever. I had to laugh because the church we went to happened to be dedicated to la virgen del carmen(the Virgin of Mt. Carmel). So there were images of the Blessed Mother holding a Scapular ALL over the church. I thought it was beautiful, but some others weren't sure what the think. It was awesome how I could still say the english prayers under the spanish and everything was so much the same! After mass we walked through an incredible park full of so many plant varieties and then we went to lunch(a spanish omelette for me, very tasty and very unique. Look it up!).

     It was around 4 by the time we finished lunch. At that point I was ready for just a little more time on the beach for some swimming and laying on the towel before dinner. I don't remember well, but I think I just relaxed in my room until dinner. After dinner I started blogging but then went to bed early. I did catch some news commentaries on the presidential elections as they came in! El Partido Popular(PP) won, but I don't really know what that means. Thankfully, I was able to fall asleep fairly quickly to rest up for my big trip today!

    Today was a trip to Mijas, Spain. It was a pueblo up on the mountain above Benalmádena. Some people woke up at 6:30 to see the sunrise, but I slept in until around 10:30 and just looked at their pictures. It did look beautiful. About 8 of us chose to hunt down the bus for Mijas at 11 and took the journey all on our own. It was unforgettable. My pictures will be up eventually, you'll just have to wait. The first stop we made was a small chapel built as a tower over a cliff. It turned out to be the site of a Marian apparition: La Virgen de la Peña(The Virgin of the Rock). The images of her were mystifying. I sat and dedicated a small prayer for Grandma Flori and read the history. She appeared to a boy and girl, Juan y Asuncion, in the 16th century who were playing on the hill. I also bought a rosary with the image on it, though it's a bit small to see details.

    There were so many wonderful things about Mijas. We really felt like the other twelve missed out, but the 8 of us were very happy. After the chapel, we sat down for lunch in the shade. In the sun it was hot, but where we ate we had a breeze of perfect coolness brushing by. We all agreed we could sit there all afternoon but had to get moving. We had the option of riding burros(donkeys) around the town, but decided to save our Euros. We thought we could explore the town on our own, but we ended up walking down a very long dead-end residential street away from the more tourist-welcome areas. We were interested to see where people really lived, but happy to find our way back to public squares. We walked up past the bull ring, passed two churches, and then found another spanish park full of their marvelous plant life. The second(third, fourth?) best part of the adventure was sitting down at the edge of the park looking over the edge of the cliffs toward the sea. We all just sat and looked and absorbed it all. Pictures can't do it justice.

     The last thing we did in Mijas was finding a small ice-cream shop. Because one of us couldn't eat sugar, we ended up going to an out of the way frozen yogurt shop in a hidden away corner. It was barely a hole in the wall and the woman(early thirties?) seemed like she was new to the town herself, but the yogurt tasted better than any frozen yogurt I had ever eaten. It tasted like regular yogurt, but very cold and the consistency of ice cream. Along with your yogurt you got three choices of toppings. I had watermelon, pineapple, and honey(the best decision of all!). None of us could get over it, and the woman seemed like we were answered prayers to have so many customers at once.

    As we finished our frozen yogurt, we sat to wait for our bus and quizzed vocab on benches in the shade. The perfect end to the perfect trip(minus the vocab and having to finish our yogurt). Coming back to the hotel, we had a short time to collect ourselves back in our rooms before our vocab quizzes and dinner(still in the same unimpressive hotel restaurant). Pites treated us to a little helado(ice cream, but it's extra creamy here) and I tried the rum and raisins flavor. It was unique to say the least, but I did enjoy it. After that, I came back to the hotel and here I am blogging, checking e-mail and facebook. Tomorrow we leave for Granada and then to Cordoba and Seville the next day(with two nights in Seville; I'll let you know if I see any barbers!).

I'll update as soon as I can!

Bienvenidos a españa!

Welcome to my new blog! This is for all of you living through me right now while I'm in spain. I'm trying to take lots of pictures for you, and I've been journaling each night so far. Here are my entries! You can find pictures on facebook. And so there's no confusion, we're doing some tourism before landing in Salamanca for classes and there is nothing between Karen and I even though her name appears a lot in my journal. We just happened to do everything together. I should also mention Samantha who has spent a lot of time with us and is very nice.

5/18/2011 Madrid

9:12AM – “We just arrived at the hotel! Madrid is bellísima. Our shuttle driver from the airport was very chatter and our hotel is caro to say the least. Very nice. We arrived to soon for our rooms to be ready, though, so we’re all tired and hungry in the lobby. Nonetheless, very excited!

     “For myself, I’m trying to ease into the culture. I started speaking Spanish when the plane landed, but it’s been back and forth. I was able to converse with the shuttle driver at least. He told us all about places to see around the hotel as we drove past. Most notable was el Puerto de Alcalá(think Arc de Triomphe), which you’ll see pictures of later. The city is filled with trees, old architecture, and lots of sunshine.

   “Today our plan is to recover from travel. I’m going to take my camera out tomorrow after I’ve had some rest. This trip is not about sightseeing for me, though. It’s about experiencing and learning. I’ll be keeping a comfortable pace. I don’t want to try to see everything, and that’s my attitude. I’m very content. Let’s hope it doesn’t hit too hard when the novelty wears off!

     “We’ll be in Madrid for two nights and then head south to Benalmádena for three nights. Benalmádena is a sort of suburb of Málaga on the southern coast of Spain. We’ll get 3 days on the beach and a flamenco show.

“So much to do ahead, but for now it’s time to rest my eyes. Hasta luego!”

11:07PM – “I’m getting ready to sleep again, but this time for the night. Many more exciting things happened today and I wanted to write about them while they are still fresh on my mind. First of all, we got into our room and were very pleased. It has all the amenities of an American hotel and we have a large floor-to-ceiling window which opens up to a view of the botanical gardens full of trees. There’s a street right below that some might think is too loud, but my roommate Preston and I like the cool breeze and sounds of the city. It’s very relaxing.

     “I took two naps todays, and ate lunch in between. Lunch was served at the late hour of 2 o’clock and was huge! I had a plate of paella, a mix of various meats in rice, as my “first course” and French fries with a sort of seasons pork as course two. The paella was fun to eat because it had shrimp, clam, oyster, and chicken all together. By the second plate, I was really too full already. I should also mention the flan I had for desert(a sort of egg-gelatin). It was all too much but very delicious.

     “After lunch was nap #2 followed by a trip to the Reina Sofia art museum. There was a bit too much cubism and other strange forms of art for my taste, but there were many pieces of work I did enjoy. They had a number of pieces by Salvador Dalí(but not the melting clocks) which were cool. I especially liked seeing Picasso’s “Guernica.” It was huge! Guernica was a civilian town in Spain that was bombed by Germans assisting the Nationalists during the Civil War in the 1930s. Historians considered it a practice run for the WWII blitzkriegs. It’s one painting I’ve seen a lot in my textbooks.

     “After the museum, I had a pesto spaghetti for dinner and came back to the hotel for bed. Now I’m here, showered, jounaled, and ready for sleep and tomorrow.

                                                                 “Buenos noches!”

5/19/2011 Madrid

10:35PM – “Day 2 survived! So much happens every day it feels like two or three days. We started the day with an awesome continental breakfast, took a vocab quiz, took a tour bus around the city, stopped and explored several notable locations, ate lunch somewhere in the middle, walked to a city park, went to Madrid’s largest museum El Prado, and finally ended with dinner and heading up to bed. If I didn’t mention in my last entry, Madrid is a beautiful city and I am very thankful to experience it.

     “Our breakfast was lots of fresh fruit, juice, bread, and cereal options. I had a large slice of fresh artisan bread, a glass of mango-pear juice, and a kiwi for round one. Round two was a bowl of cereal with dried mango chunks on top and some yogurt with other dried fruits. It was delicious. The vocab quiz wasn’t bad afterward, and then the real fun started with heading to our tour bus which was an open-roof double-decker.

     “When we stepped out of the hotel, my friend Karen and I began a competition of taking the most photos to help me remember to take pictures, which I think was a success. Some of my photos are just of buildings and environment, but I tried to get a lot with people in them. If you look through them(right now on facebook only) you’ll see the Puerto de Alcalá, a GIANT flag, lots of domes for which Madrid is famous, and the library. The bus ride was okay, but more exciting were the stops.

     “Our first stop was a small park with a monument dedicated to the writer Cervantes who wrote Don Quixote. The monument was a tall pillar with scenes from his stories on two sides, a fountain on a third, and Cervantes himself looking over large statues of Don Quixote and his faithful friend Sancho Panza and a reflecting pool.

     “The second stop was the old Palacio Real(Royal Palace) walking tour. We entered by its plaza and walked up the welcoming steps as any foreign dignitary might have many years ago. We weren’t allowed photography inside, but it was royal to be sure. Many of the walls had hand embroidered fabric wallpaper. There were huge tapestries and gold everywhere. The flows were made of intricately designed inlaid marble patterns. Masterfully carved, tall wood doors separated each chamber along with wallpaper matching drapery. My favorite rooms were the oriental room covered in embroidered silk and the smoking room which had porcelain walls so it wouldn’t absorb the smoke. Karen and I also found the armory off of the plaza which displayed old suits of armor, helmets, swords, shields, and horses prepared for both battle and jousts. That was my favorite part.

     “For lunch we bussed to the Plaza Mayor(Greater Plaza). I had half a pizza and a tomato&spiced sausage sandwich. Yum. We peeked into the middle of the plaza, but spent most of our time resting in the small cervecería outside where we ate. We did see, as we were leaving, a youth demonstration on some political matter. The Presidential elections are this weekend and they were camping out on the street for their cause.

     “Although we did explore a nice Spanish flavored central park, the big activity of the approaching evening was El Prado, the art museum. This gallery was much more my style(less abstract). My favorite section was a series of religious paintings by El Greco which were based on mysteries of the faith(annunciation, nativity, ascension, crucifixion, and others). I also liked appreciated seeing Velasquez’s Crucifixion painting in person(another textbook wonder). Christ was about life size and very real. We saw some pieces by the famed Goya, but it wasn’t much to me. The museum of course had many other workds, but I couldn’t possibly describe(or have seen!) them all.

     “Dinner was a chance to finally relax. I had a small plate of cannoli followed by a plate of delicious mystery fish. The rest of the evenings has been resting my feet and stopping by the McDonalds next door to journal while friends used the wifi. I didn’t have time to use it myself , but I’ll be on soon enough. For now, it’s time to head to the room to get ready for bed.

    “Recuédame en vuestras oraciones!”

5/20/2011 Madrid&Málaga

9:55PM – “Today has been much less eventful. After breakfast, we left for the train, and once on it I did see a lot of beautiful Spanish countryside. We were on our way here to Málaga. After arriving at our destination, we settled into our hotel and were given free rein to relax with no schedule.

     “The chief attraction of Málaga is its beach, from which we are staying less than a block away. For this reason we spent a lot of time there today. It also turns out to be a popular vacation point for the UK. I had a burger, chips(fries), and a beer at a very English establishment. Shortly after, I walked along the shore with a group of my fellow travellers and spent an hour just splashing in the tide. It was very relaxing.

     “I can’t say enough how beautiful Spain is, especially here on the Mediterranean, but I do miss home. Being with the group so much and exploring gets tiring. Dinner was less exciting tonight and the novelty of restaurants is wearing off. It seems I’m hitting the culture shock a little quickly. Hopefully the recovery will be accordingly swift. I am making new friends and there is plenty to be excited about, but I’ll also be trying to find quality time both alone and with the people I enjoy most.

     “In addition to praying for me, please enjoy the comforts of home. For those of you in Cape, take a stroll down by the river. Mom&Dad, enjoy your evening popcorn. Jadie, practice a little extra piano and guitar for me. Everyone else, consider a nice PB&J for lunch, there’s nothing quite like it. And don’t worry about the fresh seafood and rice I get to eat!

“Vos quiero.”